Russian Front (10)
Chapter Eight MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD The flight from Prestwick to Moscow had been both uneventful and uncomfortable. Fortune had given Swayne a new and genuine identity card for his trip to Scotland. He had been met in foggy Glasgow by another staff car - working for one of the secret organizations had its compensations, you didn’t have to struggle around on public transport - driven by a private who couldn’t seem to stop yawning. At Prestwick Airport, after fulsome security checks, he was shown into one of the Nissen huts where he was told to wait while he had a breakfast of stewed tomatoes on toast with a mug of tea served by a stocky waitress with an impenetrable accent. The fog cleared gradually to gray skies during the day. Some time during the late afternoon, as a pale sunset briefly cast long faint shadows, Swayne was told to get ready. In another hut he and the other passengers, who seemed to be British diplomatic staff except for one American high-ranking officer, put on bulky flying suits over their pin stripes and uniforms. Swayne was still wearing his RAF outfit, and it amused him to think that, should there be any kind of emergency during the flight, the other passengers would probably look to the Brylcreem Boy for reassurance. The plane was a Liberator, a big and rather pot-bellied aircraft which, it relieved Swayne to see, was powered by four engines. It was painted black but seemed more depressed than sinister as dusk deepened over the busy airfield. Swayne thought it looked like an aircraft that was worried about its weight. The interior had been rigged with canvas seats and there was a sleeping bag for everyone. For the second flight of his life Swayne bagged a seat by a window over the wings, although there was not much competition. The plane roared down the runway – it seemed much noisier than the elegant Douglas that had taken he and Sally from Lisbon to Croydon – and took off to begin circling the Grampians, gaining height all the time in the dying light from the West. From his seat Swayne could see the pilot adjust dampers on the exhaust outlets to reduce the flame from the exhausts. After quarter of an hour’s flight it was pitch dark outside and very cold inside as, in faint blue light, they were shown how to use their oxygen masks. All the passengers crawled into their sleeping bags. The noise, the sucking and blowing into the mask, the occasional bumps and falling sensation from turbulence, were all exhausting. As they tracked into the freezing night over Scandinavia and the Baltic, everyone dozed. One of the diplomatic-types next to him muttered in his sleep, which Swayne would not have minded if he could have followed what the man was saying. He had just fallen properly asleep when an RAF dispatcher woke him to offer coffee from a thermos and a sandwich of some indeterminable filling. The coffee helped keep out the cold but he didn’t drink too much of it since he wasn’t very keen on using the chemical toilet at the back of the plane. He dozed and thought, and thought and dozed, mostly about Sally. He hoped she was all right. He wanted to see her again, although the prospect of any relationship seemed as insubstantial as the filling of the RAF sandwich. He also knew on some atavistic level that he must go to bed with her. She was unfinished business, prey that had temporarily escaped. He would not be able to decide how he really felt about her until the chase was over and he had experienced her body. Hunters talk about ‘taking’ a deer and, although not he was not overly introspective, he could see the emotional link between the two kinds of pursuit. The line of thought that compared Sally to an animal of the forest woke his conscience but he self-righteously declared, almost out loud, that it was all right because he always used French letters. Or, at least, offered to use them. But his chief feeling was excitement at the prospect of going to Moscow and Stalingrad. Colonel Fortune had told him that the mission wasn’t particularly hazardous. What Swayne hadn’t told Fortune was that he was sick of killing other men like game for the table and that he had been about to apply for another posting. He slept again, waking only briefly when there was a kind of brief hammering on the fuselage, sounding for all the world as if someone was outside and knocking to be let in. It was probably flak from a German ship in the Baltic, which might have alarmed him if he had been less exhausted. He was only jolted awake when his ears began to pop as the plane lost altitude in bright sunlight as it came into its final approach before landing. The aerodrome in Moscow had only a light covering of snow. Apart from the red stars on the other aircraft, it looked much the same as any other airfield. Swayne was slightly disappointed; he had expected it to be different, more exotic somehow. He reminded himself that Moscow was in European Russia and on much the same latitude as Edinburgh. Together with the diplomats and the American officer he trudged what seemed about half a mile through runway slush to a building where the diplomats were swiftly separated and taken to another room. Briefly he glimpsed a banquet table laden with what looked like caviar, smoked herring and bottles of vodka. The American and he were shown to separate cars for their trip into Moscow. Almost immediately, the smart young officer escorting him gave him a black woolen mask with eyeholes. Swayne looked at it, was about to tell the man where he could put his mask, then remembered his mission. As he settled back in the comfortable seats of the American-made Willis staff car and adjusted his mask it occurred to him that he would find it hard, after lately being driven everywhere, to get used to the crowding and delays of wartime buses and trains. The day was brilliantly sunny but for some infuriating reason the officer who accompanied him insisted on pulling down the blinds of the car ‘in case of sunburn’. Peering around the edges of the blinds he was aware of very little traffic. Once they got into the outskirts of town, passing huge apartment blocks that contrived to appear both recently constructed and shabby at the same time, he could see propaganda posters on the sides of buildings. Most featured Stalin and seemed to be exhorting the Russian people to heroic efforts of production, although he could not read a word. It interested Swayne to notice a poster comparing a brutally handsome Stalin with some military hero from Peter the Great’s time. Clearly the Communists were prepared to call on folk heroes from the czarist era when it suited them. Or rather, when the situation was so desperate. He knew that they were approaching their destination when the car began to go through a checkpoint through a gate in an enormous stone wall. He realized that he was entering the Kremlin. Neither the officer who sat next to him nor the driver belonged to the regular Red Army. Their uniforms were both fairly smart and the officer had a fur hat with a red star in the center. Swayne knew from the newsreels what Russian infantry looked like, and these men were something else. NKVD troops, probably. The car proceeded across a courtyard, past another equally stringent checkpoint where a guard with a machine pistol that resembled, with its snail magazine, a prohibition-era gangster’s tommy-gun, leaned forward as if to look inside the back of the car. The officer next to Swayne spoke very sharply and the soldier immediately straightened up and snapped to attention, clearly terrified. The officer shouted an order through the blinds at the driver who put his foot down making the car skid on the pebble stones of the courtyard as it proceeded to another very large courtyard almost like a city square. Swayne’s legs were stiff after the long flight and he took his time to stretch as he got out of the car and breathed deeply in the frosty air. The officer looked at him oddly as if this were some breach of etiquette. Swayne felt intuitively that this was because most people who visited the Kremlin were far to preoccupied with their fate to stretch or, for that matter, blow their nose or ask for the toilet. But he felt perfectly at ease. What was there to be worried about? He was a guest here, wasn’t he? The car sped off and the officer led him, without speaking or any kind of welcoming pleasantness, up steps through a beautifully carved tall wooden door and to a marble staircase. The place was very busy with officers and clerks passing them in both directions. It fascinated Swayne to notice that nobody looked twice at the mask. If they glanced in his direction at all it was very discreetly at his strange uniform. Along an immensely long hall with many doors they came at last to a room where the blinds were drawn. Swayne’s escort went out, closing the door behind him quietly, and Swayne looked around. The room was lit by means of a chandelier of which the majority of the bulbs were not working. He pulled the woolen mask off and stuffed it in his pocket, rubbing his face and straightening his hair. Another door to a connecting office opened and in came a man and a woman, both in uniform. The man took charge immediately and held out his hand. ‘Lieutenant Swayne. Delighted to meet you. I’m Romanov. Sergei’ He was in his late twenties, good-looking, with gray eyes that seemed to look through Swayne, and the inimitable languid manner and infuriating self-assurance of an Eton-Cambridge type. His English was faultless, his handshake was limp. ‘Let me introduce you, Tania. This is Hugh Swayne, come to raise the heroic Yuri from the grave, as t’were.’ Tania winced faintly at this. ‘How do you do?’ She said, offering her hand to Hugh. Her handshake was firm, which Hugh liked in women as well as men. She also looked in his eyes and attempted a tight smile as she shook his hand. Hugh liked this as well. Somehow he also admired the fact that there was no trace of flirtation in her look. Sergei walked smiling to a table filled with vodka bottles, glasses, and smoked fish. Swayne and Tania followed him unbidden. He glanced at her. She looked to be mid-twenties with a good, athletic figure. He noticed long and rather muscled legs in a drab brown skirt and leather boots. Her eyes were blue and sad, her longish blond hair pulled back in a wildly unpretty bun. She had a uniform hat on, but he could not have guessed her rank, except that perhaps she was a junior officer. Her outfit lacked the quality and distinctive green collar tabs of Sergei’s. So she was regular military, he concluded. Sergei poured vodka in small glasses for all three of them. The vodka had small white slivers floating in it. Swayne looked at these with what must have been a dubious expression. ‘Garlic, old chap,’ Explained Sergei. ‘Keeps away colds and hangovers. Chin-chin.’ Swayne was famished and concentrated on the fish and bread. Tania stood, both gracious and sad, drunk her vodka rapidly and filled her glass. ‘I’ve spent quite a bit of time in England as you can tell. Harrow and Cambridge,’ said Sergei with quiet conversational confidence. He gave Swayne what he probably believed was his most debutante-devastating smile and murmured, ‘I expect you’re wondering what someone like me is doing in this set-up.’ Of course Swayne had been asking himself just that. He smiled slightly in what he hoped was a polite invitation for Sergei to go on. He was beginning to remind Swayne of a certain type of younger Guards officer universally despised in the British Army. Sergei kept looking at him without blinking, silently demanding a reply. He was attempting to dominate Swayne from the outset. Fuck you and your Sandhurst games, thought Swayne, who was more tired and irritable than he had realized. He didn’t attempt to stare Sergei out. It was a pet theory of his that people who play staring games have a master-slave mentality and as a consequence view all relationships in terms of power. Staring someone out is immensely important to them. Swayne was fond of saying when he was drunk that such people practice by looking in the mirror without blinking. All alone in their rooms at night, he would add. Very few people ever knew what he was talking about. Move back into cover, Swayne decided. He kept his eyes on Sergei’s and then let them travel, without blinking, up to the top of Sergei’s rather Sassoonish wavy red-brown hair. Then Swayne frowned slightly. Without blinking, he sighed and let his eyes move to the blinds over the windows. He walked towards them, brushing Sergei slightly. He reached for the blinds as if to open them and was rewarded with the sound of panic-stricken movement behind him. ‘No, no, old chap, you mustn’t! You’ll get us all shot!’ Sergei rushed to the window and grabbed the blinds, smoothing the hair on the top of his head. ‘All of us?’ murmured Swayne, moving back to the table for a refill. ‘Well, Tania and myself anyway. This mission is top secret. You really shouldn’t show your face before we’re ready. Yuri’s picture has been in all the newspapers.’ Tania hadn’t moved. She was filling her glass again. She wasn’t looking at either of them. Her mind was somewhere else. She’s lost somebody, Swayne perceived. Sergei had regained his Waugh-like composure. ‘It’s a terrible bore, I know. But if you could bear to keep your mask on until curtain up, as t’were, the powers-that-be would be a lot happier.’ ‘But then they wouldn’t have anyone to shoot, would they?’ ‘Oh, my dear Hugh,’ muttered Sergei, ‘They have simply tons of people they are itching to shoot, I promise you.’ He looked at Swayne, this time without any pretension in his face. ‘Please don’t imagine that your King’s Commission or British passport will serve as any kind of bullet-proof vest. You are a long, long way from home.’ He continued in a voice that became almost dreamy: ‘No village bobbies here. No court of appeal. No Speakers’ Corner. And quite definitely no elections. That’s not how our chaps hold on to the kind of power they’ve got.’ ‘How do they keep their power?’ asked Swayne, although he suspected that he knew the answer.’ ‘Terror, dear boy,’ said Sergei. Tania did not react in any way at all. * * * * * The next thirty-six hours were a blur of activity for Swayne as he was kitted out in a Red Army Major’s uniform – ‘Congratulations on your promotion, old chap,’ commented Sergei dryly - and given brief tuition on the Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle on a range in an officers’ training school that was closed and surrounded by NKVD troops while he was there. He learned that the original plan had called for him to be surgically operated on to reproduce the extensive scar that Yuri had borne on his neck. He was relieved to be told that this refinement had been cancelled because the wound would take too long to heal. Whenever Tania and Romanov wanted to say something to each other in confidence, they simply started speaking to each other in Russian. It seemed rather rude to Swayne, who knew that they could both speak English. When they decided to ignore him they did so with complete unselfconsciousness. He sensed that somehow the fact that he was English, or more exactly a westerner, made him very different and somehow inferior in their eyes. Not a sensation a middle-class British Army officer was used to. On the morning when they were due to make the first leg of the long flight down the line of the Volga to Stalingrad, Tania herself cut his hair for him, since this was part of the preparation that could not be done with the mask on. He sat in the room with the sad chandeliers on a hard chair while she put a blanket around his shoulders. She still carried about her an air of distracted sorrow. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing with those scissors. I’m terribly vain,’ he said in an effort at conversation. ‘My mother used to cut the hair in our family when I was little,’ said Tania. Her voice was quite deep, with a strong accent. ‘I watched her cut my father’s hair. Once a month, in front of the stove on a Sunday night. My mother’s hair was very beautiful. It was long enough for her to sit on.’ ‘Where are your parents now?’ asked Swayne, hoping that he would not have cause to regret doing so. ‘It is difficult to say,’ sighed Tania in a voice that held no hope. ‘The family home was in Kiev, which is deep in the part of our country that is now occupied by fascists. My father was Jewish and a communist. That means the Germans have almost certainly murdered him. My mother might be dead, or she might be alive. We get no news from there, no letters. She might have escaped. My dream is that she is a refugee working in one of the new factories beyond the Urals. I have no brothers or sisters.’ ‘What about the post? Newspapers? The Red Cross. Isn’t there any kind of central register of evacuees? Tania snorted, ‘This isn’t England!’. ‘What part of England did your mother come from?’ ‘London. The north part of the city, I think. Her mother was, erm, suffragette and the whole family was active in politics. Socialist and feminist.’ Swayne was faintly alarmed to see Tania move out of his sight and come back with a shaving mug filled with soap. She had cut his hair very short with the scissors and now she began to cover his head and chin with soap. ‘I …’ Swayne began. ‘I saw a photograph of Yuri, He didn’t appear to have a shaved head.’ ‘The picture was taken just before he became lousy. I must shave your head. I take it you want me to shave your chin while I am doing this?’ ‘Why not,’ said Swayne in an effort to show that he could adapt quickly, although he closed his eyes when she approached him with a cut-throat razor. ‘Don’t worry, Hugh. My hands are steady,’ she murmured in a voice that held faint traces of both condescension and amusement. Sergei had mentioned that Englishmen were seen as soft in Russia. It was the first time that she had used his first name, which she pronounced ‘You’. When she had finished Hugh asked for a mirror, a request which made Tania curl her lip with contempt. Russia, he thought to himself, beginning to feel fed up. A land where men are men and so are the women. He ran his hand over the unfamiliar dome. His ears felt cold. The door opened and Sergei came in, warmly wrapped up in greatcoat and fur hat. He ran an amused eye over Swayne’s new profile. ‘I’d say it’s an improvement if anything, dear boy. Now put your mask on. The car is waiting to take us to the airport.’ In the car, with Hugh and Tania’s spare uniform clothing, weapons and other kit crammed in the boot, and the three of them squashed into the back seat, Sergei pulled a single sheet of paper out of his pocket and showed it to Tania, who was in the middle. For some arcane reason, or perhaps simple forgetfulness, there were no blinds on the car windows this time. The car sped through Red Square, across which a column of German prisoners was being paraded to boost Muscovite morale. They looked enormously weary, with incipient beards and hollow eyes. Their clothes, particularly footwear, were in terrible condition and most seemed to be shod in rags tied up with string.
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Copyright © 1998 Aidan Steer |