The crowd grew denser as he approached the ground, with many pushing against the tide. The gates were closed, he heard one man say, but if that was the case it didn’t seem much of a deterrent. As Russell crossed the West London Line railway bridge he could see people walking along between the tracks, and others scaling the back of the grandstand. Away in the distance small figures could be seen lining roofs and walls, or precariously clinging to chimney stacks.
He fought his way through to the grandstand entrance, where ticket-holders were still being admitted, and took his place in the fast-moving line. When he passed through the turnstile there was still half an hour before kick-off, so he joined the queue for tea. A party of Russians was ahead of him, happily swapping banter with some of the locals. Watching the exchange, Russell was reminded that most ordinary people still considered the Soviets as friends and allies.
The British press was certainly helping to preserve the illusion. J. B. Priestley had just chronicled a visit to the Soviet Union in a series of articles for the Sunday Express, and his impressions had been overwhelmingly favourable. Russell was glad that the popular playwright had noticed some Soviet plusses — particularly in education and culture — but rather more disappointed that he had missed most of the minuses. And Priestley was far from alone. Some descriptions of the Soviet leadership in the British press were naive to the point of idiocy. One journalist had recently compared Stalin to ‘a collie panting and eyeing his sheep’; another had announced that his successors would be ‘middle-aged Men of Good Will’. Which planet were they living on?
Tea in hand, he followed the signs for the appropriate block and climbed the relevant steps. Emerging above the dull green pitch he found himself looking out across a huge crowd, a large portion of which had already spilled out onto the greyhound track that ringed the playing surface. More to Russell’s surprise, the Russian players were already out, passing several balls between them. Their shirts and shorts were different shades of blue, with a old- fashioned white ‘D’ where British clubs wore their badges. Their socks were a fetching bottle green.
He found his row, and searched the gloom for Shchepkin. The old Comintern operative was a dozen or so seats along, his newly white hair peeking out from under a fur hat. There was an empty seat beside him.
As Russell forced his passage along the row he realised that all those making way were Russians — the whole block was occupied by fur-hatted men smoking strange-smelling cigarettes and conversing in nasal accents. Shchepkin smiled when he saw him coming, and Russell, rather to his own surprise, found himself reciprocating. If a list were made of those ultimately responsible for the mess his life was in, then Shchepkin’s name would undoubtedly come close to the top. But so, Russell knew, would his own. And the past was not for changing.
He took the seat beyond Shchepkin, beside a burly blond Russian in a shiny new suit.
‘This is Comrade Nemedin,’ Shchepkin announced, in a tone which left no doubt of the man’s importance.
‘Major Nemedin,’ the man corrected him. His blue eyes were a definite contender for the coldest that Russell had ever seen. ‘Mister Russell,’ the Russian said in acknowledgement, before turning his attention back to the pitch.
‘We will talk business at half-time,’ Shchepkin told Russell.
‘Right.’
‘How do you like living in London?’ Shchepkin asked him in Russian. Nemedin, Russell guessed, did not speak English.
‘I’ve been in better places,’ Russell replied in the same language. ‘It’ll take a lot more than six months to make up for the last six years.’
‘Did you grow up here?’
‘No, in Guildford. It’s about thirty miles away. To the southwest. But my father worked in London, and we used to come up quite often. Before the First War.’ He had been thinking about those visits lately. On one occasion he and his parents had been caught up in a suffragette rally. To his father’s chagrin and his mother’s great amusement.
Down below them the Dynamos were leaving the pitch. The crowd was now over the inner fence of the greyhound track, and, despite the best efforts of the police, creeping towards the touch and goal lines. On the far side a woman was being lifted across a sea of heads towards a posse of waiting St John Ambulancemen.
‘How are your family?’ Russell asked Shchepkin.
‘Oh.’ The Russian looked disconcerted for a moment, but soon recovered. ‘They are in good health, thank you. Natasha is training to be a teacher.’
‘Good,’ Russell said. They both knew that Nemedin was listening to every word, but Russell felt childishly intent on not being cowed into silence. ‘And how long have you been in London?’
‘Since the Sunday before last. We came with the team.’
‘Of course.’ Russell shifted his attention to Nemedin. ‘And how do you like it here, Major?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Nemedin replied, as if he’d heard a different question. ‘Are they going to force them back?’ he asked, indicating the crowds below.
‘I think they’ll be happy with keeping them off the pitch,’ Russell told him.
‘But… is this normal? There is no control.’
Russell shrugged. Where the English were concerned, the controls were internal. ‘Do you like football?’ he asked the Russian.
‘Of course.’
‘Will the Dynamos do well, do you think?’
‘Yes, I think so. If the referee is fair.’
There was a sound of breaking glass away to their right. Someone had fallen through the grandstand roof, and presumably landed in someone else’s lap. It wasn’t a long drop, so Russell doubted that anyone had died.
The two teams were filing out now: Chelsea in a change strip of red, the Dynamos carrying bouquets of flowers. They lined up facing each other, and those in the seats rose to their feet as the Royal Marines band launched into the Soviet national anthem. The crowd was respectful to a fault, and the wave of emotion which rolled across the stadium was almost palpable, as minds went back to those months when their two nations were all that stood between the Nazis and global domination. The Americans and their economy had certainly played crucial roles in the Allied victory, but if Britain had broken in 1940, or the Soviet Union in 1941, all their efforts might well have been in vain.
‘God Save The King’ followed, and the moment it died away the eleven Dynamo players stepped forward and presented the bouquets to their blushing Chelsea counterparts. A storm of laughter engulfed the stadium, leaving most of the Russell’s immediate neighbours looking bemused. In the seats below one man shouted that it must be Chelsea’s funeral.
A minute later the game was underway, and it was looking as if he’d been right. Far from being ‘so slow you could hear them think’, the Russian players were soon swarming towards the Chelsea goal, passing their way through their opponents with a deftness and speed which left the crowd gasping. Within minutes shots had hit the goalkeeper, the side netting and the post, and the Russians around Russell were almost purring with pleasure at the lesson their countrymen were teaching the English team.
For twenty minutes they did everything but score. And then, after hitting the post for a second time, they conceded at the other end — Tommy Lawton, much to Nemedin’s disgust, forcing the ball from the Dynamo keeper’s hands and setting it up on a plate for Len Goulden. When a stupid mistake at the back gifted Chelsea another goal, the sense of injustice was almost too much for Russell’s companions to bear. And, rubbing salt into the wound, the Dynamos contrived to miss a penalty just before half time, the left-winger hammering his shot against the post. When the teams disappeared beneath them with the score at two-nil, Russell couldn’t recall a less appropriate scoreline.
On his right, Shchepkin seemed less put out that most of his compatriots; on his left, Nemedin was muttering darkly to himself, which probably boded ill. The NKVD were hard enough to deal with when things were going their way.
Nemedin, however, proved able to set aside his disappointment. ‘We have two jobs for you,’ he told Russell once their mini-conference was underway, the two Russians leaning sideways until all three heads were only inches apart. ‘First, you will make contact with several German comrades in Berlin, some of whom you know, some of whom you don’t. We want to know where these comrades stand on several crucial issues. There has been a lot of discussion in the German Party about a “German Road to Socialism”. This is acceptable, but only insofar as it doesn’t become an anti-Soviet road. We want to know how these men feel about this in particular, and where their