The Winds of War

Amphiteatrov turned and faced them, and showed his gums and teeth without smiling. Behind him through the frosted windshield they could vaguely see on the main street of the town smoke, fire, a plunging horse, soldiers running, and green army trucks in a slow-moving jam. “Well, there has been a very big breakthrough in the north. Moscow is in danger. Well, all foreign missions will be evacuated to the Caucasus. We must skedaddle.” He brought out the awkward slang word humorlessly, and turned to the driver. “Nu, skoro!”

Under the blanket stretched across the passengers’ legs, Pamela Tudsbury’s gloved hand groped to Victor Henry’s hand. She pulled off her glove, twined her cold fingers in his, and pressed her face against the torn shoulder of his bridge coat. His chapped hand tightened on hers.

Chapter 56

Leslie Slote heard footfalls in the dark, as he sat in an overcoat and fur hat, working by the light of a kerosene lamp. His desk overflowing with papers and reports stood directly under the grand unlit chandelier in the marble-pillared great hall of Spaso House, the ambassador’s Moscow residence.

“Who’s there?” The nervous strident words reverberated in the empty halls. He recognized the white Navy cap, white scarf, and brass buttons, before he could make out the face. “Ye gods, Captain Henry, why didn’t they take you straight to the Kazan Station? Maybe you can still make it. You’ve got to get out of Moscow tonight!”

“I’ve been to the station. The train to Kuibyshev had left.” Pug brushed snow from his shoulders. “The air raid held us up outside the city.”

Slote looked at his wristwatch in great agitation. “But — that’s terrible! God knows when there’ll be another train to Kuibyshev — if ever. Don’t you know that one German armored column’s already passed by to the north and is cutting down behind the city? And they say another pincer is heading up from Kaluga. One doesn’t know what to believe any more, but it’s at least conceivable that in the next twenty-four hours we may be entirely surrounded. It begins to smell like Warsaw all over again. Slote gaily laughed. “Sorry there are no chairs, a party of mad Georgian workmen came in and covered and stacked all the furniture — oh, there’s a stool after all, do sit down—”

Pug said, “That’s more than I know, about the German pincers, and I’ve just come from the Narkomindel.” He sat down without opening his coat. It was almost as cold and dark in Spaso House as in the snowstorm outside.

“Did you suppose they’d tell you anything? I got this straight from the Swedish ambassador, I assure you, at nine o’clock tonight in the dining room at the Kazan Station, when I was seeing off the staff. My God, that station was a spectacle to remember! One bomb hit would have wiped out all the foreign correspondents and nine-tenths of the diplomats in Russia — and a healthy chunk of the Soviet bureaucracy too.”

“Have all the typewriters been stowed? I have to write a report.”

“There are typewriters in Colonel Yeaton’s office. I have a skeleton staff, and we’re to keep things going somehow until the charge gets organized in Kuibyshev.” Slote gave this answer with absentminded calm, then jumped at a muffled sound from outside. “Was that a bomb? You have no time to write reports, Captain. It’s really my responsibility to see that you leave Moscow at once, and I must insist that somehow—”

Pug held up a hand. “The Nark’s making arrangements. There are other stragglers like me. I have to check back in at eleven in the morning.”

“Oh! Well, if the Narkomindel’s assumed responsibility, that’s that,” Slote giggled.

Victor Henry looked narrowly at him. “How come you got stuck with this duty again? It seems kind of thick, after Warsaw.”

“I volunteered. You look skeptical. I truly did. After all, I’ve been through the drill. I wasn’t too proud of the job I did in Warsaw and I thought perhaps I could redeem myself this time.”

“Why, Byron told me you did a helluva job in Warsaw, Leslie.”

“Did he? Byron’s a gentleman. A knight, almost. Which reminds me, an enormous pouch came in from Stockholm the day you left? There was stuff from Rome. Would you like to see a picture of your new grandson?” Fussing through papers on his desk, he pulled a photograph from a wrinkled envelope. “There he is. Don’t you think he’s handsome?”

The lamplight carved deep black marks in the naval officer’s face as he read the writing on the back of the snapshot, For old Slote — Louis Henry, aged 11 days, with circus fat lady, then contemplated the photograph. A plump, hollow-eyed Natalie in a loose robe held a baby that looked startlingly like Byron as an infant. The triangular face, the large serious eyes, the comically determined look, the fine blond hair — they were the same; Louis was another print of the template that had molded his son. He was much more of a Henry than Janice’s boy. Victor Henry cleared his choked-up throat. “Not bad. Natalie’s right, she’s gotten fat.”

“Hasn’t she though? Too much bed rest, she says. I’ll bet the baby will be as clever as it’s handsome. It looks clever.” Victor Henry sat staring at the snapshot. Slote added, “Would you care to keep that?”

Henry at once extended it to him. “No, certainly not. She sent it to you.”

“I’ll only lose it, Captain Henry. I have a better picture of Natalie.”

“Are you sure? All right.” Victor Henry tried to express in an awkward smile the gratitude for which he could find no words. Carefully he put the print in an inner pocket.

“What about the Tudsburys?” Slote asked. “Are they stuck in Moscow too?”

“I left Talky trying to wangle a ride to Archangel for himself and Pam. The Russians are flying out some RAF pilot instructors. I’m sure he’ll get on that plane.”

“Good. Did you run into any trouble at the front? What an idiocy, dragging a girl out there!”

“Well, we heard some firing, and saw some Germans. I’d better get at this report. If Talky does fly out, I want to give him a copy to forward via London.”

“Let me have a copy too, won’t you? And another to go in the next pouch. If there is one.”

“You’re a pessimist, Slote.”

“I’m a realist. I was in Warsaw. I know what the Germans can do.”

“Do you know what the Russians can do?”

“I thought I did. I was the Red Army’s biggest booster in the embassy, until -” Slote shrugged and turned to his desk, blowing his nose. “The only thing that really gets me is this stink of burning paper. My God, how it brings back Warsaw! The embassy absolutely reeks. We were burning and burning today, until the minute they all left. And there’s still a ton that I’ve somehow got to get burned in the morning.”

“All Moscow stinks of it,” Pug said. “It’s the damnedest thing to drive through a snowstorm and smell burned paper. The city’s one unholy mess, Slote. Have you seen all the barbed wire and tangled steel girders blocking the bridges? And good Lord, the mob at that railway station! The traffic jams heading east with headlights blazing, blackout be damned! I didn’t know there were that many trucks and cars in the whole Soviet Union. All piled with mattresses and old people and babies and what-all. And with those blue A.A. searchlights still swinging overhead — God knows why — and the snow and the wind, I tell you it’s a real end-of-the-world feeling.”

Slote chuckled. “Yes, isn’t it? This exodus began the day you left. It’s been snowballing. A convoy of government big shots left yesterday in a line of honking black limousines. Gad, you should have seen the faces of the people along the streets! I’m sure that triggered this panic. However, I give Stalin credit. He’s staying on to the last, and that takes courage, because when Hitler catches Stalin, he’ll just hang him like a dog in Red Square. And he’ll drag Lenin’s mummy out of the tomb too, and string it up alongside to crumble in the wind. Oh, there’ll be stirring things to see and record here, for whoever survives to tell it all.”

Victor Henry rose. “Do you know there’s no sentry at the door? I just walked in.”

“That’s impossible. We’re guarded night and day by a soldier assigned by the Narkomindel.”

“There’s nobody there.”

Slote opened and closed his mouth twice. “Are you positive? Why, we could be sacked by looters! It’s getting near the end when soldiers leave their posts. I must call the Narkomindel. If I can get the operator to answer!” He jumped up and disappeared in the gloom.

Victor Henry groped to the military attache’s office. There he struck matches, and found and lit two kerosene lamps. In their bleak yellow-green glow he surveyed the office. Bits of black ash flecked the floor and every surface. BURN — URGENT was scrawled in red crayon on manila folders topping heaps of reports, files, and loose papers