Five minutes pass in the stifling heat of the office. Now and then, Rufus rubs his hands together expectantly. Axelson taps his foot nervously on the wooden floor; the vibration seems to be in rhythm with the noise outside. For some reason, it sets my teeth on edge.
I look out through a grime-covered window, and see the guard who met us, coming back along the walkway towards the office. His face under the shadow of his cap is smiling, as if amused by some private joke. Then, a few paces behind him, I see another man. Something in the way the second man is striding along the wooden causeway stirs a memory in me, a sense that I’ve seen the same thing before…
The door opens. The second man is General Aristarkhov.
“Miss Frocester, Professor Axelson – and Mr Rufus du Pavey. I should say I’m surprised to see you. But I’m not. Because, we’ve been expecting you.”
My skin goes cold as the general explains.
“Of course, you may all be wondering why I am here in Baku. After I led a detachment of the Red Guards in the capture of the Winter Palace, I was rewarded by being appointed in charge of security and intelligence for the Baku Soviet Committee. There are many opponents of the Revolution in this city. I am here in order to investigate traitors and spies.
A few hours ago, one of my intelligence officers brought me a report from the Red Guards at Astrakhan airfield. They had spotted a large flying aircraft in the distance, heading towards the Caspian Sea. The aircraft matched a description of one reported stolen from Kamensk near Yekaterinburg, and another description too, given by staff at Orenburg airfield. The staff at Orenburg also described all three of you, in detail. And of course, I have been in touch with Commandant Yurovsky at Yekaterinburg. He explained to me about your unauthorized disappearance from Yekaterinburg. All the evidence added up.”
I look at him open-mouthed. He shrugs.
“Russia is big, but we are able, contrary to what you Westerners think, to communicate across the miles.”
The general’s voice is filled with satisfaction. He pauses, as if to savor the moment, before continuing. “It goes without saying, of course, that you are all under arrest.”
None of us respond. Because another voice speaks. It’s the guard who first met us on the oilfield causeway.
“No, General Aristarkhov. It is you who are under arrest.”
Looking Aristarkhov straight in the eye, the guard pulls off his own red sash. Then he flings it on the floor with a gesture of contempt. Aristarkhov is struck dumb with shock.
I see several armed men running along the causeway. The first of them throws open the office door. He points a rifle right between the general’s eyes. Now, Aristarkhov finds his voice.
“What in the name of God is going on?”
One of the men laughs out loud. “General Aristarkhov, I thought you didn’t believe in God! You’re an atheist and a communist – so you believe in the power of the people, don’t you?”
Aristarkhov stares down the barrel of the rifle, as the man continues.
“The power of the people! Well, the people of Baku have chosen. They want no Bolsheviks, no Baku Soviet Committee, no Red Guards. And they don’t want you, General Aristarkhov.”
28
Letters of passage
I look out of my hotel window. My room is high up, and I can see the skyline of the city of Baku; the domes and minarets of mosques, the round towers and spires of the Armenian churches, the squat office blocks of the oil companies. It’s a familiar view: we have been stranded here for seven weeks.
As Rufus would say, our arrival in Baku brought good news and bad news. The good news was, of course, that the Bolsheviks have indeed been toppled from power in this city. But the bad news is threefold. First, the airplane was requisitioned ‘for the defence of Baku’. Without it, we have no means of escape.
Secondly, despite spending all my time making enquiries, I have not found Yuri. All we have discovered is that he was transferred from Moscow to imprisonment in Baku on Aristarkhov’s orders. I was told by one indiscreet official the reason why Yuri was moved here.
“When the Bolsheviks ruled this city, General Aristarkhov’s word was law. He insisted that Captain Sirko was transferred from Moscow to Baku, because the captain is accused of murdering a foreign lady, and there are delicate issues of diplomacy and politics. So, the general himself wanted to preside at Captain Sirko’s trial.”
The third bad thing is less easy to put into words. There is something undefined, uneasy, in the air here in this city. It’s almost tangible. No-one in the streets of Baku looks at us; nor do they look at each other. Even the street markets are conducted in silence. Food, it’s true, is in short supply. But that’s not the source of the atmosphere that I sense. Right now, I look down from my hotel room window onto the street below me, and I see dark-robed figures of women and children flitting furtively from doorway to doorway, as if they are afraid to be outside their homes. Rarely, I glimpse people’s faces; when I do, every pair of eyes is somehow the same. As if they are watching and waiting, for something that they dread.
When we first came to this hotel, my chambermaid mentioned to me that there had been trouble in the city a few months ago. Although she and I were alone in the room, she told me in a whisper.
“The Bolsheviks, and that man Aristarkhov, had arrested many people in Baku. All the men he arrested were Azeri people, who are Muslims. So, a few months ago, the Azeris marched through the streets, protesting against the Bolsheviks. Then Red Guards with guns came out to put down the protests, and they were joined by Armenians.
A lot of the Armenians carried weapons too – knives and so on. Some people said that the weapons were to protect themselves from the Azeris, but I don’t know whether that was true. It is hard to know, in this city, what is the truth and what is a story. I grew up in Moscow, so I do not understand either side. But I know there are old hatreds in Baku between the Armenians and the Azeris.”
“What happened to the demonstration?”
“The Red Guards started shooting at the crowds. After that, I was afraid, and I stayed inside this hotel. I saw nothing more.”
But since then, over the course of many evenings in the hotel, we have found out more about what happened. Most people staying here are staff of oil companies; many of them in fact are Americans. All of them are desperate to leave, and every one tells us that they saw horrible things. They tell us their stories – but there is always a point where their voice becomes hushed, and then they say “I can’t go into details.”
From the stories, we have pieced together what happened. The Azeri men who took part in the protests were not the only victims. After the shooting broke out, the whole Azeri population tried to flee from the city centre, but they were chased by mobs armed with guns and knives. Azeri women, children and the elderly were slaughtered indiscriminately.
The Azeris who survived sent messages of appeal to their traditional allies, the Turks. After years of war, there is peace between Bolshevik Russia and Ottoman Turkey. So the Bolshevik leaders of Baku were confident that the Turks would not attack.
But now, things are different. Baku has deposed the Bolsheviks and declared itself separate from Russia. Its former leaders, including General Aristarkhov, are in prison. The newly independent Baku – the ‘Central Caspian Dictatorship’ as it calls itself – has no treaty with the Ottoman Empire. And of course, the city now has no protection from the Red Army. Soon after we arrived, we heard news that the Turks had agreed to support the local Azeri people.
A Turkish army has approached the city and is camped on the hills a few miles inland. Some days ago, we heard gunfire, but then it stopped, replaced by this strange silence. But everyone says the same thing: the Ottomans will attack soon. They will avenge the massacre of the Azeris. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ is the phrase I hear every day. No quarter will be shown to men, women or children.