The Steel Tsar (11 page)

It was true, as Nye argued, that no military aerial vessels were in evidence at that moment, but I was not sure that, as he put it, this was “the best chance of getting clear we’ll ever have”.

I did believe that there was a small chance of escape as well as a fair chance of being killed or wounded. But I argued to myself that even if I were wounded I should spend time in the hospital away from Wilson.

“Very well, Nye,” I said. “You can count me in.”

“Good man.” He patted my shoulder.

That night we assembled in twos and threes at Olmeijer’s shop. The Dutchman was not in evidence. He would have been too portly to have squeezed himself into the tunnel Nye and his rugger chums had been digging. It was usual to meet in the hut in the evening, to play table tennis or the variety of board games supplied by the Red Cross. We had only occasional trouble from the guards, who were inclined to look in on us at random. Because they did not check our numbers, we stood a fair chance of all getting down the tunnel before they suspected anything. A few of the airshipmen had elected to stay behind to cover us.

Nye was to go first and I was to go last. One by one the men disappeared into the earth. And it was as I was about to follow them that I realized Fate was almost certainly singling me out for unusual punishment. Wilson walked though the door of the hut.

I was halfway down. I think I remember smiling at him weakly.

“My lord, old man! What are you up to?” He asked. Then he brightened. “An escape, eh? Good show. A secret, is it? Shan’t breathe a word. I take it anyone can join in.”

“Um,” I said. “Actually Nye...”

“My pal Nye, eh? His idea. Jolly good. That’s all right with me, old man. I trust Nye implicitly. And he’d want me along.”

One of the airshipmen near the window hissed that a couple of guards were on their way.

I ducked into the tunnel and began to wriggle along it. There was no time to argue with Wilson. I heard his voice behind me.

“Make way for a little ’un.”

I knew that he had joined me in the tunnel before the light vanished as the airshipmen above replaced the floor boards.

I seemed to crawl for eternity, with Wilson muttering and apologizing, constantly bumping into my feet, criticizing what he called the “poor engineering job” of the tunnel. He wondered why they hadn’t thought of asking him for his expert help.

We emerged into sweet-smelling darkness. Behind us was the wire and the lights of the camp. We were close to the earth road which wound down to the harbour. Nye and the merchant seamen were whispering and gesticulating in the darkness, just as if they were still choosing sides for a game.

Wilson said in a voice which seemed unnaturally loud, even for him: “What’s the problem? Need a volunteer?”

Nye came up to me urgently. “Good God, man. Why did you tell him?”

“I didn’t. He found out just as the guards were on their way.”

“I thought you could do with an extra chap,” said Wilson. “So I volunteered. Don’t forget I’m an expert engineer.”

I heard someone curse and murmur: “Shoot the blighter.” Peewee, of course, was oblivious.

Nye sighed. “We’d better start getting down to the harbour. If we’re separated—”

He was interrupted by the unmistakable growl of airship engines high overhead. “Damn! That complicates things.”

The sound of the engines grew louder and louder and it was evident that the ships were coming in lower. We began to duck and weave through the shrubs and trees at the side of the road, heading for the harbour.

Then, suddenly, there was light behind us, and gunfire, the steady pounding of artillery. A dying scream as a bomb descended some distance from the camp. Up the road came several trucks full of soldiers, as well as a couple of armoured cars and some motor-bicycles. The firing continued until I realized that the ships were attacking. Something whizzed past me, just above my head. It felt like a one-man glider. These ingenious devices were far more manageable than parachutes in landing troops. It seemed there was a raid on and we had become caught in the middle of it.

Nye and his lads decided not to vary from their plan. “We’ll use the confusion,” he said.

Wilson called: “I say, steady on. Perhaps we should wait and see what—”

“No time!” shouted Nye. “We don’t know what this is all about. Let’s get to that boat.”

“But suppose—”

“Shut up, Wilson,” I said. I was prepared to follow Nye’s lead. I felt I had little choice now.

“Wait!” cried the engineer. “Let’s just stop and think for a minute. If we keep our heads—”

“You’re about to lose yours to a samurai sword,” called Nye. “Now for God’s sake shut up, Wilson. Either stay where you are or come with us quietly.”

“Quietly? I wonder what you mean to say when you say—”

His droning voice was a greater source of fear than any bombs or bullets. We all put on an excellent burst of speed. By now machine-guns were going, both from the ground and from the rear. I have never prayed before for another human being’s death, but I prayed that night that somebody would take Wilson directly between the eyes and save us.

The Japanese were all making for the camp. As a result we were lucky. They weren’t looking for escaped prisoners just yet. Even when we were spotted, we were taken for enemy soldiers. We were shot at, but we were not pursued.

We reached the outskirts of the town. Getting through the streets unobserved was going to be the difficult part.

Again we were lucky in that whatever was going on behind us was diverting all troops, all attention. It was Wilson crying: “I say, you fellows, wait for me!” that brought us the greatest danger. A small detachment of Japanese infantry heard his voice and immediately began to fire along the alley we had entered. Nye went down, together with a couple of others.

I kneeled beside Nye. I tested his pulse. He had been shot in the back of the head and was quite dead. Another chap was dead, also, but the survivor was only slightly wounded. He got his arm over my shoulder and we continued to make for the harbour. By this time we were fairly hysterical and were yelling wildly at Wilson as Japanese soldiers opened fire again behind us. “Shut up, you damned fool! Nye is dead!”

“Dead? He should have been more careful...”

“Shut up, Wilson!”

We got to the quayside and went straight into the water, as planned, swimming for the nearest boat, a white-and-red blur in the misty electric light from the harbour. I heard Wilson behind me.

“I say, you chaps. I say! Didn’t you realize I couldn’t swim?”

This intelligence seemed to lend me greater energy. Supporting the wounded man, I swam slowly towards the MTB. Some of the seamen were already climbing its sides. I was relieved to hear no further gun shots. Perhaps we had managed to surprise them, after all.

By the time I eventually got to the MTB a rope ladder had been thrown down for me. I lifted the wounded man on to it, holding it while he ascended. I think I could still hear Wilson’s dreadful cries from the harbour:

“I say, chaps. Hang on a minute. Can somebody send a boat to fetch me?”

I hardened my heart. At that moment I must admit I didn’t give a fig for Wilson’s life.

By the time I reached the deck I was gasping with exhaustion. I looked around me, expecting to see captured Japanese sailors. Instead I saw the white uniforms of Russian Navy personnel. A young lieutenant, his cap on the side of his head, his tunic unbuttoned, a revolver and a sabre in his hands, saluted me with his sword. “Welcome aboard, sir,” he said in perfect English. He grinned at me with that wild, careless grin which only Russians have. “We both appear to have had the same idea,” he said. “I am Lieutenant Mitrofanovitch, at your service. We took this boat only twenty minutes before you arrived.”

“And the airships back there?”

“Russian. We are rescuing the prisoners, I hope, at this very moment.”

“You’re using an awful lot of stuff for a few prisoners,” I said.

“While the prisoners are on the island,” said Mitrofanovitch pragmatically, “we cannot bomb the fueling station.”

One of the English seamen said. “Poor bloody Nye. He died for absolutely nothing.”

I leaned on the rail. From the quayside I could still hear Wilson’s awful voice, pleading and desperate: the wailing of a frightened child.

I
f someone had told me, before I ever entered the Temple of Teku Benga, that I should one day be glad to join the Russian Service, I should not only have laughed at them I should, if they had persisted, probably have punched them on the nose. In those days Russia was the greatest menace to our frontiers in India. There was often the threat of open war, for it was well-known that they had territorial ambitions in Afghanistan, if nowhere else. The fact that the Japanese Empire and the Russian Empire had clashed over which parts of South-East Asia and China came under their control was probably fortunate for the British. The war might well have taken a different turn, with Japan and Britain as allies, if Russian ambitions had not, in this world, been diverted towards the crumbling remains of the Chinese Empire. A great deal of the reason for this, of course, was Kerensky himself. The old President of Russia (and the chief power in the so-called Union of Independent Slavic Republics—fundamentally the countries conquered by Imperial Russia before the socialist Revolution) was anxious to keep the friendship of Europe and America and this meant that he had become extremely cautious about offending us. Russia needed to import a great many manufactured goods even now, and she needed markets for her agricultural produce. Moreover, she required as much foreign investment as she could get and was especially interested in attracting British and American capital. She had taken huge steps forward since the successful— and almost bloodless—Revolution of 1905 which had occurred at a time when another war between Russia and Japan was brewing. Her brand of humanist socialism had produced almost universal literacy and her medical facilities were amongst the best in the world. She had produced a thriving and liberal middle class and it was very rare, these days, to encounter the kind of poverty for which Russia, when I was a boy, was famous. All in all, even amongst the most conservative people, there was no doubt that Russia and her dominions were much improved by Kerensky and his socialists.

Whatever the historical reasons, there was nothing dishonourable in joining the Russians against our common enemy. When we were taken, by sub-aquatic liner, first to Vladivostok and then, by airship, to Khabarovsk, I wondered how long it would be before I could begin doing something again. The imprisonment alone had left me frustrated. When news came through that any British citizens with airship experience were needed for the aerial arm of the Russian Volunteer Fleet and that Whitehall was actively encouraging us to join up, I put my name down immediately, as did most of the chaps I was with. Those few of us, like myself, with military experience were given the choice of serving on armed merchantmen, flying in convoys, or on the escorting aerial frigates and cruisers themselves. I elected to join the frigates. I had no particular urge to kill my fellow men but wanted to take something less than a passive role through the rest of this particular war. I have learned from my experiences that hatred and racial antagonism can be manufactured by the politicians of any one country against any other, so I was no longer the patriot I had been. Personally, however, and I know now that this was an infantile impulse, I felt that I had been put to a great deal of trouble by the Japanese and I might as well fight them as anyone else. I also, I must admit, rather hoped there would not be too much conflict. I wanted to fly good, fast ships. And here, at last, was my chance.

We had a two-week training programme in and around Samara, in which we learned the specifics of the Russian ships, which were mainly built and equipped according to the designs of the great engineer Pyatnitski and at that time were amongst the most modern in the world; then we were assigned to various ships to get general experience. I joined the aerial cruiser
Vassarion Belinsky
. She was a fine, easy-handling ship, sailing out of the Lermontov Airpark a few miles to the north of Odessa, that marvelous cosmopolitan seaport from which have come so many fine Russian-speaking poets, novelists, painters and intellectuals. I had a few days’ leave in Odessa before we sailed and I enjoyed those days to the full. Being on the Black Sea the port was relatively untouched by the war and there was more merchant shipping in her harbours than there was naval. Her streets were crowded with people of every colour and nation. She smelled of spices, of the food of five continents, and there was a merry, carefree quality about her, even in wartime, which seemed to me to exemplify the very best of the Slavic soul.

Odessa has a large Jewish population (for it is, of course, the capital of Russian Jewry beyond the Pale, even though the Pale itself, together with all anti-Semitic laws, has been abolished in Kerensky’s Russia) and so is full of music, intelligent commercial enterprise—and Romance. I fell in love with her immediately. I know of no other city quite like her and often wish that I could have spent longer exploring her winding streets, her avenues and promenades, her resorts and watering places. She is not, strictly speaking, a Russian city. She is Ukrainian, and the Ukrainians will insist very firmly that the “goat-beards” (their word for Great Russians) are interlopers, that Kiev, capital of the Ukraine, is the true centre of Slavic culture, that the Muscovites are upstarts, parvenus, johnny-come-latelies, tyrants, imperialists, thieves, carpet-baggers and almost anything else of the kind you care to think of. It is true that the government of Moscow has most power over the Ukraine, but there is a spirit of freedom about Odessa which, I think, denies any of its denizens’ allegations.

In Odessa I also learned a great deal about the progress of the war. On land the Japanese had made many early gains but were now being beaten back by Russian and British infantry—indeed, they had held less territory than before the war. They were still pretty powerful in the air and at sea, and were masters of strategy, but all in all we were optimistic about the way the conflict was turning, for the Dutch and Portuguese were also on our side and although their navies were not large they were extremely capable.