A cold wind blew over the land as a covered truck chugged into the small town of Tonos thirty kilometres from Petrograd. It was late October, and although it was five-thirty in the afternoon, it was already dark.
The truck came to a halt in the main square and a group of men led by a tall man with a beard walked up to the passenger’s door He wore a big, grey coat and a brown, flat cap. The others were dressed similar to the leader.
Fabian Fortin emerged from the passenger door and approached the group.
“You are Lenin?” he asked the man with the beard.
“I am Vladimir Lenin, yes,” replied the man.
“Then I have something for you.” Fortin said, walking round to the back of the truck.
He undid the knotted ropes and pulled open the canvas coverings. Both men then pulled themselves up into the vehicle where several wooden cases lay on the floor.
Fortin grabbed a crowbar and levered off the lid of one crate.
“Are these what you want?” He asked Lenin as both men stared at the self-loading rifles.
Lenin lifted a rifle out of the box and weighed it in his hands, “it’s heavy.”
“They're Browning self-loading prototypes; the real thing's not due out until next year.”
“Ironic isn’t it my friend? Capitalist rifles for a Bolshevik revolution,” said Lenin with a twinkle in his eyes.
“These guns will do the job for you. There are two hundred in twenty crates.”
Lenin nodded to his followers to empty the truck.
“Tell me comrade, why do you do this for us? The money is surely less than you could make elsewhere. Are you a Marxist sympathizer?”
“Your politics, as with anyone else’s politics, do not interest me. What interests me is your religion or rather your lack of it,” said Fortin, staring at Lenin with red eyes.
Unnerved, Lenin stepped back and paid the man. His gut instinct told him that this was not a man to trifle with, and the sooner he left the better.
“Long live the revolution,” said Lenin, as Fortin climbed into the truck.
“Yeah,” said Fortin, as his driver fired up the engine.
The truck did a U-turn in the square and then disappeared into the night.