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said. "I'd got away from all that muck, just when I was beginning to think I never would."
    The tone of relief in which he said that silenced me abruptly. It silenced me then, and it has done so ever since. For him, service with the Soviet meant a deliverance from hell, and a [Pg 25] chance to get away and make a fresh start. That was a great injury that his wife did him when she went.
    It was a sort of Polish Jew who interviewed him. He took Lenden through it pretty thoroughly, asking him the most searching questions about his war service. He was particularly anxious to know whether he had had any experience on post-war single-seater fighting machines. Lenden had done half an hour on one of the earlier Siskins, and made some capital out of that; for the rest he judged it better to speak the truth.
    They sent him away with instructions to come back next day. In the interval they must have looked up his record at the Air Ministry in some occult manner, for they told him quite a lot about himself that he hadn't mentioned before. Then they gave him a pretty stiff medical examination, and then they photographed him. And finally they presented him with a contract, drawn up and ready for him to sign; eight hundred a year for a two years' engagement, with repatriation at the end of it. He signed it on the spot, and they gave him thirty pounds salary in advance.
    "You could have knocked me down with a feather," he said. "But they've treated me damn well all through. I know they're dirty dogs in other ways, of course. I've seen it—a damn sight too much of it, out there. But they've always given me a square deal, and I don't mind saying so. Jews mostly—all that I've had anything to do with. And you mostly get a square deal in business from the Jews."
    In three days' time they sent him his passport and some tickets. He went out to Russia indirectly, travelling under an assumed name. There was a place up on the hills behind Ventimiglia, he said, the villa of an Italian profiteer, that seemed to serve as a centre for their activities in that part of Europe, and it was to this place that he was told to go. He reported there in due course, and the next day he was sent on through Austria and Poland into Russia. He had a fair command of languages that he had picked up through flying about the continent, and the travelling didn't present many difficulties. From San Remo he travelled on a forged American passport.
    [Pg 26] They sent him first to Moscow. He did a little flying there, and in about ten days' time he was sent on down to Kieff, where they were forming a squadron for instruction in advanced fighting.
    "We're a pretty mixed crowd," he said. "Most of the instructors out there are Germans, but there were a couple of English there before me, and one or two French and Italians." He shifted in his chair. "Never hit it off very well with the other two English out there—not my sort. The Germans aren't a bad crowd, though. There's one chap there that I got to know pretty well—a fellow called Keumer, who comes from Noremburg. Married, with two or three children. Like the-rest of us—couldn't get anything to do in his own place. Used to fly a Halberstadt in the war—in our part of the line, to. He's a damn stout lad. We live in pairs out there, in little three-roomed huts, and after a bit I went and shared his place."
    He stared reflectively into the fire. "Kieff's a good town," he said. "It must have been better before the Revolution, but it's a good spot still. They put us out beyond Pechersk, with the aerodrome about a mile from the river. Not much to do away from the aerodrome. You can go into the town—they lend us a car whenever we want it—and eat a heavy meal with the Germans. Or you can go toying with Amaryllis—there's any amount of that to be had for the asking. Or you can go to the cinema and see Douglas Fairbanks and Norma Talmadge and Mack Sennett pretty well as soon as you can see 'em in London, with Russian