“That’s easy. None of the Indian comrades I met in Moscow had a good word to say about Gandhi. They called him a Menshevik, a false revolutionary, someone who’d put Indians in charge of the same rotten system, not change the system itself. And the Russians that Brady has recruited sound like men who think the same way, men who fought a revolution to change more than faces and who now believe that they’ve been betrayed by their leaders. They can’t do much about that, but they can stop it happening again in India.”
“So, a simple convergence of interests as far as Brady is concerned?” Komarov asked.
“I don’t believe he’s really working for Five.”
“Well, if they succeed in killing Gandhi, his true allegiance won’t stay hidden for long. Because that’s when the British will seize their scapegoats, and either he’ll be one of them, or he’ll mysteriously disappear.”
“True.”
“I don’t believe it,” Caitlin interjected. It was the first time she’d spoken since McColl’s arrest. “Aidan Brady may be a heartless bastard, but he would never willingly work for the British government—it would destroy his sense of who he is. And Sergei’s not stupid; neither was Aram for that matter. If we can guess what the British have in mind, so can they. And Brady won’t shirk from taking them on—he’s always had more confidence than any man’s entitled to. He’ll have something up his sleeve.”
“I agree,” McColl said. “But what?”
“Once we’ve caught them, we can ask,” Komarov said, rising. “It’s time to get moving.”
McColl liked the “we,” but doubted its use was deliberate. If he was going to be shot—an outcome that seemed inevitable in a strangely abstract sort of way—it would probably be in Kerki, though there also seemed a chance that he’d be taken back to Tashkent or Moscow for a suitably public trial.
As he looked to the west, the last slice of sun slipped below the horizon, pulling the night down across the desert. It wasn’t a place you escaped from.
The column of ponies moved across the stony desert at walking pace, the starlight turning everything to silver grey. When they’d set off on their night trek, and no apparent restrictions had been placed on Jack, Caitlin had expected an early conversation, but as the miles went by, it became clear he had other ideas. He was, she realized, trying to protect her.
A nice thought, but a little late in the day. Komarov hadn’t said anything, but he knew. So why keep silent? She found it hard to believe he was playing with her, so perhaps he didn’t know himself. Or did he still think she might prove useful when they caught up with Sergei?
He had turned a blind eye three years earlier when she’d admitted not reporting Jack’s presence in Moscow—in those days comrades still forgave one another the occasional transgression. But he had also warned her that he wouldn’t do so again, and these were harsher times.
Should she talk to him, try to explain? She might end up admitting things he didn’t know and make it worse for herself. Or Jack.
If she was arrested, too, there wouldn’t be much she could do. Asking Kollontai for help might do more harm than good—there were plenty of men who’d jump at the chance of punishing her friend by proxy. She would just have to hope for the best—deportation rather than internal exile, internal exile rather than prison or worse.
She might have been kidding herself, but such prospects still seemed unreal. Komarov hadn’t said anything in front of Maslov, which might mean nothing, but certainly gave him the option of turning another blind eye and allowing her to resume her work.
And that, she supposed, was what she wanted. Or was it? When she’d been dragged away from Moscow, there’d been no doubt in her mind. Being press-ganged into a hunt for her renegade husband had been downright annoying, and she’d known the hunt itself would probably have a heartbreaking ending, but once it was over, she would soon be back at her desk on Vozdvizhenka Street.
The doubts had slowly crept in. Nemtseva’s fate had shaken her, and so had her comrades’ reports of cutbacks in Zhenotdel funding. The film show in Tashkent had restored some of the hopes dented by the delegate murders, but the riot and its aftermath had, for the moment at least, left those hopes hanging by a very thin thread. Were the Zhenotdel’s best years coming to an end? If so, if doors were now closing instead of opening, was Moscow where she wanted to be? As a sympathetic male comrade had once told her, pushing against a badly stuck door, you might force it open; banging your head against one that was locked would probably give you a concussion.
And then there was Jack. Would she be asking these questions if he hadn’t reappeared in her life? She had chosen the revolution over him, taken the once-in-a-lifetime chance it offered to do something utterly new, to make the most of herself and the world. But would she do so again, if the choice was now between him and years of frustration? If the postimperial Jack looked a better prospect than the man she’d abandoned in 1918, the revolution she’d abandoned him for seemed a poorer one in almost every respect.
She told herself that quitting Russia would not mean quitting politics, that over the next few years, the causes she wanted to fight for might do better elsewhere. That she would get to see her family, that she would finally get to live with Jack, after almost eight years of their on-off affair. That she wouldn’t be giving up, that throwing in a towel was okay as long as you picked up another.
And yet. She would be giving up; she would be conceding defeat. And conceding defeat wasn’t something she knew how to do.
She lifted her gaze to the star-filled heavens. As things stood, any choice she made was purely academic. Even if they allowed her to leave, why would they let Jack go? All governments believed in punishing spies they caught, and he had freely admitted he was one. Even if Komarov wanted to, he couldn’t just shove Jack across the border with a flea in his ear.
No, either Jack escaped or he was done for, and he must know it, too.
Was there anything she could do?
There was no one she could go to, no heads she could bang together. What mattered was what Komarov chose to do with Jack, and whether he caught up with Sergei, and what happened if he did. All she could do was wait, and as she knew very well, patience had never been one of her virtues.
To the south the line between mountains and stars slowly rose. The traveling party stopped to eat by another ancient well tower, and McColl listened to the soldiers debating whether Kerki was more of a dump than Karshi. As they trekked onward, he imagined he could feel Maslov’s blank scrutiny, Komarov’s impatience, and Caitlin’s dismay, each a moving ball of emotion, rolling on across the empty wastes.
The first hint of light was showing on the eastern horizon when Komarov maneuvered his horse alongside McColl’s. “The Turcoman says we’re only an hour away from Kerki,” the Russian said conversationally. “You didn’t seem very surprised,” he said, shifting subjects without shifting tone.
“I was surprised you waited so long. When did you find out?” McColl asked.
“Before we left Moscow.”
McColl shook his head, then laughed. “Sherlock Holmes,” he murmured to himself.
“When did you realize I knew?” Komarov asked.
“The morning we left Tashkent. Your disciple couldn’t look me in the eye anymore.”
“He’d never make an actor,” Komarov admitted. “I think that’s why you’re good at what you do,” he went on in the same conversational voice. “Because your disguise feels more real than who you actually are.”
McColl said nothing to that, just hoped it wasn’t true.
“But you’re finished with all that now,” Komarov said, sounding almost sad that their contest was over.
“It’s your world.”
“Yes it is, but that’s not what I meant.” Komarov was staring at him in the growing light. “I suspect that you’ve run out of people you can put your faith in. Either as
friends or enemies.”
McColl thought about that for several moments. “You may be right. But not completely, not when it comes to enemies.” He paused as he guided his pony around the skeletal remains of a sheep. “I watched Aidan Brady knife an American riot cop in 1914. That summer he damn near killed me in Ireland and then murdered two cops in England. In 1918 he had another go at shooting me and shot an eleven-year-old boy instead. And my erstwhile colleagues in London, when they finally caught him, decided he’d be more use alive than dead. Instead of the hanging he so richly deserved, they gave him this job. When my old boss found out and asked me to come here, I only said yes because it was Brady.”
Komarov was silent for a minute or more. “If you didn’t have Brady, I suspect you would find someone else—people need to put faces to what they abhor. Years ago, before the war, when I was still a city policeman, a political prisoner asked me how many enemies I had in Brazil. None, I told him, as far as I knew. He explained to me that the Russian government, which paid my wages, had colluded with other capitalist powers to force down the world coffee price. As a result the plantation workers were earning even less of a pittance than usual, and their children were dying in droves from starvation. Now, why, this man asked me, would those children’s mothers consider me anything other than an enemy?”
McColl smiled. “What did you say?”
“I said this was all very abstract, and what could I, personally, do about the world coffee price? He said: ‘Join the revolution.’”
McColl looked across at the Russian. There was no kindness in his face, but neither was there any trace of evil. There were deep lines around the eyes, etched by fatigue and something more corrosive, and the eyes themselves seemed to be pushing outward, as if they were trying to escape from the memories that lay behind them. “I think I’ve lost my chance to do that,” McColl said wryly. “Maybe you’ll put in a good word for me.”
“Maybe I will. There is something you could tell me—just to satisfy my curiosity, you understand. Just between us.”
“Yes?”
“Did you kill two members of the Trust in Arkhangelskoye in the summer of 1918?”
McColl could remember the room, the older man calmly explaining why Moscow was a harder city to starve out than Petrograd was. “I did. They were planning to poison all the fields around Moscow, and they had the stuff to do it.”
“From your people?”
“The French actually, not that it matters.”
“And it was you that left the supplies of poison in the car on Bolshaya Lubyanka.”
“It seemed the safest place,” McColl said.
“May I ask why? Why you killed your allies and thwarted their plot, I mean.”
McColl took his time to answer. “I had Caitlin to think about. And the boy I’d just brought to Moscow, the one that Brady shot. We all want to win, to see our ideas triumph, but there are some things you can’t do . . . or at least I can’t.”
As the sun rose over the mountains, the yellow-brown desert abruptly gave way to yellow-green cultivation. They rode downhill through the welcome shade of a peach orchard, emerging onto a dusty track that ran between fields of golden grain. A mile ahead the river lay on the green swathe like a red-brown snake. On its far bank, the buff-colored houses of Kerki were spread across a line of low hills, and beyond these the desert reasserted its sway.
Another beautiful day, McColl thought. Perhaps his last, but probably not. There were many obvious questions to which Komarov would still want answers.
“So much for impassable deserts,” the Russian muttered beside him.
The Amu Dar’ya, here about three hundred yards wide, posed more of a problem. The ferry-raft was berthed on the other bank, and it took three rounds from Maslov’s revolver to roust out the operator. Once alerted he stared across at their party, vigorously scratched his head, and disappeared back into his house. Minutes dragged by, and Maslov’s finger was tightening on the trigger once more when the ferryman emerged with what looked like three sons, arranged in descending order of height.
They pushed out from the far bank, pulling the guide ropes free of the water’s surface as they did so.
The raft proved larger than it had at first appeared, easily accommodating both humans and ponies. The ferryman was clearly curious, but Komarov met his questions with discouraging grunts. The current was smooth and powerful.
Across the river they could see a wooden landing stage and, behind it, set back from the embarkation area, the ubiquitous chaikhana. On the latter’s right, there was a long wooden building, which one of the soldiers said was the town barracks. Between the two buildings, a road led steeply up to a half-ruined fortress. Red flags fluttered on the two towers that flanked its entrance gate; staring up at the battlements, McColl caught the flash of sun on glass.
Komarov was more interested in the barracks, which looked ominously quiet. “Ask him how many soldiers are stationed here,” he instructed McColl.
“About fifty,” was the initial reply, “when they’re here,” the unfortunate caveat.
“Ask him where they are.”
They were out chasing the Basmachi.
It was the first time McColl had heard Komarov swear.
The ferry was halfway across the river. As two men issued from the fortress gates and started down the hill, half a dozen soldiers appeared from behind the barracks and hurried toward the landing stage, most still arranging their dress. By the time the ferryman had pulled his craft alongside the landing stage, the soldiers had turned themselves into a ramshackle guard of honor, lining each side of the ramp and channeling the new arrivals into the welcoming arms of the officials from the fortress. One of these, to McColl’s amazement, was bedecked in a full-length leather coat, the sort that even stylish Chekists usually kept for winter. The other was a woman, and a handsome one at that. She was probably in her forties, and her eyes sparkled with an intelligence that seemed lacking in her male superior.
The man in the leather coat was the chairman of the Kerki Soviet. “How many men have you got?” Komarov asked while they were still shaking hands.
“These,” the chairman said, airily indicating the now-at-ease guard of honor. He was a Pathan, McColl thought, or maybe a Tajik. “You’ll take tea?” the man was asking Komarov.
“Tea? Oh, yes, I suppose so.”
“This way, comrade.”
They were led into the chaikhana garden, where a line of iron bedsteads topped with mattresses gave the usual impression of an open-air hospital. The woman disappeared into the building and shouted at someone.
“We have news,” the chairman announced importantly, once they had all sat down. “The Red Turkestan should be here sometime this afternoon.”
“How do you know this?” Komarov asked, obviously surprised.
“We have an airplane. Since the message arrived from Samarkand, our pilot has flown down the river each day and kept track of their progress.”
“Is the airplane armed?” Komarov asked.
“No.”
“A pity. But perhaps we could use it to drop explosives.”
The chairman looked uncomfortable. “I regret to say that we have run out of fuel. The pilot barely had enough for his last return flight.”
Komarov buried his nose in his hands. “When are the troops due back?”
A shrug. “Who knows? The garrison commander is a fool.”
“Probably not for several days,” the woman said, rejoining them.
“Twelve men,” Komarov muttered.
It was enough for Jesus, McColl thought flippantly. He sipped at the hot, sweet tea, staring up at the serried ranks of mud houses climbing the hill. He had the strange feeling that he was seeing Asia for the first time.
Maslov proved more oblivious to their surroundings. “What shall I do with the Englishman?” he asked Komarov,
as if McColl were a piece of shopping they’d just brought home.
“There’s a lockable room in the barracks,” the woman said, eyeing McColl for the first time.
“That’ll do,” Komarov told Maslov.
As he was led away, McColl took a look downriver. There was no sign of the expected riverboat, but his ears picked up the faintest echoes of distant gunfire. It might have been hunters or the town’s absent troops trading fire with a band of Basmachi. Or maybe his one indisputable enemy, only a few hours away.
Piatakov watched the passengers wade ashore, still grumbling loudly. They didn’t know how lucky they were. Farther upstream a battle was waiting for the Red Turkestan, and thanks to him they were going to miss it. Brady had considered keeping them aboard as a disincentive to artillery, but had been won over by Piatakov’s counterargument that too many strangers would get in their way.
He went back to constructing a makeshift breastplate for the machine gun. Having already taken the cargo-space doors off their hinges, he lashed them to either side of the mounting to give himself some extra protection. It had already been decided that he would man the gun and that Chatterji’s first responsibility was looking after captain and bridge. Brady would go wherever he was needed.
The American was full of confidence, and Piatakov was inclined to feel the same. The captain had cheerfully warned them that Kerki had a sizeable garrison and that the river there was appreciably narrower, but as long as the ship didn’t run aground, it would certainly take some stopping. As Piatakov had discovered on the Volga, boarding a moving ship in the face of hostile fire was a daunting prospect for even the best-trained troops, and there wouldn’t be many of those out here in the middle of nowhere.
In Kerki the morning passed slowly. McColl had been shut in an officer’s room; it contained a bed, a cupboard, one pitted enamel bowl, and two books: The ABC of Communism and a volume of Pushkin’s verse. The door was not locked—to Maslov’s chagrin the key could not be found—and only a single soldier was presently standing guard outside, making escape to the nearby border a highly feasible proposition.
The Dark Clouds Shining Page 30
