The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  Maslov didn’t bother to answer.

  McColl leaned back in the seat and let his body relax. It had turned into yet another beautiful day. The golden cupolas hung like decorations in the clear blue sky; the pastel buildings were brightly reflected in the puddles that had gathered in the hollows of unrepaired pavements and streets. The long line of tree stumps down the center of the boulevard reminded McColl of how lovely the city had been before the usual sources of fuel ran out.

  On Kamergersky Street a crowd spilling out of an old church caused the Cheka driver to snort with derision and mumble something insulting. Most of the worshippers stopped on the steps as the car drove by; like a cat on a wall watching a dog pass below, they were not so much anxious as ready to be so.

  “Mother wants to know how long you’ll be gone,” the driver said, revealing himself as Maslov’s brother.

  “Tell her I’ve no idea,” Maslov said.

  “You don’t sound very keen on this trip.”

  Maslov grunted. “I don’t even know why we’re going. As far as I can see, it’s a job for our men in Tashkent.”

  “It’s just you and Komarov going?”

  “And our interpreter here. And the wife.”

  “Komarov’s?”

  Maslov laughed. “No, Piatakov’s. The American woman who works for the Zhenotdel. She knows Brady too.”

  In the back seat, McColl’s heart skipped several beats.

  “Why are you taking her along?” the brother asked.

  “Who knows? I sometimes think Komarov fancies her.”

  “A looker, is she?”

  “I suppose so. I don’t imagine she’d be much fun.”

  McColl was only half-listening by this time. There might be other American women working for the Zhenotdel, but surely none with a connection to Aidan Brady. Caitlin Hanley, the young American journalist he’d met in China at the end of 1913. The woman he’d fallen in love with and then betrayed by agreeing to investigate her Irish republican family. Who’d given him the second chance he hardly deserved, then whisked the rug from under his feet by putting her politics first and choosing to stay in Lenin’s Russia.

  It had to be her. And she was married.

  And why not? he asked himself, trying to ignore the sense of emptiness the news provoked. Three years had passed. Lots of time to meet other men, to fall in love, to plan a life together. Why shouldn’t she be married?

  More to the point, he told herself, he and she were about to renew their fractured acquaintance.

  How ridiculous was that? A week in Moscow praying that he wouldn’t run into her, and here they were, booked on to the very same train, for a journey that would certainly last several days, and maybe even weeks.

  Which was not his most pressing problem. Her initial reaction might be the death of him, if Komarov or Maslov was there to witness it. She’d be as shocked as he was now, but without the time to rehearse a response.

  She might of course choose to give him away, and he wasn’t sure he’d blame her if she did. The last time they’d met he’d told her he was quitting the Service, and the only conclusion she could feasibly draw from his undercover reappearance was that he’d either had a change of heart or been telling bare-faced lies.

  If she did give him up on the spot, there’d be nothing he could do about it, but—fool that he might well be—he still found it hard to believe that she would. Giving him away accidentally seemed the more likely outcome.

  What could he do to prevent it?

  The car was approaching Kalanchevskaya Square, the home to three of Moscow’s stations. It was almost empty, unlike the day three years before when Brady had shot and killed Fedya, and McColl had managed to lose his pursuers in the milling crowd. The memory still made his blood run cold, but he forced his mind back to the present—getting himself caught or killed wouldn’t bring back the boy.

  As they pulled up outside the Kazan Station entrance, McColl looked for her and Komarov, but neither was there. On the platform, then. If he and Caitlin came face-to-face with witnesses present, McColl just had to hope she was willing and able to conceal the shock. If fate was kind and that didn’t happen, he would have to find some way of announcing his presence in private.

  The concourse was crowded, the Tashkent train at the farthest platform. “The three red cars at the front,” a Chekist at the gate told Maslov, pointing him down a long line of dark green coaches. High on the wall beyond the train, a series of futuristic posters announced the delights of the Moscow Circus.

  The rear coaches were crowded with Red Army soldiers—around a battalion’s worth, McColl reckoned. Ahead of these were two flat trucks bearing mounted machine guns surrounded by sandbags. Five or six coaches for ordinary civilians followed, then a third flat truck, two box vans, an antique-looking dining car in faded green and gold, and finally, reaching beyond the end of the platform, the promised red carriages. Outside the first a suited man with a neat brown beard was smoking with a leather-coated Chekist, and in one of the windows behind him, a woman was stretching up to place a suitcase on a rack, emphasizing the trimness of her figure.

  It wasn’t Caitlin.

  Komarov was standing alone by the door of the second vermillion coach, checking his watch and looking impatient. There was no familiar face in the windows behind him.

  Was the Cheka boss waiting for her? McColl certainly hoped so. After Komarov had acknowledged him with a nod and told him that his was the end compartment, he manfully resisted the temptation to turn and look back down the platform.

  Stepping up into the vestibule, he walked cautiously on past the attendant’s cubicle and into a long and unpopulated saloon full of upholstered chairs and highly polished tables. There was a stove in one corner, a well-stocked bookcase along one partition wall. The Cheka apparently traveled in style.

  He walked on through to the front carriage, which contained half a dozen compartments, each with a seat-cum-berth, collapsible table, and basin. His luck was in, McColl realized, closing the door. He could hide himself away until he knew which compartment she was in.

  Which of course proved easier said than done—he had to stand with one ear pressed against the door for more than half an hour before he heard footsteps in the corridor outside. And then the voice, the faintest of American accents edging the excellent Russian as she thanked whoever it was who had carried her luggage.

  Feelings welled up inside him, feelings he couldn’t deal with now.

  He opened his compartment door and cautiously leaned his head out into the empty corridor. The third door along was closed, all the others open.

  A step across to the window told him Komarov and Maslov were still on the platform. Should he go and see her now, and hope that the two Chekists would still be there when he reemerged? Or should he wait and hope for some safer moment? It occurred to him that Komarov might want to introduce them to each other.

  Now would be better, but he would have to be quick, and there was so much to explain. A note, he thought. He would write one and push it under her door.

  It took him five minutes to work out what he needed to say and how best to say it. The corridor was still empty, the Chekists still on the platform. McColl walked quietly to her door, squatted to slip the note under, and then had second thoughts. He told himself he had to be sure she was in there, that no one else would read the message. And he wanted to see her.

  He rapped on the door with one hand, and pushed down on the handle with the other, hoping she hadn’t locked it. She hadn’t.

  “What—” she began, then realized it was him. “Jack!” she said, her initial look of utter surprise giving way to a gamut of other emotions, anger foremost among them.

  “I want you to read this,” he said quickly, offering her the note. “Before you do anything drastic,” he added.

  “But—”

  “I’l
l talk to you later,” he promised, backing out through the door and pulling it shut. A few seconds later he was in his own compartment hoping he wouldn’t hear her leaving hers. Several agonizing minutes passed in silence, which presumably meant she was reading the note. Several more went by, leaving him pretty sure that she wasn’t about to betray him. Not without giving him time to explain.

  He laid himself out on the long seat, hands behind his head, listening to the bustle of activity outside. She looked different, he thought. The girl had gone, at least for the moment. The green eyes and chestnut hair both seemed duller, her complexion even paler than he remembered it. Living as a Bolshevik these last three years hadn’t done much for her physical health.

  But there was that feeling again, glowing inside him against all reason.

  He knew what he should do. He should slip off the train while it was still in the station, somehow get back to Petrograd, and get himself over the Finnish border as quickly as he could. He hadn’t completed the mission, but once he’d reported all he knew and guessed, Cumming should find it easy enough to intercept Brady and his renegade partners.

  So what was stopping him? The prospect of sharing a long train journey with an enemy who was smarter than he was? Not to mention the love of his life, whom he’d barely gotten over, and who he’d just discovered was married to someone else.

  He’d be facing a firing squad or a rebroken heart. Quite possibly both.

  Look on the bright side, he told himself. He hadn’t died in the war like Mac; he hadn’t succumbed to the flu like his brother. He was already living on borrowed time.

  She might have broken his heart three years ago, but the damned thing was just about mended, and probably needed retesting. She might be married now, but the fact that her husband was one of the men they were hunting suggested the marriage had seen better days.

  And then there was Fedya and Brady. Reason enough, he’d thought, when agreeing to the job. It still was.

  A last adventure, he thought, and if he survived, he would try something different. He was almost forty, but these days that wasn’t so old. He would do something with the years he often felt he didn’t deserve, those years that Jed and Fedya would never get to live. Something grounded in kindness rather than cruelty. Something that wasn’t a game played by boys in adult bodies.

  Outside a whistle shrieked, and a few moments later the train staggered into motion. He moved himself next to the window and, for the next fifteen minutes, watched Moscow’s bedraggled suburbs slide past. Soon they were steaming past scattered farmsteads and gentle birch-covered hills, the occasional dacha set beside a dull brown stream, an old manorial house clinging to a lee slope, surrounded by tall, waving trees. Of people the land seemed curiously empty—already the train seemed headed into a void, into that vastness where the Mongol arrows had whistled, south and east toward desert wastes and cerulean domes.

  Sorochinsk

  It had been light for over an hour, and the other occupants of the carriage seemed to be sleeping. Caitlin had already visited the kitchen three cars down, and sweet-talked the cook into bringing meals to her compartment. She would still have to leave her sanctum when nature called, but not for anything else.

  She picked up the note and read it again. “Dear Caitlin,” it began, “I know that finding we’re both on this train will be a shock. It certainly was for me. And I’m sure that your first assumption—an understandable one considering our past—was that I’m here on some anti-Bolshevik mission. This is not the case. I’m here in Russia as a personal favor to my old boss. It’s all about Indians plotting something in India and has nothing to do with the Bolshevik government. In fact, as far as I can tell, your government has as much interest in foiling this plot as I do. If we can meet casually—on the platform at one of the stops might be best—I will explain the whole business and try to answer any questions you might have. After that—after we’ve officially met, so to speak—then we should be able to share the odd cup of tea without raising any suspicions. Love, Jack.”

  She put the letter down again. She should tear it up, she thought. Throw the pieces out of the window.

  She believed him. Or would it be more accurate to say that she didn’t think he was telling deliberate lies? The last time he’d appeared like a jack-in-the-box he’d said much the same, only to later admit that he’d been fooling himself. Was he doing that again?

  He was right about one thing—it had been a shock. Her life at the moment felt like a stream of unwelcome surprises: Sergei caught up in robbery and worse, the Zhenotdel under threat, Komarov virtually kidnapping her. And now Jack McColl appearing out of the blue, Jack who she’d thought was safely locked in the past.

  Russia might be getting a breathing space, but her own life was being turned every which way.

  “If it’s drowning you’re after, don’t torment yourself with shallow waters.” Where had that come from? It was something Aunt Orla had been fond of saying many, many years ago, when Caitlin was a child.

  A brave heart, her aunt had called her the last time she’d been home. And maybe sometimes she was. But not at this moment. Her first instinct now was to hide herself away, to keep herself locked in the cabin until they reached wherever it was they were going. She had brought along a suitcase full of work, so why not make use of the time?

  She opened the case, took a long look at the contents, and clicked the clasps shut once more. For the moment at least, it felt like news from a foreign country, one whose language she could barely speak.

  The hours passed slowly, and she kept dozing off, often waking with a start when the train jerked into motion. It seemed to be stopping at every settlement it came to and spending more time stationary than moving. At several of the stops, she caught glimpses of McColl through the gap between her curtains, usually alone but sometimes talking with other passengers. There was something different about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. There was sadness there; he carried himself as if something were pressing down on his shoulders. Maybe he always had, but it wasn’t how she remembered him.

  He was doubtless waiting for her to come and join him, but she wasn’t ready to engage with him again, not over this or anything else. And the thought of seeing him day after day—sharing “the odd cup of tea,” for God’s sake—was more than her not-so-brave heart could cope with.

  Nor had she any desire to socialize with Komarov or his wretched assistant. They might be on the same side, they might all agree that Brady and Sergei should pay for their crimes, but relishing the hunt wasn’t something she could share. Caitlin was afraid that she’d be standing over her husband’s corpse before all this ended, and however far apart they’d grown, that would never feel right.

  Just see it through, she told herself. And then get back to your job.

  McColl took a sip from his tumbler of vodka, stared at his reflection in the glass, and realized that the train had stopped yet again. He walked out to the vestibule and pushed his head through the open window in search of an explanation. There was none to see: beyond the orange glow thrown out by the engine fires there was nothing but darkness, no station, no signal, no dwellings.

  It had been a long and frustrating day. Earlier that evening one of the drivers had told him that the train had traveled only eighty miles since leaving Moscow almost thirty hours before. Since then, it had probably managed another five. A walker setting off when they had would be quite a way ahead.

  He’d seen no sign of Caitlin. At every one of the all-too-frequent stops, he’d strode up and down the platform hoping she would join him, but all to no avail. The good news was that she hadn’t betrayed him—if she had, he’d be in irons. The bad news was that seeing her after all this time had upset him more than he’d expected, awakening thoughts and feelings he’d hoped were dead and buried.

  Things would be better, more real, he thought, once a past was not the onl
y thing they had in common. But that could only happen if she came out to talk.

  He heard footsteps behind him and knew they weren’t hers.

  It was Komarov, bearing a bottle and chess set. “Do you play?” the Russian asked.

  “Badly,” McColl replied. Playing chess with the Cheka didn’t seem like the wisest of moves.

  “Then we’re well matched,” Komarov said, ignoring McColl’s lack of enthusiasm. He sat himself down in the opposite chair, smoothed out a checkered square of cloth, and began extracting wooden pieces from the lacquered box.

  McColl felt bound to acquiesce. He hadn’t played chess for years. His uncle had taught him originally, on winter evenings in the parlor of the Polmadie house, and he had made his first friends at Oxford through the chess club, one of the few university institutions that hadn’t seemed to require a blood certificate as qualification for membership. Most of those friends had been Jews, fellow outcasts at that shrine of good breeding.

  Komarov was holding out his fists. McColl picked white and began. As he moved his pawn forward, the train lurched into motion again.

  At first they played mostly in silence. McColl was pleased to find that the Russian took the game no more seriously than he did, simply enjoying the mental exercise. He offered grunts of appreciation when McColl made a good move and self-deprecating laughs when it was obvious he himself had made a bad one. He won nevertheless, and offered a rematch. McColl was about to decline when he realized that he was actually enjoying himself. And that more than five minutes had passed since he’d thought about Caitlin.

  While setting up the pieces for the next game, the Russian casually slipped in a question. How had McColl come to learn a language like Urdu when so few people spoke it in his native Turkestan?

  “More than you might think,” McColl answered calmly, though his heart seemed to be beating a trifle faster. “My father had a large cotton plantation,” he went on, “and his manager was from the Punjab. In India. My mother was ill a great deal, and this man’s wife was like a cross between a nanny and a governess to me. I learned a lot of Urdu from her, and when I went to school in Tashkent, I found I had a knack for languages. So I carried on with the Urdu as well as learning Uzbek and a little Farsi.”