The proof that I was actually watched and waited for thrilled me anew. It also alarmed me when my friend explained how deeply my Government was affronted. Soon the alarm outgrew the thrill and in the end I quite broke down. Then the woman in her, touched with pity, apparently displaced the adventuress. We took counsel together and she showed me a way out.
"Your document," she said, "has a Russian as well as a German importance. Why not try St. Petersburg since Berlin is hostile? For the sake of what you bring, Russia might give shelter and protection."
Remember, I was very young and she was all kindness. Yes, she discovered for me the avenue of escape and she set my foot upon it in the most motherly way. And I unknowingly took my first humble lesson in the great art of intrigue. For, as I learned years afterwards, that woman was not a German agent but a Russian!
But at that time I was all innocent gratitude for her kindness. I was thankful enough to proceed to St. Petersburg by way of Italy, Constantinople and Odessa. Of course, she must have designated a man unknown to me to travel with me, and make sure that I reached the Russian capital. To my hotel in St. Petersburg, just as the woman had predicted, came an officer of the political police, who courteously asked me not to leave the building for twenty-four hours. The next day the man from the Okrana, or Secret Police, came again. This time he had a droshky waiting, with one of those bull-necked, blue corduroy-robed, muscular Russian jehus on the box. We were driven down the Nevsky Prospekt to a palace. Here I soon found myself in the presence of a man I did not then know as Count Witte. He greeted me kindly, merely remarking that he had heard I was in some difficulties, and offering me aid and advice. My letter was not referred to and the interview ended.
So began the process of drawing me out. A fortnight later the matter of my information was broached openly and the suggestion was made that if I delivered it to the Russian Government, high officials would be friendly and a career assured me in Russia, as I grew up. But by that time Germany had changed her attitude. Her agents also reached me in St. Petersburg. From them I received a new assurance of the importance of the document. If I would release it so the German agent who came to my hotel told me and keep my tongue still, Berlin would pardon my indiscretion and assure me a career at home. Russia or Germany? My decision was quickly made. That very night I was smuggled out of St. Petersburg and whisked across the frontier at Alexandrovna into Germany; and the letter passed out of my hands for the time being.
CHAPTER IIDIAMOND CUT DIAMOND
I impersonate a Russian Prince and steal a Treaty What the Treaty contained and how Germany made use of the knowledge.
GROSS LICHTERFELDE! As I write, it all comes back to me clearly, in spite of the full years that have passed this, my first home in Berlin. A huge pile of buildings set in a suburb of the city, grim and military in appearance; and in fact, as I soon discovered.
I was to become a cadet, it seems; and where in Germany could one receive better training than in this same Gross Lichterf elde?
At home I had had some small experience with the exactions of the gymnasium; but now I found that this was so much child's play in comparison with the life at Gross Lichterf elde. We were drilled and dragooned from morning till night: mathematics, history, the languages they were not taught us, they were literally pounded into us. And the military training! I am not unfamiliar with the curricula of Sandhurst, of St. Cyr, even of West Point, but I honestly believe that the training we had to undergo was fully as arduous and as technical as at any of those schools. And we were only boys.
Military strategy and tactics; sanitation; engineering; chemistry; in fact, any and every study that could conceivably be of use to the future officers of the German Army; to all of these must we apply ourselves with the utmost diligence. And woe to the student who shirked!
