By the time we got to the director's office, the room was full of Communists and Komsomol secretaries from the works. By the light of the two green-shaded lamps I recognized Kazurkin, Secretary of the Town Party Committee, our Flegontov, and the OGPU chief whom I had seen when the mine was discovered under the foundations of the blast-furnace.
'We won't wait any longer,' Rudenko said looking round when we had all sat down. 'Tonight, comrades, making use of the fact that tomorrow would be a day-off, our enemies intended blowing up all the vital sections of our plant. Their plan is in our hands! There it is.' Rudenko pointed to a crumpled paper lying before him. 'I consider it my duty to thank our comrades, the security men, for discovering this document in time.'
Ivan Fyodorovich turned to the security man and gripped his hand warmly. The latter shook his head, as much as to say that neither he nor his assistants deserved any gratitude.
The announcement shocked us, and in the tense silence that followed the director's voice sounded even more impressive.
'The first warning we got of this kind of thing came to us, as you know, during the Komsomol members' voluntary work on Sunday. The despicable hireling of the bourgeoisie who had been entrusted with the task of detonating the mine lost his nerve and failed to carry out this act of sabotage. Then the lads in the foundry spoilt everything for him. Fortunately he has now been arrested, and at the first interrogation turned out to be very talkative. Similar mines planted by the old owner and his assistants in 1919 have been discovered in the stoke-hole and near the furnaces...'
'Who was it, Ivan Fyodorovich?' several voices asked at once.
'The worst worker and the worst drunkard at the plant —Entuta,' the director said amid tense silence.
'So that was the man who tried to frighten us with his anonymous letter after we had showed him up!' the thought flashed through my mind.
After a pause the director went on: 'Our comrade here will tell you the rest.' And again he looked at the benevolent little man in the grey suit, beckoning him to take the chair.
All night, until daybreak, we stood watch in the shops, guarding the works until every fresh mine that had been discovered was rendered harmless.
The fact that the good-for-nothing drunkard Kashket had turned out to be a foreign agent soon lost its novelty. 'Wasn't it obvious from the start that the foreign capitalists would recruit their agents among such degraded types!' I reflected as I paced up and down between the cooling furnaces. 'People like him who've never had any feeling for their country will do any filthy work to get more money or another bottle of vodka... '
Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya, about whom the security man had spoken in a restrained but very impressive manner that evening, had known about Kashket's past for a long time, ever since she had agreed to become a resident foreign agent in our town, concealing her secret activities against the Soviet state under the mask of being a dancing-mistress.
The first messenger to arrive on a cargo ship from London met her in secret. Besides handing her a letter from her husband, the sugar-refinery owner who had escaped to England, the messenger presented her with a certain 'business document.' This document was a list of people who were 'still loyal,' compiled by Nestor Makhno himself, who was in those days living in Paris and, so it was rumoured, even lectured on his bandit activities at the Staff Academy. With the help of the Entente forces he was hoping to return on his machine-gun carts to the shores of the Azov Sea.
This list included the name of the anarchist Entuta, nicknamed Kashket. Madame had got her plump bejewelled fingers on him back in the days when she still owned the 'Little Nook' restaurant. Kashket came to his 'mama' to cadge drinks, which thanks to Madame's 'kind heart' he rarely paid for. And when at her own dancing- saloon in Genoa Street Madame demanded Kashket’s first signature on a receipt for a hundred rubles received from the British Intelligence Service, Kashket did not hesitate.
For a whole year after that Rogale-Piontkovskaya and her agents were left to themselves.
Connections with London broke down. For a long time no ship flying a British flag entered a Soviet port. Madame's bosses decided to make contact with her by other means.
Had he succeeded in blowing up security headquarters in our town in Podolia, Kozyr-Zyrka was to have visited the Donbas and the Azov coast and handed fresh instructions to other resident secret agents, Rogale- Piontkovskaya among them. Apparently that was the Kozyr-Zyrka's second task, which had baffled Vukovich for so long.
Many things that at first sight seemed trivial had helped Vukovich in his work. One of them was the chance suggestion I had made in my letter to Nikita that the keeper of the dancing-saloon might be a relation of the old countess whom we had seen in the far-off days of our childhood in Zarechye.
Vukovich established a link between Pecheritsa's appearance in the town by the sea and the fact that the engineer 'killed at Uman' was passing the time very pleasantly abroad and had even got his name in that strangely named index of celebrities Who's Who.
When Polevoi wounded Kozyr-Zyrka in the loft of security headquarters, Kozyr-Zyrka took refuge in Pecheritsa's flat and entrusted Pecheritsa with this second task.
It was quite possible that had not Vukovich discovered in time where Kozyr-Zyrka was hiding, Pecheritsa might have made a 'business trip' to Kharkov, taking in the Azov coast as well. But things
turned out differently. Pecheritsa had to flee and lat the same time carry out the task that he had been landed with by Kozyr-Zyrka.
When Vukovich had laid hands on both Pecheritsa and Kozyr-Zyrka, he was able to tie up all the threads.
Nikita's warning at the station had had a purpose. Any gossip about Rogale-Piontkovskaya might have hindered the exposure of the plot.
Madame's nerve had begun to fail her of late. As soon as she learnt that Kashket had been arrested, she hastily packed her family jewels and with the coming of dusk decided to go 'for a boat trip.'
While Petka Maremukha was acting her on the stage, Madame was making her way round the breakwater towards the foreign ship, which was finishing loading in the bay.
The town security chief did not tell us that evening that another boat with Soviet security men in it had followed Madame's boat, and that it was they who had prevented Madame from climbing aboard up a conveniently lowered rope ladder... He merely explained what a danger 'had threatened the works, and mentioned in passing that 'Madame was detained in time.'........
I. must admit that many of us were still very puzzled during the night we spent guarding the works. I can write of it all now in such detail because the following days of discussion and thought about this mysterious affair helped us to understand what had happened.
ACROSS THE AZOV WAVES
Such a gale blew up in the evening that the yellow waves raged fiercely even in the harbour. The low- funnelled paddle steamer moored there ready for sailing rose and fell on the pounding seas.
The name of the ship was written in a semi-circle over one of the paddle-wheels:
FELIX DZERZHINSKY
Not long ago when calling at our port on its way to Kerch, this steamer had been the first to bring us the sad news of the death of the man whose name it now bore. Even before, it entered the harbour from the bay, we heard the melancholy note of its siren. Its flag, edged with mourning, flew at half mast.
Before the newspapers arrived from Mariupol, we had learnt all the details from the ship's wireless operator. We were told that Felix Dzerzhinsky had died of heart failure in Moscow, after his speech to the Central Committee, where with his usual vehemence he had exposed those despised enemies of the people—the Trotskyites. The news of Comrade Dzerzhinsky's death overwhelmed us... Not long ago, just before I set out for this town, I had heard Dzerzhinsky ring up the chief of our frontier-guard detachment. I still remembered with what excitement Nikita had said to me: 'Do you know who that was on the phone? The first security man of the Revolution!'
The next day, at lunch-time, on Flegontov's instructions, I read out the Central Committee's announcement
