I was horrified at my position, compelled as I was to convey the means of death to the hands of the German spy Tchernine, who had been placed as servant to the Russian commander. I saw that I must leave Petrograd for Minsk that night; therefore I set about preparing for my adventurous journey. Indeed, shortly before midnight I left the Gorokhovaya with the box of Swedish matches in my inner pocket.
The journey from Petrograd due south to Polotzk, where I had to change, proved an interminable one and occupied nearly two days, so congested was the line by military traffic and ambulance trains. At last on arrival there I joined a troop-train with reinforcements going to Minsk, where I duly alighted, to discover that General Brusiloff's headquarters were out at a village called Gorodok, about five miles distant, in the direction of Vilna. The evening was bitterly cold, and as I drove along I became filled with ineffable disgust of Rasputin and the disgraceful camarilla who were slowly but surely hurling the nation to its doom.
Had I refused to undertake that devilish mission, the monk would have instantly suspected me of double dealing, and sooner or later I should have met with an untimely end, as, alas! so many others had done. So completely had he placed me beneath his thumb that I was compelled to act as he dictated, in order to save my own life, for, as I have already explained, the "holy" man held the lives of those who displeased him very cheaply.
At headquarters, which proved to be a veritable hive of military activity, I posed to a sergeant as Tchernine's brother, and begged that I might see him. It was nearly dark as I stood with the man, who had roughly demanded my business there.
"I fear you will not be able to see him," he replied. "The Emperor has just arrived on a visit to headquarters, and he is with the general, and your brother is in attendance upon them."
Tchernine, a spy of Germany, was actually in attendance upon the Emperor, and hence could listen to the conversation between His Majesty and the army commander!
"But I have come all the way from Petrograd," I whined. "I have a message to give my brother from his wife, whom I fear is dying."
This moved the honest sergeant, who, calling one of his men, told him to go to Tchernine and tell him he was wanted immediately.
"Only for a few moments," I said. "I will not keep him from his duty more than two or three minutes—just to give him the message."
I waited alone in a small, bare hut for nearly half an hour, when the man returned with Brusiloff's servant.