Blood Red Snow White Read online

  I stared at the paper, pretending to read, but taking none of it in. The words blurred before my eyes and swam across the page, but then I saw another name I recognized. Reilly.

  Sidney Reilly figured in the accounts of the plot, too. I had never met him, but Lockhart had told me about him. Could he have dragged Robert into something that was nothing to do with him?

  The same thought had obviously occurred to Sir Esmé.

  “Lockhart’s no murderer,” he said. “Nor in the business of paying people to murder on his behalf.”

  “No,” I agreed, though did he know, as I did, that Lockhart was a spy of some sort?

  “Indeed, Ransome, but then, people are not always what they seem.”

  Involuntarily, I smiled. How many times Lockhart had told me the very same thing.

  “Is something funny?” Sir Esmé asked.

  “No, not at all. I just…” I paused. “Sir Esmé, what you say is true. Sometimes people are not what they seem, and I think I may be a victim of such thinking.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “It seems that since my arrival in Stockholm I have been under suspicion. I don’t know why. Though I might guess.”

  I threw the paper onto his desk.

  Sir Esmé pushed his chair back and came around the desk to me. He perched on the corner of it and spoke quietly.

  “And if you were to guess, what would you say?”

  “I would say that people are suspicious of me because I know the Bolsheviks. I have spent time with them. That much is true. I even like some of them, though others are more small-minded than it’s possible to imagine. And I think that because I left Moscow immediately before they were all arrested, it’s thought that I had something to do with it, or, at the very least, that I knew about it and did nothing to warn my friends, my compatriots. That’s what I’d guess.”

  “Very well, you have said it. And I may tell you that you’re right. That’s precisely what people are saying, and since you’ve worked this out, then why shouldn’t I join them and think it the truth?”

  “Because I did nothing!” I said, too loud. Sir Esmé tried to shush me. “I knew nothing about the invasion of Archangel, and that’s why the Bolsheviks had all the British in Moscow arrested. How could I have known about that when even Lockhart didn’t know it was going to happen?”

  “Fair point.”

  “Yes, it is. And furthermore, do you really think that had I known everyone was going to be arrested that I’d have said nothing to him? Robert is my friend. I told him the show was over, but that was only my opinion. All I meant was that I was leaving. He knew that.”

  He stood again, silent for a time while I tried to calm down. Anger would get me nowhere.

  He turned back to me and smiled, though it was thin and unconvincing.

  “I want to believe you. To be honest, I don’t think you have it in you to lie about something like this.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “There are some who wouldn’t think it was a compliment.” He laughed. “To survive in this game you need to be able to practice deceptions of all kinds.”

  “Maybe so. But I don’t count myself as part of this game.”

  He seemed affronted.

  “Is that so? So you’re above the rest of us are you? A journalist’s independence perhaps, free of concern for anything but a story and a good headline.”

  “That’s not the case.”

  “No? Where do your loyalties lie, Ransome? To Britain? Or to the Bolsheviks? Or just to yourself?”

  I stood. There was no point arguing. And though all I could do was worry about Evgenia, I could help Robert.

  “No,” I said. “There are people I care for. People who have died, and I could do nothing about it. I’ve lost people too, and it was my fault. Now I can’t be with them. But there are still those I love, who I will protect for all I am worth.”

  “That’s a fine speech,” he said, and as I met his eyes I knew he was being honest. “But what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to save Lockhart’s skin, if I can. And then maybe you’ll know where my loyalties lie.”

  4

  I WROTE A LONG TELEGRAM to Radek, asking, urging, begging him to see that Lockhart’s execution would serve the Bolsheviks nothing. Would only distance them from contact with the Allies. They already had Cromie’s blood on their hands; I urged him not to add to the list of the dead.

  Even as I wrote, I knew one thing. I knew that the telegram would be intercepted and read by the British Intelligence Services, and I knew it would only confirm their opinion that I was a friend and accomplice of the Bolsheviks.

  But I didn’t care. I couldn’t care, not while Robert was rotting in some cell in Moscow.

  I sent the telegram.

  Then, there was nothing to do, but wait.

  5

  THE LEAVES ON THE TREE WERE RUSTLING.

  The strands of my life were rubbing against one another.

  I can see that now, now that the years have rolled on, the leaves have fallen and I have had a chance to pick over them as they lie on the ground.

  I was waiting.

  The days dragged by, and I sat on the porch at Igelboda, watching the sea lanes, watching and waiting for boats to come in. I smoked my pipe, and I wrote letters home. It had been months since I had heard from anyone in England.

  It was so very lovely, that view from the porch, across the bay, but I never saw it once, not until the day I heard footsteps on the gravel path beside the house.

  Evgenia saw me the same moment I saw her, and dropped her bags.

  She ran to me laughing and all I could do was laugh back at her.

  “What?” I said after a while. “What happened?”

  She laughed some more.

  “I didn’t hear a thing from you,” I said. “I had no idea … How did you know I was here?”

  “Arthur, it’s been such a journey. We were stuck in Berlin for weeks. Then finally we were off. But I sent you a wire to say I was coming.”

  “I never got it,” I said. “My God, I’ve been so worried.”

  I held her tight to me again, laughing tears of relief and of joy, then leaned back from her slightly, my hands on her hips. I stared deep into her eyes. Something in them spoke of the distance there had been between us; the time we’d been apart. It frightened me. Even though the distance and the time had vanished, the fear that I might have lost her forever lingered in me.

  “But how…?”

  “How did I know you were here?”

  She smiled.

  “Arthur, you think you are so unimportant, that no one could be bothered with you, but you are the talk of Stockholm; the mysterious Englishman who arrives from Red Russia … And besides which, I went to the British Legation and they told me where to find you.”

  Now it was my turn to smile.

  “I needn’t have worried,” I said, “you are far too clever to need me to worry about you.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but I like you to worry about me. Oh! I forgot, there was a letter waiting for you at the Legation. Here.”

  She fished in her coat pockets and pulled out a slightly crumpled envelope.

  “It’s from England,” she said, as if that were something ever so suspicious.

  “It’s from my mother,” I said, as soon as I saw the handwriting. “Do you know this is the first letter I’ve had from her since January.”

  “I like the house, Arthur,” she said, looking at the garden and the bay beyond it. “We can make this our home, but first, we are on our honeymoon!”

  She went over to her cases, laughing to herself, looking over her shoulder at me, and smiling. It was perfect. She was perfect. Unable to take my eyes off her for long, I watched as she picked her things up and brought them up to the house.

  I opened the letter.

  I was about to read it out loud, but the words died in my mouth. There are moments when you see that something awful is ab
out to happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it, something terrible that you want with all your heart to be a lie, but you know it’s the truth.

  I only had to read a few words of Mother’s letter. My Dear Arthur. I’m so sorry. To have to tell you … I read no more, but dropped the letter onto the wooden boards of the porch and stared out to sea.

  “Arthur!”

  Evgenia saw me standing like a statue and held my hand, then saw the letter on the floor.

  “Arthur? What is it? Arthur?”

  “My brother,” I said. I could hear my voice as if someone else were speaking, hollow and dry. “My brother is dead.”

  6

  I DON’T REMEMBER much of that evening, nor of the following day.

  I was wounded by the news, struck dumb for hours before I could respond even to Evgenia’s urgent pleas for me to say something, anything, at all.

  The war had taken Geoff at last, as I had always known it would. The war took my friends, and now it had taken my brother, killed somewhere in France. Only when I finally had the courage to pick up the letter and read it to the end did I learn the final bitterness.

  He had been killed in January. I had not known. It had taken me over half a year to find out that my brother was dead, because no single letter had made it to Russia. And all that time I had been hurling my pointless letters out into space, to my mother, asking her to wish Geoff well, to send my love to him. All those hopes and wishes, spent on someone already dead. My heart was too sore then to admit that maybe I would send my love to him, even though he was dead. I know now of course that I will always send my love to him.

  Wherever he is.

  7

  THE RESPONSE TO MY TELEGRAM from Radek was not reassuring. It was impossible to recognize the hobgoblin’s usual wit and education in the perfunctory reply he gave me. He said that Lockhart was indeed being held in prison and was only not being shot to avoid giving the Allies easy propaganda.

  I took a small crumb of comfort in this. If Lockhart’s name was enough to make the Bolsheviks unwilling to shoot him, that wouldn’t change quickly, and the fact that Radek had replied to me at all was a good sign; it meant they might be open to negotiate on Lockhart’s release. If I had heard nothing, I would have feared for Lockhart surviving more than a couple of days.

  With this in mind I went to see Sir Esmé. I proposed a bargain, a deal we could make with the Bolsheviks.

  “Do you know of Litvinov?” I asked.

  “A little,” Sir Esmé said, “what of it?”

  “I know him. Quite well. Lockhart knows him, too; he gave him a letter of introduction to Trotsky when he came back out here. And we have him locked up in Brixton prison. I suggest that we propose a straight swap—Litvinov for Lockhart, and whoever’s being held with him.”

  “Well, it’s only him now. That’s the latest news. He and Hicks were arrested, then both freed. But Lockhart was arrested again by some goon named Peters. They’ve moved him from the Lubyanka Prison to the Kremlin.”

  Peters. That made sense. I thought of his boot rolling the dead prostitute over, and his chillingly banal words. Perhaps it is for the best.

  The first prison Sir Esmé referred to was in the building the Cheka used as their headquarters in Moscow, an old insurance office at number eleven Lubyanka. I didn’t know the place but I knew the Kremlin jail as something else entirely. It had a dreadful reputation; the story was that no one who’d ever been imprisoned there had left alive.

  “There’s something else, too,” Sir Esmé said. “Since you’re his friend … Our people in Moscow say they’ve arrested his mistress, too. Her name is Moura Budberg. Maybe you know her?”

  “Yes,” I said simply, and for once I was no longer surprised at what they knew. They knew everything, it seemed. “Yes, I know her.”

  “But that’s besides the point, I’m afraid. Our concern is with our man. Ransome, I like your plan. But I’ll talk to Whitehall about it as if it were my scheme. If it comes from you they’ll imagine a Bolshevik scheme. You get in touch with Moscow and sound them out. Nothing definite at this stage, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. “I can talk in generalities.”

  “One thing before you go. If I suggest this, I need to know it might work. Do you think the Russians will go for it? We’re not in one of your fairy tales now.”

  “The Bolsheviks have many faults,” I said, ignoring his cutting remark, “but they’re a practical bunch. They love talking and sometimes they like doing deals. I think it’s our best bet.”

  “I hope you’re right, Ransome. For Lockhart and for you.”

  * * *

  I walked over to the house used by the Bolshevik Legation to meet Evgenia, but was told she had already left for the day. Officially she was working as Vorovsky’s secretary, but after their nightmare journey the kind old Russian seemed to be letting her have a chance to settle into her new home.

  I left Stockholm and caught a tram out to Igelboda. As I got on, I noticed a man in a suit get into the rear of the car. Something bothered me and I realized I’d seen him earlier on, outside the Bolshevik Legation. I decided I was being paranoid, and to forget about him, but when the tram got to my stop, I stayed on and ran all the way down to Saltsjobaden. From there it was a fair walk home and I set off briskly. Once or twice I was foolish enough to stop and turn around, but could see no one. I laughed at myself for my imagination and went home.

  Back at Igelboda I found Evgenia. As she made some supper, I told her what had happened and what Sir Esmé had said. All the time, though, I knew that something had changed in me. As I heard myself talk, another part of me explored the feeling that had swept into me.

  I felt I’d been living in limbo, at least since my arrival in Sweden, maybe for months before. Geoff’s death had been a final terrible blow, and had pushed me over the edge into a blackness that would have killed me if only it hadn’t been so cowardly.

  I had left Ivy. Yes. I had lost my daughter in one way, and my brother in another. That was something to be sad about, but not to stop living for.

  I’d been letting things happen to me, without making a fight, without struggling for what I wanted, but finally, finally, the action of actually doing something to help someone, had freed me.

  For a short, clear evening, everything seemed so simple.

  I had found a woman I loved and who loved me, and I knew that I was going to do everything I could to protect that.

  8

  FOR HOW LONG DID I FORGET I was a writer?

  It must have been months, a year, or more.

  But Sir Esmé’s remark about living in fairy tales reminded me that once I had written a book, a good one, that had been praised and that children had loved so much they read it from cover to cover and then started at the front again.

  I thought of my Russian Tales and realized I no longer owned a copy of my own book. I wondered if I could ask Sir Esmé to let his children just show me their copy, even once. So that I could believe I had written it, that it was not some other fantasy of my own devising.

  I remember thinking about the time I’d written it. It was a happy time. I was in love again, not with a woman, but with Russia; war and Revolution had not yet engulfed me. I remember, in an early draft of the Russian Tales, I had decided to kill the grandfather at the end of the book. A bear comes pounding out of the woods one day, apparently for no reason, and knocks the old man down. The children are sad, so very sad, of course, but I was trying to show that pain passes, they would grieve, but they would then grow again, and become adults, so that they no longer needed anyone to look after them.

  I showed that early draft to the friends I was living with, in the house in the trees near the banks of the Volkhov, and they were dismayed.

  “You can’t do that!” they protested. “You can’t kill their grandfather!”

  I made my case, but they would not be convinced.

  “No, no, no,” they said. “It’s not that kind of book. It�
��s a happy book.”

  And in the end, I took their advice, and brought Old Peter back to life. That’s something you can do as a writer, you have that power, and during the time in Stockholm, I was glad I had done so. Death was all around me, and I was glad I hadn’t added to the list, even in fiction.

  Grandfather lifted himself up from the snow where the bear had knocked him, dusted himself off, and he lived. He lived, and now, being a character in a book who has survived to the final page, he lives forever.

  But even in my book of fairy tales, little Maroosia and Vanya have no father and mother. I knew then that if I ever found time to do another book I would never again write a story about a small girl without her father. I knew then there’d be children having adventures, and maybe with some real danger, but they’d be laughing and smiling, and coming home in the evening to their mother and father to have hot chocolate by the fireside.

  9

  IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE MY OWN FAIRY TALE unraveled a little more.

  Genia and I enjoyed our Swedish honeymoon, I relaxed a little, and into that space our feelings for each other were able to grow.

  My telegrams to Moscow worked, and we heard that Robert was to be released at last. I had earned the trust of the Intelligence Services, and the respect of Sir Esmé, if not of those who strode the corridors of Whitehall, back in London.

  It was around then that Wyatt, another agent, made his silly proposal, and silly though I found it, in the end I agreed.

  But I am getting this all wrong, because the first thing that happened was Lockhart’s arrival in Stockholm, on his way home.

  After the dust had settled and Lockhart had made a round of official meetings, we went out for dinner, just him and me and Evgenia. We found a bustling place in the Gamla Stan, and put ourselves in the corner, away from view. We spoke in Russian for Evgenia’s benefit, and Robert told us his story.

  “You look well, really,” I said, though in my heart he looked years older than when I’d last seen him only a few months before.