Fall of Giants

The back page of the paper had a photograph of the woman leading the “Hands Off Russia” campaign, and Fitz was startled to see that it was Ethel. She had been a housemaid at Tŷ Gwyn but now, the Express said, she was general secretary of the National Garment Workers Union.

He had slept with many women since then-most recently, in Omsk, a stunning Russian blonde, the bored mistress of a fat tsarist general who was too drunk and lazy to fuck her himself. But Ethel shone out in his memory. He wondered what her child was like. Fitz probably had half a dozen bastards around the world, but Ethel’s was the only one he knew of for sure.

And she was the one whipping up protest against intervention in Russia. Now Fitz knew where the information was coming from. Her damn brother was a sergeant in the Aberowen Pals. He had always been a troublemaker, and Fitz had no doubt he was briefing Ethel. Well, Fitz thought, I’ll catch him out, and then there will be hell to pay.

Over the next few weeks the Whites raced ahead, driving before them the surprised Reds, who had thought the Siberian government a spent force. If Kolchak’s armies could link up with their supporters in Archangel, in the north, and with Denikin’s Volunteer Army in the south, they would form a semicircular force, a curved eastern scimitar a thousand miles long that would sweep irresistibly to Moscow.

Then, at the end of April, the Reds counterattacked.

By then Fitz was in Buguruslan, a grimly impoverished town in forest country a hundred miles or so east of the Volga River. The few dilapidated stone churches and municipal buildings poked up over the roofs of low-built wooden houses like weeds in a rubbish dump. Fitz sat in a large room in the town hall with the intelligence unit, sifting reports of prisoner interrogations. He did not know anything was wrong until he looked out of the window and saw the ragged soldiers of Kolchak’s army streaming along the main road through the town in the wrong direction. He sent an American interpreter, Lev Peshkov, to question the retreating men.

Peshkov came back with a sorry story. The Reds had attacked in force from the south, striking the overstretched left flank of Kolchak ’s advancing army. To avoid his force being cut in two the local White commander, General Belov, had ordered them to retreat and regroup.

A few minutes later, a Red deserter was brought in for interrogation. He had been a colonel under the tsar. What he had to say dismayed Fitz. The Reds had been surprised by Kolchak’s offensive, he said, but they had quickly regrouped and resupplied. Trotsky had declared that the Red Army must go on the offensive in the east. “Trotsky thinks that if the Reds falter, the Allies will recognize Kolchak as supreme ruler; and once they have done that they will flood Siberia with men and supplies.”

That was exactly what Fitz was hoping for. In his heavily accented Russian he asked: “So what did Trotsky do?”

The reply came fast, and Fitz could not understand what was said until he heard Peshkov’s translation. “Trotsky drew on special levies of recruits from the Bolshevik Party and the trade unions. The response was amazing. Twenty-two provinces sent detachments. The Novgorod Provincial Committee mobilized half its members!”

Fitz tried to imagine Kolchak summoning such a response from his supporters. It would never happen.

He returned to his quarters to pack his kit. He was almost too slow: the Pals got out only just ahead of the Reds, and a handful of men were left behind. By that evening Kolchak’s Western Army was in full retreat and Fitz was on a train going back toward the Ural Mountains.

Two days later he was back in the commercial college at Ufa.

Over those two days, Fitz’s mood turned black. He felt bitter with rage. He had been at war for five years, and he could recognize the turn of the tide-he knew the signs. The Russian civil war was as good as over.

The Whites were just too weak. The revolutionaries were going to win. Nothing short of an Allied invasion could turn the tables-and that was not going to happen: Churchill was in enough trouble for the little he was doing. Billy Williams and Ethel were making sure the needed reinforcements would never be sent.

Murray brought him a sack of mail. “You asked to see the men’s letters home, sir,” he said, with a hint of disapproval in his tone.

Fitz ignored Murray’s scruples and opened the sack. He searched for a letter from Sergeant Williams. Someone, at least, could be punished for this catastrophe.

He found what he was looking for. Sergeant Williams’s letter was addressed to E. Williams, her maiden name: no doubt he feared the use of her married name would call attention to his traitorous letter.

Fitz read it. Billy’s handwriting was large and confident. At first sight the text seemed innocent, if a bit odd. But Fitz had worked in Room 40, and knew about codes. He settled down to crack this one.