"I'm old enough to remember the original Moulin Rouge," Gregory smiled.
Ah; the Moulin Rouge and the Abbaye Theleme; where the girls danced on the tables without any drawers and we drank champagne out of their slippers
"That's it. And the Rat Mort and the Cafe de L'Enfer."
"And the Bal Tabarin. What nights I had in those places But it wasn't only that. There's something about Paris. The flower women outside the Madeleine. Lobster washed down with that fresh petulant Touraine wine for lunch at Pruniers, the paintings in the Louvre, taking one’s aperitif on the pavement Outside the Taverne Wagner, the bookshops in the arcade of the Palais Royal, the Sacre Cur by moonlight, the Latin Quarter, the students in the Luxembourg Gardens, and.. and the trees, when they're just budding in the Bois. Yes, that's it Paris in the springtime Paris in May. Shall I tell you something?" The grey haired but still immensely virile looking Russian leaned forward suddenly. "I'm damned well going there again before I die."
"You'll find it pretty difficult to get out of Russia, won't you?' '
"Oh, it can be done. Quite a lot of people manage to get themselves appointed to Soviet Embassies abroad, and once they're out of this lousy country they never come back."
"Doesn't the Kremlin usually hold the wife and children of people sent abroad, as hostages?"
Ah But I'm all right there. I haven't got any wife or children."
"In that case, they'd never attach you to an Embassy." "Perhaps not. But I might manage to slip over the frontier one dark night."
"In that case, what's kept you here so long?"
"Valuta foreign exchange my boy. I'd rather teach Russian in Paris than be a General here; but I've got to have the money for the journey and I want to take a good sized nest egg so that I don't starve in my old age. I've been saving up and secreting foreign currency for years. I should think another twelve months ought to do it."
Gregory glanced at the clock. It was half past three and they were attacking the third bottle of sleivowitz. He was a little tight himself now but he could drink most people under the table and for some time past plans had been forming again in his agile brain. "I suppose," he said casually, "if you fail to get any information about us from your Military Intelligence people you'll send my friends and myself under escort to the German Embassy in Moscow?"
"That’s it," the General nodded.
"Well, to be honest with you, that wouldn't suit our book at all."
"Why?" asked the Russian suspiciously, and he suddenly seemed to become quite sober again.
"Because I and my friends are not very popular with the Gestapo that's why we arranged to get ourselves given special work in Finland. `Out of sight, out of mind', you know; and since we've failed to do the job we were given, we're going to be even more unpopular when we get home."
"Will they shoot you?" asked Kuporovitch with interest.
"I don't think they’ll go as far as that; but we'd much rather remain out of Germany until the wars over. I suppose as between friends you couldn't fix it for us to be sent to some neutral country, like Estonia, for example?"
The General raised his dark, pencilled eyebrows which contrasted so strangely with. his grey hair. "Sacre Tonnerre, no! Oggie will be back tomorrow morning. I call him that because he's a member of the Ogpu. When he arrives he'll want to know all about you. If I failed to put in a report to the proper quarter afterwards it would probably cost the my life."
"In that case, what about letting us go to night?"
"Help yourself to some more sleivowitz, my friend, and try to talk sense. Those two cretins who serve me as orderlies will report to Oggie that you all dined with me this evening; so I've got to produce either the four of you or your bodies, haven't I? Otherwise, what would Oggie say?"
"I see," said Gregory thoughtfully. "Still, if it could be arranged, may I take it that you would have no personal objection to our leaving Kandalaksha?"
"None at all. None whatever, now I know that you're not spies," the General said suddenly.
"How D’you know?" Gregory asked with quick curiosity.
"Because of what you just told me. And, anyhow, there's nothing worth spying on up in the Arctic, since Petsamo fell. You and your friends are just a party of Germans who managed to get out of Germany and want to keep out of it because the Gestapo's after you."
Gregory grinned. "You've hit it, General. Now, how are we going to work this thing? If you can't get us out of Russia into a neutral country, and you must report us if you keep us here, who could get us out of the country?"
"Stalin could, if he wanted to or Molotov or Krassin or Voroshilov; but I don't see why they should, do you?"
"If only I could get to one of them I believe I'd manage to persuade him to, all right."
"Well, you can't, so I'm afraid that's the end of it," said the General thickly.
"Saying I could," Gregory persisted, "which of them d’you think would be likely to prove the most reasonable?"
"Oh Clim-Clim Voroshilov every time. He may be a red-hot Communist but he's not like these mealy mouthed politicians. He wanted a fair deal a fair deal for all; but he's not like the other fellows he's human; used to like his drink and a pretty girl when he was younger. Nom d'un nom! The scandal there was after one of our victories at Tsaritsyn, when Clim and all his staff drove through the streets as drunk as hell with a whole lot of girls and danced the trepka in a restaurant. All the seedy intellectuals in Moscow said we were a disgrace to the Party but Clim didn't care. Their bally revolution would have gone to blazes if he hadn't held Tsaritsyn. D'you know what we called him? The Organizer of Victories. Aloe Dieu! What a man 1 Did I ever tell you how he threw the Chief of the Leningrad Ogpu down his own stairs?"
"No," said Gregory.
"Well, he did. Found out that the fellow had bribed one of his mistresses to spy on him. Anyone else would have had ten fits but not Clim. He walked straight round into that den of assassins and 'beat the fellow up with his bare fists. God! It makes me cold to think of it. There isn't another man in Russia who would have dared to do that. Have some more sleivowitz."
"Then, if I could get to Voroshilov he might be sympathetic when he hear that the Gestapo are after myself and my friends?"
"He might; but he won't; because you can't get to him, No one has ever escaped out of this old castle since I've been here. It's no good your trying; and in this country a man is either above suspicion or else he's dead. I haven't managed to keep alive among these blackguards for twenty three years b) taking any chances, so don't imagine that because I'm a bit tight I'm taking any now. If I let you go Oggie would be on the warpath to morrow and I might receive an invitation to Moscow. Then I'd never get to Paris again before I die."
The General was certainly tight very tight indeed but Gregory knew the type of man with whom he was dealing too well to set any great hopes on that. The Russian was one of the old school who could take any amount of liquor and might show it by a slight slurring of his speech but would keep all his mental faculties about him until lie suddenly passed out. The fact that he had managed to keep alive so long, although he liked his liquor and loathed the Soviet regime, was ample evidence that he was an efficient officer and never made a serious slip. Since he said that it would be impossible for his prisoners to escape Gregory accepted that as a fact; but he felt that to night was his one big chance. From to morrow onwards the little "filth" referred to as Oggie would be snooping round and, in consequence, the General would have become ten times more difficult. If the all important schedule for the Nazi "Family Reunion" was ever to reach London it must be got out of the castle that night.