Fall of Giants

In a small market town he bought a sack of onions. He put a leather bag containing ten thousand rubles in coins and notes in the bottom of the sack under the onions.

One night he smeared his hands and face with earth then, dressed in the peasant’s clothes and carrying the onion sack, he crossed no-man’s-land, slipped through the Russian lines, and walked to the nearest railway station, where he bought a third-class ticket.

He adopted an aggressive attitude, and snarled at anyone who spoke to him, as if he feared they wanted to steal his onions, which they probably did. He had a large knife, rusty but sharp, clearly visible at his belt, and a Mosin-Nagant pistol, taken from a captured Russian officer, concealed under his smelly coat. On two occasions when a policeman spoke to him he grinned stupidly and offered an onion, a bribe so contemptible that both times the policeman grunted with disgust and walked off. If a policeman had insisted on looking into the sack, Walter was ready to kill him, but it was never necessary. He bought tickets for short journeys, three or four stops at a time, for a peasant would not go hundreds of miles to sell his onions.

He was tense and wary. His disguise was thin. Anyone who spoke to him for more than a few seconds would know he was not really Russian. The penalty for what he was doing was death.

At first he was scared, but that eventually wore off, and by the second day he was bored. He had nothing to occupy his mind. He could not read, of course: indeed, he had to be careful not to look at timetables posted at stations, or do more than glance at advertisements, for most peasants were illiterate. As a series of slow trains rattled and shook through the endless Russian forests, he entered into an elaborate daydream about the apartment he and Maud would live in after the war. It would have modern decor, with pale wood and neutral colors, like that of the von der Helbard house, rather than the heavy, dark look of his parents’ home. Everything would be easy to clean and maintain, especially in the kitchen and laundry, so that they could employ fewer servants. They would have a really good piano, a Steinway grand, for they both liked to play. They would buy one or two eye-catching modern paintings, perhaps by Austrian expressionists, to shock the older generation and establish themselves as a progressive couple. They would have a light, airy bedroom and lie naked on a soft bed, kissing and talking and making love.

In this way he journeyed to Petrograd.

The arrangement, made through a revolutionary socialist in the Swedish embassy, was that someone from the Bolsheviks would wait to collect the money from Walter at Petrograd’s Warsaw Station every day at six P.M. for one hour. Walter arrived at midday, and took the opportunity to look around the city, with the aim of assessing the Russian people’s ability to fight on.

He was shocked by what he saw.

As soon as he left the station he was assailed by prostitutes, male and female, adult and child. He crossed a canal bridge and walked a couple of miles north into the city center. Most shops were closed, many boarded up, a few simply abandoned, with the smashed glass of their windows glittering on the street outside. He saw many drunks and two fistfights. Occasionally an automobile or a horse-drawn carriage dashed past, scattering pedestrians, its passengers hiding behind closed curtains. Most of the people were thin, ragged, and barefoot. It was much worse than Berlin.

He saw many soldiers, individually and in groups, most showing lapsed discipline: marching out of step or lounging at their posts, uniforms unbuttoned, chatting to civilians, apparently doing as they pleased. Walter was confirmed in the impression he had formed when he visited the Russian front line: these men were in no mood to fight.

This is all good news, he thought.

No one accosted him and the police ignored him. He was just another shabby figure shuffling about his own business in a city that was falling apart.

In high spirits, he returned to the station at six and quickly spotted his contact, a sergeant with a red scarf tied to the barrel of his rifle. Before making himself known, Walter studied the man. He was a formidable figure, not tall but broad-shouldered and thickset. He was missing his right ear, one front tooth, and the ring finger of his left hand. He waited with the patience of a veteran soldier, but he had a keen blue-eyed gaze that did not miss much. Although Walter intended to watch him covertly the soldier met his eye, nodded, and turned and walked away. As was clearly intended, Walter followed him. They went into a large room full of tables and chairs and sat down.

Walter said: “Sergeant Grigori Peshkov?”

Grigori nodded. “I know who you are. Sit down.”