The Margin of Evil! (17 page)

Reilly got up and beckoned Georgii to follow.
He led him down some stairs to the basement. Laid out cold on a straw mattress was Royston O'Reilly. He was snoring away to his heart's content. In one hand was an empty bottle of vodka, the other formed a makeshift cradle of sorts.

Reilly turned round to face Radetzky.
'At the moment I'll wager that he's your most valuable asset! I'll get someone to take you home.'

Georgii nodded in agreement, all he wanted to do was go home.
It had been a long, long day, and before that, had been an even longer night!

Chapter Ten

The car dropped him off just around the corner from his billet. He walked the rest of the way. He looked around him and marvelled to himself about life. A horse whinnied; a car horn went off in the distance, people were shouting in the street. Georgii thought about Pavel and Anna and the events of the previous few days.

He was also reminded of something that Trofimov had said to him,
'Why did he bother to stay?'  There really was no answer to that question. It was true that there was nothing here for him, but what else could he do.  This police work was all he knew how to do. O.k. family and friends had been lost, why didn't he go and make a new start for himself. He'd heard that the United States of America was good place to get to. You could make a fresh start there, nobody asked questions; they took you at face value! The real truth was that he couldn't be bothered; this was all that he had ever known and, if Sidney Reilly and Auguste Gerhardt were right, everything was set to unravel even further.

Georgii walked past the wretched Rezhnikov and up the stairs.
He could hear signs of life in the young family's room.  He could hear a baby crying and a mother trying to console it. Georgii knew why the baby was crying ... like everybody else it was hungry. He entered his rooms. 

The children were awake and keen to see him.
They had more bad news for him. It seems that the day before Georgii had had more visitors. They were different to the others. Pavel and Anna had been lucky they were just leaving when the visitors arrived. They could hear loud voices menacing Rezhnikov in the downstairs lobby.  They'd also heard the name Radetzky mentioned several times. The pair of them had had no time to hide, and judging by the thoroughness of the search, they would have been discovered by the men. They were left with no alternative but to high tail it up the stairs and hide in the writer's apartment. Fortunately he was in; and he hid them in an old trunk.  He said they could stay until the visitors had gone.

But that was not the end of their ordeal.
The 'Visitors' came upstairs to the writer's rooms. Inside the trunk peering through the keyhole, the two children got a good look at the men. They also heard the questions that the writer had been asked. They asked the usual: how long had he known him; had he noticed any irregular comings and goings of strangers concerning the 'Militsya' official. If anything did come to light he was to let them know immediately. They left their card and departed. After a while the typewriter started up again.

When the all clear had been given, they went back downstairs.
The scene was one of unimaginable chaos. Everything had been strewn all over the place. It was not as if Georgii Radetzky owned that much, but what few possessions he had were lying all over the place. The mattress was on the floor; the bed was on its side. The draws were all open and the contents were slung all over the place. It was the very picture of disorder or so Pavel led Georgii to believe. It took the pair of them the rest of the day to tidy things up. By the description the two children had given him, it did not take him long to work out whom his visitors had been: 'Dark and Swarthy', Steer clear of them Mum used to say.  'Very apt and very accurate he thought.

It was time to go back to work, and he did not want to draw any more attention to himself than was necessary. Not only that, he felt further confrontation with Trofimov at the moment could only, in light of recent events, work to his disadvantage.

Work was as dull as ever. Once again Georgii found himself 'Foot-slogging' around the suburbs of Moscow, with a detachment of 'Red Guards'. Unlikely as it was, this pounding of the streets, was actually doing Georgii a power of good. It enabled him to clear his head, and gave him time to think out and plan exactly what he was going to do next. Once again as he trudged up and down the streets, his thoughts turned to Royston O'Reilly. He would have to find his erstwhile associate, and find him quick, wrap things up with Gerhardt; then get the hell out of Russia. No sense hanging around to get your throat cut he thought!

Winter slowly gave way to spring, and April moved into May. The snows melted and colour returned to the bleak Moscow landscape. Grass and weeds started to grow in the streets, and the summer stench of the city soon returned. Reports from the front were sometimes favourable, other times they were not. The Whites were in disarray and Leon Trotsky
's armies won 'Historic' victories everywhere. Needless to say, the state organ 'Pravda' had neglected to mention to the 'General Populace' that the British had landed in Archangel, and the Japanese had done the same in Vladivostok. Nevertheless, whilst the economy continued to collapse the exodus to the countryside never stalled.

On morning Comrade Trofimov, called him into her corner of the office. Unusually for her she was full of praise for Georgii Radetzky.

'Comrade Radetzky, I am so glad that you took my advice?'

'
What advice was that,' Georgii sheepishly replied.

'
It was the advice about keeping your head down and staying out of trouble,’ she said.

'
Oh, that advice ... 'Comrade' I do what I do, I think it's fair to say that at that time a lot of things were going on, and bizarrely they all involved me. But as you can see, it has all quietened down!  'He paused then adopting a more purposeful tone, 'Comrade Trofimov, 'Hero of the Revolution'; I always bend too and take stock of the advice you give.'

Her mood suddenly changed,
'Cut the crap Georgii Radetzky! This brings me to why I have called you in here!'

Georgii sat there and studied her hard
face.  The poker face that gave nothing away. He looked at the mouth, it was the same mouth that had kissed him, and it was the same mouth that told him that she had loved him. Georgii looked at the wrinkles around the lips, and the 'Cold Blue' eyes that, when he'd been sitting at his desk, had watched his every move. Lost in thought, he missed what she said.

'
... With immediate effect!'

'
What, with immediate effect!'  He said.

'
You are to be transferred to 'Roadblock' duty, on the Nizhny Novgorod road. There you will be working with a select group of Latvian guards,' she said.

'
Why me? Can't someone else do it.'?

'
I would like someone else to do it. Comrade Radetzky, you are a good investigator; but 'The Powers That Be', have decided that you are, shall we say, the best qualified, and the right man for this posting. This is non-negotiable ... and non-negotiable, I believe, was the adjective they used!'

When do I start
?' he said.

'
Tomorrow morning! Twelve, midday sharp! It would be shift work two weeks long. You will meet the Latvian Guard there. 'Then she did that annoying thing, she waved her hand towards him, indicating that he was to get out and the audience was now over.

'
Great' he thought as he walked back to his desk. Sidelined to the outskirts of town. He picked up the phone. A minute or two later, he had replaced the receiver and was on his way to meet Auguste Gerhardt. The rendezvous was at their favoured meeting place outside 'The Bolshoi'.

Gerhardt told Georgii to walk alongside him.
The crux of the conversation centred around what Leon Trotsky thought that he, Georgii Radetzky, could better serve 'The Revolution', from the Nizhny Novgorod gate, than say the safe confines of a second floor desk in an overrun Militsya station. Gerhardt stressed that the move was only temporary and he would be back home in the station by the first snows of winter. But they needed him there to keep an eye on the comings and goings from Moscow. Gerhardt also explained to him that 'The Central Committee', had become alarmed by the rise in 'Black Marketeering' and the rapid depopulation of Moscow. In order to stem the tide of emigration, and keep the people working; 'The Central Committee', and especially Lenin had decided to seal off the city. There were to be two main points, barr the railways of entry and exit. One, the Nizhny Novgorod gate and the other would be on the river. Georgii said it was an impossible task, it was like trying to plug a leaking bucket. If people wanted to leave, they had every right to do so! Anyway, if the city was sealed they would always find other ways to get out of Moscow.

His mentor agreed, taking his protégé by the arm, and leading him away to the place where prying ears would not be able to hear.

There was another reason. The Nizhniy Novgorod gate would be the only route for contraband coming in and out of the city. That traffic had taken the form of 'Bourgeois Traffic - out, and blackmarket goods - in. It was also the chosen route for much needed supplies and raw materials coming into the city to aid the war effort; goods that more often than not, never found their way to the right place or their legitimate destinations. They needed someone reliable to keep an eye on this important lifeline.  Also he could carry on discreetly with his investigations, into the earlier matter.  It was, he intimated, a good move to get him out onto the edge of town and into a place away from the 'Unwanted Gaze' of certain interested parties. His money was on this place, if ever there was going to be a breakthrough in the 'Goldstein' investigation it would be here. Not only that, it had been decided to assign a detachment of Latvian guards to him.  At least they were reasonably reliable, and Georgii was reminded that they protected even Vladimir IIlyvich. They were the only ones in the current political climate that could be trusted to get on with the job.

Auguste Gerhardt then lowered his voice, if Trotsky
's summer offensive was to fail and Moscow was to fall, and several people had said that this was a distinct possibility, the difference between success and failure might depend on who was in charge of the Nizhniy Novgorod gate. There was one more thing; he was going to be working with a young woman called Yulia. She was going to be his deputy. She was efficient and, on the loyalty front, he had nothing to worry about. Gerhardt patted him on the shoulder and fixed Radetzky with a long hard, serious stare, nodded his head towards him and left. Georgii Radetzky watched him go. Once he was out of sight he headed back to the Militsya station to clear his desk.

At five thirty in the morning – five twenty nine to be precise - Georgii turned up at the Nizhny Novgorod gate.
The current incumbent, this Yulia Klimtov, briefed him quickly. She told him that the gate opened at six a.m., and shut promptly twelve hours later. Comrades, whose papers were not in order were sent back. Others of a more dubious nature: Bourgeoisie, SR's and Kadets were to be detained. Those that made a run for it were to be shot on sight. Georgii remarked that there seemed to be little freight. She told him that most of it either went by river or rail. If there was any, he would encounter it possibly during the night. Yulia Klimtov promptly left, telling him that she would see him tonight. He looked around the place. The gate itself was not a gate, as in the 'Old' medieval sense; it was situated on a large area of open space, sandwiched between the last dwellings on the outskirts of city's urban sprawl and the wall of the forest. The complete area had been cordoned off and surrounded by barbed wire; every fifty yards there was a machine gun; beyond which was an open no man's land. Inside the cordon were two routes; one in and one out. Entering was through a makeshift contra flow. Into this people, cars and carts were already being directed but, the problem for them was, the gate did not open for another ten minutes. Even then, there were no guarantees that they could exit. So people sat in chairs, on the ground, in readiness, for what would be for some, a very long wait.

The Latvians like most militias of the period
, were a motley bunch, but they seemed reliable. Georgii knew exactly why the 'Great Man' had entrusted his personal security to them. Even though, and this was the deception, some of them looked as if they couldn't even fight their way out of a damp paper bag! At first, they did not come across as exactly the friendliest of people, but over the first few weeks' relations began to steadily improve. Their spokesperson and leader was a tall gangly character going by the name of Igor, just Igor, there appeared to be no surname. Georgii learned that the detachment had been there since the beginning of the March, and during the last few weeks, they had pretty much got themselves organised. Igor assured Georgii, that all he had to do was sit back and let him run the show. Georgii was content for him to do exactly that but he reminded Igor that he was in charge and expected to be informed of everything that went on. The woman who did the opposite shift, Yulia Klimtov, was very efficient, her reports were always in order.

Like all new jobs
, Georgii had found it nerve racking at first but his confidence improved as the days went on. A typical day started like this. He would arrive for duty at five thirty or thereabouts. He would receive the daily or nightly debrief from Yulia. Then he would hold a short meeting with Igor. After which he would pour himself a cup of strong coffee and let the Latvian get on with things. The first weeks went like clockwork; most of the day was spent turning out carts, escorting 'Comrades' into the holding area and turning others away. Those were the ones leaving town, however, the people coming into town were scrutinised.  The most suspicious of those seemed to Georgii to be the ones travelling under diplomatic cover. It always seemed so ludicrous to Georgii that Hungarians, French, Germans and Italians could wander in and out with such impunity, when agents in their service were engaged in hostile acts of sabotage against the fledgling 'New Socialist Utopia'. However, as much as he'd like to tell them to 'Piss Off', it still stuck in his craw when they appeared, he simply had to bite his lip and wave them on through.