The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  Small settlements were dotted along the line, each with its handful of scrawny trees and mosaic of mud houses, its cavorting children and impassive white-robed men. In the small town of Termen Tyube, they saw their first mosque, its clay dome barely rising above the roofs, a skittish mule tethered beside the arched doorway.

  They were now into the thirteenth day of the journey and less than five hundred miles from Tashkent, but with the driest stretch still to come. Since Aralsk, drums of water and bricks of dried camel dung had been loaded onto the tenders at each stop, but when the settlements disappeared, there was only the desert to water and feed the engines. Every few hours parties of soldiers would trek out toward a smudge of green that the observer had spotted from his carriage-roof vantage point, some carrying axes for cutting through the saxaul roots, others rolling iron drums across the cracked earth to replenish the water supply. McColl joined the first party, his appetite for exercise overcoming his fear of the heat, and wished he hadn’t. Neither in Egypt nor in India had he ever experienced such a blazing sun.

  With dusk approaching, the train brought them close to a large oasis. Here it stopped for several hours, partly to take on a full load of water, partly to allow its passengers and crew the luxury of a long warm bath. Save for the unhappy shift of troops left to guard the train, everyone trailed a quarter mile out across the desert, reminding McColl of a charabanc party searching for the sea at low tide. One woman’s bright pink parasol completed the picture.

  Once water had been taken for drinking and the engine, everyone waded in. McColl had wondered what level of propriety the mixing of the sexes would produce, but apparently no one else had thought the issue worth considering, and as far as he could tell, the few naked women received no more attention from the men than they would have done in a doctor’s surgery. It made him feel slightly ashamed of his own interest in Caitlin’s slim frame, which was every bit as desirable as he remembered it.

  He lay back in the shallow water and studied the empty sky. With the light now fading in earnest, stars were beginning to appear, and he found himself remembering nights on the deck of the ship that had taken him out to South Africa and the astronomy-loving sergeant who’d taught him the constellations. It seemed so long ago, yet here they all were, blinking back into view, insisting that nothing had changed.

  Caitlin was a Leo, he thought, searching in vain for that group of stars. Komarov’s news from Tashkent—that after murdering an old comrade, Brady and her husband had managed to escape—had clearly upset her, but she now seemed increasingly resigned to their trip proving longer than expected.

  McColl wasn’t about to complain. He was in no hurry to leave her again.

  An hour or so later Caitlin and McColl were both in the saloon when the train clanked wearily to yet another halt. She put her face to the window, shielding her eyes against the reflected light. “Let’s go outside for a minute,” she suggested.

  They climbed down and walked a few yards from the train. The desert stretched darkly away, the receding curves of the dunes like an ocean of sleeping giants. In the sky above, the Milky Way floated like a jeweled veil.

  All down the train, people were getting out to stretch their legs. She considered putting her arm through his but decided it wasn’t a good idea.

  “Tell me about your husband,” he said, denting her sense of well-being.

  “What would like to know?” she asked, more brusquely than she intended.

  “How did you meet?”

  “I met him first at Kollontai’s wedding, at the beginning of 1918. But we didn’t . . . didn’t become lovers until the spring of 1919, a long time after you and I . . . And we didn’t see much of each other—I was in Moscow, and he spent most of his time away at the front.”

  “Why did you get married?”

  “He wanted to. I was never sure why, and I don’t think he was either.”

  “I see.”

  No you don’t, she thought. “It was part of the war,” she said, feeling she owed him some sort of explanation. “Most people called them ‘comrades’ marriages’; Kollontai’s phrase was ‘erotic friendships.’ People who liked each other sharing a bed, without thinking too far into the future.”

  “Ah.”

  “What about you? Have you married again?”

  “No.” He hesitated. “I was with someone for a while. It sort of started by accident and lasted a few months.”

  She was surprised that hearing this hurt and more than a little disappointed in herself. “So what else have you been doing with yourself?” she asked lightly.

  “Repairing automobiles. Converting some for disabled veterans. And I’ve just spent a few months in prison.”

  “What for?”

  “Knocking a policeman over.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “It’s a long story. Next time we have an hour to spare . . .”

  “How’s your mother?”

  “Flourishing, despite everything.”

  “I was sorry to hear about Jed,” she said. Jack’s brother had been dead for almost three years, which seemed a long time to delay her condolences. She dragged herself back to the present and asked him what he thought of Komarov’s chances of catching Brady and Sergei.

  “Not bad, I’d say. I don’t know about your husband or the Armenian, but Brady and the Indians should stick out like sore thumbs in Turkestan, and there must be a lot of Cheka offices between Tashkent and the border.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. She no longer knew whether Sergei’s capture would relieve or dismay her.

  “I suppose you’ll be returning to Moscow the moment this is over,” McColl said.

  “Of course,” she replied automatically.

  McColl advanced his second pawn and took a large sip of vodka. Caitlin had retired for the night, and Arbatov had recently discovered that one of the women traveling alone was also bound for Verny. Maslov was probably polishing buttons or boots.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Komarov asked.

  “No, none,” McColl replied, instantly on guard.

  “I had a brother,” the Russian said. “He was older than me, three years older. He joined the navy in 1900, and we celebrated his commission and the centenary with a single party.” He smiled wryly. “Which felt ironic even then.”

  “What did?”

  “Oh, all that stuff about the new century: the fresh start, the new man, peace between nations. All of it. And there we were happily assuming that the military offered the brightest of futures.”

  “What happened to your brother?” McColl asked two moves later.

  “Vassily went down with his ship at Tsushima. I was twenty then, and my father expected me to follow my brother’s example. But I refused. Not for political reasons or none that I’d consciously worked out. As you no doubt remember, when the Japanese War ended the military’s prestige was lower than ever. I was a student at the time, a law student in Moscow, and the last thing I wanted to do was fight for the czar. People used to assume that all law students were reactionaries, but in most cases the reverse was true, and for good reason. It’s only in countries like England and America that lawyers make money, because there the law has an empire of its own, independent from the state. We had no such expectations, and most of us were constitutionalists, dreaming of parliaments and bourgeois democracy.”

  He paused to bring out a knight. “Fortunately I failed my law exams. There was too much to learn, and I had too many other interests—politics, women, playing cards. Rural property law couldn’t compete. So, I became a policeman. A friend of my father’s secured me a post at the Moscow Investigation Department, and rather to my surprise, I found myself loving the work. There was something different every day, and it was always interesting.”

  “Then how . . . ?”

  Komarov poured them each another c
ouple of inches. “How did I get from there to the deputy chairmanship of the M-Cheka? Well, I’d always been politically minded—my mother once told me how enraged I’d been as a four year old when we found ourselves watching a column of men in chains on their way into exile. In my first year as an investigator, I was just a problem solver, and quite a good one, if I say so myself. But if that’s all a city policeman does, he ends up holding his nose. There are no men better placed to understand a society than those that police it and no men more wary of radical change because they know they’ll be in the front line when the bombs and bullets start flying. Which is one of the reasons policemen drink a lot,” he added, tipping back the glass of vodka.

  “I was made the liaison officer for the Investigation Department’s dealings with the Okhrana,” Komarov continued, “which meant doing the investigative legwork on political cases whenever the Okhrana was overstretched. Which was most of the time after 1905. And I met quite a few of our current leaders over the years, sitting across a table from them in some Moscow station-house basement. It was usually an illuminating experience. Not always—the bourgeoisie has never completely cornered the market in morons—but usually. Most of them were better educated than my law professors, let alone me. I started reading socialist theory so that I could counter their arguments.” Komarov laughed. “I still don’t understand half of it, but I don’t suppose it matters. Arbatov understands everything perfectly—he could quote you the footnotes in all three volumes of Capital—and look what good it’s done him! That was always the trouble with the Mensheviks: they actually believed in a blueprint, a revolution in orderly stages. When reality proved resistant and Lenin had to tear up their precious plan, they all felt personally insulted. They still do.

  “Anyway, one night I was working late at the office, and this Okhrana agent walked in through my door. I’d met the man several times and thought him a reactionary bore, so my first thought was that they’d searched my apartment and found some of the forbidden literature that I always had lying around. But no. He said he and his friends had been watching me for some time and asked if I’d consider working for the Bolsheviks. He, it turned out, had been one for years.

  “I was astonished, but I didn’t think twice, which was extremely stupid of me. He could have been an agent provocateur, and I should have checked him out first. But I was lucky—he was genuine.

  “That was in September 1908, just before the Bosnian Crisis erupted. I went home to my wife, bursting to tell her, but she’d already gone to bed. I sat there looking at her sleeping face, and suddenly realized that I couldn’t ever let her know. She was one of those people who never learn how to dissemble—her face always gave her away. When she discovered, after October, that we were on the winning side, she could hardly believe it.” Komarov sighed. “But she died the next year,” he said eventually. “What about you, Nikolai Matveyevich? Are you married?”

  “Separated,” McColl said, as he rushed to rebuild his mental defenses. Komarov’s reminiscences were usually engaging enough to make you forget all other concerns, and McColl sometimes wondered if that was the aim.

  “That is sad.” The Russian emptied the second bottle they’d gone through that night into their glasses, and for a moment McColl thought he was about to receive his first dose of Russian sentimentality from a political policeman. He should have known better; Komarov was as practical drunk as he was sober. “Marriage may be a bourgeois institution,” he said, only slightly slurring his consonants, “but I liked it. Remember what Vladimir Ilych said: you have to learn bourgeois manners before you can move on to proletarian graces. I don’t think we’re ready for free love, no matter what Kollontai thinks.”

  “I don’t think Comrade Piatakova would disagree with you,” McColl said, rather intemperately.

  Komarov smiled ruefully. “No,” he said, “but she is one of our best.” He rose a trifle unsteadily. “I shall wish you good night.”

  McColl sat by himself for a few minutes, sipping the last of his vodka. He had, despite himself, come to like and respect Yuri Komarov, but letting that color his judgment would be extremely unwise. He suspected that Moscow’s prisons were full of people who had found the man a good listener.

  Walking back to his compartment, he stopped on the coach veranda to savor the cool night air, then impulsively clambered up the iron ladder and onto the swaying roof. The moon was higher and brighter now, suffusing the desert with a pale silver glow. In all directions the featureless landscape stretched out to the flat horizon, and McColl had the fleeting impression that the train was stock-still on moving tracks, throwing fiery sparks into the night but actually going nowhere.

  Caitlin was up early next morning and found herself sharing the saloon with a talkative Arbatov. The Menshevik’s suitcase was beside his chair.

  “I’ll be leaving the train soon,” he explained. “Aruis is the railhead for Chimkent and Verny, and I’m told we should be there soon after eight. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the road journey, but at least it’ll be a change.”

  “Do you know anyone in Verny?” she asked him.

  “Not a soul. But making new friends is always good, and I expect some old ones will be joining me soon.”

  “You really think it’s all over, don’t you?” she asked, surprised at the resentment she heard in her own voice.

  He didn’t take offense. “In the sense you mean—probably yes.” He sat back in his seat, looking very much the professor. “Think what Lenin promised us in 1917.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “A free press, a multiparty democracy within the framework of the soviets, a state run by the workers and policed by a workers’ militia, an end to the death penalty. And what do we actually have? A gagged press, a one-party state run by that party’s leaders and policed by its own militia, executions by the thousand. There have been some achievements—of course there have—but most of them are fragile. Take your Zhenotdel and what it’s tried to do for Russia’s women. Changes like those make sense to you and me, but the timing’s all wrong. It’s simple really. We’re too late for capitalism and too early for socialism, and our Russia has fallen into the chasm between them. One that I fear will grow deeper and darker.”

  She wanted to argue with him, but the fears he was expressing were ones she felt herself. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said, for want of anything better.

  “Oh, so do I, but I’m usually right about things like that. And I do believe this is my stop,” he added as the train began to slow and another cluster of pale brown dwellings slid into view.

  Caitlin wished him a good journey and watched through the window as he and Komarov exchanged jovial good-byes. As a less convivial-looking Chekist led Arbatov off toward a waiting line of horse-drawn carts, the train jerked back into motion.

  Tashkent, as Maslov informed her a few minutes later, was only four hours away.

  For Tonight’s Sake

  The booking hall at Tashkent station was wide, airy, and far from crowded. Komarov sat on his upturned suitcase, feeling impatient. He had sent Maslov off in search of transport, but the rest of the party were standing in a group awaiting salvation, metaphorically clinging to one another like any bunch of strangers in a strange land. Even the cotton experts were reluctant to leave and were busy blaming each other for the fact that there was no one there to meet them.

  Maslov returned with the air of someone whose mission had been accomplished. “Our car is here,” he announced, “and there are native troikas on their way from the hotel to collect the others.”

  “You go with them,” Komarov said. “Yakov Peters is an old colleague,” he added in explanation. Which was something of an understatement—for several months in 1918, the two of them had virtually run the Moscow Cheka in tandem.

  Maslov hid any disappointment well. “It’s the Tzakho Hotel,” he said.

  “Right.” Komarov nodded farewell to the party and walked out t
o the forecourt. The sky was a bleached blue; the pastel-colored buildings on the far side of the park shimmered in the heat. A short, dark-haired Russian was standing by a dust-begrimed Fiat, holding the rear door open.

  “I’m not royalty,” Komarov told him, letting himself into the front.

  The road into town was wide and flanked by artificial streams that flashed in the sunlight. At first there was little in the way of traffic, but when, after half a mile or so, they turned onto an even wider thoroughfare, he felt he was entering another, busier continent. Long strings of heavily laden camels vied with mule- and horse-drawn carts; dust and the flat smell of animal dung both hung in the air. Yet the buildings were still European, and tramlines shone in the earthen highway.

  They veered around a large park, full of office workers taking their lunch in the shade of spreading trees, and entered a narrower street. This, Komarov guessed, was the oldest part of the Russian town. Ahead of them a pair of parked cars indicated the position of Cheka headquarters, while away to his right, a slim, incredibly graceful minaret rose above the square Russian mansions, like a flower climbing out of a tomb.

  The Cheka building had clearly been a ballet school in a previous incarnation: in the hall off the vestibule, now filled with typists and desks, exercise bars still clung to the walls. Yakov Peters’s office was on the first floor, a spacious room with a view of gardens and not much furniture: a camp bed, several native rugs, and a wide polished desk encircled by upright chairs. Three of the walls were hung with tapestries; the fourth had a large map of Turkestan and a framed portrait of Lenin.

  Two ceiling fans were noisily whirring, but it was still incredibly hot.

  Peters came out from behind the desk to embrace Komarov. The two men had never socialized much, but they’d done much the same job for the last three years and dealt with the same inner demons.