The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  “London needs to know if the Bolsheviks are keeping to the terms of the trade treaty, the ones to do with India. Whether they’ve actually abandoned their attempts at subversion.”

  “They have,” Ruzhkov said indignantly. “All the Indians were brought back from Tashkent months ago. And London knows that,” he added suspiciously. “There’s something more, isn’t there?”

  McColl shook his head. “Not as far as I know,” he lied.

  Ruzhkov shrugged his disbelief. “Your new papers are inside the Pravda,” he said coldly. “Now, tell me about my children. My son will be ten this August.”

  McColl repeated what the briefers had told him, that the children were all doing splendidly and happy as one could expect, given their father’s absence. He could see the doubt in Ruzhkov’s eyes, along with the faintest of hopes that it might be true.

  McColl wanted to be moving. “Where are the Indians staying?”

  “The Hotel Lux, of course. All the foreign delegates are staying there. You may have to shout a bit to get yourself a room, but they know who you are: the papers were sent over this morning.” He drank the last of his tea and wistfully examined the bottom of the glass. “Ten years old,” he muttered to himself.

  After they’d discussed future meetings and contingencies, McColl walked back to the city center by a different route. It was the hottest part of the day, and a group of Red Army soldiers shouldering a coffin draped in a huge red flag were sweating copiously as they passed him in the opposite direction.

  The number of visible Chekists seemed higher than it had been a few hours before, but was that only because he now knew that some at least were looking for him? He felt like a fly who’d mistaken a windowpane for the sky. Sitting there listening to the Massed Pipes had been unbelievably stupid.

  A workers’ canteen just off Petrovsky Boulevard offered a temporary haven. Behind the cover of the newspaper, he examined his new papers, and discovered that he was now Nikolai Matveyevich Davydov of Gogol Street, Tashkent. The accompanying permit authorized him to travel from Tashkent to Moscow on the given date; it was stamped for an arrival the previous day. Enclosed within the permit was a party card, which stated that he had been a member since March 1918.

  Ruzhkov had excelled himself. All McColl needed was a shave, and he’d noticed a couple of barbers on Kuznetsky Most. He left the canteen, trying to appear neither casual nor hurried. No one gave him so much as a glance.

  It was midafternoon when Komarov returned from a meeting at Vecheka headquarters. Yezhov was waiting in the outer office, feet up and half-asleep.

  “Well?” Komarov barked.

  Yezhov sat up rapidly. “We’ve found where he’s staying. The dormitory on Kuznetsky Most. His suitcase is there. Borin and Trepakov are waiting for him to come back.”

  Komarov sat down. “What’s in the suitcase?”

  “Some old leather trousers and a shirt.”

  “He’s wearing the suit. Get back over there. I don’t want any slipups.”

  McColl walked up Tverskaya to the Hotel Lux. The long, four-story stone building had recently been painted, presumably to impress the foreign delegates. The main effect, however, was to make the surrounding buildings look twice as dilapidated. One of two militiamen guarding the main entrance gave McColl’s papers a cursory examination and waved him through.

  The lobby was empty of people, empty of furniture, lined with posters and blown-up photographs celebrating the Third Congress of the Communist International. A solitary clerk sat behind a reception counter long enough to accommodate twenty. McColl waited in vain for his presence to be acknowledged.

  “I am appointed to the Indian delegation as a translator and interpreter,” he said eventually, gently pushing his papers across the counter.

  The man called for a colleague without looking up and continued sorting registration cards into neat piles.

  McColl realized that he was nervously stroking his newly shaven chin, and ceased doing so. A second reception clerk emerged, one more eager to please. McColl explained the situation and was informed that the Indian delegation was on a river cruise, along with the Chinese comrades. They would be back in time for supper. And when it came to his own accommodation, the comrade had arrived at an auspicious moment. News had just reached the hotel of an arrest at the Persian border—that country’s delegate had been seized by his own authorities and sent back to Tehran for questioning, thus freeing up his room. It was even on the same corridor as those occupied by the Indians. Room 453.

  Pushing his luck, McColl asked for a list of the Indian comrades.

  One would be typed out for him. It would be ready in an hour or so.

  Feeling slightly less apprehensive, he went up to his room and lay down on the bed to await the Indians’ return.

  The crack in the boarded-up window offered Piatakov and Brady a perfect view of the Shabolovka Street depot, and of the tram now clanking its way through the open gates, tires squealing with resentment at the tightness of the curve. As it disappeared behind the houses that fronted the main shed, a man emerged from the depot-office doorway, strode across the cobbles, and noisily swung the gates shut.

  The American checked his fob. “Half past seven,” he announced. “Let’s go.”

  He led the way down the staircase, taking care to step over the gaps where treads had been stolen for fuel.

  Behind him, Piatakov felt as tense as he ever had going into battle, and far less certain he had right on his side. Accepting that any meaningful opposition required violence was one thing; finding himself face-to-face with old comrades over the barrel of a gun would be something else.

  “I’ll check the street,” the American said, pulling back the front door and squeezing out past the corrugated iron flap that someone had nailed across the opening. Piatakov watched from the shadows, conscious of his own thumping heart and the nervous exhalations of his five companions.

  Shahumian belched softly beside him. “Goddamn carrot tea,” he murmured.

  The Indians flashed anxious smiles.

  Brady reappeared. “Okay,” he said.

  A horse-drawn cart was moving away down the street, but nothing was coming toward them. The sky had barely begun to darken, the daytime heat was showing no sign of dissipating, and Piatakov could feel the sweat running down his back. In the distance, the sinking sun was drawing flashes of golden light from the distant domes of the Kremlin churches.

  They reached the gates, Shahumian peeling off as planned to take his position at the crossroads to the left. The others slipped into the empty yard. Leaving Grazhin and Nasim to stand guard by the entrance, Brady, Piatakov, Chatterji, and Rafiq walked along the inlaid tracks toward the depot offices.

  They stopped by the side of the open door, deep in the building’s shadow, and took out the masks that Brady had devised. These were more like cloth bags than traditional masks, with rough holes cut for the eyes and mouth. He had taken the idea from his homeland, where some crazy gang of negro haters, whose name Piatakov had already forgotten, used such hoods to hide their faces.

  As he pulled his on, Piatakov could hear the murmur of conversation coming from an upstairs room. And the welcome clink of coins.

  And someone coming down the stairs, walking toward the doorway.

  The footsteps stopped, giving way to the sound of furniture scraping the floor.

  Brady and Piatakov went through the doors together. In the corridor beyond, a man in a leather jacket was bent in the act of seating himself at a table, holding a glass of steaming tea.

  “Who the hell—”

  “No noise,” Brady said quietly, showing the Chekist his Colt revolver, “or yours will be a lasting silence.” The man gulped and put down the glass, slopping tea across the table. “You two stay here with our new friend,” Brady told the Indians.

  Piatakov followed the American u
p the stairs, into a room full of people counting coins into piles. One by one they became aware of the two masked men just inside the doorway, and of the guns they were holding.

  “Good evening, comrades,” Brady said in a soft, insolent tone, leaning back against the doorjamb.

  Piatakov could picture the expression behind the mask. The man had read too many penny dreadfuls, watched too many cowboy films.

  “This is what they used to call an armed robbery in the bad old bourgeois days,” the American was telling the captive audience in his heavily accented Russian. “Don’t do anything heroic, and no one needs to die.” He paused. “And I can promise any true Bolshevik among you that the money we take will be used in the service of the revolution.”

  Someone giggled, probably involuntarily.

  “You,” Brady went on, picking out the nearest clerk and indicating a heap of canvas bags, “fill up four of those.”

  The man in question started toppling piles of coins off the edges of tables and into the open bags, his nervousness making him clumsy. The other eight clerks—Piatakov had counted them—sat staring at him and Brady. Judging by the noise, more coins were ending up on the floor than in the bags.

  “You,” the American snapped at one of the watchers, “help him.”

  There was a pounding on the stairs; Rafiq’s head appeared, dark eyes flashing through the slitted cloth bag. “Militia patrol, coming down the street.”

  “Shit.” Brady thought for a moment. “Tell—”

  A window behind him shattered, the shot reverberating through the room. A clerk at the far end of the room was just standing there, dumbly holding the pistol, not even attempting a second shot. Brady’s Colt boomed, and the man seemed to jump backward, spurting blood from his chest.

  They could hear running feet outside in the tram yard.

  Brady was striding down to where the spread-eagled clerk had collapsed against the wall. “You two, take the bags,” he told Piatakov and Rafiq, picking up the offending pistol and thrusting it under his belt. He walked back to the top of the stairs. “If I were you,” he told the assembly, “I’d think about how good life can be and just sit there quietly until this is over.”

  As the three of them reached the foot of the stairs, another two shots were fired outside. Chatterji was by the doorway, looking out; behind him, the Chekist was slumped in the chair, his blouse a sea of blood, his throat slit open from ear to ear.

  “Why did you kill him?” Piatakov asked furiously.

  “What else could I do?” the Indian snapped back.

  “You could—”

  “Later,” Brady interrupted harshly.

  He was right. Piatakov put down the heavy bags and took a look outside. On opposite sides of the tramlines, Shahumian and Nasim were retreating across the yard, guns in hand. As Piatakov watched, the Armenian took cover behind a stationary tram, the Indian in a convenient doorway. Figures were moving behind the distant gates.

  “How many, Aram?” Brady shouted.

  “At least ten,” the Armenian yelled back. “Ivan’s looking for another exit,” he added.

  As if on cue, Grazhin appeared around the corner of the building. “There’s a way out through the factory next door,” he said breathlessly.

  “Go,” Brady told Piatakov, Grazhin, Chatterji, and Rafiq, who now had a bag of coins each. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  The yard beyond the office was edged by a man-high brick wall. A grindstone offered a convenient leg up, but as Piatakov put his head above the parapet, a shout from above and behind him was followed by the sound of a vehicle driving into the yard ahead.

  He dropped back down. “More militia,” he told Grazhin.

  They retraced their steps, feeling the weight of the coins, meeting Brady on the way. Ahead of them a bullet pinged off the metal flank of a tram.

  “Maybe there’s a way out on the other side of the shed,” Grazhin suggested between coughs.

  “I’ll take a look,” Brady said, pulling the bag off his head, making his hair stand up. “Can’t see a goddamn thing with it on,” he muttered, before taking off across the yard and disappearing into the glass-roofed tram shed.

  They could hear militia behind them now, on the far side of the factory wall. Piatakov waited until a head appeared; then he fired off two shots. The head’s disappearance was presumably instinctive, as he’d aimed deliberately high. It wasn’t so long ago he’d been fighting the Whites alongside men like these.

  He turned in time to see Grazhin, following in Brady’s footsteps, caught by fire from the militia beyond the gates. As his comrade stumbled and fell, the heavy bag dropped from his hand, spilling its harvest of shiny coins between the tramlines.

  Nasim’s gun barked in reply, followed by Chatterji’s and Piatakov’s own. Grazhin, cursing loudly, hobbled on into the shed, holding his thigh.

  Brady emerged from the tram shed, and signaled that he’d found a way out. He helped Grazhin deeper into the shed, and then joined Shahumian in offering covering fire for those on the wrong side of the open yard.

  Piatakov made it across, slamming into a tram with rather more force than he wanted to. Chatterji was right behind him.

  Rafiq tripped on a rail, went down, and then scurried on without his share of the spoils. Coming up behind him, Nasim stooped to retrieve the bag, but was instantly hit by a fusillade of fire. Flung backward across the tramlines, he came to rest with his handsome face staring lifelessly up at the sky.

  When Shahumian instinctively moved toward the body, another volley sent him scurrying back, clutching his left shoulder.

  Piatakov stared at the dead Indian. A blue world.

  A bullet exploded a tram windshield above their heads. The militiamen from the factory were over the wall.

  “Move!” Brady shouted, leading them at a run down the line of trams in the wake of the struggling Grazhin. The door at the rear of the shed was open.

  Beyond it was another walled yard. In the corner a long-disused gate led into a narrow strip of waste ground between factory and houses. At its end they could see someone strolling past on Shabolovka Street. Behind them the sounds of pursuit grew louder.

  They went down the passage at a run, slowing to a halt where it ran into the street. For a short moment only the stroller was visible, approaching the crossroads; then two militiamen came rushing around the corner, almost knocking him over. As Brady’s gun boomed, dropping one and sending the other flying for cover, a shot from down the passage spun Rafiq against the wall.

  Piatakov returned fire, pinning the pursuers down, then followed the others across the street and into the alley opposite. Rafiq had taken a bullet high in the chest; his face was the color of pastry. Shahumian was bleeding profusely, but swore it was only a flesh wound. Chatterji was now carrying both the remaining bags of coins, Grazhin leaning against a wall, holding his mask over his thigh wound and breathing heavily. Brady was reloading the Colt. “Keep moving,” he said. “I’ll keep the bastards’ heads down.”

  “No,” Grazhin wheezed.

  Piatakov hesitated.

  “I can’t run,” Grazhin told him and Brady. “Leave this to me.” A smile flickered across his cadaverous face. “I’ve had enough,” he added laconically.

  Brady looked at him, nodded almost absentmindedly, and turned away, pulling Piatakov after him. At the end of the alley, as they caught up with Aram, Rafiq, and Chatterji, Grazhin’s army pistol sounded twice in quick succession.

  They all pocketed or belted their guns, crossed the deserted street in front of them, and took a turn to the north. Ahead of them the half-built Shukhov wireless tower was starkly silhouetted against the yellow evening sky. More shots echoed, sounding much farther away.

  “We should split up,” Brady said.

  Piatakov eased Shahumian’s bloody shirt up over his head, balled it up, and tol
d the Armenian to hold it against his wound. As he placed a pan of water on the faintly glowing ring, Piatakov realized how angry he was feeling, with Brady, with the others, with himself. What had they all been thinking?

  He told himself to calm down. What was that phrase of Caitlin’s—crying over spilled milk. He smiled to himself—when had they last seen milk?

  On the other side of the room, Shahumian was flexing his shoulder.

  “How does it feel?” Piatakov asked, carrying the candle across to get a better look at the wound. “It doesn’t seem serious.”

  “It isn’t. I’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

  “Assuming we haven’t been caught,” Piatakov said bitterly. “I should have spoken up. I knew it was a huge gamble, and I said nothing. Now Ivan Vasilyevich is dead; Nasim is dead; you and Rafiq are both wounded. I should have said something. Chatterji . . . I mean . . . why did he do it? Why not just knock the man out? And Brady . . . sometimes he seems like a madman. He was having the time of his life out there!”

  “He was,” Shahumian agreed. “But that’s what makes him such a fighter. Isn’t that water ready yet?”

  It was barely warm but would probably take a week to boil. Piatakov carried the pan across to his friend.

  “I know what you mean, though,” Shahumian went on. “He really loves it. He was like that in Ukraine. And maybe you wouldn’t want him to marry your sister, but if you’re in real trouble . . .”

  “And when he’s the one who got you into it?”

  “He wasn’t. We all agreed, remember?” The Armenian winced as Piatakov cleaned the wound. “And don’t mourn for Ivan Vasilyevich,” he said a few moments later. “He was dying anyway—we all knew he was. And he made his death count.”

  Piatakov was winding the improvised bandage around the Armenian’s waist. “I know, but . . .”

  “This is not going to be easy, Sergei,” Shahumian interjected. “It will probably be the end of us. But if it is . . . Sergei, I lost my Anna, and I lost my children, and we’re losing the revolution they died for. I’m quite willing to give up my own life, but it sure as hell is going to cost someone.” He got to his feet, stood there testing his strength. “A blaze of glory, my friend,” he added softly. “If going down is all we can do, then we’ll do it in a blaze of glory.”