But, as with everything, life—and the show—must go on.
Over several bottles of vodka and with men sitting around a table in the last twilight of August, old white-bearded Gromelko sums it up best.
Beware the quiet ones, he says. Beware the ones who would rather live with animals than in the company of humans.
For as the saying goes: Make a friend of the wolf, but better keep your axe ready.
The Man From London
The man from London, who today had journeyed by horse-drawn sleigh from a small Russian town called Pruzhany, wore dark glasses. Without them, the glare of the afternoon sun on the great wide landscape of snow was blinding. The man from London was careful with his eyes. Covered up with coarse blankets, he sat in the back of the sleigh while his driver cracked the whip on the struggling horses. He wore a brown mink cap with ear flaps. The man from London today went by the name of William Bartlett. Yesterday, in Minsk, his name had been Keith Suddings, and it was while wearing that name that he’d shot his target through the right temple in room 53 of the Hotel Fortitude.
Last night the train had brought him to Pruzhany, and today the sleigh would take him to another place. He was a relaxed man. He was a cool, collected and calm Englisher. But there were times today he had looked back over his shoulder across the sea of snow, his pale blue eyes slightly worried behind the dark lenses. He knew there were always trains running from Minsk to Pruzhany, and if he had not undertaken to visit this drear little hamlet he was approaching he would already be in Warsaw by now, having a cup of what the Poles called tea and sending a coded telegram through the proper channels. But he was the chosen boy for this job, so that was that. And anyway, all the loose ends were tied up. Weren’t they? He tapped the fingers of a gloved hand on the knee of his gray corduroy trousers. He was wearing several layers of clothing beneath a fleece-lined overcoat, because even the bright sun in a Russian winter felt frigid. Or maybe, he considered, it was just him.
Revenge, of course, was a dish best eaten cold. He hadn’t really known the man he’d executed in room 53 of the Hotel Fortitude, but he was the boy chosen for the job, chosen to carry out the revenge that some unknown other man desired, and now the desire for revenge would probably flip to the other side, and that was that.
The man from London was a thirty-six-year-old boy, Oxford-educated and wise to the ways of the dirty little world in which he found himself on this sunny Russian afternoon. It was the eleventh of February, 1928. In Germany the pain of the Great Depression was cracking the old order of things, and an ambitious man named Hitler had imposed himself as leader of a secret society with the trappings of medieval militarism.
In Russia the equally ambitious Stalin had just inaugurated his first Five-Year-Plan to advance industry while underhandedly manipulating the peasants and the military. In Britain, cannabis had just become a controlled substance.
But the British lions were awake. In fact, they never slept. In the backrooms under the small intense lights directed to the tables of maps and radio signal transcripts, the hale and hearty fellows from such stellar universities as Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham made their deductions and decisions, and perhaps over time they would lose their hale and hearty demeanors and become more solitary and sallow, but that was the job.
Someone had to do it.
The man from London looked back once more over his shoulder, at all the snow and sky behind him. He was trying to summon up a Russian proverb. What was it? Oh, yes.
The past is a different country.
“How far now?” he asked the driver, in his meticulous and careful use of the Russian tongue. His answer was a shrug; you couldn’t rush these oxen-like people.
It was very interesting, the man from London thought, how the merry sound of sleighbells could over time drive a man nearly mad.
But at last the driver said, “We are here,” around his cigarette, though the cluster of wooden houses were still a thousand meters away across the flat white plain. As the sleigh closed the distance with its horrendously-jingling bells, the man from London could see stone ruins atop a small hill overlooking the village.
That was the point of his interest.
A few people emerged from their houses to watch the sleigh approach. They were bundled up in the tattered and patched coats of poverty. They stood like scarecrows in the wind. One of them, a small child, lifted a hand in greeting and the man from London cheerfully waved back because he knew it was important to make a good first impression.
Then he shifted a little in his seat, because the compact one-shot assassin’s pistol under his coat and three sweaters was pressing into his side.
A large bull of a man emerged from one of the houses and approached the sleigh as if he owned this particular piece of snow-covered earth, which he probably did.
The sleigh’s driver recognized authority and put his muscles into the reins; the two horses stopped walking and blew gouts of steam. The bull-man, wearing brown britches and a heavy red sweater, came forward like a force of nature and was flanked by two other men who matched his stride but not his size. The bull-man had a bald head, a thick gray mustache and beard, huge gray eyebrows and gold rings in both ears. His boots crunched through the snow until he reached the sleigh’s side.
“Hello,” said the man from London in the native language, his cheerful smile wide and his square white teeth ablaze with good intentions.
“Who the fuck are you and what are you wanting here?” came back like a cannon’s blast.
Obviously the village chief, thought the man from London. Which was saying that maybe this gentleman owned more cattle or pigs than the others, or maybe he had the biggest gun or the biggest dick.
“My name is William Bartlett. I’m—”
“English?” It was spoken with incredulity. Other people were pressing forward now. The houses were emptying their peasant owners. The Russian-spoken English went around like a hushed echo.
“Yes, I am,” said the man from London. “May I step out?” He decided to add, “I’ve come a very long way.”
The chief only glared. A small wizened woman who had eased up beside the bull-man gave him an elbow shot to the ribs. “Step out,” came the reply, with a small wince of pain.
“Ah, thank you.” The man from London put his boots into the snow and hauled himself free from the treacherous seat and smelly blankets. He stood six feet three inches tall and towered over the Russian heads. He was lean and broad-shouldered and gave the sensation of coiled power, for in his youth he’d been a champion boxer and such hard training and arduous experience never fully faded. Further evidence was his many-times broken and craggy nose, but he’d always given worse than he got. “May we go into your house, sir?” he politely asked the chief.
“I asked what you wanted here.”
“Yes, so you did.” The man from London removed his sunglasses to reveal the blue eyes that were as pale and sharp and cutting, if need be, as Imperial daggers. He paused to let them scratch the bull-man’s surface. “But I didn’t answer, did I?”
The moment hung between jeopardy and violence.
But the man from London knew the Russian mind. Perhaps bull-like, yes, but also holding the curiosity of a child. And very respectful of courage, that was certainly true.
The chief’s mouth seemed to tilt to one side. His eyes narrowed.
“Come on, Bartlett,” he said, speaking the name as if he’d spat it, and he led the path to his house a short distance away.