John Sweeney - The Useful Idiot

“He is a fool,” said Evgenia flatly.

“I am a fool,” echoed Jones. “The paranoia, you end up losing your wits. I am most terribly sorry, Ilya. My name is Gareth Jones of the Western Mail and this is Evgenia Davidovich Miranova.”

Ilya smiled to himself once more. “Delighted to meet you both. Mr Jones, you are, I think, a good fool. Otherwise you would not be here. Now, eat, because we don’t have much time. Oh, I forgot.” He produced a small bottle of clear liquid from his knapsack. “A little vodka?”

“Now you’re talking,” said Jones.

“Eat. Drink.”

As they followed his commands to the letter, Ilya told them about the Cheka’s net for them: house-to-house searches of all properties, farms and outhouses in the surrounding villages for the last two days, checks at every railway station for one hundred miles around, checks at every road bridge, hundreds of troops combing the fields and forests for miles around.

“So we have no hope,” said Jones, his mouth half-full of bread and sausage.

“Not quite,” said Ilya.

“How do we get out?”

He looked them up and down. “You will leave inside the marble.”

“We would die.”

“If you stay here, you will die.”

“But we would surely suffocate.”

“I would not be suggesting this route if it were untried. It isn’t. It’s worked before.”

“How?”

“For that, you’ve got to trust me. It won’t be comfortable. In fact it will be extremely uncomfortable. But you will have someone with you the whole way, by road and river and sea, someone who will look after you as best he can.”

“The whole way where?”

“To Odessa.”

“And then?”

“Mr Jones, I can smuggle you and Miss Miranova out of this Cheka-infested hole underneath ten tons of marble. But I am not a magician. When you are in Odessa, you must find a foreign ship all by yourself.”

“Why can’t you come with us?”

“The Cheka watch me the whole time. I am the guardian of the marble goose that lays golden eggs. I cannot move from here.”

“So who’s going to look after us on the journey?”

Ilya whistled, softly, and once again they heard footsteps over the sound of the wind in the tunnel. The boy who appeared was big-boned, sure of himself, unafraid – but only fifteen years old, if that.

“Ond dim ond plentyn ydyw,” Jones said to Evgenia. He’s just a child.

“Is there a problem?” asked Ilya.

“He’s very young.”

“Yuri is someone I trust absolutely.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because, Mr Jones, he’s the son of the murdered priest. He’s also my grandson.”

“The priest was your son?”

“Yes.”

“Do the Cheka know that?”

“Not yet. He changed the name on his identity card to protect us.”

Evgenia looked away.

“But the boy is very young,” said Jones.

“You’re going to have trust him.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, Mr Jones, you have no choice.”

Ilya led the way into the labyrinth of tunnels, stopping every now and then in silence to listen. Nothing, only the wind’s murmur. Soon, a tunnel took them downhill for a time, and then the darkness grew less thick. Twenty yards ahead, Jones sensed the tunnel opening out into the lesser darkness of the night. He took a step forward and, beneath the arc of the rock, he saw the heavens, the stars glittering all the more brightly in the frozen air. Banished from seeing the sky for four nights, he moved forward again until Ilya, roughly, dragged him back.

“Stay deep inside the cave, idiot. Someone could be watching.”

Yuri disappeared into the night.

“What’s the plan?”

“The truck will come here, where no-one can see us. You will lie down between two long slabs of marble. We’ll put wooden planks and straw on top of you, then drive off to the factory where we’ll use the crane to lift more marble slabs, crossways, on top of you. You will be quite safe. The bad news is that the truck will be so heavily laden it goes pretty slowly. So the journey to the river will take the whole day. Once there, Yuri will find the right moment for you to get out of the truck and into the barge. That’s the hardest part – but he’s good at staging a distraction so no-one tricky spots you.”

“What about the dogs?”

“This is one of ten trucks. We bait the others with dead mice and rats. The dogs will be too busy to care about you two.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. We bait the dog handlers, too, if needs be. Under Communism, foreign currency can buy pretty much anything.”

“Even the Cheka?”

“Especially the Cheka. Unless Moscow is involved. Then it gets more difficult.”

Jones hesitated, then asked Evgenia to translate the phrase, “Sometimes I get claustrophobia.”

Ilya looked puzzled. “Claustro-what?”

“Fear of being confined in a small space,” explained Jones.

“Tough,” said Ilya.

Some time later, they heard the sound of a truck engine being started up, the dynamo whining, the exhaust clearing its throat, gears grating as the truck moved slowly, ponderously towards them, showing no lights. The way Yuri backed the truck deep into the cave, fifty feet from the entrance, it was clear that this wasn’t the first time this operation had been carried out.

Yuri and Ilya helped them climb up onto the flatbed. Sitting side by side were two big rectangles of marble, seven yards long, a yard deep and a yard high. Between the two slabs was a gap of around two feet wide, filled with straw. Yuri led them to the gap and invited them to lie down as close to the cab as possible. Once they were inside the gap, Ilya gave Jones three bottles of water, a sausage and a half-loaf of bread. Jones opened his satchel to put them inside and the tin of the film reel glinted in the gloom.

“What’s that?” asked Ilya.

“Nothing,” said Jones.

Ilya wished them good luck and watched them bed down between the two great slabs. Grandfather and son covered them with more straw, then they heard the squeak of a pulley and tackle, and a narrow square of rock fitting almost exactly the gap between the two long slabs was swung into place, blocking out what dim light they had enjoyed. Next they heard the clatter of wooden planks pressing down on the straw and their tomb was half-complete.

“Bloody hell,” whispered Jones, failing to suppress his fear.

“Don’t be a baby,” said Evgenia, her hand reaching out to stroke his face.

The engine started and the first part of the journey began. The truck crept along extraordinarily slowly, the lack of light rendering them blind but strangely heightening their other senses. They heard a trickle of water running through the ice-bound river. That would be the same river they had tramped through five days before. The truck slowed to a crawl and they heard the timbers of a wooden bridge creaking, the flowing water trilling softly underneath. It cleared the bridge, sped up a little, climbed a hill, the engine grunting against gravity; then it accelerated downhill, slowed down, and they entered what must have been the headquarters of the quarry. Out there, they could hear the sound of men’s voices. Someone laughed out loud, and a small engine, not a truck, coughed into life.

Then the small engine erupted with yet more noise and they heard the working of a winch. Suddenly the axles beneath them sunk an inch, two, and the whole frame of the truck groaned under the weight of the marble slabs being placed on top of them. Their tomb was complete.

They heard steps on the marble on top of them, someone unhooking ropes perhaps. Then, in every direction, more truck engines burbled into life, and their own slipped into gear, as if ready to be off.