CHAPTER XXI
IT DIDN'T TAKE US LONG TO FIND THE LETTER. THERE WERE NOT many places where it could be hidden in such a rudimentary structure. Maks had slipped it between one of the beams supporting the roof and the wooden roof itself. One had to be looking for it to find it.
It was addressed to me – dated the twenty-seventh, the same as his scratched message. There were about half a dozen sheets, covered on both sides with Maksim's small, precise handwriting. I read it aloud.
'My dear Aleksei, 'If you are reading this letter, then I must apologize for not having waited longer for you to arrive. As you will understand once you have read this, I am very much in fear for my life and perhaps for even more. In communicating the circumstances specifically to you, Aleksei, and (I hope soon) in committing myself to your custody I intend at least to ensure that I die with some vestige of my reputation intact and also to die by a method whereby my soul might be saved. I can see your expression of surprise to learn that either of these should be of concern to me, but let me assure you that the former always has been. The future of my soul is a question that I have only recently begun to realize is worth asking.
'I shall remain here for four days. I have told Dominique where I am and she will, I hope, tell you and only you. If you have not arrived within that time, then I shall be forced to move on. The possibility that either Dmitry or the remaining Oprichniki should find me here is too dreadful to risk. I shall head south to Tula and on then to my mother's. You know where she lives. I shall not write here where that is in the hope that my omission may protect me from any others who might read this. Once I have seen her and, with luck, my sisters, then I shall attempt to leave the country for ever. I shall not be happy to make my home in France. It has become less and less the country I thought it to be.
'You are, I know, well aware of my interest in the republics of both the United States and France. We have happily discussed the matter often and I know that, at least on general principles, your views and mine have often coincided. Where I am certain that you will find no sympathy with me is that as a result of these principles I decided some years ago to make an active effort to support republican France. It was when I was captured at Austerlitz that I first began to work for France. I see the cynical curl of your lip, knowing that you would tell me that at that time the republic was no longer a republic since by then it had an emperor. Though Napoleon had indeed become emperor, though Austerlitz was fought on the anniversary of his coronation, I still believed that he and those around him did what they did for the sake of enlightened, republican ideals. Even today I still believe it.
'After my capture I was persuaded – willingly persuaded – by, in particular, a French colonel (whose name is best kept secret), who convinced me that by helping them, I could ultimately be helping Russia itself to become a republic as great and as powerful as France or America ever could be. I was returned to Russia as though I were a freed prisoner-of-war. In reality it was an act not of liberation, but of infiltration.
'So you see, Aleksei, for almost the whole time that I have known you, I have been a French spy, but believe me, that is the only matter on which I have deceived you. You may regard that as small consolation, if consolation at all, but in everything I have ever said to you, in every matter of opinion, of strategy and of friendship there has been no veil of pretence between us, nor between me and Vadim or Dmitry. The Maksim you have known has been the true Maksim in all aspects except this one tiny issue of allegiance. Men of different political colours and even of different nationalities do not have to be at war with each other, and even when they are they become enemies not out of choice but out of circumstance. Their friendship can be rekindled once the smoke of battle has cleared. If I had been born French then, although we might not have become the friends we once were – that I hope we still are – I would at least have retained your respect. That is not to say that I am blaming my treason on an accident of birth. I would not choose to have been born French rather than Russian. My affiliation has always been to ideas rather than to states. My hope was to take an idea born in France and see it flourish in Russia.
'Whether I have in practice been of very much use to France, I have to doubt. The only work of significance that I have undertaken has been alongside you, Vadim and Dmitry. I count my allegiance to you three higher than any and so I could never have handed over any information that would have directly put you in jeopardy. As to the more general picture of the state of our armies which I have conveyed, I doubt whether any of it has been of much assistance.
'I write this not in any attempt to exonerate myself or to make some plea for clemency that may help me avoid my execution as a traitor. I will attempt to avoid death by flight, but not by denial of what I truly believe. I write it simply in the hope that, though you may rightly condemn me in your own heart to death, you will at least regret that it had to be so.
'However, I would have no scruple that urged me to tell you the truth about myself had it not been for the fact that you most certainly already know the entire truth. It is of the circumstances of how this truth came to be revealed that I must give you every detail I can recall, in the hope that what I tell you may help in some way to defeat these despicable creatures whose war on humanity casts into unmistakable relief the petty squabbles of petty nations.'
'So he did know about them,' I said, half to myself, half to Dmitry, though I had been convinced of it almost from the start.
Dmitry did not respond. He sat with his back to the wall, almost mirroring the posture of Maks' lingering remains. The two sat at opposite corners of the same wall, like naughty schoolboys who have been told to sit apart. Neither, for very different reasons, could raise his eyes to look at me as I continued to read.
'When we returned to Moscow from Smolensk, I had had no opportunity for several months to make any report back to my superiors in the French camp. (By the by, when you see Vadim, tell him that in the French army I also carry the title of major, so he can no longer pull rank on me. To be honest, I think they bump up the ranks of agents just to flatter them. I hope that, despite what I have done to him, Vadim will be able to smile at this. I know I have no right to be flippant, but I cannot tell you how much I long for just five more minutes of the times when we used to sit beside the Moskva and drink vodka and tease one another – but mostly tease Vadim.)
'Our return out west with the Oprichniki gave me a fine opportunity to get back behind French lines and report what I knew. I looked for every chance to separate myself from Andrei, Simon and Iakov Alfeyinich, but it transpired that they were even more keen to be rid of me than I was of them. The very same night that we set out from Gzatsk – the last time, in fact, that I saw you – first one, then two, then all three of them had made some excuse to separate from the rest of the party and scout around on their own.
'I took full advantage of the solitude and headed straight off for the French encampments to the west of the town. I told them all I knew – again, I must assure you, nothing of our personal work, nor even of the Oprichniki, although on that latter point I wish I had – and after a couple of hours of debriefing I was treated to the wine, food and good company that is bestowed on any patriot who has been so long away from his confederates. It meant little to me. I seek little more from food than nourishment and the company was not as good as I have known.