Red Dusk and the Morrow by Paul Dukes — Read

Flight from the prison of "Soviet" Russia was as difficult a matter for me as for any Russian anxious to elude pursuit and escape unobserved. Several designs failed before I met with success. According to one of these I was to be put across the Finnish frontier secretly, but officially, by the Bolshevist authorities as a foreign propagandist, for which I was fitted by my knowledge of foreign languages. I was already in possession of several bushels of literature in half-a-dozen tongues which were to be delivered at a secret address in Finland when fighting unexpectedly broke out on the Finnish frontier, the regiment through which the arrangements were being made moved, and the plan was held up indefinitely. Before it could be renewed I had left Petrograd.

Another scheme was devised by a friend of mine, occupying a prominent position at the Admiralty, at the time when the British fleet was operating in the Gulf of Finland. On a certain day a tug was to be placed at the disposal of this officer for certain work near Kronstadt. The plan he invented was to tell the captain of the tug that he had been instructed to convey to the shores of Finland a British admiral who had secretly visited Petrograd to confer with the Bolsheviks. At midnight the tug would be alongside the quay. My friend was to fit me out in sailor's uniform and I was to pose as the disguised British admiral. Then, instead of stopping at Kronstadt, we should steam past the fort and escape, under the soviet flag and using soviet signals, to Finland. If the captain smelt a rat a revolver would doubtless quiet his olfactory nerve. But two days before the event, the famous British naval raid on Kronstadt was made and several Russian ships were sunk. My friend was ordered there at once to assist in reorganization, and I -- well, I failed to become an admiral.