John Sweeney - The Useful Idiot

“Back in the day, with the Wobblies, we were plagued by Pinkerton spies, company men who were out to bust strikes and break us. If they could get close, they’d see something or make something up, didn’t matter to them, and then we’d all go to jail charged with murder or some such. After a time, we developed a sixth sense, who to trust, who to doubt. If you had doubts about someone, you hit them with it. If they smiled and said that’s not true, if they tried to cajole you out of your suspicions, then, by experience and instinct, you probably had your traitor. On the other hand, if they hit you, straight out, you’d accused an innocent party.”

Jones’ mouth opened but he said nothing.

“Get her back in here, Mr Jones. It’s cold out there.”

Outside, the sky was a mackerel blue and grey. It took some time to find her. She’d walked to the end of the rough road where Haywood’s izba stood and was standing with her back to him, in front of a stream that had iced over.

“Evgenia.” The cold scarred his throat.

“Go away.”

“He was testing you, that’s all.”

“He thinks I am a traitor.”

“No, but he thinks someone is. So he tested you. The good news is that you passed the test.”

Her shoulders became a little less bowed. “How did he work that out?”

“The test is how you respond to the accusation of treachery. If you sweet-talk him, you’re guilty. You hit him, you’re innocent.”

“That’s idiotic.”

He paused, sighed and said, “It’s not my test. In Great Britain we do things differently.”

She hit him, hard, and he fell back into the snow, his sides bursting with laughter.

They returned to Haywood’s izba, hand in hand, ready to make their departure to Finland and a new life.

Inside, the old Wobbly sat in his chair, a glass of liquor by his side, beaming at the two of them. Standing up stiffly, he went to a pile of wood by the stove and very slowly started taking it apart. They studied each other, puzzled and amused, sensing that he was going to give them something, some kind of present. The rigmarole of him hiding whatever it was in the woodpile made them expectant. This wasn’t just a fancy bottle of wine or a book. It must be something special. At length, he turned and produced from a black leather bag Borodin’s Kinamo camera and a cylindrical tin case. He set the bag, camera and tin case on the table.

“There’s the camera. There’s one roll of film. It’s good for seven minutes. I am dying and this is my dying wish. I want you two to go to Ukraine and film the famine, then get the hell out and tell the world the truth about Stalin’s evil.” He started to choke, a hacking cough that consumed his attention so that he did not take in how his request went down with its executors.

Evgenia gasped, all colour drained from her already pale complexion. Jones said, “Fuck”, then shook his head, stammered a little, recovered and smiled. “Thank you, Bill, thank you.”

Evgenia stared at Jones, shaking her head, a tear running down her cheek. This dying man’s last wish could not be ignored but there was only one way this ended, in the cells beneath the Lubyanka, a written confession and a sentence without the right of correspondence.

They returned to the Hotel Lux and stayed the night, seeking but not quite finding comfort in each other’s bodies. In the small hours, Jones woke up, cradled Evgenia’s pale beauty in his arms and listened to the soft murmur of her breath. Still not being able to sleep, he got up and opened the curtain. Down on the street, underneath a lampost, a watcher in hat and overcoat was staring up at him.

It was like fighting a monster unafraid to bite the heads off people. Something like this would be happening in Berlin, right now, too. There and here, power could signal its displeasure as it pleased.

In the morning, the telephone rang and rang but they ignored it, dressed and walked out of the hotel into a cold grey day, carrying only the leather bag with the Kinamo in it, the film reel in the tin case and a change of clothes.

On the street they bumped into Winnie, wrapped in a mountain of fur. She kissed them both. “The poem,” she said. “They’re picking everyone up. I had to warn you…”

“Winnie,” said Jones, “we know.”

“Big Bill should have kept his trap shut.”

“He’s not well, Winnie. He thinks they’ve poisoned him.”

Her face crumpled, her brown eyes filled with a film of liquid. “No…”

She seemed frozen to the spot.

“Winnie,” said Evgenia, “we must go.”

“Where you folks heading?”

“South, through the Ukraine,” replied Jones. ”People say it’s worst there.”

“What’s worst?”

“The famine.”

“And then back to Moscow?”

He shook his head.

“How are you going to get out? Via Poland?”

“Odessa, perhaps. The old smugglers’ city may be our best chance.”

“I dream of leaving this city of ice. You make it, you let me know, brother, sister, ahuh?”

They took turns to hold her tightly, kissing her on the lips and the eyes, then hurried off to the Metro.

The night train to Dnipro trundled through the snowy wastes, often at walking pace. There was far less comfort here than on the special train to the Lenin Dam, but at least there was anonymity. No banquets here, no champagne – only a press of ordinary people, nearly all thin, some terrifyingly so, human beings trying to stay alive and out of trouble in a dark time.

GPU guards and ticket inspectors checked their documents but not once did they have to use their magic letter from Yagoda. Their time in Dnipro was a disaster. At sunrise, having not slept properly the whole way, they had tried to check into the hotel they had stayed in during their previous official visit. The moment the sleepy clerk had demanded their passports and identity papers, Jones had realised that this was a very bad idea. On the move, they could lose themselves amongst their fellow travellers. When they stopped to rest, questions started to be asked and the clerk had hit them with three: “Where is the rest of the party? Are you on an official tour? Where are the Soviet partners?”

Not a bad euphemism for the GPU, thought Jones, whilst his mind raced for a good answer.

“This is not the hotel we booked,” said Evgenia, brightly.

“This is the only hotel for foreigners in Dnipro,” the clerk fired back.

“Mr Jones and I are on Cheka business,” said Evgenia. It was a good answer in the moment, because the clerk froze and they took their opportunity to disappear from the hotel. But, over time, Jones began to wonder whether it was a bad answer, because it gave anyone who might be looking for them in the biggest country on earth a place to start looking. The truth was that they were amateurs; they didn’t know what they were doing or how to do it.

What surprised then was not what happened in the end but how they managed to run and keep on running for so long.

They had tramped through the snow since dawn and, as they approached the next village, they came across a dead horse and a dead man in the middle of the road. The horse still lay harnessed to the wagon, the man frozen upright, still holding the reins in his bone-white hands. Jones took out the Kinamo and filmed the dead horse and the dead man for fifteen seconds.

The village had fallen to a silent evil. Through the window of one hovel they saw a dead man propped up by his stove. His back against the wall, he stared at them, his eyes wide open. Some bodies were decomposed. Others were fresh. At one house there was a sign printed on the door: “God bless those who enter here, may they never have to suffer as we have.” Inside, two men and a child lay dead. An icon lay beside them. Jones filmed that too, for forty-five seconds. Now the reel had six minutes left.