Dennis Wheatley - The Forbidden Territory

“Good God! What the devil can we do?”

“I don’t know. I’m worried out of my wits.”

Simon groaned. “To think I’ve been sitting here doing nothing since Sunday. If only I’d known.”

“My dear old boy, you didn’t know. It’s no use fussing yourself about that. The thing is, what can we do?”

“What about your — er — gaoler friend?”

“No good, I tried him, he’s one of the head men. Doesn’t do ordinary duty himself. He’d be suspected at once if he attempted to tamper with any of the warders.”

“There’s one chap who was decent to us,” said Simon, slowly. “Used to be a peasant on the Plakoff estates, and remembers the Duke as a young man. Wonder if we could get hold of him?”

“What’s his name?”

“Yakovkin — big strapping fellow with a beard and a scar over one eye.”

“They might be able to arrange something between them,” said Richard, meditatively. “Anyhow, I’ll try and see my man again this evening.”

“How about mun? I haven’t got a bean.”

“I have, plenty; I got a supply from the Embassy in Vienna. But if I can arrange anything, how the devil can we get them away?”

“I’ll get Valeria Petrovna’s car.”

“Sorry, Simon, but I’m a bit nervous about bringing her into this.”

“I’ll pinch it if necessary. We go for a drive in it every morning — the people in the hotel garage know me.”

“Good for you,” Richard smiled. “But won’t they stop you at the frontier?”

“Um — perhaps, still you know what Napoleon said about the Rubicon and the Vistula!”

Richard laughed. “You’re a bit mixed in your history, old chap; but I agree. If only we can get them out the Pecher-Lavra that’s half the battle. Look here, I’d better leave you now, I don’t want Valeria Petrovna to find me here, and don’t let on to her for the moment that you know the truth about Rex and the Duke.”

Simon nodded, sadly. “No, I won’t do that yet I want to think about what I’m going to do myself first. When shall I see you again?”

“When’s the best time?”

“Tomorrow, about twelve. She’s giving a special show at the theatre tomorrow night as she is in Kiev, and she’s rehearsing in the morning. I shall be alone then.”

“Good. With any luck I’ll be able to tell you then if I’ve succeeded in fixing anything. I’ll be able to see Zakar Shubin again tonight and ask him about this Yakovkin, or rather, my beautiful wife will!”

“Your what?”

“Oh, of course I haven’t told you.” Richard looked a little sheepish. “I married Marie Lou. It was the only way for her to return here safely, and I couldn’t have done much without her.”

“Good God!” Simon laughed into his hand. “We are in a muddle — but I must say marriage seems to suit you!”

“I must go now,” said Richard, quickly. “See you tomorrow.”

Marie Lou was in her bedroom. She had agreed with Richard that it was too dangerous to sit in the lounge. Every precaution must be taken to prevent Valeria Petrovna seeing them.

Richard joined her there and told her of his interview with Simon. They would not be able to see Zakar Shubin until he came off duty again in the evening, so Richard suggested that they had better go out as they were supposed to be ordinary tourists, and the hotel people might be suspicious if they stayed indoors all day. They collected the official guide who had been attached to them, and made their way through the beautiful old square of Saint Sophia, which joins the hotels to the cathedral.

“Mind how you go,” said Richard, taking Marie Lou’s arm as they entered the gloom of the great building with its five long naves. The frescoes on the walls were quite wonderful; they were not religious subjects, but scenes of hunting and sport, dating back to the eleventh century. The guide told them that at one time a portion of the cathedral had been an ancient palace. Afterwards he took them to the Kievo-Pecher-Lavra. Before the Revolution it had been the greatest monastery in the Ukraine, now, a large part of it had been converted into a museum.

Richard was puzzled, it was here, somewhere in this vast labyrinth of buildings, that Rex and the Duke were held prisoners. He looked about eagerly for signs of warders or guards, while the guide reeled off facts and figures. Even in its decline the monastery had owned fifty thousand serfs. The monks had had a monopoly in trading in salt, and, until the Government took it over, in vodka. They had been bankers and merchants. The Metropolitan had had an income of eighty-seven thousand roubles a year. Thousands of pilgrims used to come annually from all over Russia to the Lower Lavra, or caves — great catacombs constructed in the dark ages, where the dead monks were buried; some property in the soil mummified the bodies — the guide laughed.

“The situation was such, that the ignorant people believed the papas who told them that it was their great holiness that prevented decay!”

Perhaps the prisoners were kept in the caves with the long-dead monks, thought Richard. How horrible, but he was disabused on this point as they were walking under the great flying buttresses, in the courtyard of the printery. The guide jerked his thumb towards a forty foot wall in which the lower ends of the buttresses were set.

“Cells of the popes, then,” he said. “Now it is prison — forbidden to go in — but, no matter, nothing to see.”

They left the Lavra and the guide pointed to another vast building. “See — arsenal,” he explained. “Stronghold for revolution in ’seventeen, also again in nineteen-eighteen — much fightings — see bullet marks on wall.” After which he led them back to the hotel.

“My wife is tired,” Richard informed him, as he was leaving them at the entrance. “We shall not go out this evening.”

Nevertheless when the evening came they crossed the threshold once more. In order to lessen the risk of running into Valeria Petrovna they were not having meals in the restaurant of the hotel. Richard had asked the hall-porter for the name of some restaurant in the old town, and they found their way to the place he had suggested in the ancient street of Andreyev, which leads from the palaces to the docks on the wide Dneiper. After a far from satisfactory meal they went out into the narrow, twisting streets of the quarter, the damp smell of the river came to them from the near-by wharfs, mingled with a hundred other unpleasant odours.

Marie Lou kept very close to Richard. Somewhere in these mean streets lay the drinking shop into which she had been dragged on that terrible night when she had been lost in Kiev and afraid to ask her way.

With some difficulty they found the ill-lit court they had visited in the morning. Fortunately Shubin was at home.

Zackar Shubin was a bald man with cunning eyes set close together in his head. He cursed roundly in Russian when he saw them. Did they want to bring the Ogpu about his ears? Was not one visit from foreigners, dressed as they were, enough? Two in one day was altogether too much. They had the information which he had been paid to give them, already.

Richard mollified him by placing a banknote of some value in his pudgy hand at once, without argument.

Marie Lou spoke rapidly in Russian.

Yes, he knew Yakovkin — a true son of the Ukrainian soil. A kazak to the backbone. Well, what of it?

Marie Lou questioned him about the prison organization. They sat round a bare wooden table, filthy with stains of oil and grease. A guttering candle was the only light. Richard produced his wallet from his pocket.

For an hour they talked and argued. At last Shubin was persuaded to sound Yakovkin when he came off duty the following morning and see how far the man was prepared to go. If he were successful he would slip out of the Lavra himself for half an hour and meet them at a little café that he named near the Vladimirskaya Gorka. He did not seem to think that he was likely to meet with much success. Yakovkin would certainly have to face imprisonment himself if the prisoners escaped while he was on duty. It would have to be a big sum which would tempt him to do that.