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collect the colonel and a few things."
"At most a half hour," he replied. "And don't forget that the prefect
has a car."
We shook hands, and I went in to get my friend. I asked him to follow
me without wasting a moment and on the way to the house I explained what was
happening. He was worried about the colonel. "He is old and sick; we cannot
leave him alone here. What are we going to do?"
When we got there, we told the colonel what was going on and asked him
to get ready as fast as possible and to gather any compromising papers. As
he was getting the papers together, he clasped his hand to his heart and lay
down on his bed. "It is nothing," he said. "It will pass." And with that he
closed his eyes and died. "He is better off," my friend said. "He could
never have stood what is ahead of us."
We kissed him, and recited a prayer for the repose of his soul. Then we
took our handguns and the money and papers and left. The closest border we
could head for was the Turkish. To avoid the police, we circled the city. In
the distance, we could hear the siren of the prefect's auto.
It was a dark, warm night and we made good time. As we walked along we
tore up the papers we had taken with us. The area between Burgas and the
border was sparsely populated and heavily wooded. It was a simple matter to
avoid the few villages.
When day broke, we found a well-covered hiding spot in a grove and
slept there for several hours. When we awoke, we were dying of hunger and
thirst. A little way along we came to a large farm. The lieutenant colonel
guarded our arsenal while I went to get something to eat and drink. I had a
heavy walking stick with me, luckilv, because no sooner had I entered the
yard than I was attacked by a half-dozen savage dogs. They had me backed up
against a wall when an old woman appeared from the house. She chased the
dogs away, yelling at them and throwing stones.
She lived alone in the house with her young grandson. I explained to
her that I was Russian and that my friend and I were looking for work in the
forests. I showed her my money and asked her if I could buy something to
eat. She sold me some bread, two dozen eggs, a wheel of cheese and a large
jug of milk. That was fine, but how was I to get out by the dogs? The old
woman worked out a stratagem, coaxing them into the stable with some cheese.
While they were fighting over it, she closed the door and I got away.
As day broke on the third day, we saw a barrack with the Bulgarian flag
in the distance. This was the border. We moved off the road and waited until
dark to try to pass over. It was very hot, but we found a small stream where
we could drink and wash ourselves. The day dragged on and we got
increasingly nervous. Greek troops were guarding the border, since all of
what had been European Turkey was occupied by the Allies. At last, night
came and we moved out slowly. We clambered into a stream, but there was no
way of knowing in the dark when we had crossed over to the "other side."
The night was completely still. We would have prayed to heaven for some
wind or rain, even a storm, rather than that quiet in which our every step
resounded. We held our pistols ready and agreed that we would not fall alive
into the hands of the border patrols. We walked for about another twenty
minutes, about ten yards away from each other. I was just about to say to my
companion that we had probably crossed the border when we heard a shout
fifty yards behind us, "Stoi!" -- "Halt" -- in Bulgarian. We were still not
across.
A hundred yards ahead lay the shadowy outline of the forest, and
bullets whistled around us. One passed so close to my right ear that I was
briefly deafened. One more burst of energy and we reached cover. Bullets
struck the tree trunks. We were so out of breath and tired that we couldn't
run any more. Our only recourse was to resist, to return fire until we had
recovered enough strength to move on. The lieutenant colonel took cover
behind a thick tree trunk, and I lay down behind a felled tree.
Immediately another foe appeared -- a Greek patrol drawn by the sound of
the Bulgarian firing. They could not see what was going on and began firing
back at the Bulgarians. They soon saw their mistake and began firing in our
direction. They could not see us, but from the echo of the bullets as they
hit the tree trunks, we knew they were both in front and behind us. We were
in a cross fire. Without a word between us, my companion turned his fire on
the Greeks, who were nearer to him, while I aimed at the Bulgarians. We had
semiautomatic weapons and we fired in short bursts to conserve our
ammunition. Off and on we would hear cries of wounded men. We were in a much
better position: invisible in the shade of the forest, while we could spot
their patrols against the horizon as the sky grew lighter.
I held off their advance by hitting three of the five men who remained
able to fight. Nonetheless, our situation was worsening. The patrols would
certainly be reinforced, and our ammunition was running out. I had only two
charges left. I was dashing to my companion when I heard his firing stop. I
reached him crawling on my hands and knees, but he was dead, a bullet in his
head.
I could still hear firing behind me but the bullets were no longer
whistling by. I then took my friend's ammunition, money and papers, fired
another round, and took off through the underbrush. The forest was not very
dense, and soon I was able to stand up and run at full speed.
SINCE i HAD had some rest during the shooting match, I set out on an
all-day, all-night marathon. Though I stopped from time to time, I was
utterly exhausted by the end, too tired even to feel hungry. My mouth was so
dry I could hardly swallow. As I stood at the edge of a small wood at dawn I
could hear dogs barking in the distance and headed in that direction.
I was moving along cautiously when I saw a man watching me from behind
a bush. I took out my Mauser. He called out "kardache," the Turkish word for
friend. I had come on a "pomak," one of those Bulgarians who had been
converted to Islam by the Turks. We spoke to each other in Bulgarian. I
explained to him that I trying to get to Constantinople to look for work,
because there was none to be found in Bulgaria, and that some Greeks had
fired on me as I was crossing the frontier and I had returned their fire. He
replied that he hated the Greek dogs and would help me as much as he could.
He offered me food, though all I wanted was something to drink and some
sleep.
He led me to a small thatched log cabin. He took care of about two
hundred sheep that belonged to him and his family and hated the Greek
soldiers, who were constantly stealing them. There was a huge jug of cool,
clear spring water. He smiled at me as I gulped it down. Then he piled some
sheepskins in the corner and I threw myself on them. The shepherd covered me
with skins until I was completely hidden. I had my arms ready to defend
myself in the event of danger. I might be discovered at any moment by a
Greek search party, or the shepherd might betray me. He had an honest face --
and guests are sacred in his country -- but I couldn't know what was going on
inside his head.
I fell asleep immediately and when I awoke, it was night. I had slept
away the entire day. The shepherd was sitting on a stool near the doorway
and when he saw me emerge from the sheepskins, he smiled and wished me a
good evening.
"The Greeks were here looking for you. You and your friend killed a lot
of them, and some Bulgarians, too. They looked in here but didn't see
anything. They told me I would get a reward if I saw you and reported your
whereabouts to the police. I gave them a lamb to get rid of them." I was
ashamed that I had doubted his goodwill. I shook his hand warmly and thanked
him.
I felt strong again and hungry enough to eat a sheep. My host gave me
an enormous piece of cold mutton and some homemade cheese, which I washed
down with spring water, since wine is forbidden to Moslems. As I ate, my new
friend counseled me on how to avoid all the traps on the way to
Constantinople. The most dangerous places, he said, were on the outskirts.
They were occupied by French, English and Italian soldiers, who patrolled
all the roads leading into the city. I might be arrested and thrown into
prison for entering Turkey illegally. Not to mention the gunfight at the
border -- the Greeks had better not learn that I had taken part in that
battle. (There had been two Greeks killed and three wounded, and the
Bulgarians had one dead and five wounded, as I later learned.)
I had to get moving. The Greeks might come back at any time. One last
time I thanked my Bulgarian friend and gave him my automatic pistol. Tears
came to his eyes. I couldn't have kept it anyhow. It was too heavy and hard
to hide, not to speak of incriminating. I cautioned him that it could get
him into serious trouble and warned him to keep it hidden.
I practically had to lose my temper in order to get him to accept
twenty English pounds, a small fortune to him. Furnished with a supply of
meat, bread and cheese, I set out at about 10 P.M.
I moved along a narrow path, my Mauser in my hand, a bullet in the
chamber. It was a clear night. The clouds had disappeared and the landscape
was brightly lit by a half moon. Suddenly, two uniformed figures loomed in
front of me, Greek policemen. But they had made a bad mistake. Instead of
carrying their carbines at the ready, they had them slung over their
shoulders. I didn't want to kill them but I had to do something. I fired at
their legs and they crumpled with screams of pain.
I ran most of the night, then slept for a couple of hours in a thicket,
ate something, and started out again, avoiding the villages. From the top of
a hill I saw a Greek patrol in the distance.
At dusk I came on a small stream and decided to spend the night there.
My feet were killing me. I bathed them in the stream for a long time and
rubbed them with grease from the mutton. I found a sheltered spot and spent
a peaceful night, and in the morning I felt refreshed and ready for the
road. That day passed without incident. But my shoes were falling apart,
which was a serious problem. The ground was rocky and in a day or two I
would be barefoot.
I spent the next night near a stream and in the morning I decided to
risk everything. I had to find a hamlet where I wouldn't be discovered by
the police but where I could buy a pair of the woven shoes the peasants
wear, which are comfortable for walking in the mountains and forests. In the
afternoon, I spotted a tiny hamlet, just a few houses around a small mosque.
I had no choice but to dare it since I also needed more provisions.
As I entered the village a pack of dogs set up a terrible racket and
some Turks came out of their houses. I greeted them with "Shalom alechem"
the common greeting in all Moslem countries. They began to speak to me in
Turkish but I indicated by sign language that I didn't understand. They were
neither hostile nor friendly -- merely suspicious. They exchanged anxious
glances and asked if I were Greek, English or French. I told the truth: "I
am ourousse [Russian]."
To my great surprise, their attitude immediately changed. They began
shaking my hands and slapping me on the back. One of them led me by the hand
into his house. Then I grasped the reason for their change of heart. My
Turkish host kept repeating over and over "Kemal Pasha [Ataturk], ourous
kardache" Kemal Pasha was battling the Greek army in Asia Minor with arms
supplied by the Soviet Union. The Turks did not make any distinction between
Red and White Russians. All Russians were "kardaches" to them.
A crowd gathered around me while I ate. I explained that I was trying
to get to Istanbul (the Turks disliked the name Constantinople), showed them
my tattered shoes and a five-dollar bill. (The rest of the money was tied
around my waist in a cloth belt.) No one would take my money but in a few
minutes they had set before me several pairs of boots of the kind worn by
Balkan peasants, made of strips of sheepskin. They are so light you hardly
know you have them on. One wears them with long woolen stockings the women
weave, and a pair of these were brought to me. Then I was escorted to the
fountain in the courtyard of the mosque, where I washed my feet, put on the
stockings and my size 44 shoes, and felt like a new man.
I spent the night in this hospitable village. All evening long I heard
patriotic songs in which I could distinguish only one word: Kemal Pasha. The
Turks were incredibly proud of his victories over the Greeks. On the other
hand, they detested the Allies, who occupied their capital, and explained to
me in sign language that it would not take their hero long to throw them
out.
The next day the entire village accompanied me to the Istanbul road. On
my back was another gift from these Turkish peasants, a large embroidered
cloth bag full of provisions. Once again, they adamantly refused any
payment. As I walked along I thought of the wonderful people I had met since
crossing the Bulgarian border and of the age-old traditions that make a
stranger a cherished friend to them.
Of course, the Turks knew nothing of my adventures with the patrols and
I had no way of explaining, as they pointed out the road to Istanbul, that I
had to avoid the direct routes. So after a few kilometers I struck off on a
path that ran parallel to the road and two days later I sighted
Constantinople. Night was falling as I arrived at Galata, an outlying
district of the city on the Bosporus. I was glad it was dark, as I was
filthy and my clothes were torn and unkempt. While I walked through more and
more densely populated neighborhoods, people stared at my strange getup and
I grew more and more dismayed. As I turned a corner, I saw two men whose
clothes identified them as Russian soldiers. I asked if they could tell me
where I could spend the night.
We were standing under a streetlight. One of them looked at my costume
and said, "Where have you come from in that condition?"
"I walked all the way from Bulgaria. Tomorrow I will go to see our
military attache."
"Are you an officer?"
"Yes. "Then maybe you're part of this Bulgarian business that veryone's
talking about."
"I don't know what you're talking about. I Hed from Bulgaria to escape
being arrested."
"Very interesting. We are a Russian naval and a merchant marine officer
and we live in a rented house a few steps away. Come and tell us your tale
and let's see what we can do for you."
My appearance caused a sensation among my clean, well-dressed hosts.
"Where did you find that ragamuffin?" one of them asked the officer who led
me in.
They all laughed. But they stopped laughing when they heard where I had
come from and why. Everyone crowded around to listen. Someone showed me to
the shower they had built for themselves, and each one brought me a piece of
clothing from his modest wardrobe -- one, trousers, another underwear, a
shirt, and so on. When I had shaved and looked human again, I sat down at
the table and told them the whole story, except the part about the treasure.
They, in turn, filled me in on what had happened after the defeat at
Burgas. The newspapers had been full of it. Stambolisky had turned against
our organization in Bulgaria, which had wanted to continue the fight against
the Bolsheviks by any and all means. Colonel Samokhvalov, our chief of staff
in Sofia, had been arrested and imprisoned. The membership roll of the
secret organization was found in his desk. Except for the colonel and
myself, who had been alerted in time, everyone had been arrested. General
Pokrovsky had been killed by the police during arrest and General Koutiepov,
commander-in-chief of the Russian troops in Bulgaria, had been expelled.
So, General Pokrovsky, the colonel, and the lieutenant colonel were the
treasure's first victims. There would be others. I was so upset that I
couldn't sleep in spite of my exhaustion. I was the sole survivor among
those who knew about the treasure. What made it all the more strange was
that I had learned of its existence only recently, and that those who had
gathered it were all dead. I was overwhelmed by the responsibility.
Should I speak to the highest ranking Russian military authorities? The
three of us had solemnly sworn to General Pokrovsky not to reveal anything
without his explicit permission. But now the general was dead and my promise
had no more force. Whom should I tell? Considering the moral standard of our
high-ranking officers -- with the exception of Denikine and Wrangel-the
treasure would certainly be misappropriated in short order. By the next
morning I had made a decision to speak of the treasure to no one for the
time being. It was securely hidden, though I had no way of recovering it.
Later I would confide in someone I trusted absolutely.
I had breakfast with the officers, borrowed a little Turkish money, and
promised to return in the evening. I set off downtown. The first thing I had
to do was change some money to buy some clothes. At Galata I found a Greek
money changer and changed fifty English pounds, quite a large sum for the
times.
All the foreign diplomatic missions were still functioning in
Constantinople. The Russian military attache was quite helpful when he'd
heard my story. On the spot, he provided me with identity papers, in Russian
and French, under the name of Sergei Orel, as he thought it would be safer
not to use my real name until public interest in the Sofia affair died down.
He asked me whether I had any money. I was faced with a dilemma. If I said
yes, it would seem strange, given the general poverty of the Russian
refugees. On the other hand, I knew he couldn't be very well off and it
embarrassed me to take money I didn't need. I replied that two or three
Turkish pounds would do me for the moment. He seemed relieved and added,
since I had told him I had borrowed the clothes I was wearing, "I'll give
you a letter to Mme. IIovaiskaia, the general's daughter, who is secretary
to Miss Mitchell, the head of the American Red Cross. She will outfit you
from head to toe."
I thanked the general sincerely and promised to let him know my address
as soon as I had found somewhere to live. At the headquarters of the
American Red Cross, Mme. IIovaiskaia provided me with a fine blue pinstripe
suit (with a label from a Philadelphia tailor), shirts and underwear, shoes,
and even a hat.
A month later, I received a visit at my small hotel in Galata from an
officer who served the military attache. His superior wanted to see me as
soon as possible. The next morning, when I went to the embassy, the general
received me promptly. He led me into a private office and closed the door
carefully. His first question took me off guard.
"What do you know of the treasure General Pokrovsky was guarding?"
"What treasure, Excellency?"
"You know nothing of it?"
"I only met General Pokrovsky, under whom I had served in Russia, two
months before I fled Bulgaria. The general never spoke to me of any
treasure. I have no idea whether such a thing exists."
"In that case, essaoul, let me ask you where you got the money you have
been spending. You told me you had no money and I lent you five Turkish
pounds. Now you are living in a hotel that, modest as it is, costs a pound a
day. You eat in a restaurant every day that must cost another pound. You
bought a suit from an Armenian tailor. Over and above this, I know that you
have given over one hundred Turkish pounds to various refugees. Allow me to
ask you where this money -- a small fortune for a refugee -- comes from."
They've been watching me ever since I got to Constantinople, I said to
myself. If only I had told him that General Pokrovsky had given each of his
aides a small amount. Too late now. "It is true, Excellency, that I had no
money when I arrived. What I did not say -- and I don't know why I should
have-is that I brought a few valuables from Russia, including a heavy gold
cigarette box signed by Faberge. It was a family heirloom and I didn't want
to sell it but as you know, there is no work here and I was forced to." (In
fact, I had sold it in Yugoslavia.)
"In that case, you can tell me to whom you sold it."
"To an American tourist on the Mauritania. I didn't want to sell it in
a jewelry shop. They're all run by Greeks and Armenians. You know what a
ridiculous price they would have given me."
He was looking me in the eye and I stared back. Then he asked me to let
him know where I could be reached if I left the hotel, but I never saw him
again.
I stayed at the hotel two more months, until my money ran out, and then
I moved into a boardinghouse for refugees where it was only five piasters
for a bed for the night. It was a wooden building and, like many Turkish
houses, harbored a fantastic colony of bedbugs that were impossible to get
rid of. The only solution would have been to burn the whole thing down,
bedbugs and all. The beds were made of iron and we burned out every possible
hiding place on them with gasoline. Then we set the legs in tin cans of
gasoline but the damned bugs crawled up to the ceiling and dropped down on
us while we slept. Sometimes, when I was half crazy with them, I would take
my bedclothes and sleep on the lawn of one of the abandoned cemeteries in
the city.
Then the day arrived when I didn't even have the five piasters. It was
winter, an unpleasant season in Constantinople, with icy winds and rain
almost every day. I was facing disaster and had nowhere to turn. Once more,
good luck intervened. On the main street of Pera I saw someone who looked
familiar. We gazed at each other and then we fell into each other's arms. It
was like a miracle. At the military school at Irkutsk, my bunk and
Teliatnikov's had been next to each other. He was from Tashkent, had been an
assistant manager of a bank, and was forty years old; I was then just
eighteen. Now he told me of how he had escaped from Russia through
Vladivostok, had roamed over half the world and ended up in Constantinople.
For two years now he had been the chief accountant at the Nobel Company, the
principal owner of the Baku oil fields. The Bolsheviks were selling Nobel
his own oil. My friend thought it couldn't last because the communists
needed the oil badly themselves and were only selling it for foreign
credits. He loaned me a little money and promised to try to help. Two days
later he arranged for me to come to work for Nobel as a gasoline salesman.
So there I was, with a Crimean Tartar driver who spoke Turkish. Every
day we went to a different neighborhood in a specially equipped wagon drawn
by two mules carrying twenty- and fifty-liter cans. Most often I had to
carry them on my shoulders because the streets were too narrow or too steep
for the wagon. The driver helped me but it was still very hard work. I stank
so of gas that people turned away as I passed. I had to sleep in the stable
with the mules but I got pretty good pay, ate three meals a day, and my
compatriots envied me my job. Twice a week it brought me to the rear of the
famous Pera Palace Hotel, where I gazed at the lovely women on the arms of
the Allied officers. The Italian officers, with the comic opera uniforms,
were the most elegant.
I still did not know what to do about the treasure- whether I should
abandon it forever or tell the right person. Who was the right person?
I worked at Nobel for four months and got to know Constantinople as few
foreigners do. I also learned to speak Turkish in order to bargain with the
grocers. But when Nobel stopped buying oil, I was out of work again.
After a few days of near panic, I heard that the English army was
hiring Russian refugees to work on their bases in the Dardanelles. I had no
idea what kind of work it was but I had no choice so I signed on for a year.
A boat took us to an English base on the right bank of the straits facing
Chanak, where we were lodged in unheated Turkish army barracks. We slept on
the bare wooden floor and shivered with cold day and night. It rained all
the time and the wind was freezing. We could never get our clothing dry.
Canned meat and soup were the only hot food we had and so we were
perpetually hungry. We used to steal a few cartons of food once in a while
but eventually we stopped as a point of honor. We worked hard and long in
the rain and mud. The English noncoms treated us like prisoners even though
we were free workers. A lot of the time, we worked unloading heavy cases of
shells. I wondered why the British were stockpiling so much militarv
material when their war was over. Kemal Pasha was continuing his successful
campaign against the Greeks but the English had remained neutral in that
conflict.
About a month after I arrived, we were ordered to unload cases of heavy
artillery shells. Four men could hardly lift the cases. Since I spoke
English, my comrades designated me to inform the sergeant that we could not
and would not. The cases were unwieldy and if one fell, we would be blown to
bits. The sergeant was well aware of this and kept his distance. I
approached him, but instead of listening to our complaint, he started to
curse at me as only an English sergeant can. "You have no right to insult
me," I said. "I am not a prisoner or a slave."
He went wild, and dragged me by the arm to the major in charge. I took
off my cap. The major put his on. He sentenced me to a hundred and
sixty-eight hours (why a hundred and sixty-eight hours instead of a week?)
in prison for disobedience. I was not permitted to utter one word. They
locked me in a barbed wire enclosure with two tents where there were three
other Russians, who were being punished for refusing to eat corned beef
every day.
It was the first time I had ever been locked up. At the crack of dawn
we were rousted out with yelling and swearing. All day, with only a short
break for lunch, we were made to run on the double to the beach, fill a
fifty-kilo bag with sand, run back to the prison with it, and empty it onto
a pile. When the pile was large enough, we took the sand back bag by bag to
where we'd gotten it. When we slowed down, the English soldiers threatened
us with long clubs.
One night after it had rained for twenty-four hours the tents were
flooded up to our knees. We complained to the guards but all they would
allow us to do was fill some sacks with sand and pile them up so we could
squat on them. We were trembling with the cold, our teeth chattering so that
we could barely talk.
The next day I told my companion, a sublieutenant, that I had decided
to break out and that he was welcome to come with me. He agreed. I had
noticed that by lifting the barbed wire where we gathered the sand you could
dig a ditch deep enough to slip under. The next night the rain stopped but
there came a very strong wind, almost of hurricane force. Our tents were
almost blown away but fortunately it was a dark, starless night. We waited
until very late and then slipped out of the tent. We filled some sacks with
damp sand and slipped them one by one under the wire. This opened up a
narrow passageway. It took a long time and we were very nervous. The guards,
who slept in a small wooden barracks at the far end of the compound, could
emerge at any moment and they would almost certainly shoot us. Our hands
were bleeding from the barbed wire. My companion was smaller than I and
slipped out easily. I had some trouble but I finally managed to squeeze
through.
We took the road that ran along the strait to Gallipoli. Late in the
morning, when were some distance from the camp, my companion suddenly
shouted, "Watch out. They're after us." Sure enough, there were two British
soldiers on bicycles with dogs about a kilometer away and moving toward us.
There was nowhere to retreat to. On the right was the water, and on the
left a steep rise covered with thick underbrush. Ahead about three hundred
yards away there was a small bay, where four men were unloading stone blocks
onto the bank. Without stopping to think, we 'dashed toward them. They were
Turks. I explained that the English were after us because we didn't want to
work for them and as soon as they heard the magic word ourousse they said,
"Jump into the felucca."
When the English soldiers got there five minutes later, we were one
hundred yards from the shore. The dogs were barking angrily at having lost
their trail and the English soldiers concluded that we must be underwater.
They waited around for an hour or two before returning to base. In the
evening, the Turks reentered the cove. It was too late to work so they
dropped anchor about fifty meters from shore and invited us to spend the
night. We accepted gratefully. They gave us tincture of iodine for our hands
and a meal of grilled fish and sour milk. Our hosts began to sing and again,
over and over, we heard the name Kemal Pasha. The night passed uneventfully
and early the next morning, we thanked our rescuers and pressed on to
Gallipoli.
The appearance of the city, which was empty and abandoned, was
sinister. It was bizarre to see a good-sized city inhabited by nothing but
wild cats, who would run when we approached, and by pigs darting in every
direction. Finally we found a few French soldiers who were
^
guarding the lighthouse, and four Russians -- the sole survivors of
General Koutiepov's army, which had been evacuated into Bulgaria and
Yugoslavia. A single trace of their encampment remained -- a pyramid of
stones. Every soldier and officer had brought one stone to build it, the
inscription read. This moving monument was all that testified to the fate of
an "army of chevaliers," as one French writer called it.
The Russians told us that the Greek population had abandoned the city,
when Kemal Pasha's army reached the opposite shore of the Sea of Marmara. It
was better to be a refugee in Greece than face the Turkish soldiers, who did
not treat Greeks gently.
When I got back to Constantinople, I faced the same problems as before:
I was a penniless refugee in a city where there was no work to be found.
There was a three-or four-month waiting list to emigrate to America and even
then I would have had to have at least twenty-five Turkish pounds, which I
had no way of getting.
Once again, a solution presented itself -- to enlist in the Foreign
Legion. My companion and I went to the recruitment office and were
interviewed by a French officer. "Formal swearing in," he informed us "will
take place at Fort Saint-Jean in Marseilles. In the meantime, you will be
lodged and fed at the post here."
He gave us a note for the commanding officer. The post was a formidable
building surrounded by high walls that looked more like a prison than an
army camp. We arrived at mealtime, and for the first time in three days ate
all we wanted. It wasn't very good, but as the saying goes, we didn't look a
gift horse in the mouth. However, we realized immediately that we were
trapped. Once inside there was no getting out. The next day, a transport
ship arrived from Marseilles. Some legionnaires who were being demobilized
for illness or wounds stopped at the post on their way back home. There were
Serbs, Bulgarians, and Rumanians. Needless to say, we asked them about life
in the legion.
Their response was unanimous: "The legion is living hell. You work on
the roads twelve hours a day in the broiling sun. At night, as often as not,
you have to fight , since Morocco is in open revolt. The discipline is cruel
and punishment is brutal. The only relief, when you get your lousy pay, is
to get drunk enough to forget."
All we could think of was to escape. In two days the transport would
leave for Marseilles and formal enlistment, which would mean five years of
hell. But we didn't know how escape would be possible. We had noticed that
certain trusties went out in the evening, and there were also some civilian
employees, mostly Greeks, who left for the night. They had to show their
exit permits to a noncommissioned officer. On alternate days, the officer in
charge was a Sengalese who did not even read the papers, just waved the men
on. My comrade and I did have Russian military identity papers. We waited
for the Sengalese noncom to come on duty and got in line. We flashed our
papers at him and he let us pass. Once outside, we ran as fast as we could.
The next day I remembered that the owner of the Russian newspaper in
Constantinople, a man named Maxi-mov, had known my father. I went to ask him
for work. By chance, the man who had distributed the papers to the retail
dealers had just left for America, so I inherited his menial job. It paid
just enough to feed me and allow me to feed my blood to the bedbugs that
infested the quarters reserved for Russian refugees. I couldn't go on like
this. I had to find a way to get out.
One day I read in one of the newspapers I distributed that a ship
headed for Marseilles with a French regiment would also take Russian
refugees who had French visas. I was off that day, so I went up to the
Galata port. Maybe I would have a chance to say good-bye to someone I knew.
And I did meet a lieutenant I had known. He had studied at the conservatory
and now led a Russian orchestra and had a three-month engagement in a
nightclub in* Nice. Out of the blue, he said: "Do you want to go to France?"
"Of course. What a question! But how? I have no money and no visa."
"But it's very simple, my friend. Get your bags, get on board, and I'll
tell the boarding officer that your name is on the group passport."
I ran home, grabbed my two bags, ran back and up the long gangplank
right into the arms of the boarding officer "Passport?" he asked. From below
the orchestra leader yelled up, "He's with us. His name is on the group pass
port.
After a bit he came on board and hid me with their baggage. I waited
there for six or seven hours, scared to death. Then I heard the most
beautiful sound imaginable, the ship's whistle; we were under way.
Eventually, my friend came to rescue me. "You can come out now. Even if they
find you out, there's nothing they can do. You're on your way to
Marseilles."
The crossing took five days. The French soldiers fed me from their
rations.
so, FOR THE FOURTH TIME, I was fleeing, leaving behind what little I
possessed. What would become of me in Marseilles? The thought tormented me.
But when we arrived, it turned out that there were about twenty of my
compatriots on board in the same fix I was in, with no passport or visas.
"These damned Russians," the commissioner of the port police said with a
tolerant smile, "they keep arriving from all sides." They let us in and
ordered us to go to the Russian consulate to get proper papers and then to
report to the local employment office.
It was September 24, 1923. Everything was odd in this land of my dreams
that I now saw for the first time . . . both strange and enchanting. After
four years of nightmare, the French were living life to the hilt. There was
a lot of construction and workers were needed everywhere. Things were cheap
and one could actually live on one's salary. In their effort to forget
hardship and bereavement, the French were living as if there were no
tormorrow.
All of us were offered work in the Departement of the Aisne in a metal
factory near Soissons, not far from Laon. We were issued tickets for the
train and set out, hungry and somewhat bewildered. None of us had a penny in
his pocket and we were happy Just to get where we were going. Our good humor
was short-lived. We disembarked, not even at a station, but at a makeshift
wooden barrack. The surroundings looked like a picture of the moon --
completely barren, not a tree, nothing but trenches and excavations. We
asked a railroad clerk where the metal factory was. He gazed back at us with
an ironic expression. "The factory? Well, you see the road that goes up the
hill over there? When you reach the top, you will see your factory." He
smiled. In spite of our hunger, we formed a small military detachment and
marched off, singing. We got to the top of the hill. There was no factory.
There were about twenty barracks and long rows of something we could not
make out. (They turned out to be piles of shells and shrapnel.) A youngster
came along on a bicycle and I asked where the factory was. "What factory?"
he asked. I showed him the paper that had been given us in Marseilles with
the name of the factory. "There is no factory here. Look at your papers. You
see, it's in Alsace. All we do here is to gather the shells from the fields,
defuse them, and send them to the factory."
We had been tricked once again. Now we were under contract for a year
and we had been lied to about the nature of the work, and not told anything
of the dangers involved. We agreed that we could not accept it and that we
would announce our decision as soon as we arrived at the barracks. As we
drew closer, we could see that one of the barracks flew the banner of the
Red Cross. I asked to speak to whoever was in charge, and a man came out
immediately to greet us. When we told him our decision, he blew up. "How
dare you? Do you think I'm an idiot? You signed for a year's work, your trip
was paid for, and now you refuse to work. You are asking to be put in jail.
I'll telephone the police to come and arrest you."
"You are the one who should be under arrest, monsieur," I replied.
"Look at my papers. It says in black and white that we are supposed to work
in a metal factory. Where is the factory? We've been lied to and we're not
such idiots that we're going to get killed for a few francs. There is a Red
Cross barrack full of injured men. We're the ones who are going to
complain."
He changed his tune. "Listen, the work really isn't dangerous and I'll
raise your salary if that's the problem." We laughed at him and went off to
find the mayor.
"This is not the first time," he told us, "that these people have
deceived their workers. You are absolutely correct to refuse. My advice to
you is to go to Laon and apply for work at the labor office."
We had eaten nothing for two days and I felt as if my legs were about
to cave in. I had made friends with a lieutenant about my age and we had
decided to hang in together. The others had left before us, so by the time
we arrived at the employment office, they had already been hired by a
threshing factory. The only jobs left were on a farm in the village of
Chalandry -- it was called the Chateau-Chalandry and was about seven miles
away. We must have looked pretty sour at the prospect of such a long walk
because the office manager finally asked us when we had last eaten. When he
heard, he gave us some bread and butter.
We walked to the farm by fields of sugar beets. We ate one of them and
felt a little better. I remember that we arrived at the farm at suppertime.
We had expected something grand because it was called a "chateau," but it
was only a mediocre farm with a silly-looking tower, from which it must have
gotten its name.
The farmhouse was in the middle of a large courtyard surrounded by
barns. We saw an old man, one of the owners. He ran the farm with his
brother-in-law. "Do you know how to do farm work?" he asked. My companion
did not speak French so I answered for both: "Yes, sir. We know all about
farms. We used to be farm workers." He looked at us skeptically. "I don't
really believe you were farmers, but we'll see about that." He looked over
our papers and then invited us into the kitchen for something to eat. "If
you work as well as you eat," he said, "I have made a good bargain."
After supper, he took us over to a ladder. "Climb up there," he told
us. "There are blankets and someone will wake you in the morning."
I was so exhausted that when someone waked me up I felt as if I had
slept for only an hour. After a measly breakfast, we went out to pick beets.
We had arrived at the hardest work season of the year. We used huge
pitchforks to load the beets onto horse-drawn wagons. The beets were deep in
the earth and it took tremendous effort to pry them loose. We were weak from
malnutrition, and by noon of the first day our hands were bleeding. My
friend was in better shape than I was, and not nearly so done in. "You do
what you like," I told him as we walked back to the farmhouse for lunch,
"but I can't manage. Look at my hands."
"I'm still okay," he said, "but if you have to quit, I'm going too."
Just then the other owner came over to me. "From now on you'll be in
charge of the cows. You'll be told what to do." I accepted this new
assignment gladly, and slept contentedly in the barn with my cows for the
next eight months.
I took care of the cows and the whole dairy as well. Usually, I had to
get the hay ready and load it. I was badly exploited, working twelve hours a
day for a few dollars a month and lousy food. The older brother was at least
agreeable, but the younger one was plain mean, stu-. pid and brutal. I used
to fantasize about punching him in the nose, but I never did it. I had to
earn enough money to get away and find something better.
I don't really regret those eight months. Working on the land is
healthy and satisfying and I had never worked with my hands before. I got
back some measure of physical strength and even acquired a bit of patience.
When I had saved about two hundred and fifty dollars I left. My
companion had already quit. I went to the Employment Office in Laon and
found a better-paying and safer job in Resigny as a wagon driver at one of
the processing plants of a huge dairy company. Each morning I drove a wagon
all around the neighborhood, collecting about two thousand gallons of milk.
I got back to the plant about noon. The milk was processed, and in the
afternoon it was loaded onto trucks in cans and early the next morning sold
in Paris. It was pleasant work, especially in the summer. The Ardennes
forest reminded me a little of my native Caucasus. I planned to stay long
enough to save five hundred dollars and then try my luck in Paris.
I used to subscribe to a Paris newspaper to keep up with what was going
on in the rest of the world. And since I was absorbed by the affairs of the
Russian emigres, I also took the two most important Russian-language papers
that were published in Paris. Rut all this time I was thinking more and more
seriously about "my" treasure . . . the treasure of the White Army.
It was crucial for me to understand the interconnections between the
various groups of emigres to figure out whom I could eventually go to for
help to recover at least part of the treasure. I had already made one firm
decision:
I would not offer the treasure, or any part of it, to the exiled
Russian military organizations. These organizations had sprung up
everywhere, under the leadership of General Wrangel. Later, after his death
in 1928, General Koutiepov assumed the role of leader. Rut the Civil War was
over. We were defeated and in exile. All we could do now was to adjust to
our new circumstances and understand that there was no possibility of
overthrowing the Soviet regime from abroad. General Koutiepov and all the
exiled class of officers dreamed of nothing else; I shared their passions,
needless to say, but I had come to terms with reality. Many Russians,
blinded by their hatred of Rolshevism, could not understand that aggressive
action against the communist government from abroad would only reinforce the
regime. The White organizations were riddled with provocateurs and double
agents; even General Skoblin, who had commanded one of the most brilliant of
the White regiments, had betrayed us. General Koutiepov and his successor,
General Miller, were both kidnapped, to the consternation of the French
press. What kind of organizations were these, whose leaders could be
kidnapped in broad daylight in the middle of Paris? I was not going to share
"At most a half hour," he replied. "And don't forget that the prefect
has a car."
We shook hands, and I went in to get my friend. I asked him to follow
me without wasting a moment and on the way to the house I explained what was
happening. He was worried about the colonel. "He is old and sick; we cannot
leave him alone here. What are we going to do?"
When we got there, we told the colonel what was going on and asked him
to get ready as fast as possible and to gather any compromising papers. As
he was getting the papers together, he clasped his hand to his heart and lay
down on his bed. "It is nothing," he said. "It will pass." And with that he
closed his eyes and died. "He is better off," my friend said. "He could
never have stood what is ahead of us."
We kissed him, and recited a prayer for the repose of his soul. Then we
took our handguns and the money and papers and left. The closest border we
could head for was the Turkish. To avoid the police, we circled the city. In
the distance, we could hear the siren of the prefect's auto.
It was a dark, warm night and we made good time. As we walked along we
tore up the papers we had taken with us. The area between Burgas and the
border was sparsely populated and heavily wooded. It was a simple matter to
avoid the few villages.
When day broke, we found a well-covered hiding spot in a grove and
slept there for several hours. When we awoke, we were dying of hunger and
thirst. A little way along we came to a large farm. The lieutenant colonel
guarded our arsenal while I went to get something to eat and drink. I had a
heavy walking stick with me, luckilv, because no sooner had I entered the
yard than I was attacked by a half-dozen savage dogs. They had me backed up
against a wall when an old woman appeared from the house. She chased the
dogs away, yelling at them and throwing stones.
She lived alone in the house with her young grandson. I explained to
her that I was Russian and that my friend and I were looking for work in the
forests. I showed her my money and asked her if I could buy something to
eat. She sold me some bread, two dozen eggs, a wheel of cheese and a large
jug of milk. That was fine, but how was I to get out by the dogs? The old
woman worked out a stratagem, coaxing them into the stable with some cheese.
While they were fighting over it, she closed the door and I got away.
As day broke on the third day, we saw a barrack with the Bulgarian flag
in the distance. This was the border. We moved off the road and waited until
dark to try to pass over. It was very hot, but we found a small stream where
we could drink and wash ourselves. The day dragged on and we got
increasingly nervous. Greek troops were guarding the border, since all of
what had been European Turkey was occupied by the Allies. At last, night
came and we moved out slowly. We clambered into a stream, but there was no
way of knowing in the dark when we had crossed over to the "other side."
The night was completely still. We would have prayed to heaven for some
wind or rain, even a storm, rather than that quiet in which our every step
resounded. We held our pistols ready and agreed that we would not fall alive
into the hands of the border patrols. We walked for about another twenty
minutes, about ten yards away from each other. I was just about to say to my
companion that we had probably crossed the border when we heard a shout
fifty yards behind us, "Stoi!" -- "Halt" -- in Bulgarian. We were still not
across.
A hundred yards ahead lay the shadowy outline of the forest, and
bullets whistled around us. One passed so close to my right ear that I was
briefly deafened. One more burst of energy and we reached cover. Bullets
struck the tree trunks. We were so out of breath and tired that we couldn't
run any more. Our only recourse was to resist, to return fire until we had
recovered enough strength to move on. The lieutenant colonel took cover
behind a thick tree trunk, and I lay down behind a felled tree.
Immediately another foe appeared -- a Greek patrol drawn by the sound of
the Bulgarian firing. They could not see what was going on and began firing
back at the Bulgarians. They soon saw their mistake and began firing in our
direction. They could not see us, but from the echo of the bullets as they
hit the tree trunks, we knew they were both in front and behind us. We were
in a cross fire. Without a word between us, my companion turned his fire on
the Greeks, who were nearer to him, while I aimed at the Bulgarians. We had
semiautomatic weapons and we fired in short bursts to conserve our
ammunition. Off and on we would hear cries of wounded men. We were in a much
better position: invisible in the shade of the forest, while we could spot
their patrols against the horizon as the sky grew lighter.
I held off their advance by hitting three of the five men who remained
able to fight. Nonetheless, our situation was worsening. The patrols would
certainly be reinforced, and our ammunition was running out. I had only two
charges left. I was dashing to my companion when I heard his firing stop. I
reached him crawling on my hands and knees, but he was dead, a bullet in his
head.
I could still hear firing behind me but the bullets were no longer
whistling by. I then took my friend's ammunition, money and papers, fired
another round, and took off through the underbrush. The forest was not very
dense, and soon I was able to stand up and run at full speed.
SINCE i HAD had some rest during the shooting match, I set out on an
all-day, all-night marathon. Though I stopped from time to time, I was
utterly exhausted by the end, too tired even to feel hungry. My mouth was so
dry I could hardly swallow. As I stood at the edge of a small wood at dawn I
could hear dogs barking in the distance and headed in that direction.
I was moving along cautiously when I saw a man watching me from behind
a bush. I took out my Mauser. He called out "kardache," the Turkish word for
friend. I had come on a "pomak," one of those Bulgarians who had been
converted to Islam by the Turks. We spoke to each other in Bulgarian. I
explained to him that I trying to get to Constantinople to look for work,
because there was none to be found in Bulgaria, and that some Greeks had
fired on me as I was crossing the frontier and I had returned their fire. He
replied that he hated the Greek dogs and would help me as much as he could.
He offered me food, though all I wanted was something to drink and some
sleep.
He led me to a small thatched log cabin. He took care of about two
hundred sheep that belonged to him and his family and hated the Greek
soldiers, who were constantly stealing them. There was a huge jug of cool,
clear spring water. He smiled at me as I gulped it down. Then he piled some
sheepskins in the corner and I threw myself on them. The shepherd covered me
with skins until I was completely hidden. I had my arms ready to defend
myself in the event of danger. I might be discovered at any moment by a
Greek search party, or the shepherd might betray me. He had an honest face --
and guests are sacred in his country -- but I couldn't know what was going on
inside his head.
I fell asleep immediately and when I awoke, it was night. I had slept
away the entire day. The shepherd was sitting on a stool near the doorway
and when he saw me emerge from the sheepskins, he smiled and wished me a
good evening.
"The Greeks were here looking for you. You and your friend killed a lot
of them, and some Bulgarians, too. They looked in here but didn't see
anything. They told me I would get a reward if I saw you and reported your
whereabouts to the police. I gave them a lamb to get rid of them." I was
ashamed that I had doubted his goodwill. I shook his hand warmly and thanked
him.
I felt strong again and hungry enough to eat a sheep. My host gave me
an enormous piece of cold mutton and some homemade cheese, which I washed
down with spring water, since wine is forbidden to Moslems. As I ate, my new
friend counseled me on how to avoid all the traps on the way to
Constantinople. The most dangerous places, he said, were on the outskirts.
They were occupied by French, English and Italian soldiers, who patrolled
all the roads leading into the city. I might be arrested and thrown into
prison for entering Turkey illegally. Not to mention the gunfight at the
border -- the Greeks had better not learn that I had taken part in that
battle. (There had been two Greeks killed and three wounded, and the
Bulgarians had one dead and five wounded, as I later learned.)
I had to get moving. The Greeks might come back at any time. One last
time I thanked my Bulgarian friend and gave him my automatic pistol. Tears
came to his eyes. I couldn't have kept it anyhow. It was too heavy and hard
to hide, not to speak of incriminating. I cautioned him that it could get
him into serious trouble and warned him to keep it hidden.
I practically had to lose my temper in order to get him to accept
twenty English pounds, a small fortune to him. Furnished with a supply of
meat, bread and cheese, I set out at about 10 P.M.
I moved along a narrow path, my Mauser in my hand, a bullet in the
chamber. It was a clear night. The clouds had disappeared and the landscape
was brightly lit by a half moon. Suddenly, two uniformed figures loomed in
front of me, Greek policemen. But they had made a bad mistake. Instead of
carrying their carbines at the ready, they had them slung over their
shoulders. I didn't want to kill them but I had to do something. I fired at
their legs and they crumpled with screams of pain.
I ran most of the night, then slept for a couple of hours in a thicket,
ate something, and started out again, avoiding the villages. From the top of
a hill I saw a Greek patrol in the distance.
At dusk I came on a small stream and decided to spend the night there.
My feet were killing me. I bathed them in the stream for a long time and
rubbed them with grease from the mutton. I found a sheltered spot and spent
a peaceful night, and in the morning I felt refreshed and ready for the
road. That day passed without incident. But my shoes were falling apart,
which was a serious problem. The ground was rocky and in a day or two I
would be barefoot.
I spent the next night near a stream and in the morning I decided to
risk everything. I had to find a hamlet where I wouldn't be discovered by
the police but where I could buy a pair of the woven shoes the peasants
wear, which are comfortable for walking in the mountains and forests. In the
afternoon, I spotted a tiny hamlet, just a few houses around a small mosque.
I had no choice but to dare it since I also needed more provisions.
As I entered the village a pack of dogs set up a terrible racket and
some Turks came out of their houses. I greeted them with "Shalom alechem"
the common greeting in all Moslem countries. They began to speak to me in
Turkish but I indicated by sign language that I didn't understand. They were
neither hostile nor friendly -- merely suspicious. They exchanged anxious
glances and asked if I were Greek, English or French. I told the truth: "I
am ourousse [Russian]."
To my great surprise, their attitude immediately changed. They began
shaking my hands and slapping me on the back. One of them led me by the hand
into his house. Then I grasped the reason for their change of heart. My
Turkish host kept repeating over and over "Kemal Pasha [Ataturk], ourous
kardache" Kemal Pasha was battling the Greek army in Asia Minor with arms
supplied by the Soviet Union. The Turks did not make any distinction between
Red and White Russians. All Russians were "kardaches" to them.
A crowd gathered around me while I ate. I explained that I was trying
to get to Istanbul (the Turks disliked the name Constantinople), showed them
my tattered shoes and a five-dollar bill. (The rest of the money was tied
around my waist in a cloth belt.) No one would take my money but in a few
minutes they had set before me several pairs of boots of the kind worn by
Balkan peasants, made of strips of sheepskin. They are so light you hardly
know you have them on. One wears them with long woolen stockings the women
weave, and a pair of these were brought to me. Then I was escorted to the
fountain in the courtyard of the mosque, where I washed my feet, put on the
stockings and my size 44 shoes, and felt like a new man.
I spent the night in this hospitable village. All evening long I heard
patriotic songs in which I could distinguish only one word: Kemal Pasha. The
Turks were incredibly proud of his victories over the Greeks. On the other
hand, they detested the Allies, who occupied their capital, and explained to
me in sign language that it would not take their hero long to throw them
out.
The next day the entire village accompanied me to the Istanbul road. On
my back was another gift from these Turkish peasants, a large embroidered
cloth bag full of provisions. Once again, they adamantly refused any
payment. As I walked along I thought of the wonderful people I had met since
crossing the Bulgarian border and of the age-old traditions that make a
stranger a cherished friend to them.
Of course, the Turks knew nothing of my adventures with the patrols and
I had no way of explaining, as they pointed out the road to Istanbul, that I
had to avoid the direct routes. So after a few kilometers I struck off on a
path that ran parallel to the road and two days later I sighted
Constantinople. Night was falling as I arrived at Galata, an outlying
district of the city on the Bosporus. I was glad it was dark, as I was
filthy and my clothes were torn and unkempt. While I walked through more and
more densely populated neighborhoods, people stared at my strange getup and
I grew more and more dismayed. As I turned a corner, I saw two men whose
clothes identified them as Russian soldiers. I asked if they could tell me
where I could spend the night.
We were standing under a streetlight. One of them looked at my costume
and said, "Where have you come from in that condition?"
"I walked all the way from Bulgaria. Tomorrow I will go to see our
military attache."
"Are you an officer?"
"Yes. "Then maybe you're part of this Bulgarian business that veryone's
talking about."
"I don't know what you're talking about. I Hed from Bulgaria to escape
being arrested."
"Very interesting. We are a Russian naval and a merchant marine officer
and we live in a rented house a few steps away. Come and tell us your tale
and let's see what we can do for you."
My appearance caused a sensation among my clean, well-dressed hosts.
"Where did you find that ragamuffin?" one of them asked the officer who led
me in.
They all laughed. But they stopped laughing when they heard where I had
come from and why. Everyone crowded around to listen. Someone showed me to
the shower they had built for themselves, and each one brought me a piece of
clothing from his modest wardrobe -- one, trousers, another underwear, a
shirt, and so on. When I had shaved and looked human again, I sat down at
the table and told them the whole story, except the part about the treasure.
They, in turn, filled me in on what had happened after the defeat at
Burgas. The newspapers had been full of it. Stambolisky had turned against
our organization in Bulgaria, which had wanted to continue the fight against
the Bolsheviks by any and all means. Colonel Samokhvalov, our chief of staff
in Sofia, had been arrested and imprisoned. The membership roll of the
secret organization was found in his desk. Except for the colonel and
myself, who had been alerted in time, everyone had been arrested. General
Pokrovsky had been killed by the police during arrest and General Koutiepov,
commander-in-chief of the Russian troops in Bulgaria, had been expelled.
So, General Pokrovsky, the colonel, and the lieutenant colonel were the
treasure's first victims. There would be others. I was so upset that I
couldn't sleep in spite of my exhaustion. I was the sole survivor among
those who knew about the treasure. What made it all the more strange was
that I had learned of its existence only recently, and that those who had
gathered it were all dead. I was overwhelmed by the responsibility.
Should I speak to the highest ranking Russian military authorities? The
three of us had solemnly sworn to General Pokrovsky not to reveal anything
without his explicit permission. But now the general was dead and my promise
had no more force. Whom should I tell? Considering the moral standard of our
high-ranking officers -- with the exception of Denikine and Wrangel-the
treasure would certainly be misappropriated in short order. By the next
morning I had made a decision to speak of the treasure to no one for the
time being. It was securely hidden, though I had no way of recovering it.
Later I would confide in someone I trusted absolutely.
I had breakfast with the officers, borrowed a little Turkish money, and
promised to return in the evening. I set off downtown. The first thing I had
to do was change some money to buy some clothes. At Galata I found a Greek
money changer and changed fifty English pounds, quite a large sum for the
times.
All the foreign diplomatic missions were still functioning in
Constantinople. The Russian military attache was quite helpful when he'd
heard my story. On the spot, he provided me with identity papers, in Russian
and French, under the name of Sergei Orel, as he thought it would be safer
not to use my real name until public interest in the Sofia affair died down.
He asked me whether I had any money. I was faced with a dilemma. If I said
yes, it would seem strange, given the general poverty of the Russian
refugees. On the other hand, I knew he couldn't be very well off and it
embarrassed me to take money I didn't need. I replied that two or three
Turkish pounds would do me for the moment. He seemed relieved and added,
since I had told him I had borrowed the clothes I was wearing, "I'll give
you a letter to Mme. IIovaiskaia, the general's daughter, who is secretary
to Miss Mitchell, the head of the American Red Cross. She will outfit you
from head to toe."
I thanked the general sincerely and promised to let him know my address
as soon as I had found somewhere to live. At the headquarters of the
American Red Cross, Mme. IIovaiskaia provided me with a fine blue pinstripe
suit (with a label from a Philadelphia tailor), shirts and underwear, shoes,
and even a hat.
A month later, I received a visit at my small hotel in Galata from an
officer who served the military attache. His superior wanted to see me as
soon as possible. The next morning, when I went to the embassy, the general
received me promptly. He led me into a private office and closed the door
carefully. His first question took me off guard.
"What do you know of the treasure General Pokrovsky was guarding?"
"What treasure, Excellency?"
"You know nothing of it?"
"I only met General Pokrovsky, under whom I had served in Russia, two
months before I fled Bulgaria. The general never spoke to me of any
treasure. I have no idea whether such a thing exists."
"In that case, essaoul, let me ask you where you got the money you have
been spending. You told me you had no money and I lent you five Turkish
pounds. Now you are living in a hotel that, modest as it is, costs a pound a
day. You eat in a restaurant every day that must cost another pound. You
bought a suit from an Armenian tailor. Over and above this, I know that you
have given over one hundred Turkish pounds to various refugees. Allow me to
ask you where this money -- a small fortune for a refugee -- comes from."
They've been watching me ever since I got to Constantinople, I said to
myself. If only I had told him that General Pokrovsky had given each of his
aides a small amount. Too late now. "It is true, Excellency, that I had no
money when I arrived. What I did not say -- and I don't know why I should
have-is that I brought a few valuables from Russia, including a heavy gold
cigarette box signed by Faberge. It was a family heirloom and I didn't want
to sell it but as you know, there is no work here and I was forced to." (In
fact, I had sold it in Yugoslavia.)
"In that case, you can tell me to whom you sold it."
"To an American tourist on the Mauritania. I didn't want to sell it in
a jewelry shop. They're all run by Greeks and Armenians. You know what a
ridiculous price they would have given me."
He was looking me in the eye and I stared back. Then he asked me to let
him know where I could be reached if I left the hotel, but I never saw him
again.
I stayed at the hotel two more months, until my money ran out, and then
I moved into a boardinghouse for refugees where it was only five piasters
for a bed for the night. It was a wooden building and, like many Turkish
houses, harbored a fantastic colony of bedbugs that were impossible to get
rid of. The only solution would have been to burn the whole thing down,
bedbugs and all. The beds were made of iron and we burned out every possible
hiding place on them with gasoline. Then we set the legs in tin cans of
gasoline but the damned bugs crawled up to the ceiling and dropped down on
us while we slept. Sometimes, when I was half crazy with them, I would take
my bedclothes and sleep on the lawn of one of the abandoned cemeteries in
the city.
Then the day arrived when I didn't even have the five piasters. It was
winter, an unpleasant season in Constantinople, with icy winds and rain
almost every day. I was facing disaster and had nowhere to turn. Once more,
good luck intervened. On the main street of Pera I saw someone who looked
familiar. We gazed at each other and then we fell into each other's arms. It
was like a miracle. At the military school at Irkutsk, my bunk and
Teliatnikov's had been next to each other. He was from Tashkent, had been an
assistant manager of a bank, and was forty years old; I was then just
eighteen. Now he told me of how he had escaped from Russia through
Vladivostok, had roamed over half the world and ended up in Constantinople.
For two years now he had been the chief accountant at the Nobel Company, the
principal owner of the Baku oil fields. The Bolsheviks were selling Nobel
his own oil. My friend thought it couldn't last because the communists
needed the oil badly themselves and were only selling it for foreign
credits. He loaned me a little money and promised to try to help. Two days
later he arranged for me to come to work for Nobel as a gasoline salesman.
So there I was, with a Crimean Tartar driver who spoke Turkish. Every
day we went to a different neighborhood in a specially equipped wagon drawn
by two mules carrying twenty- and fifty-liter cans. Most often I had to
carry them on my shoulders because the streets were too narrow or too steep
for the wagon. The driver helped me but it was still very hard work. I stank
so of gas that people turned away as I passed. I had to sleep in the stable
with the mules but I got pretty good pay, ate three meals a day, and my
compatriots envied me my job. Twice a week it brought me to the rear of the
famous Pera Palace Hotel, where I gazed at the lovely women on the arms of
the Allied officers. The Italian officers, with the comic opera uniforms,
were the most elegant.
I still did not know what to do about the treasure- whether I should
abandon it forever or tell the right person. Who was the right person?
I worked at Nobel for four months and got to know Constantinople as few
foreigners do. I also learned to speak Turkish in order to bargain with the
grocers. But when Nobel stopped buying oil, I was out of work again.
After a few days of near panic, I heard that the English army was
hiring Russian refugees to work on their bases in the Dardanelles. I had no
idea what kind of work it was but I had no choice so I signed on for a year.
A boat took us to an English base on the right bank of the straits facing
Chanak, where we were lodged in unheated Turkish army barracks. We slept on
the bare wooden floor and shivered with cold day and night. It rained all
the time and the wind was freezing. We could never get our clothing dry.
Canned meat and soup were the only hot food we had and so we were
perpetually hungry. We used to steal a few cartons of food once in a while
but eventually we stopped as a point of honor. We worked hard and long in
the rain and mud. The English noncoms treated us like prisoners even though
we were free workers. A lot of the time, we worked unloading heavy cases of
shells. I wondered why the British were stockpiling so much militarv
material when their war was over. Kemal Pasha was continuing his successful
campaign against the Greeks but the English had remained neutral in that
conflict.
About a month after I arrived, we were ordered to unload cases of heavy
artillery shells. Four men could hardly lift the cases. Since I spoke
English, my comrades designated me to inform the sergeant that we could not
and would not. The cases were unwieldy and if one fell, we would be blown to
bits. The sergeant was well aware of this and kept his distance. I
approached him, but instead of listening to our complaint, he started to
curse at me as only an English sergeant can. "You have no right to insult
me," I said. "I am not a prisoner or a slave."
He went wild, and dragged me by the arm to the major in charge. I took
off my cap. The major put his on. He sentenced me to a hundred and
sixty-eight hours (why a hundred and sixty-eight hours instead of a week?)
in prison for disobedience. I was not permitted to utter one word. They
locked me in a barbed wire enclosure with two tents where there were three
other Russians, who were being punished for refusing to eat corned beef
every day.
It was the first time I had ever been locked up. At the crack of dawn
we were rousted out with yelling and swearing. All day, with only a short
break for lunch, we were made to run on the double to the beach, fill a
fifty-kilo bag with sand, run back to the prison with it, and empty it onto
a pile. When the pile was large enough, we took the sand back bag by bag to
where we'd gotten it. When we slowed down, the English soldiers threatened
us with long clubs.
One night after it had rained for twenty-four hours the tents were
flooded up to our knees. We complained to the guards but all they would
allow us to do was fill some sacks with sand and pile them up so we could
squat on them. We were trembling with the cold, our teeth chattering so that
we could barely talk.
The next day I told my companion, a sublieutenant, that I had decided
to break out and that he was welcome to come with me. He agreed. I had
noticed that by lifting the barbed wire where we gathered the sand you could
dig a ditch deep enough to slip under. The next night the rain stopped but
there came a very strong wind, almost of hurricane force. Our tents were
almost blown away but fortunately it was a dark, starless night. We waited
until very late and then slipped out of the tent. We filled some sacks with
damp sand and slipped them one by one under the wire. This opened up a
narrow passageway. It took a long time and we were very nervous. The guards,
who slept in a small wooden barracks at the far end of the compound, could
emerge at any moment and they would almost certainly shoot us. Our hands
were bleeding from the barbed wire. My companion was smaller than I and
slipped out easily. I had some trouble but I finally managed to squeeze
through.
We took the road that ran along the strait to Gallipoli. Late in the
morning, when were some distance from the camp, my companion suddenly
shouted, "Watch out. They're after us." Sure enough, there were two British
soldiers on bicycles with dogs about a kilometer away and moving toward us.
There was nowhere to retreat to. On the right was the water, and on the
left a steep rise covered with thick underbrush. Ahead about three hundred
yards away there was a small bay, where four men were unloading stone blocks
onto the bank. Without stopping to think, we 'dashed toward them. They were
Turks. I explained that the English were after us because we didn't want to
work for them and as soon as they heard the magic word ourousse they said,
"Jump into the felucca."
When the English soldiers got there five minutes later, we were one
hundred yards from the shore. The dogs were barking angrily at having lost
their trail and the English soldiers concluded that we must be underwater.
They waited around for an hour or two before returning to base. In the
evening, the Turks reentered the cove. It was too late to work so they
dropped anchor about fifty meters from shore and invited us to spend the
night. We accepted gratefully. They gave us tincture of iodine for our hands
and a meal of grilled fish and sour milk. Our hosts began to sing and again,
over and over, we heard the name Kemal Pasha. The night passed uneventfully
and early the next morning, we thanked our rescuers and pressed on to
Gallipoli.
The appearance of the city, which was empty and abandoned, was
sinister. It was bizarre to see a good-sized city inhabited by nothing but
wild cats, who would run when we approached, and by pigs darting in every
direction. Finally we found a few French soldiers who were
^
guarding the lighthouse, and four Russians -- the sole survivors of
General Koutiepov's army, which had been evacuated into Bulgaria and
Yugoslavia. A single trace of their encampment remained -- a pyramid of
stones. Every soldier and officer had brought one stone to build it, the
inscription read. This moving monument was all that testified to the fate of
an "army of chevaliers," as one French writer called it.
The Russians told us that the Greek population had abandoned the city,
when Kemal Pasha's army reached the opposite shore of the Sea of Marmara. It
was better to be a refugee in Greece than face the Turkish soldiers, who did
not treat Greeks gently.
When I got back to Constantinople, I faced the same problems as before:
I was a penniless refugee in a city where there was no work to be found.
There was a three-or four-month waiting list to emigrate to America and even
then I would have had to have at least twenty-five Turkish pounds, which I
had no way of getting.
Once again, a solution presented itself -- to enlist in the Foreign
Legion. My companion and I went to the recruitment office and were
interviewed by a French officer. "Formal swearing in," he informed us "will
take place at Fort Saint-Jean in Marseilles. In the meantime, you will be
lodged and fed at the post here."
He gave us a note for the commanding officer. The post was a formidable
building surrounded by high walls that looked more like a prison than an
army camp. We arrived at mealtime, and for the first time in three days ate
all we wanted. It wasn't very good, but as the saying goes, we didn't look a
gift horse in the mouth. However, we realized immediately that we were
trapped. Once inside there was no getting out. The next day, a transport
ship arrived from Marseilles. Some legionnaires who were being demobilized
for illness or wounds stopped at the post on their way back home. There were
Serbs, Bulgarians, and Rumanians. Needless to say, we asked them about life
in the legion.
Their response was unanimous: "The legion is living hell. You work on
the roads twelve hours a day in the broiling sun. At night, as often as not,
you have to fight , since Morocco is in open revolt. The discipline is cruel
and punishment is brutal. The only relief, when you get your lousy pay, is
to get drunk enough to forget."
All we could think of was to escape. In two days the transport would
leave for Marseilles and formal enlistment, which would mean five years of
hell. But we didn't know how escape would be possible. We had noticed that
certain trusties went out in the evening, and there were also some civilian
employees, mostly Greeks, who left for the night. They had to show their
exit permits to a noncommissioned officer. On alternate days, the officer in
charge was a Sengalese who did not even read the papers, just waved the men
on. My comrade and I did have Russian military identity papers. We waited
for the Sengalese noncom to come on duty and got in line. We flashed our
papers at him and he let us pass. Once outside, we ran as fast as we could.
The next day I remembered that the owner of the Russian newspaper in
Constantinople, a man named Maxi-mov, had known my father. I went to ask him
for work. By chance, the man who had distributed the papers to the retail
dealers had just left for America, so I inherited his menial job. It paid
just enough to feed me and allow me to feed my blood to the bedbugs that
infested the quarters reserved for Russian refugees. I couldn't go on like
this. I had to find a way to get out.
One day I read in one of the newspapers I distributed that a ship
headed for Marseilles with a French regiment would also take Russian
refugees who had French visas. I was off that day, so I went up to the
Galata port. Maybe I would have a chance to say good-bye to someone I knew.
And I did meet a lieutenant I had known. He had studied at the conservatory
and now led a Russian orchestra and had a three-month engagement in a
nightclub in* Nice. Out of the blue, he said: "Do you want to go to France?"
"Of course. What a question! But how? I have no money and no visa."
"But it's very simple, my friend. Get your bags, get on board, and I'll
tell the boarding officer that your name is on the group passport."
I ran home, grabbed my two bags, ran back and up the long gangplank
right into the arms of the boarding officer "Passport?" he asked. From below
the orchestra leader yelled up, "He's with us. His name is on the group pass
port.
After a bit he came on board and hid me with their baggage. I waited
there for six or seven hours, scared to death. Then I heard the most
beautiful sound imaginable, the ship's whistle; we were under way.
Eventually, my friend came to rescue me. "You can come out now. Even if they
find you out, there's nothing they can do. You're on your way to
Marseilles."
The crossing took five days. The French soldiers fed me from their
rations.
so, FOR THE FOURTH TIME, I was fleeing, leaving behind what little I
possessed. What would become of me in Marseilles? The thought tormented me.
But when we arrived, it turned out that there were about twenty of my
compatriots on board in the same fix I was in, with no passport or visas.
"These damned Russians," the commissioner of the port police said with a
tolerant smile, "they keep arriving from all sides." They let us in and
ordered us to go to the Russian consulate to get proper papers and then to
report to the local employment office.
It was September 24, 1923. Everything was odd in this land of my dreams
that I now saw for the first time . . . both strange and enchanting. After
four years of nightmare, the French were living life to the hilt. There was
a lot of construction and workers were needed everywhere. Things were cheap
and one could actually live on one's salary. In their effort to forget
hardship and bereavement, the French were living as if there were no
tormorrow.
All of us were offered work in the Departement of the Aisne in a metal
factory near Soissons, not far from Laon. We were issued tickets for the
train and set out, hungry and somewhat bewildered. None of us had a penny in
his pocket and we were happy Just to get where we were going. Our good humor
was short-lived. We disembarked, not even at a station, but at a makeshift
wooden barrack. The surroundings looked like a picture of the moon --
completely barren, not a tree, nothing but trenches and excavations. We
asked a railroad clerk where the metal factory was. He gazed back at us with
an ironic expression. "The factory? Well, you see the road that goes up the
hill over there? When you reach the top, you will see your factory." He
smiled. In spite of our hunger, we formed a small military detachment and
marched off, singing. We got to the top of the hill. There was no factory.
There were about twenty barracks and long rows of something we could not
make out. (They turned out to be piles of shells and shrapnel.) A youngster
came along on a bicycle and I asked where the factory was. "What factory?"
he asked. I showed him the paper that had been given us in Marseilles with
the name of the factory. "There is no factory here. Look at your papers. You
see, it's in Alsace. All we do here is to gather the shells from the fields,
defuse them, and send them to the factory."
We had been tricked once again. Now we were under contract for a year
and we had been lied to about the nature of the work, and not told anything
of the dangers involved. We agreed that we could not accept it and that we
would announce our decision as soon as we arrived at the barracks. As we
drew closer, we could see that one of the barracks flew the banner of the
Red Cross. I asked to speak to whoever was in charge, and a man came out
immediately to greet us. When we told him our decision, he blew up. "How
dare you? Do you think I'm an idiot? You signed for a year's work, your trip
was paid for, and now you refuse to work. You are asking to be put in jail.
I'll telephone the police to come and arrest you."
"You are the one who should be under arrest, monsieur," I replied.
"Look at my papers. It says in black and white that we are supposed to work
in a metal factory. Where is the factory? We've been lied to and we're not
such idiots that we're going to get killed for a few francs. There is a Red
Cross barrack full of injured men. We're the ones who are going to
complain."
He changed his tune. "Listen, the work really isn't dangerous and I'll
raise your salary if that's the problem." We laughed at him and went off to
find the mayor.
"This is not the first time," he told us, "that these people have
deceived their workers. You are absolutely correct to refuse. My advice to
you is to go to Laon and apply for work at the labor office."
We had eaten nothing for two days and I felt as if my legs were about
to cave in. I had made friends with a lieutenant about my age and we had
decided to hang in together. The others had left before us, so by the time
we arrived at the employment office, they had already been hired by a
threshing factory. The only jobs left were on a farm in the village of
Chalandry -- it was called the Chateau-Chalandry and was about seven miles
away. We must have looked pretty sour at the prospect of such a long walk
because the office manager finally asked us when we had last eaten. When he
heard, he gave us some bread and butter.
We walked to the farm by fields of sugar beets. We ate one of them and
felt a little better. I remember that we arrived at the farm at suppertime.
We had expected something grand because it was called a "chateau," but it
was only a mediocre farm with a silly-looking tower, from which it must have
gotten its name.
The farmhouse was in the middle of a large courtyard surrounded by
barns. We saw an old man, one of the owners. He ran the farm with his
brother-in-law. "Do you know how to do farm work?" he asked. My companion
did not speak French so I answered for both: "Yes, sir. We know all about
farms. We used to be farm workers." He looked at us skeptically. "I don't
really believe you were farmers, but we'll see about that." He looked over
our papers and then invited us into the kitchen for something to eat. "If
you work as well as you eat," he said, "I have made a good bargain."
After supper, he took us over to a ladder. "Climb up there," he told
us. "There are blankets and someone will wake you in the morning."
I was so exhausted that when someone waked me up I felt as if I had
slept for only an hour. After a measly breakfast, we went out to pick beets.
We had arrived at the hardest work season of the year. We used huge
pitchforks to load the beets onto horse-drawn wagons. The beets were deep in
the earth and it took tremendous effort to pry them loose. We were weak from
malnutrition, and by noon of the first day our hands were bleeding. My
friend was in better shape than I was, and not nearly so done in. "You do
what you like," I told him as we walked back to the farmhouse for lunch,
"but I can't manage. Look at my hands."
"I'm still okay," he said, "but if you have to quit, I'm going too."
Just then the other owner came over to me. "From now on you'll be in
charge of the cows. You'll be told what to do." I accepted this new
assignment gladly, and slept contentedly in the barn with my cows for the
next eight months.
I took care of the cows and the whole dairy as well. Usually, I had to
get the hay ready and load it. I was badly exploited, working twelve hours a
day for a few dollars a month and lousy food. The older brother was at least
agreeable, but the younger one was plain mean, stu-. pid and brutal. I used
to fantasize about punching him in the nose, but I never did it. I had to
earn enough money to get away and find something better.
I don't really regret those eight months. Working on the land is
healthy and satisfying and I had never worked with my hands before. I got
back some measure of physical strength and even acquired a bit of patience.
When I had saved about two hundred and fifty dollars I left. My
companion had already quit. I went to the Employment Office in Laon and
found a better-paying and safer job in Resigny as a wagon driver at one of
the processing plants of a huge dairy company. Each morning I drove a wagon
all around the neighborhood, collecting about two thousand gallons of milk.
I got back to the plant about noon. The milk was processed, and in the
afternoon it was loaded onto trucks in cans and early the next morning sold
in Paris. It was pleasant work, especially in the summer. The Ardennes
forest reminded me a little of my native Caucasus. I planned to stay long
enough to save five hundred dollars and then try my luck in Paris.
I used to subscribe to a Paris newspaper to keep up with what was going
on in the rest of the world. And since I was absorbed by the affairs of the
Russian emigres, I also took the two most important Russian-language papers
that were published in Paris. Rut all this time I was thinking more and more
seriously about "my" treasure . . . the treasure of the White Army.
It was crucial for me to understand the interconnections between the
various groups of emigres to figure out whom I could eventually go to for
help to recover at least part of the treasure. I had already made one firm
decision:
I would not offer the treasure, or any part of it, to the exiled
Russian military organizations. These organizations had sprung up
everywhere, under the leadership of General Wrangel. Later, after his death
in 1928, General Koutiepov assumed the role of leader. Rut the Civil War was
over. We were defeated and in exile. All we could do now was to adjust to
our new circumstances and understand that there was no possibility of
overthrowing the Soviet regime from abroad. General Koutiepov and all the
exiled class of officers dreamed of nothing else; I shared their passions,
needless to say, but I had come to terms with reality. Many Russians,
blinded by their hatred of Rolshevism, could not understand that aggressive
action against the communist government from abroad would only reinforce the
regime. The White organizations were riddled with provocateurs and double
agents; even General Skoblin, who had commanded one of the most brilliant of
the White regiments, had betrayed us. General Koutiepov and his successor,
General Miller, were both kidnapped, to the consternation of the French
press. What kind of organizations were these, whose leaders could be
kidnapped in broad daylight in the middle of Paris? I was not going to share