The Woman of Gratz

1: The Return of the Woman of Gratz

No one had ever succeeded in controlling the Red Woman of Gratz. George Manfred, the leader of the Four Just Men, had observed once that the history of pre-war Europe was littered with the bones of men who had tried. That his own were not added to this record was testament to the resourcefulness of his colleagues, Raymond Poiccart and Leon Gonsalez, otherwise George would have gone the same way as the rest. His crime was to have stood against her anarchist army, the Red Hundred, as they attempted to wreak havoc in London; it was only due to the Four Just Men that they failed. By the end of the battle the power of the Red Hundred had been destroyed and the Just Men's finances were almost fatally depleted. George attempted to reason with Maria, to persuade her to give up her war against governments and adopt a more peaceful career; she had responded to his fatherly advice first by betraying him to the British Police, who wanted him on multiple counts of murder, and then by falling in love with him. Manfred was despatched to the condemned cell of Chelmsford prison with the desperate sobs of the woman who had betrayed him ringing in his ears.

Fortunately for both of them, Manfred's colleagues rescued him and despatched Maria to the continent before the remainder of the Red Hundred could execute her for fraternising with the enemy. Maria went first to the USA, but after a few years moved on to Moscow, where she played a significant part in the events leading up to a famous October. She made too many enemies, however, to remain there long after the revolution (her beauty and her fearsome oratory both stood against her) and she fled to Germany, which was in a state of chaos after the Great War. Here she played a constructive role during the establishment of the new regime, and for a while it seemed that she had found her niche; but her old enemies tracked her down, the old jealousies reignited, and Maria was once more on the move, this time to Spain.

In Barcelona she found people and causes to her liking, ruled by a government that was ripe for reform; but the new regime that took control had no sympathy with her politics or her supporters, and once again Maria was in danger. In desperation, she wrote to George's friends, who had helped her before to escape from Russia and Germany; and this time George himself got wind of what was going on and sent her a telegram of one word: 'Come'. Maria packed her bags and jumped on the first train north.

And so now here she was, almost twenty years since she had last seen him, standing on the doorstep of George Manfred's London house and looking into the eyes of the man she had hated, betrayed, and loved. The contradictions did not worry her. Great causes breed contradictions, she always said; it is for us to choose which way to travel. We must always choose the just way; and so Maria had chosen the Just man.

It never occurred to her that he might not choose her. She had seen his face when they parted, on the night of his arrest, and she knew he would allow her back into his life the moment she chose to return. She would not have expressed it in those terms, however. She would have said that Justice calls to Justice, the right to the right; she would have used many sonorous terms of rhetoric as if to call her audience to arms. But the net result was that she expected to walk back into George's life as easily as she had walked out of it, and he seemed to reciprocate.

He looked her in the eye, grave, unmoved, as if she were merely a regular acquaintance paying a friendly call; and then he said, 'Come in, Maria; don't stand on the doorstep,' and stepped back to let her enter. She carried her bag into the hall of the house and put it down with a sigh of relief at the end of her journey.

'Take off your coat and hat,' said George, 'and come into the drawing room. I'll call the maid to make us some tea.'

Maria looked about her, wonderingly. 'Such a lovely house,' she said, in French. George remembered that her command of English had never been good, and his next remark was in Russian.