together.
‘I am Smith, Mister Smith. I am an American.’ He grinned happily at our astonishment. ‘You are surprised, gentlemen.’ We just could not believe our ears. His Russian was impeccable. I could detect no trace of an accent.
‘Forgive me,’ I said at last. ‘It is hard to believe. How did you get here?’
He had an easy, patient, almost professorial manner of speech. ‘Let me repeat, I am an American. By profession I am an engineer and was one of a number cordially invited by the Soviet Government to help build the Moscow Metro. There were about fifty of us. That was nine or ten years ago. They arrested me in 1936, convinced themselves I was a professional foreign spy and gave me twenty years.’ He drank off his coffee. We were still looking at him like a pair of fools. ‘Now I’ll take my mug back and we shall walk together to the huts.’
Makowski and I followed his retreating back. Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians, Czechs, Finns, the flotsam of a European upheaval, these we expected to meet in the hands of the Russians. But an American… Said Makowski, with heavy humour, ‘Maybe if we look around a little more we shall find some English and French.’ Paluchowicz came over to us. ‘What do you think of him?’ Makowski shrugged, still following with his eyes the figure of Smith as he handed in his mug and turned to walk back. ‘Herr Schmidt,’ he told the Sergeant, ‘is
The four of us walked slowly back to the huts and, as was the custom, exchanged sentences. That is to say, we introduced ourselves by name as Smith had done. And he, in accordance with camp etiquette, asked us in turn, ‘How long are you in for?’ This question always had its place in first meetings. It was a form of introduction.
By now, the beginning of April, Makowski and I had got ourselves bunks near the door of the end hut. Kolemenos had also managed the switch and the others hoped to join us within a few days. Telling the Sergeant we would see him later, we invited Mister Smith into our hut. Sitting on Makowski’s bottom bunk, I cautiously outlined our plans. I told him I had sound reasons for believing that only the long road south held any chance of success, although some of the others were still reluctant to drop the idea of the short route east to Kamchatka.
He did not rush to answer. He asked a few shrewd questions. We sat silent as he thought things over. And then, ‘Gentlemen, it will be a privilege to join you. I agree that the south route is the best. You can count on me.’
We sat long with Smith. All our histories, our Russian dossiers, followed a similar pattern. Smith was different. He was the odd man out, and he intrigued us. He told us much, but neither then nor ever did he tell us his Christian name. Later, when we six Europeans addressed one another familiarly by first names, the American was always, as he first introduced himself, Mister Smith to us all, the ‘Mister’ somehow being accepted as a substitute for the name we were never told.
He had a ridged scar curving lividly from right to left from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck, some eight or nine inches long. He received it, he explained, when some scaffolding fell on him during the Metro building.
‘Apart from the accident that gave me this scar,’ he told us, ‘I had a good time in Moscow for a few years. The work was interesting, I was highly paid, and I found the Russians easy to work with. They had skilled engineers themselves, but key positions went to foreigners like myself. The reason, I think, was that this Metro scheme was a great prestige prospect and if anything went wrong national pride would be saved by having a foreigner as the scapegoat. I was quite happy. I had wanted to see Russia and I was being financially well rewarded for the experience.’
In a Moscow obsessed between the wars with its Five-Year Plans, Smith and his friends, installed in well- appointed flats and with money to spare to buy luxuries in those shops where the entry permit was either a Party membership card or a foreign passport, must have been conspicuous. Smith had a car and travelled around freely — a circumstance which must have earned him an underlined report in secret police records. He had a Russian girl friend; the police would not have liked that, either. But they let him go on, working hard and playing hard.
‘I never saw the blow coming,’ he went on. ‘After a year’s work, the Russians, without any move from me, doubled my salary, which had been fixed by contract, to show their appreciation of the steady progress that was being made with the work. From then on I thought I was well in with them.’
Smith was in his flat with the girl after midnight one night in 1936 when the N.K.V.D. called in force. They were quiet, determined and most efficient. Smith and the girl were both arrested. He never saw her again. Other occupants of the flats probably never saw or heard a thing. When dawn came Smith was occupying a cell in the Lubyanka — it was to be his home for the next six months. Repeatedly they brushed aside his demands to be allowed to see someone from the United States Embassy.
‘What a transition,’ mused Mister Smith. ‘One day a successful engineer, the next a professional foreign spy. It seems that apart from keeping a general watchful eye on my activities they had been opening my mail home. The main charge against me was that I had been sending out information about Russia in my letters to my folks in America.
‘The trial was secret and farcical. I got twenty years, as I told you. They confiscated my car and all my possessions, so perhaps they got back most of the extra salary they had so generously awarded me.
‘I was digging for diamonds in a mine in the Urals. I told them I could, by modern engineering practice, substantially increase efficiency and output. They weren’t interested. They kept me on manual labour.’
Makowski broke in. ‘Have you ever thought about escaping?’
‘I have been thinking of how it could be done ever since I was first sent to the Urals. I decided I could not do it alone.’
Then he questioned us closely about our plans. He wanted as clear and detailed a picture as we could give at this stage. He questioned shrewdly about the distances involved. Had we realized it would be a thousand miles of foot-slogging to the borders of Mongolia alone? We talked, almost in whispers, for a long time, as other occupants of Hut Number One came in past us, stamping snow off their boots, calling out to friends, standing in groups round the three red-hot stoves. I told him we would help him make the move from his hut in the middle of the line to this one. I urged that time was short.
He stood up, nodded thoughtfully. ‘Goodbye for now,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, gentlemen,’ he answered, and walked out.
The others readily accepted the seventh and last recruit to the party. There was the practical consideration that he would be useful when we got to the English-speaking world. And Zaro told him, ‘I would like to go to America when we are free.’ Said Smith, ‘I would like to have you all come to America.’
By the end of the first week in April we were all in the same hut — a triumph of preliminary organization. We were gathering an impressive store of skins, most of them pulled off the wires by Kolemenos on his frequent trips to pick up the birch logs for the ski shop. On the grindstone in the ski shop I flattened and sharpened a six- inch nail into an instrument that could be used to cut and pierce holes in the tough pelts. Our final collection included sable, ermine, Siberian fox and, a real prize, the skin of a deer which one of the officers had shot for the pot. We cut long thongs of hide for lacing up the simple moccasins we fashioned in the nightly gloom of the hut. We plaited thongs together and used them as belts. Each man made and wore under his
Our acute fear at this time was that we might be betrayed. Our feverish efforts were bound to attract some attention. Had a word been dropped to the Russians, the informant would have been well paid in extra bread and tobacco. But there was no Judas. Those who suspected what we were up to probably thought us mad and left us alone to the disaster they were sure we were inviting. For the more casual observer there was nothing odd about pilfering skins from the Russians and using them to the best advantage. We kept apart as much as possible in the hut and most of our serious planning was done on trips to the latrine trench.
I told Ushakova that I had found six friends. She did not ask me who they were and I do not think she wanted to know. She handed over to me a gift that was to be of inestimable value — an axehead. ‘That will be on my conscience all my life,’ she said. ‘It is the first thing I have ever stolen.’ I made a handle for it and Kolemenos wore it for safe keeping inside the back waistband of his trousers.
