It was the man named Spassky who had carried his canvas bag for him as they walked to the station. He had asked about Anna and Ivan. Would they be willing to be part of his team in Paris? Were they committed? Had he mastered the code they would use to him when they wrote to him? How well did he know Serov? Spassky didn’t seem particularly interested in his answers as they trudged through the snow. And his last question, just before the train pulled out was how he was going to convert the gold into francs. He seemed satisfied with the answer. Spassky neither waved nor said any farewell as the train started its long journey.
CHAPTER 3
Serov met him in from the train and insisted that they went to a café before he went home.
Over coffee Serov had broken the news that in the next few days there would be reports in at least two French newspapers that five million Russian farmers had not only had their land confiscated but had been sent into exile in the remote areas of the Soviet Union. A German newspaper was to claim that at least a million farmers had been murdered.
Andrei said, “Is it true?”
Serov shrugged. “More or less. The figure I heard was not five million but seven million. It will mean almost no harvest for two years.” He smiled. “I can’t see the Moscow bureaucrats sowing and reaping, can you? And the farm labourers who helped slaughter the farmers won’t expect to be working hard for whoever their new masters turn out to be.”
“Why didn’t Lensky warn me?”
“He wouldn’t know about the newspaper articles and the purge of the kulaks was last year.”
“How the hell do I explain this to the Party members here?”
Serov smiled. “I don’t know but I’ll be interested to hear what you tell them.”
“Do they know already?”
“There was a piece in the newspapers today. Just a few paragraphs. Possible famine in Russia and all that sort of stuff.” He paused. “I’ve arranged a local Party meeting for this evening. You’d better explain it to them.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“Lensky wants you to do it. He wants you to go to Marseilles as well. They’re feuding amongst themselves. He wants you to sort them out.”
“I want a couple of days with the family before I go anywhere. I’ve been away six months.”
“Lensky says he wants you to get a bigger place. I’ve got one for you to see.”
“Where is it?”
“In the Batignolles. Rue Legrande. Anna and Ivan have seen it. They love it.”
“Why does Lensky want us to move?”
“So’s you’ve got enough room if we ever need it for one of our people on the run. Just for a night while we sort things out for them.”
They moved to the new place the next day and the family were delighted. But Andrei vaguely resented Serov’s interference in his family life. Nobody in Moscow had ever told him that Serov was in some way his superior, but because Serov seemed to be in constant touch with Lensky he accepted the situation.
The Party members in Paris and Marseilles had accepted his explanation of the purge of the kulaks. Attempts to split the Party’s loyalties and to try and change its methods and objectives were considered disloyal by any standards. The same strict retribution had to be meted out to the kulaks as had been applied to the traitors like Trotsky and Zinoviev.
His next trip had been to Berlin where the Party was in danger of splitting on the same lines as the Party in Moscow. Andrei had realised that Stalin had to be shown as the only man who had the will and the strength to carry through the Politburo’s programme. And if there had to be old comrades who were sacrificed because of their disruption and opposition, then so be it.
When Andrei returned from a brief visit to Spain on Moscow’s orders there was the first of the fugitives installed in the apartment. She was a young French girl, Chantal Lefevre. She was wanted by the French police for “acts of subversion against the security of the State.” Not only had she been active and successful in helping to organise a militant trades union representing workers in the clothing trade but had played a substantial role in producing an underground Marxist-Leninist newssheet which gave details of bribery and corruption of politicians by arms manufacturers who she had referred to as “The Merchants of Death.”
Andrei fell in love with her the first moment he saw her. She had long black hair and big brown eyes and could have been taken as Jewish, but she wasn’t Jewish. Her family ran a hotel in Lyon and she had grown up in an ambiance of toleration and faint scepticism about the people who governed France in a time of uncertainty and tensions in French society.
Her parents had always tolerated the activities of their only child, Chantal. Admired her courage and tenacity but had doubts about whether her chosen cause deserved such sacrifice and loyalty. Anna had already made her feel part of the family.
It was Chantal who persuaded him to explore the area where they lived and to spend some time away from his meetings and arguments with the refugees from the East. To him, where they lived was of no interest. It was just a base for his work.
She took him up to the area around the rue de Rome where the shops served the students of the Paris Conservatoire. Shops where lutes and violins were made and sold, sheet-music and guitars.
The Batignolles was an area of calm between the sleazy Place de Clichy and the Gare St. Lazare.
She had taken him to a small café where she was obviously well-known and liked and as they sat at a pavement table she said, “If you don’t
