The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  A train was coming. The American cursed and took up the oars again. They had drifted more than fifty yards from the shelter of the bridge, and Piatakov could hear the rumble deepen as the approaching locomotive abandoned solid ground and ventured out onto the iron lattice. Soon he could make out the orange glow from the firebox and the pulse of smoke gathering moonlight.

  They were still some way downstream from the bridge when the train passed overhead, a line of unlit cars behind the locomotive. As far as Piatakov could see, the driver was staring straight ahead and hadn’t noticed the small craft below. “I don’t think so,” he said in answer to Brady’s inquiring look.

  The drumbeat faded; the American rowed on, his weariness apparently gone.

  Piatakov raised the telescope again. There were several barges lined up at the quay, some piled high with cotton, others awaiting their share of the towering mounds on the quayside. And there, a couple of hundred yards downstream, was their passport to Afghanistan. The riverboat was more than a hundred feet long, with a deck barely five feet clear of the water, and what looked like a long two-story house squarely plonked amidships. The line of portholes on the upper floor suggested passenger cabins; the lack of windows below suggested space for freight. At the bow end, a small square bridge was set atop and forward of the main structure; in the stern, a large cylindrical casing covered a giant paddle wheel. Red lights glinted at either end, but there was no sign of life between them.

  Ten minutes later Brady maneuvered their boat alongside the riverboat, only a few feet away from where someone had neatly stenciled “Red Turkestan.” Chatterji grabbed hold of the deck edge and squeezed himself up through the railings. He stood there and listened for a second, then disappeared into the darkness, gun in hand.

  Brady and Piatakov followed, leaving their skiff to drift away downstream. Like a balloon released into the sky, Piatakov thought—a sad sort of freedom. One of Aram Shahumian’s favorite epigrams came to mind: a revolution was like a wild horse; it wasn’t a matter of whether you’d be thrown from its back, simply of when.

  Scorpions

  “Act naturally,” Brady said as they reached the door that led out onto the deck. The three of them had spent the night in a storeroom, and the Red Turkestan had been underway for over an hour, having departed Charjui soon after daybreak.

  The American opened the door and stepped through. Behind him, Piatakov shielded his eyes against the sudden glare. The world outside looked like a child’s painting: a shiny white boat on a bloodred river under a bright blue sky. At the river’s edge, green reeds gave way to yellow-brown desert, making the most of nature’s palette.

  Ten yards away two men were leaning over the port rail, shouting to make themselves heard over the din of the paddle wheel. One glanced at them as they emerged, but without apparent interest. Brady led the way aft, hesitating only fractionally at the sight of three uniformed soldiers sitting around the foredeck-mounted machine gun. “A lovely morning,” he shouted in Russian, and one soldier raised an arm in reply. The American turned up the stairs to the upper deck, a smile on his face.

  A man and a woman were standing side by side at the bow rail, smoking cigarettes, gazing straight ahead. Leaving Chatterji to stand guard, Brady and Piatakov ascended the short flight of steps that led to the bridge. As the American stepped through the open doorway, he pulled the gun from his waistband.

  There were two men inside: one, burly and fair-haired under his peaked cap, was sitting with his back to them, booted feet resting on the ledge beneath the open window; the other, short, wiry, and dark, was standing at the wheel, resting his weight on one leg.

  “Crew only,” the man with the cap said without bothering to turn his head.

  “Have I the honor of addressing the captain?” Brady asked.

  “You . . .” The intended sentence died as the eyes took in the revolver. “What the hell . . . ? What do you want?” The man seemed more surprised than frightened.

  A veteran of some war or other, Piatakov thought. Who wasn’t?

  Brady leaned himself against a convenient wall. “We want to go to Kelif.”

  “Well, that’s just where the ship is headed, so you can put the gun away.”

  Brady smiled. “You might find this hard to believe, Captain, but there are people who don’t want us to get there.”

  The captain smiled back. “And why would that be? You don’t look like fleeing nobility.”

  Brady’s grin broadened. “See?” he said to Piatakov, who was standing with his back to the doorjamb. “I told you our disguises were perfect.”

  “If only we could persuade Anastasia to take off the tiara,” Piatakov said, surprising himself. How long had it been since a joke had come out of his mouth?

  Brady and the captain both laughed. “What’s your name, Captain?” the American asked.

  “Nikolayev,” the captain said.

  “Well, Captain Nikolayev, where do you normally stop between here and Kelif?”

  “Burdalik, Kerki, and wherever we’re flagged down.”

  “Do you need to stop? For food, fuel, anything?”

  “We might need to take on more fuel.”

  “Which I assume means you might not. So we’ll deal with that when we have to. In the meantime, we travel nonstop.”

  “That’s what you think. This boat stops every time it finds a sandbank. I suppose you could try shooting them,” he suggested with a grin.

  Brady ignored him; he never seemed to register other people’s sarcasm. “How many people are there on board?” he asked.

  “Four crew, eleven passengers. Paying passengers, that is,” he added pointedly.

  “How many soldiers?”

  “I’ve no idea. Lev?”

  “Four. Three men and one officer,” the helmsman said stiffly, not taking his eyes off the river.

  Brady pulled himself upright. “Right. Captain, we’re going to bring all the passengers and crew—all but Lev here—to the lounge. And once we’ve relieved them of any weapons they’re carrying, Sergei here will search the cabins and storerooms. Durga will stay up here on the bridge and keep Lev company.”

  “So who are you really?” the captain asked, in a tone that suggested he didn’t expect a serious answer.

  Piatakov also waited for the joke, but for once Brady was otherwise concerned.

  “Soldiers of the revolution,” he said absent-mindedly. “With nothing left to lose,” he added, looking the captain straight in the eye. “I used to pilot a boat like this. On the Missouri River in America. You understand? No one here is indispensable.”

  Caitlin and Haruka sat on one side of the desk, Komarov and Jack on the other. They were in Chechevichkin’s office, which at this hour of the morning was blissfully cool and filled with dappled light. Caitlin had noticed that the coffin was gone from the adjoining room; the Armenian must have been buried the day before.

  Komarov had asked the questions, Jack translating them into Uzbek. The girl had told the story of her husband’s murder—the “beast,” she called him—and was now describing her journey on horseback and expressing her surprise that the Russian had let her go on the outskirts of town.

  Caitlin tried to picture this man as her husband. He seemed both closer and more distant, like a part of herself she was losing contact with.

  But Sergei had cut himself loose from more than her. His bitterness had been understandable, but the man who’d joined Brady on this murderous odyssey had clearly taken leave of his senses. What did he think he was doing taking terrified children for moonlit rides?

  She switched her attention to McColl, watching his lips as he interpreted, remembering their lovemaking only three nights before. He would soon be gone, she supposed, in prison or over the border. And how would she feel then?

  Komarov was standing, thanking Haruka for her cooperation, asking Caitlin if
arrangements had been made.

  “She’s going back to her family,” Caitlin told him. “On one condition—that they don’t sell her into another marriage against her will. A condition the local Cheka will need to enforce,” she added pointedly. “It’s the best I could do at short notice.”

  Still, the girl was smiling as Maslov escorted her out to the waiting father. McColl asked Komarov if he’d be needed in the next couple of hours.

  “No, but don’t stray far.”

  “I’m going to take a look at Tamerlane’s Mausoleum,” he said, glancing at Caitlin.

  “I could do with some exercise,” she said, seeing a chance to find out why he was still around.

  “Take a look behind us,” he said when she asked the question, and there, a hundred yards back, two armed Chekists were sauntering in their wake. When they all reached the mausoleum, the Chekists perched on a broken-down wall while she and McColl admired yet another blue dome.

  “They’re sticking closer,” he told her on the walk back. “I don’t think Komarov wants to lose me.”

  Neither do I, she thought. But one way or another, she would.

  Komarov moved his chair into the courtyard and rummaged in his pocket for the latest cable. Sasha had been his usual thorough self, and the facts his assistant had gleaned from the few available records had refreshed his own memory of that summer’s events. The name of the British agent that Aidan Brady had accused Caitlin Hanley of meeting was Jack McColl. And it had of course been Brady who’d shot the boy in Kalanchevskaya Square. Two reasons for the Englishman to hate the American, but if Davydov really was McColl, surely there had to be more to his presence in Russia than a three-year-old vendetta.

  There was nothing to suggest that Piatakova had lied about her relationship with McColl, other than Komarov’s own impression at the time that she’d cared about him more than most people did about long-abandoned lovers. Maybe she had, but another three years had passed since then, and no one Sasha had spoken to doubted her loyalty to the revolution. Which was, he realized, a relief.

  There was more. Within hours of this McColl’s escape from Moscow, two crates of crop-rotting poisons had been left on the Vecheka’s doorstep on Bolshaya Lubyanka, and two White agents had been found shot in an Arkhangelskoye dacha, one dead, one severely wounded. Reading the wounded man’s description of his assailant, Komarov could see nothing to rule out the Englishman now masquerading as an interpreter from Tashkent. McColl, it seemed almost certain, had foiled a plot by Russian allies of his own government to destroy the crops that fed Moscow. Which should, Komarov thought, have been the end of his official career as a spy. So whom, if anyone, was he working for now?

  The question was still exercising his brain when Maslov ushered a young and uniformed Russian into the courtyard. “Tell Comrade Komarov what you just told me.”

  The man was a railway guard. His train had been crossing the Amu Dar’ya bridge the previous night when he had spotted a small boat in midstream. There had been three men in it.

  Komarov slapped an armrest with the palm of his right hand, causing the railwayman to step back a pace. “The boat from Charjui to Kerki—when does it leave?”

  “It should have left this morning, comrade. At dawn, I think. It was waiting for the spare parts we brought in from Krasnovodsk, so—”

  “Check it!” Komarov snapped at Maslov. The subordinate lifted the telephone and asked the operator to get him the Charjui Cheka. The three of them waited in silence, the guard shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

  “You can go,” Komarov told him. “Thank you.”

  The man needed no second bidding.

  Maslov was through at last. “Well, find out!” he shouted down the line. “They’re—”

  “I heard,” Komarov said. He was examining the map, remembering that Peters had mentioned how slow the boat was.

  “It left at dawn,” Maslov confirmed, “but our men were not on board.”

  Komarov grunted. “Ask them when it’s due to reach Kerki.”

  Three or four days was the answer.

  “Right. Get Chechevichkin in here.”

  The grains of rice that clung to his beard indicated the local chairman had been eating his breakfast. “Yes, comrade?”

  Komarov passed on the new information. “I must get to Kerki in three days,” he added, studying the map once more.

  “I don’t see how—”

  “That’s exactly what you must do. Look, here. This road—is it passable for automobiles?”

  Chechevichkin considered. “Well . . .”

  “There is a garrison at Karshi, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Half of them are down with fever.”

  “Then half of them are not.”

  They drove out of Samarkand soon after noon, cruising along a surprisingly smooth road toward the distant mountains. But not for long. As they left the last habitations behind, the road threw aside any need to keep up appearances, and swiftly degenerated into a jarring duet of potholes and ruts. The first tire burst after about ten miles, the second two miles farther on, making McColl understand why they’d bought eight spares for the two vehicles.

  While the drivers busied themselves with the second wheel change, he walked forward along the road, which ran up a wide, dry valley before disappearing between the yellow rock walls of a gorge. Behind him the sand dunes stretched back to the distant line of green that marked the course of the Zeravshan River. Caitlin was sitting on the running board of one car staring thoughtfully into space. Komarov was pacing up and down, his grey hairs glinting in the sun beneath the edge of his cap. Maslov was arguing with the two drivers, probably about their productivity.

  They had passed two camel caravans soon after leaving the city, but now seemed alone in the middle of a very large universe. Or almost. A large scorpion emerged from between two boulders not a yard from McColl’s feet, its upflung tail swaying gently as it advanced. He flicked some dust with his boot and watched it scuttle back into the shadows. Like a spy, he thought sourly. Why had Komarov brought him on this last leg?

  Maslov was waving everyone back to the cars, and soon they were driving on toward the next blowout. It occurred high in a mountain pass and was swiftly succeeded by another, but then either the road or their luck improved, and they motored safely down into another wide valley, the ancient town of Shahrisabz a growing splotch of green in the distance. Darkness was falling as they entered the main street, pursued by a crowd of children and watched by the curious eyes of the older inhabitants. The local party official had apparently been warned that they were coming; he suddenly appeared in front of them waving a large red flag. McColl wondered if the man intended to walk ahead of the cars all the way to Karshi.

  McColl climbed out to interpret, but the Uzbek’s Russian was up to the task of explaining the arrangements for their overnight stay. The drivers were sent off to find spares for the spares; the rest of them were led up onto a spacious roof where food was already being prepared. A large, black, semispherical iron bowl was sitting on a circle of bricks above a wood fire; inside it McColl could see and smell pieces of mutton, onion, carrot, and tomato sizzling in the fat—the beginnings of a pilaf. Cups of water, sliced peppers, and rice were arrayed on a tray beside the fire, ready for adding when the time was right.

  He sat himself down, suddenly feeling ravenous. Komarov was talking to the party official; Maslov and Caitlin had disappeared. The street below was still full of children, many gazing up at the roof with disappointed faces, as if shortchanged on a promised entertainment. Most of the town was visible, or would have been half an hour earlier. Now only the higher slopes of the surrounding ridges were bathed in violet light, and as McColl watched, the stars grew sharper above the jagged mountains to the south.

  Caitlin came out onto the roof with
an Uzbek woman, having let down her hair and changed into a multicolored dress and shawl. She threw him a smile as she and their hostess sat down on the other side of the fire.

  The meal was ready in about an hour, although it seemed three to McColl and his stomach. The food was delicious and, by some miracle of local requisitioning, came with a liberal supply of wine. A quintet of Uzbek musicians appeared to serenade them, three playing a stringed instrument that McColl didn’t recognize, the other two beating out rhythms on tabla and tambourine. With the stars bright above, his head full of wine and music, McColl felt a rare sense of contentment spreading through his being. If he was living on borrowed time, all the more reason to enjoy it.

  Every now and then, his and Caitlin’s eyes would meet across the fire, and they’d been lovers long enough for him to recognize her look. He knew they shouldn’t, that sleeping with him again might even prove fatal for her, so he tore himself away from the eyes and the fire, and announced that he was having an early night.

  She had other ideas, catching up with him as he reached his door and putting her arms around his neck.

  “This is too public,” she said after a long, intention-sapping kiss.

  “It’s too dangerous,” he told her, resisting her gentle tug on his arm.

  “I know,” she said. “But if making love with you makes me an enemy of the revolution, then it’s not the revolution I chose to serve. Now come.”

  He went.

  Later, as they lay in each other’s arms, she ran a finger across his chest. “Sometimes I think that we’re the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to understand.”

  “I know. And yet sometimes—like now—it seems so . . . self-explanatory.”

  She propped up her head on an arm and looked into his face. “So are you still in love with me?”

  “I’m afraid I am,” he answered with a lightness he didn’t feel.