The Forbidden Territory Read online

  The Duke and Simon were soon seated at a small table in the restaurant.

  “Well—er—any news?” Simon asked at once, but the only reply he received was a by no means gentle kick, from the Duke’s big Hessian boot under the table. Then that amazingly interesting and erudite man launched forth into a long dissertation upon the marvels of Moscow—its wonderful historical associations lying side by side with all these modern developments, which, in another two generations, might make it the capital of the civilised world.

  It was well that De Richleau talked fluently, and enjoyed talking, since the service of the restaurant was quite appalling. They had to wait twenty-five minutes before a waiter condescended to take their order—and another twenty minutes before the first course arrived.

  Despite his anxiety to hear if any news of Rex had been secured by the Duke in Helsingfors or Leningrad, Simon remained patient through the long wait and the plain but satisfying meal that followed. He never tired of listening to the Duke, and the dullness of the fare was relieved by a large helping of caviare. Simon, who was patient by nature, could be especially patient if the caviare was good and plentiful!

  Directly they had finished they donned their furs, and left the hotel, but De Richleau did not take the road to the River District. Instead he turned up the Petrowka Boulvarde, saying to Simon as he did so : “I feel that now is the time to ascertain about our Hoyo de Monterreys.”

  “Mmm,” Simon agreed, “hope they came through all right?”

  “Yes, but I did not wish to collect them until you had joined me.”

  They walked on for some twenty minutes, turning occasionally to right or left; meanwhile De Richleau still avoided the subject of Rex, and continued his dissertation upon Moscow.

  Simon looked about him with interest. Moscow was quite unlike any large city he had seen—the great majority of the buildings were in a shocking state of repair, the paint peeling from shop-fronts and doorways. The windows broken, boarded over, or covered with grime. Nine out of ten shops were empty and deserted; those that were still occupied had little in their windows other than a bust of Lenin and a Soviet flag, except here and there, where long queues of people waited outside one of the State Co-operative Stores. In contrast to this atmosphere of poverty and desolation, a great deal of demolition was going on, and in nearly every street new buildings were springing up—great structures of steel, concrete, and glass.

  The side streets showed ruts and ditches guaranteed to ruin the springs of any car, but all the main roads had been newly paved with asphalt. Traffic was practically non-existent, which gave the streets a strange appearance.

  The only regular means of transport seemed to be the trams—and at each stopping place the waiting crowds swarmed upon these like a flight of locusts; there seemed no limit to the number they were allowed to carry, and people who could not force their way inside hung from the rails and platforms at the back and front. One thing that astonished Simon was the extraordinary number of people in the streets—they all seemed to be hurrying somewhere, and he thought that some sort of national holiday must be in progress, but when he suggested this to the Duke, De Richleau shook his head.

  “No, my friend—it is only the effect of the five-day week! There are no more Sundays in Russia, or Saturday half-holidays. Everybody works at something, in a series of perpetual shifts, so that from year’s end to year’s end there is no cessation of industry. The factories are never idle, but each individual has every fifth day free—therefore, one-fifth of the entire population of this city is on holiday each day.”

  “So that is why there are so many people about—I’m surprised at the queues, though; I thought all that was done away with.”

  “While there is no system of delivery there must be queues.” De Richleau shrugged his shoulders. “A great part of everybody’s free time is spent in queueing up for necessities; besides, there is never enough of anything; if you apply for a hat or a pair of new boots, your co-operative society notifies you when they receive a consignment. If you need your boots badly, you must run to be early in the queue, or else there will be none left to fit you, or perhaps no more at all. If you live in Russia now, you must even go out to fetch the milk in the morning—that is, provided you are entitled to a milk ration. Nine-tenths of the milk supply is turned into butter in order that it may be dumped in England, and more machinery bought for the new factories with the money. That’s all part of the Five Year Plan!”

  “God-forsaken place! Glad I’m not a Russian,” said Simon, feelingly; “but what about the private shops? Why do the people go to the co-ops and queue up, when they can buy the stuff elsewhere?”

  “It is a question of money; everything in the private shops costs from four to five times as much as in the State Stores. The great majority of the people cannot possibly afford to buy from them.”

  For some time they had been walking through less crowded streets, and at last they arrived in a small square of what must have been, at one time, respectable private houses. Most of them were now in a sad state of dilapidation.

  De Richleau stopped outside one of the least disreputable, which bore the arms, painted in colour on a metal shield above the front door, of one of the lesser South American republics. The word “Legation” was also written up, both in Russian and Roman capitals. He gave a quick glance round—the little square was practically deserted—then he stepped up, not to the front door but to a smaller entrance a few paces farther on, and rang the bell sharply, twice.

  The door was opened almost immediately, and the Duke pushed Simon inside, slipping in himself directly after.

  “Is Señor Rosas in?” he asked. “I come from Señor Zavala.”

  “Yes, señor, this way—please to follow me.” The little man led them down a long passage to a room at the back of the house.

  A swarthy individual rose to greet them with a charming smile. The Duke introduced himself.

  “But, yes, Excellency—my good friend Zavala wrote to me from London of your coming. Your case has safe arrival in the diplomatic bag—it is here beneath the table.” Rosas indicated a small, stout packing case “You would like it opened? But certainly!” He rang the bell, and asked for a chisel and hammer; very soon the wooden case had been prized open, and an inner one of shining tin, about two feet long by a foot wide and eighteen inches deep, placed upon the table. “You would like the privacy to assure yourself of the right contents of the case, Excellency, is it not?” smiled Señor Rosas. “Please to make use of my room—no, no, it is no trouble—only ring when you have finished, that is all!” He slipped softly out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Now let us look at our famous Hoyos.” De Richleau seized the ring that was embedded in the soft lead strip that ran round the top of the case, and pulled it sharply. A wire to which the ring was attached cut easily through the soft lead, and a moment later he had lifted out the two cedar cabinets of cigars.

  Simon opened one with care, and ran his fingers lovingly down the fine, dark oily surface of the cigars. “Perfect,” he murmured; “travelled wonderfully!”

  “But that is not all, my friend!” The Duke had opened the other box. The cigars were not packed in two bundles of fifty each, but in four flat layers of twenty-five to the row, and each layer was separated from the other by a thin sheet of cedar wood. Very carefully De Richleau lifted out the top layer on its cedar sheet, and then the next. Simon looked over his shoulder and saw that, neatly packed in the place where the two bottom layers of cigars should have been, there reposed a full-sized, ugly-looking automatic.

  The Duke removed it, together with two small boxes of ammunition and the packing. “You will find a similar trifle in the other box,” he remarked, as he gently lowered the two trays of cigars into the place where the pistol had lately been.

  Simon unpacked the second box with equal care, the Duke taking the two layers of cigars from it, and placing them in the box before him. When all was done, there remained one b
ox full of cigars, the other—empty.

  “What—er—shall I do with this?” said Simon, a little doubtfully, as he gingerly picked up the other deadly-looking weapon, with its short blue steel barrel.

  “Inside your left breast pocket, my son. It is far too large to carry upon your hip—the bulge would show.”

  Simon did as he was bid. They rang the bell, and Señor Rosas rejoined them.

  De Richleau thanked him courteously. “There is only one thing more,” he added, “if we may trespass upon your good nature?”

  “Excellency, please to command, I beg!”

  “I should be grateful if you would be good enough to send this full box of cigars, in a plain parcel, addressed to me at the Hotel Metropole. The other—it contained some papers which I wished to receive undisturbed—I should be glad if you would burn that.”

  “It shall be done!” The Spaniard’s quick smile flashed out again. “A thousand pleasures to be of assistance to you, Excellency.”

  When they were once more out in the square De Richleau tapped his pocket with a grim little smile. “We are short of a hundred cigars,” he said, “but we may be infinitely more thankful to have these before we are out of Russia.”

  Chapter V

  The “Tavern of The Howling Wolf”

  After walking for some half an hour they came at last to the Park of Culture and Leisure.

  “Now,” said De Richleau, with a sigh of relief, “we can talk freely.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Simon laughed into the palm of his heavily gloved hand, “I’m glad about that!”

  “My friend,” said the Duke, seriously, “before—it was impossible; there are eyes and ears everywhere. Have you noticed those little ventilators in your bedroom at the hotel? They are microphones, so that all you say may be overheard. In the restaurant, along the walls, there are microphones also; Russia is pleased to welcome the tourist or harmless business man, but always the Kommissars are terrified of counter revolution. It is not easy for the small Communist party to keep an entire population in subjection on short rations; and how can they tell who is the tourist, and who the secret enemy of the Soviet, only by watching? You may be certain that the parcel containing our Hoyos will be opened and examined before it is delivered to me—yes,” he smiled, “and they will look below the two top layers; that was why I did not dare have the case delivered to me just as it arrived. Even the streets are not safe, a passer-by may overhear some chance word, and immediately one is suspect—that is why I brought you here. In these open spaces we are safe—we can speak our thoughts aloud—but only here, remember that!”

  “I will,” said Simon, briefly. “Now—any news of Rex?”

  “No,” the Duke shook his head. “My advertisements in the Finnish papers at Helsingfors brought no response. The messenger is, perhaps, by this tune in Paris or New York, or more probably he is an illiterate who can hardly read. I had to word the advertisements with care, of course, and I did not dare to use my own name—the Russian authorities might have seen them, and refused to allow me to pass the frontier. I worded them as far as possible as if they had been inserted by the American Legation, or a relative who was seeking news of Rex. In any case they have proved useless.”

  Simon nodded. “Bad luck that; I didn’t have much fun either. I went up to Jack Straw’s Castle three times; got to know the barman and the manager quite well, but there wasn’t a Russian near the place. Just the usual quiet, old-fashioned pub; no trace of any special club using it as a meeting place either, and very little business doing at this time of year.”

  “That is bad—one moment!” The Duke swung on his heel, to confront a seedy-looking man who, although apparently uninterested in them, had approached silently from behind.

  The man lurched up as De Richleau turned, and asked in Russian for a light; the Duke gave him one without comment, and they moved on until he was out of earshot.

  “Do you think that chap was listening?” Simon asked, nervously.

  “I shouldn’t think so—just a lounger. Now tell me, have you had any ideas on the subject of Rex’s mine?”

  “Ner. I’ve been puzzling quite a lot about that. Have you?”

  “No; it completely defeats me. I did not have any good fortune in Leningrad either, although I questioned everyone that I knew in the Consulates.”

  “What’s Leningrad like?” Simon inquired. “As dreary as this place?”

  “Worse, my friend; it is a dying city. These Kommissars are no fools; they know that all the wealth and fertility of Russia lies in the South, and it is here that they are making their great efforts for the future.”

  “I suppose you’ve been to the American Embassy?”

  “Yes, but they can tell us nothing that we do not already know. Rex arrived here on the 4th of December, did the usual round of sight-seeing, and left again on the 11th.”

  “What do we do now?” Simon asked, thoughtfully.

  “There is one possible line of inquiry which a friend of mine in the Italian Embassy suggested to me. It seems that there is a small ‘stoloveya’, that is, a restaurant of sorts, in the lower quarters of the town, where certain discontented elements in the population meet. There is nothing at all against them, you understand, or they would be arrested at once by the Ogpu, but it is thought that many of the habitués have counter-revolutionary sympathies.

  “My friend was told that Rex was seen there one night during his stay; I thought that we also might pay a visit to this place. It is called the Tavern of the Howling Wolf. He may have gone there only out of curiosity, but, on the other hand, it is just possible that we might learn something.”

  “Going to be a bit difficult, isn’t it?” Simon laughed. “I mean with these wretched guides about.”

  The Duke smiled. “If it is agreeable to you, I thought that, for once, we might play truant this evening.”

  “What—cut the theatre?”

  “Yes, it is possible that they may not even know that we absented ourselves; but even if they do find out, I do not think that anything very serious can happen to us. We shall be duly apologetic, and say that, at the last moment, we decided on a change of plan for our evening’s entertainment.”

  “Splendid!” said Simon. “Let’s. I tell you one curious thing that happened to me before I left London.”

  “What was that?”

  Simon told De Richleau of his meeting with Valeria Petrovna Karkoff, and her appointment to lunch with him the following day.

  The Duke was pleased and interested. “That friendship can most certainly do us no harm,” he said; “the famous artistes are as powerful here now as they ever were—more so, perhaps. It is always so after a revolution; the one thing which the people will not allow the dictators to interfere with is their amusements. The most powerful Kommissar would hesitate before offending a prima donna or a ballerina.”

  The early twilight was already falling, and in the clear air a myriad lights began to twinkle from the houses and factories across the river. They made their way back across the crisp snow of the Park, and through the slush of the streets, to the hotel.

  Dinner was a long, uninteresting meal, with many tiresome delays in service, and, since they could not talk freely together, they were glad when it was over.

  After, they sat for a little time in the lounge, where dancing was in progress; it was a strange assembly. Most of the men wore the Tolstoyian blouse of the proletariat, or some kind of threadbare uniform; one or two were in evening dress; most of the better clad were Germans or Jewish. The women, for the most part, seemed blowzy and ill-cared for, only a few were dressed in the special costume created by the revolution, most of them had shoddy copies of the fashions prevailing in London and Paris a year before. Here and there, and not necessarily with the best-dressed men, were women with expensive clothes, who would have passed muster in the smartest restaurants of the European capitals. Everybody seemed to be drinking freely, although the prices were prohibitive; the band was sho
cking, and the waiters surly. Simon and the Duke did not stay long, and were relieved when the time came at which they should have gone to the theatre. One of the limited number of hired cars that are to be had in Moscow had been ordered by the Duke; they climbed in and settled themselves upon its hard seats. De Richleau gave the address in a low voice to the driver, and the car started off, nosing its way through the crowded streets.

  On each street corner, attached to the electric light standards, were affixed a cluster of loud-speaker megaphones—they blared continuously, not music, but a harsh voice, dinning short sentences into the ears of the moving multitude.

  “What’s it all about?” asked Simon. “Loud speakers never seem to stop here! I noticed them this morning, and again this afternoon—can’t be news all the time, can it?”

  “It is the Five Year Plan, my friend,” the Duke shrugged. “Never for one second are the masses allowed to forget it. Those megaphones relate what is being done all the time—how many tractors have been turned out at Stalingrad today—how many new teachers graduated with honours from the University of Karkov last week—how many tons of ore have been taken from the great Kuznetsky basin, which they are now beginning to exploit—how the branch of the young Communist party in Niji-Novgorod has passed a resolution giving up their fifth day holiday, for a year, in order that The Plan may be completed the quicker—and every five minutes the announcer says: ‘You who hear this—what are you doing for the Five Year Plan? What are you doing that the Five Year Plan shall be completed in Four?’ ” He shuddered. “There is something terrible about it, my son. These fanatics will yet eat us all alive.”

  They fell silent, each pondering on the threat to the old civilisation of Western Europe, that was gaining force in this blind, monstrous power, growing beneath their eyes.

  The car left the smooth asphalt of the more frequented streets, jolting and bumping its way down narrow turnings into the suburbs of the city. Eventually they stopped before a house in a mean street. Faint sounds of music came from within, and these, together with the chinks of light that shone through the heavily curtained windows, were the only signs of life.