by Ashton, Hugh
“From the way you’re telling this, sir, things didn’t go quite the way they planned,” said Harry.
“They didn’t. When the three entered the cell to inform Kolinski of their decision, he was ready for them. Apparently the stay in hospital had been good for his health and had allowed him to recover a large part of his considerable strength.” Petrov smiled ruefully. “In any event, as soon as he was informed of the guards’ and the nurse’s decision, he told them he was going to present them with the rest of their bribe and showed them the coins. While their greed distracted them, he grabbed the nurse and one guard by the scruff of their necks, and smashed their heads against the footrail of the bed with such force that he broke their skulls like eggshells. According to the report, blood and brains were scattered about the room. Death, of course, was instantaneous.”
“The man sounds like a right monster, sir,” shuddered Harry.
“And the third man?” asked Brian.
“He naturally moved away as fast as he could, but it seems that Kolinski had other ideas for him. As he tells it, Kolinski seized him by the throat and squeezed hard until he lost consciousness. Maybe Kolinski thought he was dead. We will never know, unless we can catch the man himself and ask him. Apparently the guard was almost as tall as Kolinski, though not nearly as massive, and he woke up stripped to his underwear, with his gun missing. Obviously Kolinski had disguised himself as the guard and simply walked out of the hospital, after he had locked the two dead men and the unconscious guard in the cell. Oh, and there was no trace of his boots or belt, which means he is still in possession of the gold, which is enough, as you saw, to be able to bribe his way past most obstacles when violence does not seem to be a suitable way.”
“Well, that all certainly makes things more complicated,” said Brian.
“But sir,” pointed out Harry. “Don’t I remember you saying that this Kolinski had an appointment in Petrograd to meet one of the revolutionaries? Do you think he will keep that appointment?”
“That’s true. Thank you, Lieutenant, and well remembered. My theory is that his original intention was to cross over into Sweden from Germany, as we know from that ferry ticket, and then travel through Sweden and cross that border into Finland, and from there into Russia proper. That could have taken him quite a long time, particularly if he wanted to keep a low profile and travel by slow local trains.”
“And now?” asked Brian.
“My guess is that he is ahead of his original schedule. To the best of our knowledge he has never operated in Petrograd, so it is quite possible that he has to depend on his contacts to take care of him, and he will keep the appointment as arranged. But in my personal opinion, he will try to make for Moscow and the Netopyr as soon as he can, in order not to stay in Russia for longer than he has to.”
“Hardly cheerful news, is it?” said Brian.
Petrov smiled. “I think we will be able to hold off the threat of Kolinski for a few days. Please cheer up. I have a surprise for you tomorrow that I think you will both enjoy.”
-oOo-
Petrov’s mystery was revealed when they arrived in Moscow the next morning. Brian woke up to find the train stopped in a siding. He rose, washed, and shaved, before getting dressed in the freshly valeted clothes that the ever-attentive servant had laid out for him.
Brian, whose digestive system had returned to something approaching normal, made his way in the general direction of the enticing aroma of coffee drifting along the carriage corridor.
"Feeling better?" asked Harry. Brian nodded in reply, and sat down at the table.
"Where's Petrov?" he asked. "He was here some time ago. He went off with Maria, saying something about a surprise."
"Oh God, not a surprise," groaned Brian. "I really don't need one of those." He looked at the food on the table. "What's this?" picking up a small dish.
"Something fishy and salty. Not too bad, actually."
Brian cautiously took a small amount and spread it on a slice of rye bread. "Oh, right. Never had caviar for breakfast before," he commented, looking at the plate.
"Oh, so that's what they make all the fuss about? Hardly seems worth it. Prefer bloaters, myself."
At that moment, Petrov returned. "Glad to see you up and about, Lieutenant. Can you be ready to go for a little walk in about fifteen minutes?"
"I suppose so. Why so mysterious, sir?"
Petrov merely smiled. “I’ll wait for you outside the carriage. See you in fifteen minutes.”
Brian and Harry finished their breakfast. “I’m just going to make sure I look smart,” said Brian. “Lord knows what Petrov has planned for us, and who we’re going to meet and where. From what we’ve seen of Petrov, it’s probably a private audience with the Tsar of All the Russias. I’d advise you to do the same, Harry, and smarten up a bit.”
At the appointed time, the two British officers made their way down the steps at the door of the carriage. Petrov was waiting for them, Maria by his side.
“Good. Come with me.” He led them round the back of the train on which they had been travelling, where they entered a shed into which railway tracks stretched.
“What on earth is that?” asked Brian, stopping and looking in amazement at the massive piece of machinery in front of him. Harry likewise stopped in his tracks, and let out a whistle of wonder.
“That, my dear fellow, is the Zaamurets. It’s the prototype of a completely new type of armoured train which has come all the way from Kiev. Some of the lessons from this will, we hope, find their way into the Netopyr.”
“This is an impressive piece of machinery,” Brian commented. “Now you tell me what it is, I can appreciate some of the strange beauty of this thing. It would strike fear into the heart of an enemy, for certain.”
“Don’t you need a special powerful armoured locomotive to pull it, sir?” asked Harry.
“Ah, this is the true beauty of this train,” smiled Petrov. “It’s self-propelled with its own petrol motors. It can even pull other armed and armoured wagons to add to its own firepower.”
“And these here?” asked Brian, pointing to twin turrets on top of the train.
“We put 57-millimetre quick-firing guns in there. And it is equipped with searchlights and range-finders, so it can fix the enemy positions before attacking, even at night. And it has machine-guns and all kinds of other defences that we can add as needed.”
“And the armour can withstand bullets?”
“Bullets and light artillery,” explained Petrov. “It would be useless against heavy artillery, I admit. However, it does have the great advantage, as against ordinary field artillery, of being highly mobile.”
“It’s a remarkable machine,” said Brian. “Maybe not a lot of use on the Western Front, where the distances aren’t so great, but here on the Eastern Front, I can imagine that one or two of these could protect a troop movement or even be used for lightning raids into enemy territory.”
“The only problem is that it can’t move away from the tracks,” pointed out Harry.
“And that is exactly why we have the Netopyr,” pointed out Petrov. “The Netopyr can go anywhere. Not as powerful, of course, but the mobility will make up for that.”
“Can we go inside, sir?” asked Harry. “I want to see how you’ve arranged things.”
“We’re going to do better than that. We’re going to travel as passengers on the Zaamurets to see the Netopyr at Kubinka. I am pleased to invite you two gentlemen to join us as part of the exercise that we’re going to be conducting using this train.”
“Makes a change from the way we’ve been travelling up to now,” remarked Brian.
“I suppose that’s true. I hope you’re not going to be expecting caviar for breakfast again,” laughed Petrov. “Actually, it’s not as far as all that, but as you can imagine, this train here doesn’t go very fast compared to the express we’ve been travelling on. If we start off in about thirty minutes, we should arrive at the proving ground by early after
noon, and with luck, we’ll have time to carry out a few exercises. So, if you gentlemen would like to pack some clean linen and some necessities for a couple of nights? I’d also suggest that you don’t wear your best uniforms – the accommodation in the Zaamurets isn’t up to the standards we’ve enjoyed over the past few days. We’ll be returning here when we’re finished at the proving ground, so there’s no need to being all your baggage with you.”
“Am I invited, too?” Maria asked her father.
Petrov seemed a little startled. “I wasn’t expecting you to come. You told me you had a lot of shopping to do here in Moscow.” He smiled.
“I’d sooner come with you all,” her smile encompassed all three men, but seemed to linger longest on Harry, “and see what’s going on. It’s so frustrating for me to only hear about these things and not to see them for myself.”
“Very well, my dear,” replied Petrov. “But you really must change out of those clothes. Do you have anything that isn’t all frills and lace?”
“I could wear a soldier’s tunic with my riding skirt,” she replied.
“Very good,” said Petrov. “It’s highly irregular, but I suppose I can allow it this once. But don’t take too long changing.”
“Very good, father. Thank you.” She turned and started back.
“Women,” said Petrov to the other two, and shrugged.
-oOo-
Thirty minutes later, Brian and Harry climbed aboard the Zaamurets. The interior was dark, and extremely noisy once one of the engines had been started.
“They need silencers on the exhausts!” shouted Harry to Brian.
“What?”
Harry shouted even louder, “They need silencers on the exhausts, and I can smell exhaust gas.” He shouted the last words into sudden silence, as the engine sputtered and died. He turned to Colonel Petrov, and switched to German. “Sir, it really is essential that something is done about the pipes there leading from those engines. That noise is more than an inconvenience – we discovered in the trenches that constant noise like that can really get on a man’s nerves, driving him a little crazy after a while. And it certainly makes people tired and less likely to respond.”
“Noted, Lieutenant,” said Petrov. “Is it possible to reduce the noise?”
“Believe me, sir, with the right materials, which I am sure I can find quite easily, I could solve this problem in less than an hour or so.”
“Very good, Lieutenant. You can have as many artificers as you require.”
“Thank you, sir. I usually work best on my own, though, sir. And there is one other very important thing. Quite frankly, I’m surprised that you haven’t noticed it, sir.”
“Go on.”
“The exhausts are leaking, and the gas that these engines leak is poisonous. Hasn’t anyone fallen sick while this train has been running?”
“Now you mention it, there have been some cases of sickness, but we’d put that down to the motion of the train on the rough tracks over which it was travelling.”
“I’ll look at this at the same time. I am surprised that no-one has died in this train, given the state of those exhausts.”
“They may only just have worked loose,” pointed out Brian.
“That’s true,” conceded Harry. He turned to Petrov again. “And I really have no idea why the engine stopped just now, and I doubt if your engineers do, either, sir. Now if your people can lend me a pair of overalls...”
Petrov appeared to be slightly shocked at the idea of an officer doing manual work, such as Harry was suggesting, but Brian drew him aside. “With respect, sir, I think it would be a good idea to let Lieutenant Braithwaite have his way. In civilian life he was chief chauffeur and mechanic to Lord Whitchurch, and in our infantry platoon, if there was anything mechanical that needed fixing, from a machine-gun to a lorry’s gearbox, he was the man who could do it. He’s a genius when it comes to working with machinery, sir, in a way that you and I can only aspire to. And I mean that with all sincerity, sir.”
“Very good, then.” Petrov shrugged, and shouted at one of the mechanics to find a spare set of overalls for the British officer.
Once clad for the task, Harry attacked the engine with gusto. “You’re going to have to interpret for me,” he said to Brian.
“Thank you very much,” replied Brian sarcastically. “Once you get into these mechanical things, I hardly understand your English. How on earth am I meant to put this into Russian?”
“Just give it your best shot.” Harry bent to his work, and through Brian, asked for some adhesive cloth tape. A roll was found and brought to him. “Shoddy stuff,” he remarked to Brian, “but it will have to do.” A few minutes later and, “That’s fixed the leak. It looked like the joint had sprung loose. I tightened the bolts, and I’ve taped it up so it won’t happen again. Now for the noise. Brian, ask them for a couple of silencers from lorry exhausts, would you?”
“You really make life difficult,” complained Brian. He got the meaning over to the mechanics, but was met by shrugs and apologies. “They say that there are no spare ones.”
“Then take them off the lorries in the transport pool,” ordered Petrov. “They can be replaced later. This takes priority.”
The two Russian mechanics saluted, and left the train. “And while they’re doing that,” said Harry, “I’ll just check the engine that stopped.” He bent over the carburettor, and fiddled around. “Oh dear, dear, dear.” He sucked his teeth, and started unscrewing other parts of the engine. “There’s meant to be a petrol filter here, and there isn’t,” he explained to Petrov. “Someone put this thing back together without the filter. Look at this.” He thrust the carburettor under Petrov’s nose. “Sorry, sir, but just look at the muck and filth here. It’s disgusting.”
“Damn fools – probably took it away to put in a samovar or something.” When the two mechanics returned with two silencers that they had removed from the transport lorries, he greeted them with a blast of Russian, but both men shook their heads emphatically.
“Well, maybe it was never fitted, anyway,” said Harry, “but either you strain the petrol when you fill this thing up, or you get proper filters fitted in the engine.”
Brian translated this.
“And there are some valves here that really need adjusting properly,” added Harry. He stooped to the engine again, examining it closely. A low whistle, and a sucking of teeth.
“That bad, Harry?” asked Brian.
“It’s a disgrace,” replied Harry. “This is meant to be a fine bit of machinery, and these idiots have let it go to rack and ruin.”
“How long to fix it?”
“About a day.”
Brian conveyed this to Petrov, who turned on the mechanics, and gave them a furious tongue-lashing in fast colloquial Russian, half of which Brian couldn’t understand, but the general gist seemed to involve farmyard animals, excrement, and unusual sexual practices.
Petrov turned to Harry. “How long to get the engines running smoothly, if not perfectly, Lieutenant?” he asked in German.
“An hour or so, if those two will strip the other engine for me, sir. Is that going to be all right? I have to warn you that if we don’t do something soon, this engine at least is going to become useless and require either major maintenance or replacement. And the other one is probably as bad.”
“We can spend an hour or so,” Petrov admitted grudgingly. He gave orders to the two Russian mechanics, who started asking Harry what to do, with Brian acting as interpreter.
“It’s no good,” said Brian, after a few sentences. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about in English, let alone know the Russian for these things.” He was suddenly aware that Maria had entered the compartment without his noticing, and was watching Harry at work with a mixture of wonderment and what appeared to be admiration. He wondered if she had heard her father’s tirade a few minutes earlier.
“Fine, then,” said Harry. “Tell them to watch me carefully as I disass
emble this engine, and then get them to do the same to the other engine. Do you think you can make them understand that?”
“I’m sure I can,” said Brian.
Under the gaze of the two Russians, and watched with interest by Petrov and Brian, and with what appeared to be rapt fascination by Maria, Harry took the engine to pieces with the skill and delicacy of a surgeon performing a delicate operation.
“Understand?” he asked the Russians in English.
They nodded, and gave “Das” of assent before Brian could put it into Russian.
With the assistance of the two mechanics, who proved to be quite competent once they had been shown by Harry what they should be doing, the two engines were stripped, adjusted and reassembled well within the hour that Harry had promised.
“Now,” said Harry. He adjusted the choke of one engine, and cranked the starting handle. The engine sprang to life with a soft purr. The two Russians stood aside as he moved to the other engine, and repeated the process.
“Truly remarkable,” observed Petrov. “I suppose, Lieutenant, we can’t offer you a higher rank and a commission in the Imperial Army as an engineer instructor?”
Harry smiled, and shook his head. Brian looked over at Maria, who seemed lost in amazement at Harry’s skills. Ah well. You win some and you lose some, he thought to himself. It seemed that he’d lost this one even before he had started, though.
“Well, it appears we’re just about ready to go, then,” said Petrov. “We’ll wait for the rest of the crew to come on board, and I’ll make arrangements with the railway so that we have clear tracks to travel on, and then we’ll set off.”
“It’s wonderful what you can do when you have that sort of rank,” Brian whispered to Harry after Petrov had left the train. “Clearing a whole railway line for you to travel along.”
“Almost makes me wish I was a member of the Russian Imperial family,” replied Harry. “It obviously has quite a few advantages.”
Such as being close to Maria, Brian thought, but didn’t say. “What do you think of this contraption?” asked Brian, indicating the train.
