I cannot say that he was a lively room companion. | The first night he hardly said a word and declined to come out with me into Cairo for a final fling. On my return from a pleasant and convivial evening he was asleep- or pretending to be. The second evening he was, if possible, even more depressed but did become somewhat loquacious. He said that he feared we were in for a difficult time in Moscow, and compared our situation to that of a captain who has lost his ship. No explanation would convince the director that it had not been our fault that we had lost the sources which the Centre valued so highly.
I attempted to reason with him and calm his fears. I pointed out that my arrest and the consequent breakdown of communications had been entirely the fault of the Centre. They had ordered transmissions to continue after the arrest of the Hamels and Bolli, when they knew that the heat was on. Also they had never given us sufficient funds to provide an adequate reserve of trained operators and spare transmitters. In any case, I added, the main sources, Werther and Olga and the others, still remained and could be made instantly available as soon as communications were re-established. Also the Centre had not been deprived of these sources altogether, as I had brought a quantity of material with me to Paris which had been sent back to Moscow; so that they had in fact the cream of all the material available for the year November 1943-November 1944 when the Swiss network had been out of touch.
This information really startled Rado and he became more depressed than before. He bewailed the fact that he had not discussed the matter with me in Paris. Rather unkindly, I pointed out that he had only himself to blame, as I had given him my address after our first meeting at the dinner and he had not bothered to come round. It was entirely his own fault that he was going to Moscow unaware of the true state of affairs, and as an old hand at the game, he must know the danger of putting in reports without bothering to see if they tallied with the facts.
There was a long silence after this, while Rado sat tapping his fingers on the small hotel table, lost in thought. Then he got up and left the room without a word. I never saw him again. The plane left next morning without him, and his hat, coat, and luggage remained in the hotel bedroom uncollected, mute evidence of a spy who had lost his nerve.
At six the next morning we took off again, and when we reached Teheran we were delayed for three days by bad weather. I spent most of the time with Myasnikoff, who was a much more entertaining roommate than poor Rado. He expressed his relief at having got out of the sphere of British influence with no difficulty. He confessed that he had been nervous, as he had ordered the shooting of a number of British officers as a reprisal for the execution of the commissars in Baku during the period of foreign intervention. He also said that he thought his past might be brought up against him as he, as high commissioner for the Urals, had ordered the execution of the Czar and the imperial family at Ekaterinburg against the strict orders of Lenin. He made no secret of his dislike for Stalin, whom he had known in Baku in the pre-Revolutionary days. At that time he was a brighter light in the Party than Stalin and on two occasions had had Stalin expelled from the Party for brigandage. This was a curious echo from that part of Stalin's less respectable past when, no doubt for the highest political motives, he had been engaged in several bank robberies in Georgia with his own small coterie who believed that brigandage was the best way to world revolution.
After a night in Baku, where we were met by the N.K.V.D., who got us through the customs and passport formalities with speed and ease, we took off for Moscow. We were to have been met in Baku by officials from the Centre, but they missed us, as we had changed planes at Teheran and they were waiting for the wrong plane.
When we had left Baku Myasnikoff got the pilot to send a signal to the airport to ask Molotov to send a car to meet him. (He was in fact met by one of the state Packards, but the grim faces of the escort made me think it unlikely that a very rosy future lay ahead for this man, one of the last veterans of the Revolution.)
At four o'clock on the afternoon of January 14, 1945, the plane touched down at the airport in Moscow. I was well and truly behind the Iron Curtain.
THE IRON CURTAIN CLOSES
We had not landed at the main Moscow airport, but at one of the smaller ones on the outskirts of the city. In fact only as we were coming down was it possible to catch a glimpse of the capital. It appeared quite un- bombed and indeed untouched by war. Like most buildings in Moscow, the airport had a shabby air and the concrete waiting hall was unadorned by any decoration nor was it warmed by any central heating, which would have been welcome as it was bitterly cold with snow on the ground. The only gesture towards luxury was a small wooden booth selling fruit juice.