Dennis Wheatley - The Forbidden Territory

Gerry Bruce drove them out to the air-park in the morning. He was more serious than usual, and as he shook hands with Richard he said: “Go easy, old chap. I mean it. Don’t do anything to get yourself into trouble. If you are tempted to” — he grinned, suddenly — “well, think of the wife!”

The weather had turned grey and ugly; the going proved exceptionally bad. At Lemberg they landed for luncheon, and Marie Lou was pitifully white and shaken. It took all her courage to face the second half of the journey, but at last it was over. At six o’clock in the evening Mr. and Mrs. Richard Eaton stepped out of their ’plane at Kiev.

Simon lay propped up on a chaise-longue near the window. It was over a fortnight since he had received the wound in his thigh, and thanks to Marie Lou’s care, it had healed quickly. He was able to walk a little now with the aid of a stick, but he still had to keep his leg up most of the time.

The bedroom in the hotel at Kiev to which Valeria Petrovna had brought him after she secured his release, was a gloomy place. The heavy furnishings were of a date long preceding the revolution. Simon had seen similar rooms in old-fashioned provincial hotels in France, but this had the added dreariness that little attempt had been made to obliterate the traces of its generations of fleeing occupants.

A bottle of sweet Caucasian wine stood at Simon’s elbow, and a French novel lay open on his knees, but he seemed to be deriving little pleasure from either — he was gazing vacantly out of the window at the busy street below. Kiev seemed to be a hive of activity, but much of it, he supposed, was to be attributed to the five day week.

He caught a slight sound at the door, and turned his head. “Richard!” he exclaimed, in amazed surprise.

“Hullo, Simon.” Richard closed the door quickly behind him and locked it, then walked swiftly over to the other door, which led into an adjoining room, and locked that too.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Simon’s wide smile showed his undoubted pleasure at seeing his friend.

Richard sat down on the edge of Simon’s long chair. “How’s the leg?” he asked.

“Fine — how did you know about it — and — er — about me being in Kiev?”

“It’s a long story, my boy. When will the lady be back?”

“Not for an hour, but why? She’s been wonderful.”

“Splendid,” Richard nodded. “All the same I’d rather not meet her again just yet. How about Rex and the Duke?”

“Out of it! She fixed up everything.”

“You’re sure of that, Simon?”

“Um,” Simon nodded, quickly. “They left Kiev yesterday.”

“I see. Don’t mind my asking, do you — but why didn’t you go too?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Simon, slowly. “I’m — er — getting married.”

Richard smiled. “Do I congratulate the happy man?”

Simon laughed his jerky little laugh. “Well, I never thought I would get married, somehow, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“Splendid, old boy, you know how glad I am for you if everything’s really all right. When are you bringing your bride back to England?”

“Well — er — as a matter of fact, I’m not coming back to England, you see it’s this way — Valeria Petrovna takes the New Russia very seriously. She simply wouldn’t hear of coming to England — talked about her art — that it belonged to the Russian people. Besides, she really believes that the communists are going to make a better world for everybody, and that Russia’s the one place to live. “I’ll tell you — I think there’s a lot in what she says.”

“Simon, you’re talking rot, and you know it. But seriously, are you really prepared to give up everything and live in a pigsty like this?”

Simon drew his thin hand over his long receding forehead. “No,” he confessed, “I hate it, but as she wouldn’t come to England what else could I do?”

Richard stood up. “Do you really love this woman very much, Simon?”

“Yes.” Simon nodded, gravely. “I do, never thought I’d meet anyone like her.”

“Then I’ve got one of the most unpleasant jobs I’ve ever had in my life.” Richard began to pace uneasily up and down.

“How do you mean?”

“Why, to tell you the truth about Valeria Petrovna. I suppose she never told you about seeing me in Moscow a week ago?”

“Ner.” Simon looked puzzled. “Didn’t know you’d been there.”

“Well, I have; it’s less than a week as a matter of fact, though it seems like a month in some ways. You remember you asked me to start digging round if I didn’t hear from you in three weeks? That was at Miriam’s party. Well, in the middle of February I began to get worried. I stirred up the Foreign Office, but I couldn’t get any satisfaction, so by the end of the month I decided to come over myself. When I got to Moscow it occurred to me that you might have looked up Valeria Petrovna, so I went to see her. By an incredible slice of good luck that angel, Marie Lou, was there when I arrived.”

“I see.” Simon nodded. “Of course, Valeria Petrovna told me that Marie Lou had turned up with the locket, and that she’d got her safely out of the country.”

“She did — I took her! But before we left your lady friend told me quite a lot about her plans for your future, and her views on Rex and the Duke.”

“Did she?”

“Yes.” Richard faced his friend. “Now I’m not going to ask you, Simon, if you agreed to register with the lady, or whatever they call it here, solely because you do think it would be worth giving up the old life to be with her, or if she brought some pressure to bear about De Richleau and Rex, though I’m inclined to think it was the latter, but either way, you’re not the man to sit here drinking that filthy wine unless she had promised to get your friends out of it, too!”

“Ner — of course she promised, and she has, too!”

“Don’t you believe it, my boy, Rex and the Duke are still in prison, here, in Kiev, and thank God they are. I’ve been terrified that they’d have been shot by this time.”

Simon was sitting up now, his mouth wide open.

“It’s not true, Richard. She fixed up everything. Got special permits for them to leave the country, from Stalin. It took a bit longer than in my case, but she told me, only yesterday, that they’d been taken under escort to the station, and were on their way home.”

“Then she told you a lie! She said, herself, to me, in Moscow, that the only way to get you out was to marry you and keep you here. You knew too much for them to let you leave the country. She couldn’t marry Rex and the Duke as well, and they were enemies of Russia, anyway, so they could go to the devil as far as she was concerned. I should never have left Moscow, but she threatened to turn poor little Marie Lou over to the police — so I got out while the going was good.”

“That’s days ago, Richard. About Marie Lou, it was different. She’s jealous because Marie Lou looked after my leg. Got some silly idea that the girl’s in love with me — you know what women are. She wouldn’t have handed her over to the police really, but I dare say she was glad to get her out of the way. Rex and the Duke are different, she’d never deceive me about that.”

“I’m sorry, Simon.” Richard shook his head. “I know you’re in love with her, and it’s rotten for me to have to tell you all this. I don’t say that she wouldn’t have got them out if she could, just to please you, but she’s not powerful enough. Rex and De Richleau are still here, in Kiev. I know because one of our secret service people in Vienna put me on to a gaoler called Shubin at the Kievo-Pecher-Lavra. I saw him this morning, and they’re only waiting for instructions from Moscow to have them both shot.”