David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘You mean Mrs Hogarth?’

‘Her real name’s Olga Volokoskaya. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, sir? Get out of those things and into these. You’ll need your money and the papers London gave you.’ He pulled a seaman’s cap out of his back pocket. ‘And put this on. You’re a Russian stoker and your name’s Kutznesov. He’s presently indisposed, so to speak, and here’s his papers.’ He passed some crumpled paper to Paul who had begun to get out of his clothes. ‘The picture isn’t much of a likeness but they never bother with the crew much, not when there’s passengers to bully.’

Not disposed to be bullied by some port-loafing German who by rights should have been at the front, Paul did as he was told without further argument. Dressed, he stuffed a few essential items into the kitbag then followed Turner down into the bowels of the steamer with the wide lapels of the reefer jacket turned high on his neck and his cap pulled low on his head. The muted voices of stevedores unloading the boat came from somewhere in the holds while he waited as Turner collected his own belongings then passed through a door and fell in with the rest of the crew. Over his shoulder he saw several German troops coming along the corridor. He hurried after Turner as they climbed up onto deck and down the gangway.

On the quay he saw Korbelov and Solokov waiting while a pair of German soldiers examined their luggage. Turner took Paul’s arm and steered him towards a gate where a bored-looking official was waving the crew through.

‘Those two Russians will be lucky if they make it to a detention camp,’ Turner said. ‘The sauerkrauts and the White Finns have got a habit of shooting Reds out of hand around here.’

Paul stood nervously while the man on the gate gave his papers a cursory glance and then, to his amazement, they were walking out of the port and into what looked like a marketplace.

‘They call this the Salu-Torg,’ Turner said. He nodded towards an unpretentious three-storey building in the corner of the market square. ‘That’s the Imperial Palace, believe it or not. Doesn’t look much, does it?’

They crossed the wide norra esplanadgalen out of the square and turned east towards the canal that connected the north and south harbours. Near a bridge, crossing the canal onto Skatudden, Turner ducked into a narrow street and stopped at the door of a shabby building.

‘You’ll be here for a day or two, sir,’ he said as he opened the door.

Inside, Turner had a hurried conversation with an old harridan who kept throwing suspicious glances towards Paul while they talked. Then she led them upstairs to a cramped room with a damp-stained ceiling and a lumpy bed. Paul dropped the kitbag on the bed and gave Turner some of his Finnish marks for the woman, then sat down. Turner ushered the old woman out the door then crossed to the window and parted a tattered curtain. He peered into the street below.

‘You’ll be all right here but stay in the room if you would. It’s best if you keep out of sight, what with the Hun being here.’

‘Is there still any fighting?’ Paul asked. He lit two cigarettes and passed one to Turner.

‘Not since the spring,’ Turner said. ‘What’ll happen once the Hun leaves though is anyone’s guess.’

‘Was it bad?’

Turner exhaled smoke into the already fusty air.

‘Not as bad as what you’ve seen, I don’t suppose, sir, but bad enough. It had been sort of simmering for a while although nothing really serious till November when the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. There’d been strikes and skirmishes between the Reds and the Whites before then and a few men got themselves killed, but the real fighting didn’t start until the end of last January.’

He crossed to the door and put an ear to it as if he suspected someone might be listening, then smiled at Paul and shook his head.

‘The Reds took Helsingfors and held most of the south of the country for a while. They were workers — working class, that is. The Whites are middle-class — farmers and businessmen and the like. They got pushed north, out of the industrial centres like Tampere. There were a lot of political murders when the Reds took over and that cost them a lot of their ordinary support.’

‘I thought the Whites were supposed to be just as bad,’ Paul said.

‘Yes sir, but that was later. When the Reds took the south, General Mannerheim was put in charge of the White army. He’d been a general under the tsar, you see, and knew what he was about. He started giving the Reds what-for.’

‘Weren’t there Russian troops here?’

‘Some army detachments, yes. About forty-thousand, I believe, but after the Bolsheviks signed the treaty with the Hun in March they were withdrawn.’

‘Even though the Germans were here?’

‘Well it was just the Jaegers at first.’

‘Who are the Jaegers?’

‘The younger middle-class men mostly. The ones who had been pushing for Finnish independence. When the war started they sympathised with Germany, being Russia’s enemy, and were obliged to leave the country. They went to Germany, got trained and started coming back last winter. Good fighting men they are too.’ Turner pulled on his cigarette. “Jaeger”’s sauerkraut for “hunter” and that’s just about what they did to the Reds when they came back. After General Mannerheim took Tampere the Germans sent in their Baltic division along the coast. That would have been about the middle of April. They took Helsingfors back double-quick and cleared the Reds right out. By the middle of May it was over. Most of the Red leaders managed to get back to Russia, but that’s what leaders always do, isn’t it? Leave the poor bloody infantry to fend for themselves. Not that they had much opportunity to do that. After the Red terror earlier in the year the Whites took it as carte blanche to do the same to them. Far more Reds were killed than Whites although the bulk of the prisoners taken were put in camps. Only they didn’t have the food for them so a lot starved to death. The rest they tried for treason. They executed a couple of hundred.’

‘And that’s who’s in charge now, is it, these Jaegers, the Whites?’

‘That’s right, sir. Them and the Hun.’

‘So who is it helping us ?’

‘Well,’ Turner said, screwing up his pock-marked face as if the matter might still be open to conjecture. ‘A faction of the White nationalists, I suppose. It’s not so much a case of “ my enemy’s enemy is my friend ” as a case of “ my friend’s enemy isn’t necessarily my enemy ”, if you see what I mean.’

Paul wasn’t at all sure that he did.

Turner grinned. ‘As far as they’re concerned,’ he went on, ‘you’re attached to the Allied landings in Murmansk but, having said that, not all of them would be pleased to find out exactly what we’re doing. There’s a lot of people here with their own agenda, so to speak, so I’d keep it under your hat if I were you.’

Since Paul still wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing himself, he didn’t think that would be too much of a problem.

‘But can we trust them?’ he asked.

‘You’re anti-Bolshevik and that seems to be good enough for them at the moment. Beyond that, who you are and why you’re going to Petrograd, is none of their business.’

‘Need to know,’ Paul said.

‘You got it, sir.’

‘So how am I to cross the border? How far is it?’

‘Oh a long way from here, down in the Karelien Isthmus. Nothing’s really been settled about it yet. They set up the Republic of North Ingria there after the Bolsheviks took power, most of the population down there being Ingrian Finns. Ever since the Bolsheviks recognised Finnish independence at the end of last year the border’s been on the River Sestra, or the Rajajoki as the Finns call it.’