The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  And there, in one small paragraph, was the news that meant something to Caitlin.

  The “woman’s advocate” Alexandra Kollontai, the Indian writer noted, was leaving Moscow for “six months of agitational work in Odessa.” With the women’s issue now “resolved,” Kollontai’s “separate organization” had “surely fulfilled its purpose.”

  Caitlin read it several times, and could find no silver lining. They were moving her friend away from the heart of power, and it felt like a small step from there to moving women away from the heart of the party’s concerns.

  All of which made Caitlin consider her own position. If Russian men—Bolshevik or otherwise—had absorbed all the change they were ready for, then surely it made more sense for someone like her to continue the struggle elsewhere. On the other hand, if the Zhenotdel was under serious threat, it would need the help of people like her. So wouldn’t she just be running away?

  Was she just looking for reasons to stay with Jack?

  That thought brought her back to the present and her constant companions of worry and guilt. Each time Jack went out, she wondered if she’d see him again, and the knowledge that she’d written those notes to Sergei seemed to hang in the back of her mind like a small dark cloud.

  The knock on the door broke into her thoughts, and Maneka’s abrupt appearance threw them aside.

  “English downstairs!” she said excitedly. “English with guns! You must get what you need and come with me.”

  Repressing the urge to seek clarification, Caitlin took a brief inventory of the room and decided there was nothing she couldn’t live without. But as Maneka was already bundling some of Jack’s clothes into their suitcase, she threw in some of her own.

  As they left the room, footsteps were audible on the nearest stairs. Maneka grabbed Caitlin’s wrist and set off in the other direction, down a narrower flight, through an arch, and along a corridor lined with boxes of vegetables. Two servants stepped sharply out of Maneka’s path, and offered Caitlin namaskars as she hurried by. She and Maneka were almost at the end of the passage when a shout rang out behind them.

  Not pausing to see whose it was, Caitlin followed the girl through another door and found herself back in the women’s courtyard. The children all stared at her and the suitcase as Maneka tried to explain her presence to the older women. The debate was hardly started when someone rapped on the gate that guarded the second entrance, and an angry dispute erupted beyond it. The men of the household were telling the white invaders that they weren’t allowed in the women’s preserve. The white invaders were demanding the key to the door.

  They’ll break it down, Caitlin thought. If she’d been wearing the Indian clothes, they might not have noticed her. As it was . . .

  “Please,” Maneka was saying, tugging again at her wrist. There was a third door half-hidden by foliage, which at first refused to open but then did so with an angry squeak. Another corridor, another gate, and they were out in an alley.

  “That way,” Maneka said, pointing her toward the busy-looking road at the end.

  Caitlin took the girl’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you,” she said as the sound of screams came over the wall to her left. The “English” had invaded the women’s sanctum.

  “Go,” Maneka told her.

  She went, hurrying down the alley with the suitcase in hand, wondering where she should go and how she and Jack would find each other again. Their old room at the serai, she decided, if she could find it.

  She needn’t have worried. As she inched her way out of the alley, a brown hand in a uniformed sleeve closed around her neck. When she struggled, the policeman quickly released her, but not, she soon realized, from any intention of letting her go. He was shocked at having laid hands on white skin.

  While his partner recovered the suitcase she’d dropped, he harried her down the street like a sheepdog, urging her this way and that without coming too close. Several hundred interested eyes watched them pass, and some at least had the sense to look amused. An open car had been backed into Sinha’s street and now stood waiting by his gate, upper body gleaming and lower half caked in dust.

  Her captor’s partner dropped her suitcase in the back seat and disappeared into the house, emerging a few moments later with a red-faced Englishman in civilian clothes. In their wake a posse of outraged Indian men were protesting the breaking of purdah with shaking fists and shouts of defiance.

  Without looking back the Englishman flicked a hand at them, a gesture of dismissal that Nero might have practiced.

  “Where’s Jack McColl?” he barked at her.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “When did he go out?”

  “He didn’t. He’s been staying somewhere else,” she added, hoping it would help Harry.

  “Where?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s your privilege.”

  He took her upper arm in a tight grip, walked her across to the open car, and told her to get in. She did as she was told. Kicking the overgrown schoolboy might make for a few joyful seconds but probably wouldn’t be wise.

  McColl arrived at the end of Sinha’s street at the same time as the car. He took in the scene in an instant: the pedestrians and slow-moving tongas choking the Dariba Kalan, the open car with the Indian soldiers up front, Caitlin and the IPI’s Morley sitting behind them.

  Morley saw him in the same instant, but his true identity clearly took longer to register. McColl had one foot on the running board and the Webley out from under his dhoti, before the other man could react.

  “Don’t anyone move,” McColl said, holding the gun against Morley’s head. “Let’s go,” he told Caitlin, aware of the growing space around him as the locals slowly backed off. How could he disable the car and its occupants?

  “Why don’t we take the car?” Caitlin suggested.

  He grinned. “What a good idea. Out!” he told the two Indians.

  They obeyed.

  “Now start walking. That way.” He gestured toward the south.

  With one last hopeless look at their English boss, they started trudging away.

  “You won’t escape,” Morley said without a great deal of conviction.

  “Now you,” McColl ordered, stepping back to let him out. “Take out your gun, and put it on the ground,” he added.

  Morley did as he was told.

  “Now walk.” McColl picked up the gun intending to hand it to Caitlin, but she was getting in behind the wheel. “I should have guessed you’d learned to drive,” he said. He climbed in beside her, once again conscious of the multitude around them.

  As Caitlin drove carefully up the crowded street, the onlookers’ stares grew no less incredulous. It took a few minutes for McColl to realize why: a white woman chauffeuring a native man was not a common sight in British India.

  The Hardest Thing

  “I never liked this damn business from the beginning,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, losing his usual linguistic precision in the stress of the moment.

  Oh yes? Cunningham thought. The plan had originated in Delhi, if not in Fitzwilliam’s brain, with his obvious approval and encouragement. Cunningham idly wondered who, if anyone, would garner the blame. Always assuming that anyone would ever admit a mistake had been made.

  “Too tricky by half,” Fitzwilliam was muttering as he strode up and down the room, glass of whiskey in hand. Through the window other club members could be seen in various degrees of midafternoon wakefulness.

  The colonel placed his glass on the polished sideboard, extracted an oval Turkish cigarette from his silver case, and lit it with an English match. “You are certain a photograph was taken?”

  “Not absolutely. But I saw something reflect the light, and what other reason would he have had to set up such a meeting?”
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br />   The colonel stared at his whiskey. “Pity you didn’t think of that before,” he said, adding a withering look for emphasis.

  Cunningham returned the gaze and said nothing.

  “But I suppose the damage is done. I suppose we’ll be hearing soon enough what McColl has in mind. Either blackmail or the fool’s picked up a bleeding heart in Russia.”

  “I’d guess the latter,” Cunningham said.

  Fitzwilliam grunted his disbelief, though whether in McColl’s new organ or the concept itself, Cunningham couldn’t be sure. “What about the Good Indian team?” Cunningham asked.

  “Yes, I was coming to them. Did the Russian see the camera?”

  “He must have.”

  Fitzwilliam gulped down the last of his whiskey. “Well, we weren’t planning on giving them knighthoods.” He thought for a minute, leaning against the sideboard, the cigarette curling blue smoke across the back of his hand. “In fact,” he said finally, “our options seem extremely limited.”

  Cunningham nodded. “Brady won’t be any great loss to humanity.”

  “An arrest that goes sadly awry,” Fitzwilliam murmured, half to himself. He looked at his watch. “It’ll be dark in three hours. You’d better take a platoon—we don’t want any more slipups. And you can bury them there.” He allowed himself a wintry smile. “If we ever need more on Sayid Hassan, we can dig them up again.” He stubbed out the cigarette and turned for the door. “If only Gandhi had a garden,” he said over his shoulder.

  If only, Cunningham thought, as he picked up the club secretary’s telephone. After arranging the troops for that evening, he strolled back down to the IPI bungalow. He’d been there only a few minutes when Morley returned, looking hot, disheveled, and angry.

  “What happened to you?” Cunningham asked.

  “That bastard McColl,” Morley spluttered, wiping the back of his neck with a damp-looking handkerchief. He told the story between gulps of ice water.

  “But who was the woman?” Cunningham wanted to know.

  “Not a clue, old man. She didn’t deny knowing McColl, but she claimed he wasn’t staying there. Lying like a trooper, of course. She had a faint American accent, I think. A looker, all right. Chestnut hair, big green eyes.”

  “Nice tits?” Cunningham asked sarcastically.

  “Sorry, I didn’t have time to take measurements,” Morley retorted in the same tone.

  Cunningham laughed. “Okay, okay. It doesn’t matter now.” He explained about the setup at the station and his conversation with the colonel.

  Hearing someone else’s tale of woe raised Morley’s spirits. “So what now?” he asked with his customary air of boyish expectancy.

  “We clear up their mess. What else?” Cunningham gazed out of the window, wondering why he felt vaguely envious of McColl.

  When Piatakov got back to the house, he found Brady waiting in the chair beneath the banyan tree. When the American heard what had happened, he burst out laughing, loudly enough to bring Chatterji out of the house.

  “What is happening?” the Indian asked with an uncertain smile.

  As Brady repeated the story in English, Piatakov asked himself for the umpteenth time if she really was in Delhi, if she really had betrayed him.

  “The police must have engineered it,” Chatterji said without stopping to think.

  “No,” Brady decided. “Why would they? We’re not the sort of friends they’ll want to publicize.”

  “Then who? Why would anyone do this?” the Indian asked nervously.

  Brady raised a hand to quiet him, but said nothing for several moments. Then his face broke into a smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Look—”

  “Who could have forced her to write a note like that?” Piatakov interjected in Russian. “I don’t understand it. If she’s a prisoner, then maybe. But whose? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sergei, for Christ’s sake, get a grip,” Brady said coldly. “You left her and your precious party behind. What does it matter what intrigue she’s gotten herself mixed up in?”

  It matters because I cared about her, Piatakov thought. And still do. You could leave a lover behind, but not the heart that loved her.

  “You didn’t see her,” Brady continued remorselessly. “You don’t even know she’s here.”

  “It was her handwriting!”

  “Christ! Maybe someone had a copy from somewhere . . .”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. She’s history! Forget her. Forget about whoever it was sent that note. You spend your life wondering why other people are doing what they’re doing. Who cares? Now listen. Whoever was behind that camera—they’ve actually done us a favor. Because now the English have lost any chance of pinning it all on the Bolsheviks—not when there’s a picture showing one of them hand in glove with . . .” His voice trailed off. “Fuck!” he exclaimed. “What’s the time?”

  Chatterji told him.

  “Pack up all our stuff,” Brady told them. “We’re moving out now, as soon as the sun goes in.”

  “Why?” Piatakov asked.

  “The English will know that we know. And there’s only one way that they can be sure of calling the whole thing off.”

  The American was right, Piatakov realized.

  “Durga,” Brady said, “why don’t you bring the servants together?”

  Piatakov thought about protesting but decided against it. There was no time to find out whether one of the servants was genuine and, if so, which. The struggle was a lottery, claiming innocent and guilty alike. He remembered the woman in Samarkand, the shock on her face as she sank to her knees, blood coursing out through her fingers.

  During the war Piatakov had heard several soldiers say that the more they saw of death the more careful they were with their lives. Not me, he thought. He was becoming more careless, with his own and everyone else’s.

  Caitlin leaned against the balcony rail, watching the street life below. She preferred their old room at the caravansary to the one in Sinha’s house—it might be dirtier, smaller, devoid of extras, but it had this window on the world. She could still feel like part of the human race.

  Jack had gone off to see about the photographs, his mood a lot lighter than it had been for days. She wanted to share his confidence, to believe they had found a solution that scuppered the plot without costing Sergei his life, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. Something kept nagging at the back of her mind, but she didn’t know what it was.

  Maybe it was nothing. She watched two girls walk by in identical chrysanthemum-colored saris, their hair oiled, their eyes surrounded by pools of dark makeup. At what age, she wondered, was freedom curtailed and purdah imposed? Were there big differences between the religious groups? She would have liked to find people to ask, but even if she hadn’t been stuck there in her own peculiar purdah, her lack of the relevant linguistic skills would probably have proved a significant obstacle. She had no idea how many of the people walking by on the street below spoke English. Indeed, until the last couple of weeks, India itself had hardly featured in her consciousness.

  She noticed Jack coming up the street, his turbaned head bobbing above the shorter locals. He was cradling a bag with one arm, and idly swinging a rolled-up newspaper with the other. Seeing her there on the balcony, he waved the paper and disappeared through the doorway below. A few moments later he was wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing the side of her neck.

  “I bring food,” he said.

  She followed him into the room, where uncorked pots of rice and sauce were gently steaming on the floor. They ate with their fingers, something both had grown increasingly proficient at in the last couple of months, while McColl told her all about Mirza’s friend with the darkroom and their picture taking form in his developing tray.

  “It’s perfect,�
�� he said. “They didn’t say a word to each other, but they look like they’re deep in conversation.”

  “That’s good,” she agreed.

  “Mirza’s sending one to Fitzwilliam, and there are a dozen copies going out to all and sundry—foreign correspondents, the nationalist groups—”

  “It won’t work,” she said abruptly. Reaching out for the jug of water, her eyes had caught the photograph and story on the front page of the Eastern Mail, and suddenly it all made sense.

  He looked surprised. “Why not?”

  “You sent the warning to Sergei and the others?”

  “Yes, we agreed—”

  “I know. But it won’t work.” She leaned across, grabbed the newspaper, and placed it in front of him. “Look, Jack,” she said, jabbing a finger at the picture.

  “It’s the Prince of Wales.”

  “I know. When does he arrive?”

  “In a few days.” He shook his head. “No . . .”

  “When was the visit arranged?”

  “Months ago, I expect.”

  “It has to be. He’s the one they plan to kill, not Gandhi. They think your government will overreact and turn the whole country against it.”

  “They’re probably right.” He shifted his gaze from the picture to her. “Why did you ask whether I’d sent the warning?”

  It was almost seven when Cunningham, Morley, and three carloads of infantry roared up Sayid Hassan’s drive, bounced across his lawn and flower beds, and drew up in front of the house. No lights sprang on; no shouts of alarm rang out.

  Cunningham elected himself to check out the house and found the four servants. Each had been strangled with a silken cord—thuggee-style. Either Chatterji had traditionalist leanings, or one of the others had gone native.