The Red Reign: The True Story of an Adventurous Year in RussiaDurland, Kellogg
History
The Red Reign: The True Story of an Adventurous Year in Russia
Durland, Kellogg
Russia -- Politics and government -- 1894-1917
Comrades in Moscow, who had been notified of the coming of Sasha and
Nastasia by a secret-code telegram, had sent a messenger to a station
nearly half-way between the two cities to warn them that the dangers in
the Moscow station for a day or two would be too great for them to think
of arriving there.
Thereupon they had left the train at a small water station and lay in
hiding three days. From there it had not been possible for them to send
any word to us in St. Petersburg. Nastasia had taken a circuitous route
into Moscow, while Sasha had boarded the very train I was on, thus we
arrived to-day.
My passport was returned to me, and I quickly delivered up my dangerous
packets.
Sasha planned to leave for the south immediately, but a soldier of the
revolution is never master of his own destiny. In the early afternoon a
cipher telegram came from St. Petersburg urging Sasha’s return there
that night.
This seemed the height of folly to me. After jeopardizing his own life,
and the lives of others, to get away from St. Petersburg and then to
turn right back again--this was more than I could understand. But Sasha
knew that more lives depended upon his obedience, so he prepared to
leave that evening. Trains from Moscow back to St. Petersburg were not
apt to be so closely watched as those going out.
Sasha thought to go on the nine-thirty train. I went to the station with
him, for he seemed to have a strong premonition that he was about to
perform his last service for the cause to which his life was dedicated.
When I tried to purchase a ticket I was told that there was not a place
left on the train. Sasha had, therefore, to wait for the ten-thirty
train. We sat down at a table in the buffet and ordered two glasses of
tea.
Presently a member of the Moscow organization, a friend of Sasha’s,
stepped up to us, pointed out a certain man at an adjoining table and
said: “Watch that fellow carefully. He is a spy. He may be shadowing
you--or maybe some one else--but watch him.”
We did watch him for half an hour and became pretty well convinced that
he was following Sasha.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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