Dusk at Dawn Read online

  DUSK AT DAWN

  DAVID J OLDMAN

  © David J Oldman 2018

  David J Oldman has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by David J Oldman in 2014.

  This edition published by Endeavour Media in 2018

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  PART ONE

  The Man In The Turret

  — July 20th 1918 —

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART TWO

  All At Sea

  — July 21st 1918 —

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  PART THREE

  The Ghost in the Attic

  — August 30th 1918 —

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  PART FOUR

  ENAMOURED ON A TRAIN

  — August 31st 1918 —

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  PART FIVE

  On An Armoured Train

  — November 8th 1918 —

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  PART SIX

  The Wind From Omsk (I)

  — November 18th 1918 —

  43

  44

  46

  PART SEVEN

  The Wind From Omsk (II)

  — November 12th 1919 —

  47

  48

  49

  50

  PART EIGHT

  Memento Mori: Prague

  — March 11th 1948 —

  51

  52

  Dedication

  For Gill with whom I covered some of these miles, years after the events portrayed.

  Cast of Characters

  Paul Ross An army officer

  Mansfield Cumming Head of SIS

  Valentine A friend of Paul Ross

  Colonel Browning SIS officer, assistant to Mansfield Cumming

  Pinker A salesman. Passenger aboard the steamship Hesperus

  Turner A steward aboard the Hesperus

  Reverend Pater A Passenger aboard the Hesperus

  Mrs Hogarth A Passenger aboard the Hesperus

  Miss Andresen A Passenger aboard the Hesperus

  Berglund A Finnish agent

  Jalonen A Finnish agent

  Admiral Kolchak Commander of the White Russian forces

  Sofya Ivanovna Rostova Paul’s cousin

  Mikhail Ivanovich Rostov Paul’s cousin and Sofya’s brother

  Malinovsky Captain of a riverboat

  Karel Romanek A Czechoslovak legionnaire

  Colonel Voitzekhovsky A White Russian attached to the Czechoslovak Legion

  Colonel Čeček A leader of the Czechoslovak Legion

  General Syrový A leader of the Czechoslovak Legion

  Radola Gajda A leader of the Czechoslovak Legion

  Colonel John Ward C. O. of the 25th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment

  Colonel Krasilnikov A Cossack officer

  Captain Steveni A British army officer and SIS agent

  Captain Gavenda A Czechoslovak legionnaire

  Colonel Švec An officer in the Czechoslovak legion

  PART ONE

  The Man In The Turret

  — July 20th 1918 —

  1

  The railway station was a bedlam. Around him, people were rushing in every direction, bumping and colliding like automata following separate sets of instructions. The colours, still khaki and black, lent the scene the muted aspect of an oddly animated Flemish canvas. A Bruegel, was it? He couldn’t remember. What wasn’t muted was the noise. It was shattering. Pushing his way towards the platform, the uproar struck him like a wave. The clank of engines ... the hiss of steam ... the bellowed orders of NCOs trying to get the right body of men in the right place... The noise enveloped him. And, overlaying it all was the cacophonous din of carriage doors slamming and the shrill piercing discordance of guards’ whistles.

  The July evening was warm and Paul Ross felt hot and conspicuous in the greatcoat. He had been carrying it earlier, but when he got the man in the cap’s blood on his jacket he had no choice but to put the thing on. He’d managed to wipe his hands clean although he could still feel an unpleasant stickiness between his fingers. But there hadn’t been much he could do about his jacket. And after that damned woman started screaming all he had time to do was make a run for it. He was two streets away when he heard the first police whistle and had stopped only long enough to pull on the heavy coat to hide the bloodstains.

  Now, threading his way through the crowd towards his platform, he couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder every time he heard a guard’s whistle.

  At the gate he rummaged in his pocket for his ticket. It was second-class — a fact he had noted as soon as Cumming gave it to him. They couldn’t even spring for a first-class carriage, he thought at the time, and noting his reaction Cumming had said rather curtly:

  ‘You might as well get used to it. You’ll find it’s all one class on the steamer. Being Finnish they don’t hold with that sort of thing anymore. The navy usually arranges a cruiser and escort for this sort of thing but there hasn’t been a passage since the ambassador came back in January with Hart. I’m afraid the War Office wasn’t prepared to stump up a ship in this instance. It might be different if you were part of a diplomatic mission, but these days they’re a bit chary risking ships what with the Hun scattering mines all over the place. Their U-boats are still pretty active and they baulk at risking a ship for someone like you. I daresay they haven’t got over Kitchener drowning yet.’

  Cumming had stared past Paul’s shoulder to some point in the middle distance where things might have turned out differently if the Field Marshal had been a better swimmer. Paul had often wondered the same thing about his own father.

  ‘Anyway,’ Cumming finally resumed, ‘we managed to get hold of an old steamer from the Finland Steamship Company fleet. Ostensibly it’ll be their first commercial passage since their ships were impounded at the outbreak of war, so she’ll be carrying a cargo. You’ll be stopping at Copenhagen, Malmo and Stockholm before Helsingfors. Inconvenient, I know, but we have to keep up appearances. You and Hart will board in Yarmouth this evening. There are other passengers so we’ve got you down as a mining agent looking to buy lumber for pit props. You’ll carry papers in the name of Harry Filbert. There won’t be many other passengers but even so, you’ll be advised to keep your eyes open. We’ve just heard from Kell that they might try to sneak an agent aboard.’

  ‘An agent?’

  Cumming dismissed Paul’s look of concern with a wave of the hand.

  ‘Let Hart worry about him once you get to Yarmouth.’

  Cumming having mentioned Hart earlier and not wanting to confuse this man with the agent Kell said might be aboard, Paul asked how he would recognise Hart.

  Cumming and Browning exchanged a glance.

  ‘Used another name, probably,’ Browning said. ‘Good man, Hart.’

  ‘Not a rascal,’ Cumming agreed and looked pointedly at Paul as if he should infer something from the exchange.
br />   But Paul thought there had already been too much he should have inferred and was by now thoroughly confused.

  It had come as no surprise that they weren’t prepared to risk a warship on his behalf, of course, even while they assumed he would risk everything on theirs. Two years in the trenches had disabused him of any illusions he might have held concerning the value they put on people like him. Like everyone else — below the dizzying heights of the top brass, that is — he was regarded as little more than a counter to be moved around on a map. But even so, surely there were circumstances here Cumming had lost sight of?

  For one thing, Paul had been under the impression that Finland was in the middle of a civil war. In those circumstances it was hardly surprising they hadn’t yet made up their minds as to quite what sort of thing they held with. As Paul understood the situation there, the revolutionary faction supporting the Bolsheviks in Russia were busy shooting the somewhat less revolutionary faction who wanted an independent state. They, in turn, were naturally shooting back. And, just to compound the confusion, the German army had marched in to pick up the pieces. In these circumstances Helsingfors seemed a somewhat dangerous destination. When pressed on the point, though, Cumming seemed to become irritated and dismissed it all as a little local difficulty. In fact, he had maintained that the chaos would work in their favour: Paul and Hart could just slip in and out while the Finns and Germans were at each other’s throats. Barely noticed.

  As far as Paul could see that was one more indication of Cumming not being too bothered with detail — particularly if it got in the way of his plans. A disconcerting thought given the position they wanted to put him in.

  And now, on top of it all, Cumming had announced that Kell thought they might sneak an agent on board the steamer. It was all very well being warned to keep his eyes open but how was he supposed to tell one dull passenger from another?

  Cumming, of course, had neglected to say. One would have thought that it might have been pertinent to know how they knew Paul would be on the steamer. Had there been a leak from Cumming’s office?

  Predictably, though, Cumming was evasive on the point.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry yourself on that score. We’re as sound as a bell. Listen to Kell and you’d think there are spies everywhere. Part of the natural order of things.’ He turned to the somewhat urbane officer standing beside Paul. ‘Like blossom in springtime, eh Browning?’

  ‘Socialists, anarchists, revolutionaries ... country’s awash with ‘em,’ Browning agreed emphatically.

  Cumming chuckled. ‘Browning here is of the opinion that if you fired a punt-gun in the reading room of the British library, you couldn’t fail to bag a brace.’

  ‘Can’t sit down to dinner in some houses without getting wigged by a damned agitator of some stamp or the other,’ Browning complained.

  All very well, Paul had thought at the time, but it still didn’t answer the question. How did they know that he would be aboard the steamer? Particularly before he was even aware of the fact himself!

  But that was all of a piece with the day. Nothing could be pinned down, nothing taken for what it seemed.

  Things had started badly and had got steadily worse. Everything had happened too quickly. He had the sensation of being swept along in a situation that was out of his control; a situation of which he had yet to grasp the full significance. It was all too unsettling, like being somehow pushed ahead of himself. It left him with the odd impression that every time he heard a damned whistle and looked back over his shoulder, he might actually catch sight of himself standing in the middle of the station with a puzzled expression on his face.

  The railway inspector pushed Paul’s ticket back at him and waved him in the direction of the train. On the platform the crowd seemed a little thinner. He was able to relax for a moment and catch his breath. Not too many people heading north-east. Then he caught sight of a line of casualties boarding the train and his heart sank. Officers mostly, walking wounded, although he could see a couple of amputees among them hobbling along on crutches. Flanked by two nurses, they were being shepherded along the platform by a medical orderly. No doubt there was a recuperation hospital somewhere out in the Suffolk countryside. Paul supposed the poor fools would be expecting some large house in nice grounds — a river perhaps ... sunny afternoons with tea and cakes on the lawn ... time to doze under the dappled shade of trees...

  He pitied them. If it was anything like his hospital it would be draughty corridors and cold-water baths; tepid tea and, instead of cake, a diet of bored doctors.

  He found an empty compartment, lifted his bag onto the luggage rack and sat down. He had bought an evening paper from Smith’s bookstall. It was too soon for news of bodies found in alleys behind the Waldorf and the headlines were still trumpeting the fact that the Allies had stopped the German offensive. But they’d been saying that for weeks with precious little evidence to back it up. He scanned the story anyway, found nothing new, as he had suspected, and turned instead to an article about the recent events in Russia. Under the circumstances he thought that was disturbingly coincidental, even if the piece was mainly about the present conditions in St Petersburg — or Petrograd as he now had to get used to thinking of it. Even so, the paper did not paint a very comforting picture, especially as they admitted themselves that the situation was so chaotic that no news was reliable. Particularly, it took pains to note, news being released by the Bolsheviks themselves.

  Little wiser, he turned out of habit to the casualty lists, running his eyes down the columns for any familiar names. He saw none he knew, nor had he for some time. Since the first harvest had accounted for most of his contemporaries, and those who had managed to survive that reaping generally living only long enough to be scythed down in the second year, it was now only very occasionally that he did come across a name he recognised. Some stubborn individual whom the blade hadn’t cut down cleanly at first or second attempt. Much like himself, he supposed. Although he was only too aware of there still being time for that omission to be rectified.

  The compartment door opened unexpectedly and a middle-aged couple took the seats opposite him. He glanced at them guiltily and pulled the greatcoat closer to cover the bloodstains. Another whistle blew and the train gave a lurch then began moving slowly out of the station. He stared out of the window at the passing back alleys and dingy brick houses, becoming aware for the first time since early that morning of feeling almost comfortable.

  Physically comfortable, anyway. His head was still a bedlam like the station.

  2

  It had all started at his club that morning when Burkett, the steward, had pushed the note into his hand.

  ‘A gentleman left this letter for you, sir,’ he intoned in his ponderous fashion, bending towards Paul confidentially and whispering in his ear. ‘With the instruction, sir, that I was to hand it to you personally and to inform you that, therein, you would find something to your advantage.’

  There being something so unnecessarily conspiratorial in Burkett’s tone and, because he was still feeling out of sorts from having lost money at cards the previous evening, Paul almost damned the man for his impertinence.

  But then Burkett added, ‘On a separate matter, Captain Ross, I am told that the Secretary is looking for you concerning your bill.’

  The steward’s manner had now changed to one of condescension. It was an attitude Paul had noticed servants often adopted when telling one something one didn’t want to hear and he decided he didn’t like this tone any better than he’d liked Burkett’s first. But he swallowed his imminent curse conscious, as he was, of trying to rid himself of all that master—servant nonsense. And since, given his situation, he really didn’t want to see the Club Secretary, he was grateful for the warning.

  So instead of cursing the steward, he found himself muttering an all too effusive, ‘Thank you, Burkett, thank you very much.’ Aware of over-compensating with his newly adopted egalitarianism, he then shut his mouth and took th
e proffered envelope.

  It was unaddressed. Blank in fact. Suspecting a bill of some description he pushed it back at Burkett, asking if he was sure that the letter was meant for him.

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ Burkett insisted. ‘To be delivered into the hand of Captain Paul Ross.’

  Paul looked at it again, then suspiciously at Burkett.

  ‘It’s not meant for the other fellow, is it? The other Paul Ross. How do you know it’s meant for me if it’s unaddressed?’

  Burkett’s expression remained serene. ‘Poor Captain Ross was killed, if you recall, sir.’

  Paul recalled the fact only too well. It had given him a nasty shock when he had seen his own name among the dead in the casualty list.

  ‘But that hasn’t stopped people writing to him, has it?’

  Burkett’s eyebrows lifted perceptibly. A gesture that might have implied he was demonstrating patience. ‘I was instructed to hand it to you personally.’ And he pushed the envelope towards Paul again.

  Paul scowled and took it once more, stepping to where he was half-hidden from the rest of the lobby by a marble pillar. He opened it and found a note inside. Short and to the point it had been written, curiously, in green ink:

  Come to Whitehall Court at two o’clock and I may be able to offer you a way through your present difficulties. 46, east turret. Prompt.

  He read it through twice, wincing at the phrase ‘present difficulties’.

  ‘Precisely who gave you this?’

  ‘Oh I couldn’t say, sir.’

  Paul nibbled at his lip, unsure if Burkett was being evasive or not. Unable to tell from his response whether the steward actually didn’t know who had delivered the note or whether, through some arcane club rule that governed these things, did know but wasn’t at liberty to disclose the fact.

  Paul sighed. ‘Whitehall Court, then. Do you know where that is?’

  Burkett’s face registered the merest flicker of recognition.

  ‘That would be the old Liberator Building, sir. The present home of the Liberal Club.’