‘Oh, indeed.’ With two pale fingers he pushed his plate away. He took a sip of claret, ‘It was cleverly done, eh? I wonder if they ever thought the ship would really get this far?’
I could not follow him and said so. He gave me a friendly, sardonic smile and sighed. ‘Dimka, I think you and I have been set up as the front to a stock swindle. Why else did nobody warn us? No tip to unload our shares. No suggestion we resign.’
‘But the whole disaster was the result of a strike,’ I pointed out. Kolya touched the back of my hand with his palm. ‘A strike, my darling, is easily arranged. Once arranged it can be maintained to the advantage of the management, rather than the workers.’
Still at a loss, I shrugged and shook my head. ‘The strikers were bribed?’
‘The Devil doesn’t always carry a red flag, Dimka. Sometimes he pays a proxy. Agitators can be bought, particularly if they’re professionals. Once tempers are high the working men hold their ground. Capital holds its ground, and someone makes a fortune from an airship which will never fly.’
‘But who? I have bills unpaid. No salary. Rent. Various debts. Servants. I’ve hardly a penny in real cash.’
‘Same here, little one. M. de Grion seems solid enough, doesn’t he? And his friends?’
‘He wouldn’t let you down, surely. He has the scandal to consider. His daughter would suffer.’
‘I’m quite certain if I seem seriously hurt by the Company’s crash it will actually look better for him. Later my wife will receive a present. I shall no longer have capital of my own. And all will be satisfactory again. For him, the situation’s ideal. He might have planned it in every detail. However, I think it was a solution. He’d hoped to get large government grants, other contracts. This is his way of writing off his losses.’
‘So only ordinary shareholders suffer.’
He looked hard into my eyes, as if telepathically trying to convey his message. ‘And you, dear Dimka. There are also outstanding Company bills. Wages unpaid to office staff and specialists. Engineering firms, raw materials, rent. It probably comes to at least a million.’
I was dizzy with shock. I could hardly speak, Surely, I asked, I was not personally responsible for every debt! Kolya gripped my arm. ‘But the scandal of bankruptcy will attach itself primarily to you. The yellow press is already blaming “foreigners”. They’ll have a perfect victim in you. A foreign swindler? Possibly a Bolshevik agent. The anti-Semites will have a field day, too.’
‘I’m not a Jew! Nor a Communist!’
‘How will you prove it?’ Kolya spoke persuasively. He was trying to bring the realities of my position home to me. I knew an investigation of my antecedents, traced back to Odessa if nowhere else, would provide proof to anyone determined to make me out a liar and a thief. Nonetheless I resolved to fight any such insinuation. It was in my interest, ultimately, to do so. ‘I know lawyers. I’ll prove my innocence, Kolya!’
Prince Petroff was unenthusiastic. ‘You’ll need money for that. I’ll help, but I have limited means now. Is there anyone who’d lend you a large sum?’
At this, suddenly I slumped. I had spent months avoiding the only person willing to give me money (and that at great cost to myself). I could think of no one else in the whole of Paris who would for a second go out of their way for me. I was once more in a weak position. In some ways weaker than ever before. The Cheka can sniff out weakness. My alarm came flooding back. I had sworn never to suffer prison again. The Bolsheviks had accused me as a swindler once, in Kiev, and now swindlers themselves threatened to send me to prison, accused as a Bolshevik! Yet my faith in the value of my airship persisted. It was a good design. A reality. That and the truth must surely save me! ‘The British have been investing in commercial aeroplane services. So have the Dutch. Couldn’t we appeal to them for funds?’
‘It’s politically impossible.’ Kolya spoke very quietly. ‘We need private money. And private money hates scandal.’
‘Most of the frame’s already built. We have firm costings for gas, fabric and engines. Quotations for the gondola are arriving now. It will work Kolya!’
My friend’s expression grew sadder. He had tears in his eyes. ‘My advice, Dimka, is to abandon any hope of completing her. Design another airship. Find a new backer abroad. Use that passport as soon as you can!’
‘Must I go to Constantinople?’
‘To America, of course. They have real money. They’re genuinely interested in new notions. Well, if it were my choice, I would head for New York.’
‘It’s impossible, Kolya. Esmé’s papers aren’t through.’
‘They’ll arrive any day. You can’t help her if they arrest you.’
‘I haven’t enough money for the fare.’
‘I could just about find you the price of a first-class passage.’ He was begging me, with every part of him, to save myself and I loved him all the more, but I remained confused. My life had seemed so secure, my prospects perfect, and now it was falling to pieces by the moment. ‘I must have time,’ I told him. ‘I can’t abandon Esmé. You know what she means to me.’
‘There’s no suggestion you abandon her, Dimka. She’ll follow almost immediately. I’ll make myself responsible for her. She can live at our house.’
I knew he was right. I should go before there were charges. Then, at least, I would not seem a wanted criminal. ‘Thank God I have one trustworthy friend. But suppose you, too, are indicted?’
‘I shan’t be. My family connections, my title, guarantees that. I’m afraid it’s you alone will directly suffer, Dimka. I can’t swear to it, but it looks almost as if they deliberately arranged for you to take the whole onus.’
How could ordinary people be capable of such complex perfidy? I had gone through so many dangers, risked so much, abandoned more to reach what I believed a safe, just and decently ordered world, only to be betrayed more subtly, more coldly, than ever I had been in Russia. France, the Mother of Modern Justice, was about to sacrifice me to satisfy the greed, guarantee the social standing of her great men. An idealist, a person of intellect is helpless against the forces of the Fifth Dimension, the Dimension of Secret Power. The ungodly delight to bring down the poets and the scientists; to lay them upon the altars of Gog-Magog and with bloody knives cut out their innocent hearts. The Fifth Dimension is the Land of Zion, a place beyond the ordinary limits of geography; a dark world of dark men and women determined to infiltrate and inhabit our own, to replace every one of us with a doppelgänger whose spirit once belonged to a dead Carthaginian. This is how Carthage conquers. Through money and human folly. Gone are the elephants and the bronze gongs, the clashing of bright metal and the cries of red-lipped bearded soldiers. Their slaves no longer drag themselves in chained convoys, bowed beneath the whip and the throbbing sun; instead they move from desk to desk in hygienic offices; they crawl up to coalfaces wearing modern safety lamps, they work as bunnygirls in gambling clubs, and most never have the dimmest understanding that they are owned, body and soul, by invisible creatures, powerful rulers of the Fifth Dimension. Zion is Carthage and Carthage shall not die. She adopts a thousand guises and her victims are the honest, the sane, the innocent and the holy. This war continues, but we are few. I can hear their laughter, distant and merciless, mocking and rapacious, echoing across the dissipating barrier dividing one dimension from the other. This laughter of Carthage gives me strength to resist. They cannot understand. They have beaten me with their rods. They have forced me to my knees. And yet I walk still. Im darf men keyn finger in moyl nit araynleygen! The armies of Turkey and Israel combine against me, but I shall continue to fight. My friends are few, but they are strong. I wish they had been with me in Paris, in those dreadful hours of my betrayal. But there will come a time for vengeance. We shall trample down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestow life.