It was very late in the afternoon when the train finally pulled into the Vladivostok station. As the passengers got off the train, everyone seemed to have somewhere to go except Gladys. She stood on yet another train station platform wondering what to do next. She scoured the station for clues, and she was rewarded when she saw a poster in English! It was an advertisement for the Intourist Hotel, and although it didn’t say exactly where it was, Gladys picked up her bags and headed out the door. She said the name “Intourist Hotel” many times to many different people before someone understood and pointed her in the right direction. With great relief, Gladys pushed through the revolving door of the hotel. She had hoped the hotel would remind her of home, but it didn’t. It was stark and dirty. A clerk beckoned to her, and she walked over to him. As he examined her passport and assigned her a room, the thought struck her that she had no way to pay for it, but she was too exhausted to care. She would worry about that later.
The clerk then waved her towards a short, chunky man with a crumpled uniform. Indeed, the uniform looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned for a month. But when she glanced down at her own dirty and torn clothes, Gladys realized she looked every bit as scruffy and unkempt as the man did. She walked over to him, and to her surprise he greeted her in reasonable English. He asked to see her passport and then grunted as he stuffed it into the front pocket of his uniform. Finally, he eased himself up from his chair and told Gladys to follow him. They climbed the stairs, at the top of which he opened the door into a damp and dreary room. The room wasn’t heated, but there was a quilt on the bed. The man saluted her, turned around, and headed back downstairs. Gladys closed the door, dropped her bags, and climbed into bed under the warm quilt. She slept late into the following morning.
When she awoke, Gladys looked at herself in the tiny mirror glued to the back of the door. She looked awful. Her face was thin, her hair was matted, and her dress, which she’d slept in, looked even more dirty and crumpled than it had the night before. She opened the door of her room a crack and looked out. To her astonishment, the official who had taken her passport the night before was leaning against the wall in the hallway, smoking a cigarette.
When he saw her, he let out an extra long puff of smoke and said, “I have been waiting to show you around our great city.”
“Oh,” replied Gladys, not sure what to do next. “I will be ready soon,” she said, shutting the door. She sat on the edge of the bed wondering what to do. Who was the man outside the door, and what did he want? Perhaps he wanted money, or the chance to practice his English. Gladys had no way of knowing. So finally she decided to do as he suggested, all the while looking out for clues that might tell her what he wanted.
For Gladys, the tour of the “great city” of Vladivostok was anything but great. The people of the city were thin and poorly dressed. They seemed to look right through Gladys without even seeing her. No one smiled, and the streets were so filled with potholes that Gladys quickly gave up trying to keep her feet dry and instead concentrated on finding the shallowest puddles to wade through. Everything seemed gray and unwashed. Gladys longed to see a splash of color, a flower, a billboard, or a brightly colored coat, anything to relieve the dreariness that surrounded her. She was grateful when finally they rounded a corner, and there in front of her was the Intourist Hotel. She spent the rest of the day in her room.
The following morning, the scene repeated itself. There was the official standing in the hallway waiting for her. Gladys was beginning to feel very uneasy about the whole arrangement. The official had told her the day before he was an interpreter, but the way he followed her every move, he seemed more like a prison guard. Gladys decided she needed some answers. She stepped out of her room and looked the man in the eye. “When do I get to go to Harbin?” she asked in her most commanding voice.
The official narrowed his eyes, and a shrewd smile crossed his face. “What makes you think you are leaving Russia?” he asked.
Gladys’s stomach was in knots, but she knew this was no time to panic. She spoke with a low, even voice. “I paid my fare from London to Tientsin, and if your railroad people were honest, they would see that I got there.”
“Oh, but you do not need to go to China to work with machines. We have need of machine workers right here,” said the official.
Gladys exploded. “It’s missionary, not machinery. I have never worked a machine in my life, and I didn’t come to Russia to start. I’m going to China,” she yelled as she turned and stomped down the stairs.
The gray city of Vladivostok matched her mood as she wandered around. The official was never more than a few feet behind her. As she walked, she prayed. She sensed she was in more danger now than she had been in walking back up the railroad tracks to Chita. The official had her passport, he was the only person she knew who spoke English, her food rations had finally run out that morning, and she had one English pound note to her name. Worst of all, no one back in England knew where she was. She wasn’t even supposed to be anywhere near Vladivostok. If she were whisked off to repair machinery in some distant part of Siberia, no one would ever know what had happened to her. And unless she did something soon, Gladys was quite sure she could well end up an unwilling machinist in a Russian factory instead of a missionary in China. The question for her was, how could she get away from the official and from Vladivostok?
Chapter 5
The Knock on the Door
Gladys picked her way through the slimy puddles back to the Intourist Hotel. It had been an aimless day of wandering the streets with her “interpreter” close behind. The revolving door of the Intourist Hotel clicked as she pushed on it, and then she heard it click again as the interpreter followed her through the door. Inside the lobby, Gladys glanced around. The interpreter was lighting yet another cigarette and pulling up his chair at the foot of the stairs. Short of crawling out of her second-story window, Gladys could think of no way to escape from him. With her shoulders slumped forward, she climbed the stairs to her room. As she did so, a young girl about seventeen years of age brushed past her. As the girl passed her, Gladys thought she heard her whisper in perfect English, “Don’t say anything and follow me.” She turned to see whether she was imagining it, but the girl with long, straight black hair was looking the other way. Gladys wondered whether in her desperation to escape she was beginning to imagine things. Her heart beat fast as she turned and followed the girl down the corridor at the top of the stairs. As she rounded a corner in the corridor, Gladys was suddenly grabbed by the sleeve of her orange dress and pulled into a darkened doorway.
“Who are you?” she asked as her eyes adjusted to the shadows.
“That does not matter,” whispered the girl. “You are in great danger.”
Gladys nodded.
“Your passport?” the girl asked.
“The official has it,” replied Gladys.
“You must get it back at all costs,” said the girl in an urgent voice. “Look at it carefully. The Communists are desperate for skilled workers. I have seen other foreigners taken to the interior and never heard of again.”
A chill ran down Gladys’s spine.
“You get your passport,” the girl repeated before continuing. “You will hear a knock at your door at midnight. Go with the man quickly. Do not speak to him. Do not look closely at him. Just go fast.”
Gladys nodded. She felt as though she were a character in a bad spy novel. Yet it wasn’t a story; it was really happening to her.
The girl turned and walked away. With shaking hands, Gladys smoothed a piece of hair that had fallen from her bun. She walked back down the stairs to where the official was sitting in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head and his boots crossed on the table. He didn’t bother to move them as Gladys spoke to him.
“You have my passport,” she said looking down into his cold eyes. “I need it back now.” She spoke in her firmest voice.
“It is still being examined. I will bring it to your room,” the official said, and then looking Gladys up and down, he added, “tonight.”
Gladys stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat to hide the fact they were shaking violently with fear. What if the two men arrived at her room at the same time? She didn’t want to think about it. She turned and climbed the stairs again.
For most of the evening she sat shivering on the edge of the bed with her fur coat tucked around her legs trying to keep warm. Finally, she heard a loud knock on the door. When she opened the door, she saw the official standing in front of her holding a British passport in his right hand. The official stuck his foot in the doorway so that Gladys couldn’t shut the door, and then he waved the passport and leered at her. Gladys could see he had more on his mind than just delivering her passport. Quickly, before she even thought about what she was doing, she snatched the passport from the official’s hand and threw it back over her head into the room. The surprised official took two steps into the room. He stood so close to Gladys that she could smell the cigarettes on his breath.
“Why did you do that?” he asked in a mocking voice. “I told you I was coming to visit you tonight.” He shut the door firmly behind himself.
For a moment Gladys was frozen to the floor with fear. Then she suddenly jumped backwards, screaming, “You can’t touch me. You can’t touch me. God will protect me.”
Her desperation seemed to amuse the official, who laughed heartily. “You forget, you are a woman alone in a strange country. I can do what I like.”
Gladys repeated herself. “You can’t touch me. God will protect me.” As she spoke, the official began to curse her in English. He raised his hand to punch her, but his hand stopped in midair. Instead, as if guided by some invisible force, he turned around, opened the door, and walked out.
Gladys breathed a deep sigh of relief, and with trembling hands quickly bolted the door. She stooped down and picked up her passport. She remembered what the girl had said about examining it. And sure enough, there on the first page of the passport, her occupation had been altered. It no longer read “missionary” but “machinist.” It seemed the Russian officials would stop at nothing to get workers for their factories.
More than ever, Gladys knew she had to get away, and quickly. She parted the drapes a little and peered out into the darkness. Ice was already forming on the inside of the window. She was glad to be wearing every piece of clothing she owned, except for the pair of darned stockings. She would have liked to have worn them over her other pair of stockings, but they padded her feet so much she couldn’t get her shoes on over them. She had stuffed the old stockings into her coat pocket. For no particular reason, she had also taken the English one-pound note out of the secret pocket in her corset and slipped it into her coat pocket along with the stockings.
Midnight came and went, but there was no knock on her door. She began to worry. Had something gone wrong? Had the girl lied? Was it all an elaborate trap? Maybe it was a sick joke someone was playing on her. Almost two hours passed before the knock on her door finally came. It was so soft Gladys wasn’t sure whether it was real or not. She tiptoed to the door and unbolted it. She knew she was taking a risk. It could just as easily be the official again, but she had no choice. It wasn’t safe for her to stay any longer in Vladivostok. She would just have to trust that a pair of total strangers were willing to risk their lives to save hers.
The door swung open, and there stood a tall man in an old overcoat with his hat pulled down over his face. He put his finger to his lips and motioned for Gladys to follow him. Gladys pulled on her thick woolen gloves, grabbed her two bags, and crept out the door. The man with the overcoat led her along the hallway and then down the stairs. Gladys’s heart began to race. The man was leading her right out the front entrance of the hotel past the clerk and the official. She prayed a silent prayer and then listened. She heard snoring coming from the clerk’s desk, and as she got to the bottom of the stairs, she saw that the official’s chair was empty. Gladys gripped her suitcases hard until her fingers ached, and she kept walking. The revolving door squeaked as she went through it. The clerk’s snoring faltered at the noise, but then it resumed.
