by Ashton, Hugh
The flunkey returned. “His Highness awaits you,” he said, with a low bow. “Please follow me.”
Brian obeyed, somewhat confused. “His Highness?” The servant led him down a long corridor past what looked like priceless works of art, to a large set of double doors, opened them and bowed.
“Ah, Lieutenant,” came Petrov’s voice from the end of the long room. “Do come in and make yourself at home.”
“Home was never like this, sir,” said Brian, gazing at the decorated ceiling and magnificent furniture in admiration.
Petrov chuckled. “To be perfectly honest with you, it’s not my home, either. But his Imperial Majesty allows members of the family to use it sometimes.” Brian looked at him curiously. “Forgive the little deception,” said Petrov. “But I think you will remember what that policeman told us in London. There are any number of anarchists and terrorists in London, even with your excellent police service looking out for them, who would like nothing so much as to see a dead Grand Duke. We felt it would be better when I went to Britain that I remained incognito.”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” said Brian. “I had no idea...” Though Brian usually had little respect for inherited rank and titles, he had some kind of confused idea that insulting one of the Russian Imperial family could result in a diplomatic incident of some kind between Britain and Russia. “May I ask how I should address you properly, sir?”
The other laughed. “I think that you may continue to address me and think of me as ‘Colonel’. It is, after all, one of the honorary ranks that I hold, and I can think of worse titles. Please continue to think of me as Colonel Petrov. I’ve got rather attached to the fellow, myself, and I will be happy to answer to the name.”
“And what exactly do you do, sir, if you’re not the humble military attaché whom we knew in London? And if I might mention it, sir, you have been remarkably humble. I mean, you never had a single servant on the submarine to look after you.”
Petrov laughed. “So many people seem to think that those of us in our position are helpless babies, unable to lift a finger to look after themselves. I’d have you know, young man, that in the war against the Japanese, I served in the trenches at Port Arthur, without benefit of servants or any luxuries.”
“Sorry, sir. No offence meant.”
“Never mind. I’m sure I have some similarly strange ideas about you where you would be happy to put me right. So, to answer your first question, I hold a rather senior position in our military organisation while not actually being part of the military,” explained Petrov. “Similar in rank, I suppose, to your superior, C, but with a much more purely military function. My specialisation is the development of new weapons and the like. But also, for obvious reasons, I work with people such as your C, and our Russian equivalents from time to time.”
There was a knock on the door, and in answer to Petrov’s command, a young lady entered, carrying some papers in a cardboard folder. From the fond smile on Petrov’s face, it was obvious that she was not a servant or a clerk.
“May I introduce my daughter, Maria?” smiled Petrov. “Maria, this is Lieutenant Finch-Malloy from England.”
Brian, who had instinctively stood up when Maria entered, bowed. Hovering between shaking Maria’s extended hand and kissing it, he settled on the latter.
“That’s not a very English habit,” smiled Maria. Brian couldn’t help noticing that she had a pair of the most beautiful dark eyes he had ever seen, set in a heart-shaped face that almost knocked the breath out of him. Her English was almost unaccented. She noticed Brian’s surprise. “I was sent to school in Cheltenham. A little unusual, perhaps, but it taught me English, which, as you see, Father doesn’t speak very well,” (Petrov grinned a little self-deprecatingly at this) “and it gave me a taste for English things. So as well as bringing in this file which Father asked for, I came to ask if you would like some English tea.”
“That would be most welcome.”
“I’ll arrange for some. By the way, your name is Finch-Malloy? I heard correctly?”
“That’s right.”
“I was at school with a girl who had a cousin called Brian Finch-Malloy, I think. Charlotte Cripps was her name.”
“Yes, my cousin. She was married two years ago to a charming fellow, but I’m sorry to have to tell you that her husband was killed in action. It happened in France a few months ago,.”
“Oh, that is sad news. Please convey my condolences to her when you return to England.”
Petrov coughed discreetly.
“Oh, sorry, Father. I beg your pardon. I’ll see about the tea. If I may join you gentlemen at tea after you’ve finished your business?” Petrov nodded, and Maria handed the folder to her father, and walked out, Brian staring after her.
“Congratulations on your most charming and beautiful daughter,” said Brian, when the door had closed behind Maria, and he was finally able to tear his eyes away.
“She is rather an exceptional lady,” agreed Petrov. “I have to confess that I work her rather harder than I might work any other assistant, but she says that she enjoys the work, and who am I to deny a daughter her pleasures, especially when she continues to be so useful? Bismarck promoted his son in his service, and though Russia is not ready for a woman to take high office, I dearly wish that Maria could serve her country as well as Hubert von Bismarck served his country in the service of his father. Maria will be travelling with us, at least as far as Petrograd, and then probably to Moscow. I must allow her some time to herself. Like all women, she is continually complaining that she has nothing to wear, and needs to go shopping. You’re not married, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir,” said Brian. He nearly added “Not yet,” but decided to hold his tongue.
“So, let us look at what Maria has brought me. This is the police dossier on the man we picked up out of the water. At least, it’s the dossier of someone who matches what we know of our friend.”
“So you’ve been able to alert the police as to his whereabouts?”
“Indeed so. You went to the hospital with him to take his clothes there?” Brian nodded. “You noticed that his room was for him and him alone? Maybe you failed to notice the bars on the windows and the strong doors. I described the man to one of my colleagues before I decided whether to send an ambulance for him and, at least partly due to your observation of the tattoo on his neck, we almost certainly have the man positively identified. I am very happy that he is out of that submarine and behind firmly locked doors. As soon as he is in a condition to realise where he is, he will soon recognise that his days are numbered.”
“Who is he, then, sir?”
“He usually goes by the name of Kolinski. He is a vicious man. We are almost certain that he is responsible for many of the so-called ‘expropriations’ – that is to say, bank robberies – carried out by these Bolshevik scum seven or eight years ago. In many of these, people were killed, innocent bystanders, as well as police, and almost indisputably, Kolinski was responsible for many of these murders. In addition to this, his name has been linked, admittedly without much in the way of firm evidence, to murders and killings abroad, in Switzerland and elsewhere.”
“Whose murders?”
“Typically those of members of rival parties to the Bolsheviks. As far as we are able to tell, Kolinski is devoted to your old friend Ulyanov and his cause – or at any rate, the money he receives from them – it’s somewhat doubtful whether he understands the finer points of Karl Marx’s economic theories. We are very glad indeed to have him in our power. It’s lucky that Commander Horton picked him out of the water.”
“How is that, sir?”
“We know where he is now, and we have him in our grip. If he had perished in the water, we would have been none the wiser, and we would have continued to waste time and effort continuing to search Europe for a man whose bones were at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. And, furthermore, thanks to the note that you found, we know exactly when and where he is to meet his confede
rate, and we can wait there and pick up the confederate, who may lead us to others of the gang. I think, Lieutenant, we are in a very good position to cut off the Russian head of this hydra, thanks to our luck in finding this man.”
-oOo-
Kolinski opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, where the whitewash was cracking and flaking away. A spider’s web stretched across one corner of the room, and the spider was sitting in the middle of it.
He shifted his gaze to the window, and cursed the bars over it. Even if he had all his strength back, he doubted very much whether he would be able to remove those solid-looking obstacles without making a noise that would bring the guards running.
For Kolinski had no illusions where he was. They might call it a hospital, and he might be lying in a comfortable bed with clean sheets, but hospitals didn’t usually have reinforced and barred doors and thick bars over the windows. Nor did nurses (male, to Kolinski’s disappointment) usually enter patients’ rooms accompanied by marines carrying slung carbines. Kolinski was a prisoner, and he knew it.
His immediate question was whether he still had the gold with him. If he did, there was a very good chance he could bribe his way out of where he was being held, and still make his rendezvous. He looked carefully to see if he was being watched through the spyhole in the door, and decided it was safe to check. He slipped out of bed, still feeling a little weak and dizzy, and picked up one of his boots. Praise be to the saints, it still felt heavy, and so did the other one. He reminded himself yet again that as a good Communist, he should not be addressing God or the saints, but he felt happy enough about not having drowned in the sea not to care. The belt also still felt heavy. He extracted three gold coins from it, and pushed them carefully under the pillow before he slipped under the blankets again.
Patience, he told himself. He was surprised that no-one had asked him who he was, or what he had been doing in the sea, since he guessed that the strange Russian-speaking Englishman with the cold green eyes would have told the Russian authorities something about how he had been picked up. But the longer they delayed questioning him, the more time he had to plan his escape. He would have to use the gold, as he could no longer rely on his strength alone to force his way out of this guarded military institution, in his current relatively weakened state. He doubted whether he could ever have made his way through the armed guards with little more than his powerful muscles, even when he had been feeling at his strongest. He lay back and daydreamed, eventually dozing off.
He was woken by the nurse arriving with the midday meal, the two marines following him as usual. The food here wasn't that bad, Kolinski thought to himself. There was even a little bit of pork fat in the cabbage soup, and the bread wasn't too hard. Nothing like what he'd become used to in Switzerland, of course, but better than most meals he remembered eating in Russia. The wooden bowl and spoon were left beside his bed, with the hunk of bread beside them, and the nurse left the room, the door being locked behind him. Kolinski finished off the soup, and broke the bread into three parts before feeling under his pillow for the gold coins, one of which he stuffed into each of the hunks of bread.
He lay back and waited for the bowl to be collected. One thing about being in a Navy hospital; they did keep things relatively clean and tidy, and all the chores were carried out efficiently and punctually. At last the footsteps outside the door returned, the door was unlocked, and the nurse entered.
"What's the matter?" he asked Kolinski, looking at the uneaten bread. "Not hungry today?"
"There's something strange in the bread. Something hard," replied Kolinski.
The nurse picked up one of the pieces of bread, and sniffed at it. "Smells all right. Seems a bit heavy, though."
"Try it for yourself," suggested Kolinski.
"Not a chance," retorted the nurse. "You've probably pissed on it or something."
"Well, aren't you even going to see what I nearly broke my teeth on?" Kolinski complained.
"All right." He picked up the piece of bread and crumbled it a little. The gold coin shone out of the bread. "Holy Mother of God, would you look at that?" he exclaimed. "Is this real?"
"I have a feeling that those pieces of bread might be the same. Perhaps our two friends here would like to check them for strange ingredients?" Without waiting for an answer, he proffered the two pieces of bread to the two guards, who accepted them, puzzled. Their reaction was much the same as that of the nurse.
"What's this for?" asked one of them. "If you want to get out of here, it's going to cost you more than this."
"I don't have very much more," Kolinski lied. “Maybe I can manage the same again for each of you.”
The guard scratched his head. “Maybe,” he conceded. “Not sure that we can really help you for that amount of money, though.”
“This is gold,” Kolinski pointed out. “None of your paper shit.”
“True,” said the younger guard. “Sasha, I think this is worth thinking about, at least. My family could use the money, even if yours doesn’t need it.”
“Same here,” agreed the nurse.
“We’ll think about it,” said the first guard. “Mind you, you’re going to have to come up with some sort of plan. Don’t ask us to help you there. That’s nothing to do with us. We’ll give you an answer tomorrow. We’re off duty in an hour’s time, and we won’t see you until tomorrow morning.”
“Agreed,” said Kolinski, as he was left alone.
Now, sitting on the edge of his bed, he wasn’t sure that he had done the right thing. He had let them know that he had more gold – to be sure, he hadn’t let them know exactly how much was involved, but it wouldn’t be hard for them to discover what remained of his store of gold now they knew it existed. He checked the spy-hole in the door once more, and lifted up his belt. He reckoned that after paying for his train and ferry tickets, the bribe to the village stationmaster in Germany, and the money he had just given the guards and the nurse, he had more than enough money there for the additional bribes. He hadn’t touched the money in his boots, so he knew exactly how much should be there.
He wasn’t sure if he could remove the heels of his boots easily, since he had no implement to help him, but it seemed after careful examination that no-one had tampered with his boots since he had stuffed the heels with the gold pieces. Certainly the weight seemed to be about what he remembered it being. So that was all right.
He took the belt and fastened it round his waist. At least no-one was going to take that off him in a hurry. The boots were another matter. He had no wish to wear them in bed, but he decided to take them from their place on the floor, and keep them under the blanket, and be damned. At least they’d be in a place where he could stop them being stolen, even if they did dig into his side every time he turned over.
-oOo-
Brian was driven back to the docks, where he returned to the submarine and informed Harry that his earlier suspicions regarding Petrov’s identity had been correct, and that Petrov was definitely of a higher rank than he had previously claimed.
“So what is he? Some sort of prince or something like that?”
“Something like that,” Brian confirmed. “Maybe a grand duke – he dropped hints that he’s quite closely related to the Emperor.”
Harry whistled in appreciation. “You mean, he’s that high up? Royalty or something?”
“That’s what it seems like. Can’t be sure of it, but I’m pretty certain that he’s a cousin or something like that.” Brian then told Harry about his visit to the Catherinethal palace.
“What do I call him, then? I’m not used to talking to princes and dukes and that sort of person.”
“That’s just what I asked him, and he said that we could carry on calling him ‘Colonel Petrov’. He said he’d got used to it and he liked it.”
“I suppose you can get tired of being a prince,” Harry remarked reflectively. “Not sure if I ever would, though.”
“Not that you or I are ever likely to get
the chance to find out,” smiled Brian.
“What are our plans in Petrograd?” Harry wondered, changing the subject.
“You and I are meant to report to the Embassy and let them know that we’ve arrived safely. I expect there are going to be some more orders for us from London waiting for us there. Petrov also mentioned that we may have to attend some formal receptions with Russian high-ups and so on. Lord knows who we’re meant to be meeting, or why, but that seems to be the way things are done round here.”
Harry groaned.
“It’s not as bad as all that. We’ll probably run into some princes or dukes who aren’t running around pretending to be colonels. You’ll be able to write home and tell them that you’re hobnobbing with royalty. Or at least, you’ll be able to tell them when you get back, since we probably shouldn’t be telling anyone where we are right now. Oh, and there’s another nice little surprise for you, which I think you’ll like. We’re going to have a fellow-traveller with us at least to Petrograd. I think you’ll be impressed with the Grand Duchess Maria, or whatever her formal title is.”
“Oh no,” groaned Harry. “First I find out I’m working with a prince, and then you tell me that I’m going to be sharing a train with a duchess. You know I don’t bring it up that often, Brian, and I know that you never do, but you’re one of the nobs and I’m not, though you don’t like to talk about it. Anyway, I’m safe from her, because I can’t speak Russian.”
“She’s one up on you then, Harry, because her English is as good as anyone’s. She went to school in England. We had a bit of a chat after I’d finished my business with Petrov. She’s not at all snobbish, it seems to me, and she thinks the world of England and the English. Maybe that’s why Petrov is so keen on working with us. Anyway, you’ll like her, and I’m sure she’ll like you. And she’s a real looker.”
“Lucky you,” said Harry.
