The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (23 page)

Container number five held 700 landmines and there was soon another explosion just as powerful as the first one, which in
turn led to the contents of a further four containers being spread in all directions.

Chaos was what Allan and Herbert had wished for, and chaos was what they got. And yet it had barely begun. The fire reached container after container. One of them was full of diesel and petrol. Another was full of ammunition, which took on a life of its own. Two of the watchtowers and eight of the barracks were fully ablaze already before some armour-piercing shells got in on the act. The first shells knocked out watchtower number three, the second went right into the camp’s entrance building and, in passing, took the entrance barrier and guard post with it.

Four ships were berthed and ready for loading and the next salvo of armour-piercing shells set fire to all of them.

Then another container of hand grenades exploded and that started a new chain reaction, which finally reached the very last container at the end of the row. This happened to be a second load of armour-piercing shells, and now these shot off in the other direction, towards the open part of the harbour where a tanker with 65,000 tons of oil was about to berth. A direct hit to the bridge left the tanker drifting, and a further three hits to the side of the tanker’s hull started the largest fire of all.

The violently burning tanker now drifted along the edge of the quay towards the centre of the town. During this last journey, it set fire to all the houses along its route, a distance of 2.2
kilometres
. The wind was coming from the south-east that day. So it didn’t take more than another twenty-five minutes before – literally – all of Vladivostok was ablaze.

Comrade Stalin was just finishing a pleasant dinner with his henchmen Beria, Malenkov, Bulganin and Khrushchev in the residence at Krylatskoye, when he received news that, basically, Vladivostok didn’t exist any longer, after a fire that had started in a container of blankets had gone amok.

The news made Stalin feel really out of sorts.

Stalin’s new favourite, the energetic Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, asked if he might be permitted to give a piece of good advice on the matter, and Stalin lamely answered that yes, Nikita Sergeyevich certainly might.

‘My dear Comrade Stalin,’ said K, ‘I suggest that what has happened in this case has not happened. I suggest that Vladivostok is immediately sealed off from the rest of the world, and that we then patiently build up the town again and make it the base for our Pacific Fleet, just as Comrade Stalin planned earlier. But above all – what has happened has not happened, because the opposite would indicate a weakness that we cannot afford to show. Does Comrade Stalin understand what I mean? Does Comrade Stalin agree?’

Stalin still felt out of sorts. And he was drunk too. But he nodded and said that it was Stalin’s wish that Nikita Sergeyevich himself should be responsible for making sure that what had happened, hadn’t happened. Having said that, he announced that it was time for him to withdraw for the evening. He wasn’t feeling well.

Vladivostok, thought Marshal Beria. Wasn’t that where I had that Swedish fascist expert sent to keep him in reserve in case we couldn’t build the bomb by ourselves? I had forgotten all about him. I should have liquidated the devil when Yury Borisovich Popov so brilliantly solved the problem by himself. Anyway, perhaps now the man has been incinerated although he didn’t need to take the whole town with him.

At the door to his bedroom Stalin informed his staff that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed. And then he closed the door, sat on the edge of the bed and undid the buttons of his shirt while he reflected.

Vladivostok… the town that Stalin had decided would be the base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet! Vladivostok… the town
that was to play such an important role in the coming offensive in the Korean War! Vladivostok…

Didn’t exist any longer!

Stalin just had time to ask himself how the hell a container with blankets could start to burn when it was -20°C. Somebody must be responsible and that bastard would…

Upon which Stalin fell head first to the floor. There he
remained
stroke-bound for twenty-four hours, because if Comrade Stalin said that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then you didn’t disturb him.

Allan and Herbert’s barracks was one of the first to catch fire, and the friends immediately scrapped their plan of sneaking in and putting on the uniforms.

The fence around the camp had already fallen down and if there were any watchtowers left standing there was nobody in them to keep guard. So getting out of the camp was not difficult. But what would happen next? They couldn’t steal a military truck because they were all on fire. And going into town to find a car was not an option either. For some reason, all of Vladivostok was burning.

Most of the prisoners who had survived the fire and
explosions
stayed in a group on the road outside the camp, at a safe distance from the grenades and armour-piercing shells and everything else that was flying about in the air. A few
adventurous
types set off, all of them in a north-westerly direction, because that was the only reasonable direction for a Russian to flee. In the east was water, in the south the Korean War, and directly north was a town that was rapidly burning up. The only option remaining was to walk right into the really cold Siberia. But the soldiers had worked that out too, and before the day was over they had caught the escapees and sent them to eternity, every one of them.

The only exceptions were Allan and Herbert. They managed to make their way to a hill south-west of Vladivostok. And there they sat down for a short rest and to look at the
destruction
below.

‘That signal rocket burned very bright,’ said Herbert.

‘An atom bomb could hardly have done a better job,’ said Allan.

‘So what are we going to do now?’ asked Herbert, and in the bitter cold almost longed to be back in the camp which wasn’t there any more.

‘Now, we’re going to North Korea, my friend,’ said Allan. ‘And since there aren’t any cars around, we’ll have to walk. It will keep us warm.’

Kirill Afanasievich Meretskov was one of the most skilful and decorated commanders in the Red Army. He was a Hero of the Soviet Union and he had been awarded the Order of Lenin no fewer than seven times.

As commander of the Fourth Army, he had fought the Germans around Leningrad, and after 900 terrifying days the siege was broken. No wonder Meretskov was made a marshal of the Soviet Union, in addition to all his other orders, titles and medals.

When Hitler had been pushed back once and for all, Meretskov went off to the east instead, 9,600 kilometres by train. He was needed to command the Far Eastern Front, to chase the Japanese out of Manchuria. To nobody’s surprise, he succeeded in that too.

Then the world war came to an end, and Meretskov himself was tired. Since there was nobody waiting for him back in Moscow, he remained in the east. He ended up behind a military desk in Vladivostok. A nice desk it was too. Genuine teak.

In the winter of 1953, Meretskov was fifty-six years old, and was still sitting behind his desk. From there, he administered the Soviet non-presence in the Korean War. Both Marshal Meretskov and Comrade Stalin considered it to be strategically important that the Soviet Union did not for now engage in direct combat with American soldiers. Both sides had the Bomb, of course, but the Americans were way ahead. There was a time for everything, and this was not the time to be provocative – which naturally didn’t prevent the Soviets from getting involved in Korea: the Korean War could be won, and indeed it ought to be won.

But now that he was a marshal, Meretskov allowed himself to take things a bit easy occasionally. For example, he had a hunting cottage outside Kraskino, a couple of hours south of Vladivostok. He stayed there as often as he could, preferably in the winter — and if possible on his own. Except for his aide of course, marshals couldn’t drive their own cars. What would people think?

Marshal Meretskov and his aide had almost a whole hour’s drive remaining to Vladivostok when they saw, from the winding coast road, a pillar of black smoke.

The distance was too great for it to be worth getting the binoculars out of the boot, so Marshal Meretskov ordered full speed ahead, adding that in the next fifteen minutes the aide should find a place to park with a good view of the bay.

Allan and Herbert had walked some way along the main road when a stylish military green Pobeda approached from the south. The escapees hid behind a snowdrift while the car passed. But then, the car slowed down and stopped about fifty metres away. Out stepped an officer with a chest full of medals, accompanied by his aide. The aide took the officer’s binoculars
out of the boot and then the officer and his aide left the car to seek out a place with a better view of the bay on the other side of which Vladivostok had recently stood.

This made it simple for Allan and Herbert to sneak up to the car, seize the officer’s pistol and the aide’s automatic and then make the officer and his aide aware of the fact that they were now in a tricky situation. Or, as Allan said:

‘Gentlemen, would you kindly take your clothes off?’

Marshal Meretskov was furious. You did not treat a marshal of the Soviet Union in that way, not even if you were a camp prisoner. Did the two gentlemen mean that he – Marshal K.A. Meretskov – should enter Vladivostok on foot wearing nothing but underpants? Allan answered that it would be difficult to enter Vladivostok at all, as the town was at that moment
burning
down, but otherwise that was more or less what he and his friend Herbert meant. The gentlemen would of course be given a couple of sets of inferior black-and-white prisoner’s clothes in exchange, and in any case the nearer they got to Vladivostok – or whatever one should call the cloud of smoke and ruins over there – the warmer it would get.

Upon which Allan and Herbert put on the stolen uniforms and left their old prison clothes in a pile on the ground. Allan thought that it would perhaps be safest if he drove the car himself, so Herbert got to be Marshal Meretskov, and Allan his aide. Allan wished the marshal farewell and said that he needn’t look so angry, because Allan was quite sure that it wouldn’t help at all. Besides it would soon be spring, and spring in Vladivostok was… well, perhaps it wasn’t. Anyway, Allan encouraged the marshal to think positively, but added that it was of course entirely up to the marshal himself. If he really wanted to walk along wearing only his underpants and have negative thoughts about life, then he could do so.

‘Farewell, Mr Marshal. And you too, of course,’ Allan added to the aide.

The marshal didn’t reply. He just continued to glare at them, while Allan turned the Pobeda round. And then he and Herbert set off southwards.

Next stop North Korea.

The border crossing between the Soviet Union and North Korea was an uncomplicated and quick affair. First, the Soviet border guards stood to attention and saluted, and then the North Koreans did the same. Without a word being exchanged, the barrier was lifted for the Soviet marshal (Herbert) and his aide (Allan). The most devoted of the two North Korean border guards could hardly keep his eyes dry when he thought of the personal commitment he was witnessing. Korea could not have a better friend than the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Presumably, the marshal was on his way to Wonsan to make sure that the supplies from Vladivostok had arrived safely.

But this particular marshal was not thinking about the
well-being
of North Korea. It is not even certain he knew in which country he found himself. He was fully occupied with trying to fathom how you opened the car’s glove compartment.

What Allan had gathered from the sailors in the harbour in Vladivostok was that the Korean War had come to a standstill, that the two parties were each back on their own side of the 38th parallel. When Herbert heard this news, he suggested that one way to pass from North to South would be to get up speed and jump over the border (as long as it wasn’t too wide). There was, of course, a risk that they would get shot when they were jumping, but really that wasn’t such a big deal.

But it turned out – still with quite a way left to the border – that a full-scale war was already being waged around about
them. American planes circled in the air and seemed to be bombing everything they saw. Allan realised that a
military-green
, Russian staff car would probably be regarded as an excellent target, so he left the main road (without first asking his marshal for permission) and drove inland, on smaller roads with more chance of seeking shelter every time they heard the roar of an airplane above their heads.

Allan continued in a south-easterly direction, while Herbert entertained him with a running commentary while he went through the marshal’s wallet, which he had found in an inner pocket of his uniform. It contained a tidy sum in roubles, but also information about what the marshal was called and some correspondence about activities in Vladivostok.

‘Maybe he was the one in charge of that train transport to the port,’ said Herbert.

Allan praised Herbert for that thought, which he found wise, and Herbert blushed.

‘By the way, do you think you can memorize Marshal Kirill Afanasievich Meretskov’s name?’ asked Allan. ‘It would be useful.’

‘I am sure I can’t,’ said Herbert.

When it started to get dark, Allan and Herbert turned into the yard of what looked like a well-to-do farm. The farmer, his wife and their two children stood to attention in front of the important guests and the fancy car. The aide (Allan) apologized in Russian as well as Chinese for arriving unannounced, but wondered if it was possible to get something to eat. They would of course pay for it, but that would have to be in roubles; they didn’t have anything else.