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"Early. "
She laughed. "You never pretend, Gus, do you? I love that about you. "
That was good. I love that about you was not the same as I love you but
it was better than nothing. "Early it is," he said.
"What shall we do?"
"It's Sunday. " He said the first thing that came into his head. "We could go to church. "
"All right. "
"Let me take you to Notre Dame. "
"Are you Catholic?" she said in surprise.
"No, Episcopalian, if anything. You?"
"The same. "
"It's all right, we can sit at the back. I'll find out what time mass is and phone your hotel. "
She held out her hand and they shook like friends. "Thank you for a lovely evening," she said formally.
"It was such a pleasure. Good night. "
"Good night," she said, and she turned away and disappeared into the hotel lobby.
Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - March to April 1919
When the snow melted, and the iron-hard Russian earth turned to rich wet mud, the White armies made a mighty effort to rid their country of the curse of Bolshevism. Admiral Kolchak's force of one hundred thousand, patchily supplied with British uniforms and guns, came storming out of Siberia and attacked the Reds over a front that stretched seven hundred miles from north to south.
Fitz followed a few miles behind the Whites. He was leading the Aberowen Pals, plus some Canadians and a few interpreters. His job was to stiffen Kolchak by supervising communications, intelligence, and supply.
Fitz had high hopes. There might be difficulties, but it was unimaginable that Lenin and Trotsky would be allowed to steal Russia.
At the beginning of March he was in the city of Ufa on the European side of the Ural Mountains, reading a batch of week-old British newspapers. The news from London was mixed. Fitz was delighted that Lloyd George had appointed Winston Churchill as secretary for war. Of all the leading politicians, Winston was the most vigorous supporter of intervention in Russia. But some of the papers took the opposite side. Fitz was not surprised by the Daily Herald and the New Statesman, which in his view were more or less Bolshevik publications anyway. But even the Conservative Daily Express had a headline reading WITHDRAW FROM RUSSIA.
Unfortunately, they also had accurate details of what was going on. They even knew that the British had helped Kolchak with the coup that had abolished the directorate and made him supreme ruler. Where were they getting the information? He looked up from the paper. He was quartered in the city's commercial college, and his aide-de-camp sat at the opposite desk. "Murray," he said, "next time there's a batch of mail from the men to be sent home, bring it to me first. "
This was irregular, and Murray looked dubious. "Sir?"
Fitz thought he had better explain. "I suspect information may be getting back from here. The censor must be asleep at the wheel. "
"Perhaps they think they can slacken off now that the war in Europe has ended. "
"No doubt. Anyway, I want to see whether the leak is in our section of the pipe. "
The back page of the paper had a photograph of the woman leading the "Hands Off Russia" campaign, and Fitz was startled to see that it was Ethel. She had been a housemaid at Ty Gwyn but now, the Express said, she was general secretary of the National Garment Workers Union.
He had slept with many women since then-most recently, in Omsk, a stunning Russian blonde, the bored mistress of a fat tsarist general who was too drunk and lazy to fuck her himself. But Ethel shone out in his memory. He wondered what her child was like. Fitz probably had half a dozen bastards around the world, but Ethel's was the only one he knew of for sure.
And she was the one whipping up protest against intervention in Russia. Now Fitz knew where the information was coming from. Her damn brother was a sergeant in the Aberowen Pals. He had always been a troublemaker, and Fitz had no doubt he was briefing Ethel. Well, Fitz thought, I'll catch him out, and then there will be hell to pay.
Over the next few weeks the Whites raced ahead, driving before them the surprised Reds, who had thought the Siberian government a spent force. If Kolchak's armies could link up with their supporters in Archangel, in the north, and with Denikin's Volunteer Army in the south, they would form a semicircular force, a curved eastern scimitar a thousand miles long that would sweep irresistibly to Moscow.
