John Sweeney - The Useful Idiot

Only a feeble echo of daylight reached their resting place – but, even in the dimness, she could tell that Jones was not right, his breathing jerky, his forehead white, his cheeks a faint, sickly blue. Hurrying back to the entrance of the cavern, she used the very last of her strength to rip the few saplings growing here out of the rock and hurried back to Jones. Reaching into her handbag, she found the priest’s matchbox – but it was sodden from their forced swim and none of the matches would light.

Jones mouthed something out loud but it meant nothing, only the gibberish of delirium.

They had come so far, captured the reality of Stalin’s famine in one seven minute film reel – and now the man who had made it happen was being taken from her for the lack of a matchstick. A light wind sucked through the tunnel, ruffling a tendril of hair that had fallen on her face. Her eyes welled up and she let out a single sob.

In her mind’s eye she travelled back to the first moment she’d set eyes on him. Sitting in sumptuous luxury in the special train, watching the ordinary people struggling to board their miserable carriages, she’d been thinking that she was one of them , when suddenly she heard shouting, a guard yelling “Nyet!” – and then, out of the mass of people, this man rose up from nowhere to land on his feet, balancing on the very top of the railings like a circus acrobat. She had been taken with him from that very first moment, and Duranty had sensed that too. He’d played that silly game with Aleister Crowley’s cigarette lighter, and then Jones had won and Duranty, furious, had forced her to…

The cigarette lighter!

She delved into the bag holding the Kinamo and there it was, glinting at the bottom. Closing her eyes, saying a prayer she could barely remember, she pressed her thumb down hard on the igniter and opened her eyes.

The flame held good and true.

The fire took some moments to get going but, once it did, its flames reflected in the tunnel’s walls, its heat spreading its healing warmth. Jones wriggled a little, studied the inscription by the light of the fire and murmured, “All my darkness, eh? At last old Crowley ended up doing someone a bit of good.”

Evgenia held his head in her lap, stroked his hair with a deep love she had never before experienced , and sang Myfanwy to him as he fell asleep. Here, in this remote cavern, by the light of her faltering fire, she wondered when their luck would run out.

It held, for a time.

For three days and three nights, they eked out an existence of a kind in the quarry tunnel, drinking icicles Evgenia melted in the sunlight and eating rotten berries and scraps of moss she found on the tunnel floor. Jones was still weak from his fall and, with no real food to eat, getting weaker by the hour. Soon, they would have to move or otherwise he would die here. But if they moved too soon, then the Cheka would find and kill them both.

On the fourth night, Evgenia was dozing in front of the fire, Jones’ head lolling in her lap, when a distant sound made her sit up. Startled, Jones murmured something. She told him to hush and listened intently. Yes, there it was again: the sound of stones being dislodged, then a scuffling. Footsteps? The sound went away, died completely – and she dared to believe that they might be safe. But then the sound – footsteps, certainly – came nearer.

Her eyes were focused on the tunnel. In the distance, a tiny pin-point of light appeared, danced, disappeared and then danced once more.

It seemed pointless to move. She knew that she, too, was weak. She could barely carry him ten yards, let along shift him half a mile down a dark tunnel. And even then, if they were unbelievably lucky and managed to escape at this moment, the Cheka would surely find them. The Cheka were remorseless.

The light grew brighter and danced less, the footsteps growing louder and louder still. From the impenetrable darkness came the click of a revolver’s safety catch; then there was silence, only the sussuration of the wind sucking through the tunnel.

“So here you are.” The words came softly.

She couldn’t see the man behind the torchlight. The man came nearer, crouched down – and was in touching distance when Jones threw the rock at him.

The man fell back with a heavy thunk, his torch spilling, lighting up a cylinder formed of brilliant stars of dust, his revolver falling away into the darkness. In spite of his weakness, Jones moved astonishingly fast and was on him in a second, his knees on his chest, his hands around his throat, throttling him with manic intensity.

The man had started to utter a sickening gurgle, was surely close to the moment of death, when Evgenia went for Jones, using all her strength to break his hold.

“Stopiwch ef, ffwl. Dim ond mewn trioedd y daeth y Cheka erioed. Stopiwch ef. Rydych chi'n lladd ffrind.”

The Welsh punched through Jones’ madness far better than English.

“Stop it, fool. The Cheka only ever come in threes. Stop it. You're killing a friend.”

Jones released the grip on the man’s throat and, as he did so, Evgenia found the torch and illuminated the stranger. Silver-haired and gaunt, he was indefinably old, a bloody gash on his temple where the rock had struck.

“She’s right,” he said thickly, blood in his mouth. “I’m no Chekist and if I was one then there would be three of us.”

“Perhaps you’re an informer,” said Jones, still suspicious.

“Listen, everyone, all the villagers, all the workers around here, they all know who you are. We’ve all seen the smoke coming out of the tunnel mouth. We know the Cheka are after you. That’s why I came, to warn you to move.”

“So why bring a revolver?”

“Because,” he coughed up some blood and spat it out into the darkness, “I am afraid.”

“Who are you afraid of?”

“Of them.” He paused. “Of you.”

The man’s accent was Muscovite, not Ukrainian, refined, not thuggish.

“How long have we got?”

“They’ll come for you in the morning. At first light.”

“How do you know?”

The man braced himself. “Because I’ll be the one guiding them through the tunnels. I know them better than any man alive. With my workmates I dug most of them myself. I told the Cheka it was too dangerous to search the tunnels at night and, like fools, they believed me.”

“So you are an informer,” said Jones. “Only, you’re informing on the Cheka.”

“Yes, you could put it like that,” said the man with an air of bemusement. “We are all informers now.”

The man smiled a little, and put his hand to the gash on his temple. It was sticky with blood where the rock had hit him. Evgenia found a handkerchief and dabbed the wound, tutting at it and pulling a face at Jones.

“I’ve brought you some food.”

Squatting down, he removed a knapsack from his back and opened it. Then he lay out a white cloth and laid upon it some cheese, two onions, two lengths of sausage and half a loaf of black bread.

“Where did you get this?” asked Jones, hotly. He’d found the revolver and it rested in his hands, its muzzle pointing at the man.

“You still think I work for the Cheka, don’t you?”

“Where did you get this food?”

“My name is Ilya. I am the manager of the All Soviet Marble Works. The marble from my tunnels is shipped all around the world, especially to Germany and Italy. The fascists love marble more than gold, and our collective brings in millions of roubles every year. For the moment, that means the Cheka leaves me and my workers alone, more or less. It means that we get more money than most and so we eat. But I am all too well aware,” his voice dropped an octave, “that others are starving and that it is vital that the world knows what is happening here. Everyone around here heard them machine-gunning the orphanage. Everyone around here loved the priest. So I’m risking my life and that of my family and my friends to help you. You already hit me over the head with a rock, then strangled me – and now, when I offer you my family’s food, you suspect me.”