The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  Saskia felt the thickening air through her hands, which shook on the juddering yoke. She swallowed and pulled back as hard as she could. She pushed the intercom.

  ‘Brace, brace, brace!’

  She watched sunlight move across the ceiling switches. Behind her, screams overcame the volume of the alarms and the rushing air.

  This won’t hurt. I’m not really here.

  She looked at her hands.

  At her left hand.

  Maybe this time I’ll save them.

  She was wearing Jem’s ring.

  Maybe this time—

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The alarm had stopped. So too had the American voice. The sun no longer swung across the ceiling. There was no vibration through the yoke or the seat and the jet engines were silent. Everything had stopped.

  Saskia took her hands from the yoke. She unbuckled her harness and leaned forward until the ground was visible through the window. The Danube was fifty metres below, and real enough, but unmoving. The wavelets were still.

  Her mouth hung open.

  She rose from her seat and moved to the rear of the cockpit, where she could stand. Between her feet was the body of the pilot. His dry eyes stared into the shadows beneath the seat. Saskia stepped over him, up the slope to the flight deck door. Her trainers squelched.

  The door was shut. She imagined the stewardess with the intercom handset pressed against her head, the free hand raised at the terrified passengers. Those passengers would be folded against their knees. Above them, yellow oxygen cups and plastic snoods would dangle.

  Saskia opened the door and made

  ~

  two bloody footsteps across a wooden floor. It was an open landing at the rear of a milk bar. She dropped to one knee, looking through a balustrade across the heads of a dozen men. Daylight sank narrow shafts through the smoke, which was wafted back and forth in the wind of a heavy cloth by a boy with a pulley. The men wore long coats. They looked penniless. They were princes.

  Saskia looked at the door behind her. It showed the edge of a cot, a dirty mirror and a window covered in wire mesh. The aircraft had gone, along with her bloody footsteps.

  ‘Come down,’ called the owner of the milk bar. He sat on a high chair near the door. Next to him stood the wrestler called Papashvily who would come for Saskia in Switzerland two years later.

  Following the owner’s call, which was friendly enough, the customers, standing to a man, ceased their conversation and stared at her as she took the steps all the way to the earthen floor, soft in her fur boots. She was dressed like a school teacher but for her canvas skirt and hand warmer, in which she hid her amputation.

  The silent, staring princes were decked variously in blouses, peasant smocks, and long coats bristling with bullets in lieu of buttons. Some wore bandoliers. Most carried rifles. Fur hats. Fezzes. Luxuriant moustaches. They looked like a theatre troupe. The richest of them wore puffed trousers and leather boots. It was summer and they stank. During her summary inspection, a boy entered the bar; he was steered back to the rocky street by Papashvily.

  I know them. All their names. Which are faithful to their wives. Which will die in the bank heist: shot by militiamen or gendarmes, trampled under horses and carriage wheels, hunted down in the weeks to follow.

  I know why they have come here this morning, why they wait in the heat, armed, not one of them drinking.

  They’re scared.

  Scared of him.

  There was a creak from the rail above. Saskia, like the men, turned to look.

  Simon Ter-Petrossian—Kamo—emerged from the same door as Saskia. Sweat had gathered on his forehead. His eyes were clear.

  He hasn’t yet had his accident with the bomb.

  ‘Come down,’ said the owner of the milk bar. He, alone, seemed insulated from Kamo’s superiority.

  Kamo took the steps two at a time and walked into the crowd with his arms wide, ignoring Saskia. He gathered the men to him and kissed them and knocked their caps off and pinched their cheeks. They responded in kind. There were roars and much stamping.

  ‘Where have you been? Don’t you know the Kuban Host is in town?’

  ‘When did you arrive in Tiflis?’

  ‘Why do we have to meet here, at the Adamia, for all love?’

  ‘What is the name of your beautiful woman?

  At this, Kamo’s ebullience winked out. The men saw this change and quietened in a moment. Nobody wanted to be the last to stop laughing. They could read his moods precisely. They were Kamo’s Own; they were to become the core of his notorious Outfit.

  ‘Who?’ Kamo asked, turning to Saskia. ‘Lynx?’

  He laughed.

  Nobody laughed with him any longer. They knew his habit: upon a return, he would claim knowledge of a traitor, and conduct the murder personally.

  This is it, thought Saskia. I was standing here at the stairs, wondering what to say, when I first met him. The Milkman came to the milk bar.

  When Soso entered, admitting cold October air, the men drew back from the doorway and made a channel towards Kamo and Saskia. Soso walked through the gap. He wore a skirted chokha coat and white Caucasian hood. His face was clean-shaven, pockmarked and his hair reddish. There was an imbalance to his gait.

  He was struck by a cart during his childhood. Tamaz will tell me this later, over the chessboard.

  Soso fixed his amber eyes on Kamo. They hugged. The rubbing of their cheeks struck Saskia as a peculiarly feline greeting. Soso looked at Saskia. She stepped back.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Kamo.

  Saskia was burning.

  Why do I feel the surprise a second time? So this is Joseph Stalin. Deal with it. Old news.

  Kamo continued, ‘This is—’

  Soso put two fingers to his lips. He shook his head. Then, turning to the crowd, he said, ‘Hang around.’

  The men were galvanised. They shook hands with each other, not Soso, as though a crucial deal had been concluded to their advantage. Indeed it had. With these two words, Soso was telling them that another expropriation was in the wind. They did not know the day, the time, the target, or the plan. But they would receive a cut. They would hang around.

  Half of the men left the milk bar. Saskia watched them leave. Nobody passed through the line of Soso’s stare, which was centred on her.

  ‘You regard me with a particular expression, my dear. Could it be that I look familiar to you?’

  His Russian was perfect. It lacked the Georgian flavour.

  He’s hiding himself. He thinks I’ve recognised him from a mugshot. He sees me as a threat to his liberty. He wonders whether I should be bought off, raped, or dropped from one of the many rocky heights in Tiflis.

  The remaining men had dragged tables and chair from the walls and sat on them. Their conversations were gruff and empty. Saskia saw the boy enter once more. This time, nobody stopped him. The ceiling sail began to move. Hot air moved down to them, between her and the man who would become Joseph Stalin, and she said:

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ He smiled, showing his teeth. Again, the feline, feminine aspect of this man was undeniable. ‘Who is this one, Kamo?’

  It didn’t happen like this. I was alone in the milk bar and Soso noticed me. It was the owner who told me never to refuse a drink from a gangster.

  ‘I can talk for myself,’ said Saskia.

  Kamo put his hand on her shoulder. The gesture was companionable, but she knew he had strapped a spring-loaded knife along his forearm after rising from the cot. Saskia looked down at the sawdust.

  ‘I found her swinging from a tree above Turtle Lake.’

  As Kamo related the story, Soso watched Saskia. He seemed to be judging her reaction in turn. She maintained a blankness in her mind. She let Kamo talk.

  ‘The instant she was cut loose,’ said Kamo, ‘she attacked them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re dead. She fights like a Magic Boxer.’

  Both th
e men looked at her as they spoke. It was an uncomfortable analogue of the conversations between those Cossacks before they hanged her.

  Soso asked her, ‘How did you come to be there?’

  ‘I made the mistake of trusting someone.’

  Soso made the characteristic Georgian sharp inhale that meant she should continue. She did not. She remained there while her balanced mind struggled with the counterweight of adolescent distaste for this man.

  ‘She’s a Prussian,’ said Kamo.

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Berlin,’ said Saskia.

  ‘I know it. Where were you before you met our Tsarist friends?’

  ‘I spent some time in Siberia,’ she said.

  ‘That does not make you exceptional in our company,’ said Soso. He took a cigarillo from his jacket, pinched off the end, and sucked it alight against a tallow candle, which Kamo held towards him. ‘What do you want in life?’

  ‘I need papers to get home and money to spend on the journey.’

  ‘Berlin?’

  ‘That’ll do for a start.’

  Soso laughed. The sound was not loud, but it carried through the room. Heads were turned and milk cups dropped to their tables. Soso raised his Caucasian hood and offered his hand to Saskia. After a glance at Kamo, who nodded, Saskia took it.

  ‘She can fight, like I said,’ added Kamo, as the three emerged onto a sloping street, but Saskia and Soso had already moved ahead of him.

  ~

  The sky was clear enough to see the snowy peak of the Kazbek. The snow on Golovinsky Avenue, however, was thin and would not last. As they walked, Soso was waylaid on a dozen occasions by family friends, street sellers, and people asking for money. Soso always let these people speak themselves out. The ambiguity in his language was masterful; he left no trace of his intention or agreement; he was polite and kissed them in greeting and farewell. Ten paces behind her, Saskia noticed the Outfit trailing in a loose pack. Kamo said little.

  She saw no policemen. There were Russian soldiers, however, and women and children. Porters hurried past with burdens as disparate as a carpet, an iron bedstead and a piano. The road traffic comprised cabs, bullock-driven carts, and donkeys. A common cargo was wine in animal skins. Saskia heard ten languages, identifying Hindustani and Sart. The Georgians and the highlanders wore tall fur hats and colourful outfits Soso called tcherkesska. Those in skull caps and long cotton or woollen tunics were Tartars. Persians were to be recognised by their kaftans and their dark red hair, beards and nails. Those dressed in a Tartar-like manner or in European clothes were likely as not Armenians.

  They passed the Viceroy’s palace and several government buildings: a museum; theatres; all the while, in contrast to Kamo’s silence, Soso explained the importance of Tiflis to the Trans-Caucasus. Here was the conflux of two great trading routes. First, the railway to Batum on the Black Sea connected Tiflis to the west, while the eastern line took one to Baku on the Caspian, and from there to Russia, Central Asia and Persia. Second was the northern military high-road across the frosty Caucasus to Vladikavkaz and European Russia; southwards, it gave onto North-Western Persia.

  At the southern end of Golovinksy, they entered the Dvortzoyvaya, which led to Erivan Square. Soso indicated the town hall and the Caravanserai opposite. The latter was a building whose purpose was business—from the fruit stalls at its base to the high offices of the Armenian merchants.

  ‘Isn’t that right, Kamo?’ said Soso.

  Kamo said nothing.

  Soso nodded with contempt. ‘Remember this place, Lynx,’ he said, and they moved on.

  Here, in Yerevan Square, eighteen months later, Saskia would help steal almost half a million roubles.

  ~

  By the close of the day, a dry wind got up and fired the sand and snow from the stone roads. Saskia was sweating beneath her furs when they entered a three-storey building on stinking Freilinskaya Street and rose through its passages to a rooftop patio. Next to the low wall that marked the edge, a teenage girl sat next to a brazier. A baby slept in her lap.

  ‘My beautiful wife, Ekaterina,’ Soso said, ‘and my nephew, Shura.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Saskia.

  Ekaterina looked up. One eye was closed with an infection. She nodded, but emptily, as though Saskia was not somebody she expected to meet again. Then Ekaterina stood and walked to the weather-beaten door that led to the stairwell. She carried the child on her hip.

  Saskia was alone on the rooftop with Soso and Kamo.

  Soso had turned to face the sun. Saskia was unsure of her role and questioned Kamo with a glance. She was surprised to see that he was scared. Kamo, a man whom she had seen blasé in the midst of the greatest physical danger, was afraid: here, on the sunny rooftop.

  Soso wants to kill me.

  No; he wants to recruit me.

  Then why is Kamo afraid? He wasn’t afraid the first time this happened. Remember. Kato stayed in her chair; we spoke about the baby as Soso held him towards the sky and spun, laughing, while Kamo watched.

  Soso drew his Mauser pistol and gestured along the street, moving the sights from tavern to milk bar to cobbler to tailor to haberdashers. Along the street, thin dogs trotted along scent trails. A carriage blasted through, driven by laughing children.

  ‘We have the go-ahead, Kamo. This is a big one.’

  ‘Perhaps we should talk about this when Penelope is absent.’

  Soso regarded Kamo with surprise. ‘Why? Don’t you trust her?’

  ‘Trust has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Trust,’ replied Soso, looking at Saskia, ‘has everything to do with it.’ He beckoned to her, and when she came to him, Soso put his arm about her shoulders. ‘See this, Lynx?’ He gestured with the Mauser. ‘This is mine. If I fired this pistol, its report would be heard by my mother, my school master, and my childhood friends. We call it a city, but it is a village of stone, built on stone and uneven mountainsides. Everything is within walking distance.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘What do you say about the Tsar?’

  ‘Joseph—’ said Kamo.

  Soso turned to his friend and, releasing Saskia, struck him across the collarbone with the pistol. Kamo fell to his arse. He looked at Soso like a dog whose master has kicked him: he looked for a way back into his world.

  This didn’t happen. What’s changed? Have I acted differently? Perhaps. The first time round, I was a woman who thought her past was a lie. Now I believe it to be the future. Soso can see that.

  ‘Lynx,’ Soso said, returning, ‘what do you say about the Tsar?’

  She said, ‘“Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes”.’

  Soso waited a moment before he replied. His eyes, electric yellow, seemed fused in their sockets. ‘Wonderful. Beautiful. Is it Prussian?’

  ‘French. Albert Camus.’

  ‘I must read Camus.’

  ‘Good luck. He’s difficult to find.’

  ‘Kamo tells me that you are a woman of particular skills. I will trust you. If I said that fate has sent you to me, would you believe it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled. ‘Kamo, the lady is standing and yet you are seated.’

  As Kamo stood, slowly, Soso watched for Saskia’s reaction. She tried to remain expressionless. Soso returned the Mauser to his waistband and put a finger beneath her chin. He turned her head upwards. Above Stalin, clouds were gathering against the mountain.

  The curls at their edges mean rain. That is what I will come to learn in the months ahead.

  ‘The organisation I work for needs money. I have just returned from a meeting with my boss. He has given me the go-ahead for a criminal spectacular. Tell me, how much do you want your money and papers? How much does it mean for you to go home?’

  ‘Keep talking,’ she said.

  ‘You see that building there? It is the military headquarters. Beyond it is Yerevan Square, the square I asked you to remember. Off that square ar
e the premises of the State Bank. Before long, a stagecoach bearing enough roubles for lifetimes of excess will enter that square. I intend to take it.’

  Kamo looked down.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Saskia.

  ‘There is a man who works within the mail office. A Georgian called Geno. We went to school together. He is, it transpires, an admirer of my poetry.’

  ‘You write poetry?’

  ‘Despite this admiration, he stops short of giving me the information I need. That is, the date and precise time of the stagecoach’s arrival. Do you understand?’

  ‘Soso,’ said Kamo, ‘she is only—’

  ‘What do you say, Lynx? Geno is an ugly man. You are beautiful. What defence can he possibly have?’

  If I fail, there will be no heist. Does this mean I can stop it?

  Soso caught something of her thoughts. He took her to the edge of the patio. They both looked down onto the heads of pickpockets, the water-carriers and the pimps, thirty feet below.

  ‘If you are, or intend to be, a traitor, you will regret it. Is that understood?’

  Saskia counted to five, slowly. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Fearless!’ shouted Soso. He smiled at Kamo. ‘Where did you find her? Find more!’

  A ghostly, answering smile appeared on Kamo’s face, but he seemed distant from the moment. Was it because he had lost his limited control over Saskia? Or did he hold genuine friendship for her, a friendship that did not sit well with the notion of Soso pimping her services like a common flower seller?

  Soso disappeared through the wooden door. Saskia and Kamo lingered for a moment. They did not speak. They had not spoken since she had denied Kamo’s oddly formal request for sex the night before. When Soso returned, he wore a scarlet shirt and black Fedora and carried three glasses of wine, red as roses.

  ‘From this point,’ he said, ‘I am Soselo the Poet. Where did you find your name?’

  ‘Kamo gave it to me.’

  ‘No, not ‘Lynx’. I mean the name you have assumed for your travels.’

  ‘Penelope?’

  ‘Yes. On what basis did you choose the name?’

  ‘It is consistent with some papers I acquired. Additionally, it recalls the Odyssey.’