The revolutionist, p.14
The Revolutionist, page 14
Speaking Russian with his usual Georgian accent, Stalin said, "I am told you once eliminated a traitor in New York."
Tuohy didn't bat an eye. "Where did you pick up that bit of information,'*"
"I hear things. This is the story: We have accounts in several banks in Petrograd through which our German friends filter money to us from Stockholm. They are in the name of a Bolshevik named Alexinsky. Gregory Alexinsky. We have reason to believe that Alexinsky is on the verge of going over to Kerensky. If the provisional government gets its hands on this information, we'll be finished." Stalin came to the point. "Alexinsky is arriving from Moscow by train this afternoon. He'll be carrying some family jewels in a briefcase. You must be sure to take them—"
"I don't understand—do you want me to rob him or kill him.'"'
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"Both. That way he won't complain about the robbery. The peasants have a saying: a man who has lost his head doesn't cry over his hair." Stalin emitted a guttural laugh; it sounded as if he were clearing his throat. "Be sure you dump the jewels into the river. With the briefcase gone, robbery will appear to be the motive, but we don't want to take the chance that the death can be traced back to us through the jewels. As soon as you have accomplished this, you must drop out of sight until the affair has died down. Trotsky's going off tonight to make a tour of the front. I've arranged for you to join him as a bodyguard." Stalin tilted his head and added, "Take care of this job correctly and I will not forget it."
Stalin had given him a perfect description of Alexinsky, and so Tuohy had no trouble picking him out when the afternoon train from Moscow pulled into the station. The platform teemed with soldiers and sailors returning for leave, along with peasant women lugging large burlap sacks, and a file of silent nuns, their faces lost in the shadows of their peaked hats, on a pilgrimage to Petersburg's holy places. Alexinsky, tall, thin, wearing an overcoat with a mink collar and pointed Italian patent leather shoes, hugged a briefcase to his body and struggled with a heavy leather valise.
Tuohy blocked his path. "Comrade Alexinsky," he said in a respectful voice, "I greet you in the name of the Minister of Justice of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky. Here, let me help you with the valise—"
A trace of doubt flickered across Alexinsky's face, and instantly disappeared in the folds of an ingratiating smile. "How extremely thoughtful of Kerensky," he said. "But how did he know when I was due back in Petrograd.'"'
Tuohy lifted the valise and fell into step alongside Alexinsky. "There is very little that happens that Kerensky doesn't know about," he said vaguely.
Alexinsky's eyes settled suspiciously on Tuohy. "You speak Russian with a slight accent.''"
"I am half English," Tuohy explained. As Stalin had foreseen, this detail seemed to allay Alexinsky's suspicions; the English were known to be pro-Kerensky.
Outside, Tuohy led Alexinsky through a cluster of peasants brewing pots of tea on small open fires to the two-seater Pierce Arrow he had "borrowed" for the occasion. He deposited the leather suitcase in the luggage compartment and held the door open for Alexinsky, who was still clutching his briefcase under one arm.
"To be met by an automobile," laughed Alexinsky. "It is just like the old days."
THE REVOLUTIONIST
"You are a very important individual," Tuohy told him. "My superiors are prepared to go to great lengths to see that no harm comes to you."
Tuohy took a roundabout route, driving through rundown neighborhoods and crossing out-of-the-way canals, going all the time in the general direction of the Vyborg section of the city. Alexinsky's eyes darted to the narrow, unfamiliar side streets. "Where are you taking me.''" he inquired, making an effort to keep his voice natural.
"I'm sorry, I thought I told you," Tuohy said innocently. "The minister wants to see you immediately—something about bank accounts in your name. He instructed me to take the long way around to make sure you were not being followed."
Tuohy turned onto a narrow, badly paved side street off Chukova Street, then into an unpaved alleyway behind a row of abandoned stables. Darkness was settling over the city as he pulled the Pierce Arrow into a dilapidated stable with an open door. Tuohy cut the motor.
"And where is Kerensky.''" Alexinsky asked nervously.
"He is waiting for you in the apartment upstairs." Tuohy pulled the stable door closed and bolted it from the inside. Then he walked around to Alexinsky's side of the automobile.
By now all traces of blood had drained from Alexinsky's face and his words came in a rush. "Look, I don't know you, but you have an honest face. Maybe we can strike a deal. I can make it worth your while—"
Tuohy only smiled. "Citizen Alexinsky, you are bothering yourself for nothing. Believe me, Kerensky is waiting for you upstairs. He considers you to be an important collaborator."
Tuohy opened the door, snapped his head in the direction of the staircase, and smiled again. "You are keeping the minister waiting."^
Alexinsky glanced around uncertainly, then gingerly climbed out of the car and gazed up the dark stairs. At the top a partly open door seemed to confirm that he was expected. "You are absolutely sure he is there.'"' he asked Tuohy.
"You have my word for it."
Alexinsky put his weight on the first step, hesitated, then started slowly up the flight of stairs, which creaked under him. Tuohy helped himself to a cigarette, tapped it several times against the case, and stuck it into his mouth without lighting it. He drew his revolver from its wooden holster, sighted on Alexinsky's back, and squeezed the trigger. The shot sounded like the crack of a whip in the stable. Alexinsky's body hurtled through the partly open door onto a floor Uttered with empty beer bottles and old magazines. Taking the steps
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two at a time, Tuohy retrieved the briefcase, kicked Alexinsky over onto his back, and grasped his wrist to check for a pulse. When he felt one, he shook his head in irritation. Alexinsky's eyes twitched open. Tuohy, reaching out at arm's length, tried to wedge the barrel of his German pistol into Alexinsky's mouth. The wounded man pleaded with his eyes and gritted his teeth as if his refusal to open his mouth could save him.
"Beg for your life," Tuohy ordered.
Alexinsky made the mistake of saying "Please." As his mouth opened, Tuohy slipped the tip of the barrel deep into it. Alexinsky gagged—but Tuohy, relishing the moment, didn't pull the trigger.
"Comrade Alexinsky, there is very little that happens in Petrograd that Stalin doesn't know about," he whispered harshly.
Alexinsky's eyes glazed over in terror. Tuohy's fingertips tingled with power—and pleasure. Smiling faintly, he pulled the trigger.
Night, along with a thin, moist smog rolling in from the Baltic, had already engulfed the city when Tuohy, making his way on foot, reached the Anichkov Bridge, its tarnished bronze horses silhouetted against the last stray streaks of gray in the west. Tuohy paused in the middle of the bridge to make sure he was not being observed, then pried open the lock on the briefcase with a pocket knife and spilled the contents into the darkness below. He flung the briefcase in after the rest and headed by the most direct route he knew toward Arishka's flat.
"Americanitz, you are too rough with me," Arishka complained after Tuohy had pulled off her clothes and launched his assault. He positioned his body in an effort to get her to do something she had never done before, but she resisted. "I have heard of such a thing, but it does not appeal to me," she said in her forthright way. Tuohy persisted. Arishka gritted her teeth.
"For Christ's sake," Tuohy exclaimed, "it's not going to bite you."
Arishka made the mistake of saying "Please, Americanitz—"
Tuohy slipped it past her parted lips. Arishka gagged. Closing his eyes, oblivious to Arishka's panic, Tuohy relived the killing of Alexinsky until, smiling faintly, he once again treated himself to the pulling of the trigger.
At the stroke of midnight Tuohy joined the three-automobile caravan parked at the Moscow Gate at the end of Ligovsky Prospekt. Trotsky, struggling with a picnic hamper filled with sausages and wine, soon showed up along with several Bolshevik agitators, and the caravan set off for the front.
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Trotsky, who had only recently returned to Petrograd—the British had removed him from the Christianiafjord and interred him at Halifax for a month before allowing him to continue on to Russia—curled up in the backseat, plugged his ears with wads of cotton, and sank into a deep sleep. Tuohy drove until he found himself dozing, then changed off with one of the agitators and slept fitfully in the passenger seat, his head banging against the window every time the automobile hit a pothole.
In the days that followed, Trotsky's caravan explored the moonscape of Russia at war. The evidence of battles and destruction was everywhere—and it was worse than Tuohy had imagined. Whole villages had been reduced to debris by enormous German cannon shells. The roads were clogged with refugees who, fearful of a new German onslaught, had loaded their possessions onto carts and headed east. Occasionally the caravan passed handfuls of Austrian prisoners being herded away from the front; once they even saw a German prisoner wearing a greatcoat and the distinctive spiked helmet.
Late one evening Trotsky's party bivouacked across the river from a hospital, and in the morning Tuohy wandered back over to flirt with an English nurse he had seen the night before. He arrived in time for the burial of a teenage soldier who had succumbed to shrapnel wounds. The body had been wrapped in a sheet and placed in a coffin. A priest, hoarse from officiating at funerals, uttered prayers over the coffin, which was swarming with flies. Eventually someone had the good sense to nail the lid shut. Tuohy, edging closer to the English nurse, thought he could hear the flies trapped inside buzzing to get out.
That afternoon they took lunch at a mobile field kitchen with its open air bread ovens lined up nearby, smoke streaming from their tin chimneys. Later, the three automobiles in the caravan were ferried across a river alongside a bridge that had been destroyed. They passed rows of barbed wire entanglements stretched in front of a freshly dug system of trenches; the trenches had been prepared as a fallback position in case the actual front line cracked. Behind a barn they found hundreds of rifles, half of them rusting and unusable, stacked against a wall; they had been salvaged from the battlefield and left for the raw recruits who arrived without weapons. The caravan skirted a troop of boy soldiers straining under the weight of their rifles and backpacks as they headed for the front to relieve a unit on the line.
Every time the caravan came across a unit, no matter what its size, no matter what the time of day, Trotsky would emerge from the backseat of his automobile, climb up on an ammunition box or a coffin, and with the light flashing from his pince-nez, lash out at the
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provisional government for its failure to take Russia out of the war. Propaganda, however, was not the principal reason for the trip. Trotsky had been sent out to sample the mood of the troops at the front. If it came to a showdown, would the rank and file soldiers support the handful of Bolsheviks who wanted to put an end to the war, or their officers who wanted to enforce military discipline and continue the war.''
An answer of sorts came unexpectedly one night when Trotsky and his entourage were sharing a watery cabbage soup, cooked over an open fire, with soldiers behind the front line. The regiment had been ordered to return to the trenches facing the Germans. The regimental Soviet, dominated by Bolsheviks, protested the order. "We are finished spilling our blood," cried one of the young Bolsheviks, "so that the capitalists back in Moscow and Petrograd can fatten their bank accounts."
The regimental colonel, a gaunt officer with a chest full of medals, appeared soon afterward. "Men," he called, "the day the tsar declared war against Germany, he recited the oath that Alexander the First took at the time of Napoleon's invasion of our motherland in 1812." The colonel elevated his chin and began to recite. "I solemnly swear ..."
In the shadows behind the campfires, a handful of soldiers stood up and joined their colonel in reciting the oath.
". . . that I will never make peace ..."
Now there were several dozen soldiers on their feet, and the colonel's voice was lost in a chorus of voices.
". . . so long as one of the enemy is on the soil of . . ."
Suddenly the young Bolshevik who had spoken earlier stepped out of the shadows and plunged a bayonet into the stomach of the colonel. He pulled the bayonet free, and calmly walked away. Blood gushed from the colonel's tunic. He swayed on his feet and collapsed. Several junior officers who had been watching from the fringes sprinted for their horses and galloped off into the night.
The Bolshevik agitators from Petrograd tried to convince Trotsky that it would be wiser for them to leave immediately, and Tuohy wholeheartedly seconded the notion. But Trotsky was adamant: he wanted to observe at first hand how things turned out.
An hour later Tuohy heard the sound of automobile engines. Headlights stabbed out of the darkness on ever>' side, and a dozen or so armored cars, enormous vehicles that looked like prehistoric monsters, closed in on the camps. "Soldiers," a voice cried through a bullhorn, "you have three minutes to stand parade with equipment and rifles. Anyone who doesn't obey this order will be shot."
"Now we shall see," Trotsky said calmly, "if they will fight for their rights or meekly give in."
THE REVOLUTIONIST
For a moment it could have gone either way, and Tuohy loosened his pistol in its holster and prepared to pull Trotsky under one of their automobiles. Then several soldiers rose to their feet, kicked dirt onto their campfires, and fell in before the headlights of the armored cars. Others joined them until, finally, every soldier in the regiment was standing in line.
"Fix bayonets," the voice ordered through the bullhorn.
The soldiers drew their bayonets from their scabbards and snapped them onto their rifles.
"Present rifles," the voice ordered.
The rifles flew up in front of the soldiers. Four officers with drawn pistols started down the line of soldiers. One of them ran a finger over each bayonet as he passed. His finger came away from a bayonet sticky with blood. The officers pulled the soldier roughly from the line, relieved him of his rifle, and thrust him against the trunk of a tree. "Soldiers," shouted an officer, "this is the fate of rebels in your midst." And so saying, he extended his pistol at arm's length until it touched the nape of the neck of the soldier.
"Comrades," cried the soldier, "long live the revolution!"
A bullet tore through his neck.
"Sub-officers," shouted an officer, "take charge and move these men into the trenches. Execute."
In the eerie light coming from the armored cars, the soldiers hefted their rifles onto their shoulders and marched sullenly off into the night.
Absolute quiet settled over the fields. Trotsky, Tuohy, and several of the Bolshevik agitators went over to the body of the executed soldier. He was lying facedown at the foot of the tree. With a chill Tuohy saw that the soldier's long hair was tied into a knot at the nape of his neck.
"What regiment was that.''" he asked one of the agitators.
"The Four forty-third Regiment of the One hundred tenth Division," the man answered. "Why.'*"
"Nothing."
He realized that the dead man was Arishka's husband.
The fat Uzbek who had traded the solid brass ear trumpet for the photograph of the naked princess kept it hidden in a drawer, referring to it on the occasions when his wife indicated, by a series of subtle gestures that had long since become a code between them, that she wanted to be made love to that night. Then one day the Uzbek was haggling with a Cossack who had come into possession of an envelope of cocaine. The Cossack hesitated about trading it for a saddle that
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had once belonged to a grand duke—his royal insignia was embossed on the leather—and ten English pounds sterling, so the Uzbek offered him the photograph of the naked woman to clinch the deal. "The man who sold it to me swore she is a genuine princess."
The Cossack ran the ball of his thumb over the body of the princess, then with a grunt of satisfaction tucked the ten-pound note and the photograph away in his orders ledger, hefted the saddle onto his shoulder, and departed.
White as the sheet that covered him, Zander sat propped up in a large bed. Heavy green curtains were drawn across the windows because dayUght still bothered his eyes. Lili spoon-fed him chicken broth with the yolk of an egg mixed into it.
"Does your head still hurt.^^" When he didn't answer, she said softly, "Do you remember what happened?"
He remembered all right. "The colonel cut off my—"
"Oh, Alexander, you don't remember. He didn't—"
Zander created a wall so her words would not penetrate; if he allowed himself to hope, he would die of disappointment.
"You don't believe me.?" Tears appeared in her voice. "See for yourself." She tore off the sheet.
Zander turned his head away and shut his eyes.
"If you won't look," Lili cried, "then feel." She took his limp penis in her hand as if she were lifting a wounded sparrow. With the tips of her fingers she kneaded the beak of the bird. "Now you can look, Alexander," she encouraged him quietly. "Turn your head. That's right. Open your eyes."
His skull throbbed; he thought he would be blinded by the pain. Light seeped into his brain. Images, washed by tears, came into focus.
What he saw confirmed what he could feel.
And then the image blurred again as Zander began to sob.
When he could bear to listen, Lili explained what had happened in the coal room. "You remember the young soldier on guard duty when we arrived—the one who said he was a Bolshevik.? He and his comrades had been on bad terms with their officers for months. When one
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