David Dickinson - Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

Lady Ripon turned her attention to the seating plan. Crooks held out the red leather pad with slits to hold the names and place settings of the guests and the order of precedence on the way into dinner.

‘Good God, you don’t expect me to be taken in to dinner by that fool Twiston-Frobisher, do you? I don’t care if he isn’t English, I must be taken in by Mr Diaghilev. It’s my party and he’s the guest of honour. I do believe Frobisher’s the stupidest man in England. And you can’t put Sir Ernest next to Lady Trumpington, he’ll be bored to tears. And the Ambassador — he’ll expect to be next to Mrs Sackville. He’s been crazy about her for years.’

By eight o’clock all the guests had arrived except the Russians. Lady Ripon began to grow anxious. Her husband, an older and larger figure, was deep in conversation about cricket with the retired Brigadier who lived next door. By half past eight, Crooks the butler was whispering that the food could not be delayed much longer or it would spoil. He also pointed out that in the absence of Diaghilev and Nijinsky, the only appropriate person to take Lady Ripon in to dinner was Sir Felix Twiston-Frobisher. The guests were beginning to look at their watches in a pointed fashion by now. At ten to nine the butler reported that the chef and the sous chef were threatening to leave and take up another position in a house where their skills would be properly recognized. At five past nine Lady Ripon relented and was taken into dinner by the stupidest man in England. Half an hour later, as the lobster was being served, she had changed her mind. She was now sure that Sir Felix must be the stupidest person in the entire world.

Diaghilev came with the pudding. He was, he assured Lady Ripon, so fond of pudding that he would gladly forgo all the previous courses so as not to disturb the pattern of such an elegant dinner. Lady Ripon’s spirits began to rise. They rose still further when she led the way to the little stage in her ballroom. It was lit entirely by candlelight. Nijinsky danced part of his role in The Spirit of the Rose . The guests were enchanted. Lady Ripon’s Russian evening was saved.

Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Captain Yuri Gorodetsky’s right foot was beating out a permanent rhythm on the wooden floor of his office. The Captain was normally a placid and peaceful soul. The uncertainties of military life had been replaced by a more regular occupation, even if that was being a secret service officer in pursuit of terrorists and revolutionaries. Captain Yuri Gorodetsky felt he had made a mistake — well, oversight might be a better way of putting it. He was walking up and down and waiting for the man who could reprimand him — who was also the man who could solve his problem — to speak to him on the telephone. The people in Paris had assured the Captain that General Peter Kilyagin, the man in charge of the Okhrana in Western Europe, was in his headquarters building. He had not yet gone home. He would be with the Captain in a moment.

‘Gorodetsky! My dear fellow, how are you?’ The General’s voice was very loud, almost as if he was speaking from the next room.

‘I am well, General. But I fear I may have made a mistake.’

‘What’s the problem? I’m sure we can sort it out.’ At least the General seemed to be in a good mood. He had a fearsome temper and had once shouted at one of his subordinates for twenty-five minutes without stopping.

‘It’s about those revolutionaries trying to change the money from Lenin’s bank robbery in Tiflis, General. You remember your plan to funnel them into twelve banks rather than let them spread out all over London?’

‘Of course I remember. Bloody Bolsheviks from Bethnal Green. What’s gone wrong?’

‘I forgot one thing, sir. The bankers have spotted the problem and they want an answer tonight. Do they hand over the money — the English money, I mean. They say that if you can’t change the money in Russia it’s probably worthless. They suspect that the Russian authorities have cancelled all these notes.’

‘What do they want us to do about it?’

‘They want a guarantee that they will be fully recompensed for all the English pounds they may hand over tomorrow. You won’t have forgotten, General, that we could be talking about a quarter of a million roubles.’

‘I haven’t forgotten. I’d be surprised if that amount of money goes on parade in the City of London tomorrow morning, mind you. I’m sure some of the notes will have disappeared, liberated on their journey, as our revolutionary friends might put it. Do you know, that’s more than the annual budget for my whole department.’

‘Mother of God!’

‘Let me think for a moment, Captain. Don’t go away. I’m just going to put the phone down for a minute.’

Captain Gorodetsky thought he could hear very faint footsteps coming down the line from Paris. Perhaps the General was marching around his office. General Kilyagin was tracking the bureaucratic route map he would have to use if he followed normal procedures for a question of this sort. This would involve not only the state bank, but also a number of different departmental bureaucracies. It would at some point enter the Winter Palace or the Tsar’s Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo in the country close to St Petersburg. At this time of year, the bloody Tsar might be on his yacht, or even going to Livadia in the Crimea on his special train, always accompanied by an identical special train to confuse the men with bombs. General Kilyagin felt certain that once his problem was inside the magic circle of Tsar Nicholas, his ghastly wife and the totally unpredictable Rasputin, any sensible request could be thrown out on a whim. Some grand duke might roll up and scupper the whole thing. General Kilyagin thought of phoning the Minister of Finance direct, but he thought the man might be drunk by this time of day. He was to say later that his mind was made up by a carriage on the Rue Monceau that performed a daring series of swerves to avoid running over two small boys who had wandered into the middle of the road.

‘I’ve got it!’ he yelled down the phone. ‘Give the Bolsheviks from Bethnal Green the money! All of it. Don’t hesitate. Pay up! Tell these miserable bankers that the Russian authorities will compensate them for every last pound or rouble they may have to pay out. You can give them my word on that!’

‘Thank you for that, General, thank you very much. Would you like the English police to arrest the Bolsheviks and confiscate the English money? They’re in receipt of stolen goods, after all.’

It was at this point that the General showed he was a master of strategy as well as a master of tactics.

‘No, no, leave them be. Let’s play this little game out right to the end. And let’s take a leaf out of their Bolshevik book. Ask the English bankers to hand the money over in the largest possible denominations, hundred-pound notes if they’ve got such things. And for God’s sake tell them to make a note of the numbers on the notes they hand over. We can circulate every bank in Europe with those numbers and arrest every Bolshevik who tries to turn them into any other currency, Polish zlotys or roubles or Swiss francs. There’s only one proviso, Gorodetsky. You’ve got to keep your eyes on what happens to the money. The English revolutionaries will want to get rid of it as soon as possible. They will have to go to somebody who can get it back to Russia or maybe even to Lenin’s café in Cracow in the Ballets Russes luggage. You’ve got to watch that luggage like a hawk, my friend. Like a hawk.’

‘Should our English friends intercept the luggage before it goes on its travels?’

‘I said we should play the game right to the end, Captain. We follow the luggage. We follow whoever picks up the money out of the luggage. We follow them wherever they go. At the point when the handover is actually happening, we arrest everybody. That would also be the time for our English friends to arrest the Bolsheviks from Bethnal Green if that’s what they decide to do. If they arrest them any earlier, word will get to Lenin in his bloody café and the whole plan will be changed. We’ve got to play it long.’