I said to Boltikov, “Round up the Davidovs and get them on the train. No time for their baggage. Just do it.”
Then the Countess was in front of me, bleeding from the mouth. “Did you see that? An unprovoked assault. She should be shot as well as that man of hers.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Boltikov shepherding the Davidovs towards the Pullmans.
“If you won’t do it, Oskar will. I’ve told him to find the pistol. He thinks it’s in his small suitcase.”
Kobi still had that bunch of dissipated failures covered with the machine gun. The morning sun was blaring down on us in the clearing, bouncing back off the raw rock of the quarry walls. The air was absolutely still. The only smell in it was of coal smoke. Not clouds of the stuff, black or white, but a haze of light grey vapour coming from the chimney of my new train, the colour you get when the fire’s hot, when the loco’s primed and ready.
Kobi was getting ready to gather up the machine gun and make a run for it. He looked over his shoulder to see how near starting Valenty was.
There was a shout from Oskar. He’d found his pistol. His clumsy hands were fumbling with the ammunition. It was time to go.
I seized Delicia Countess Benckendorff in my arms. I hugged her to me—all bone, her vertebrae crunching like railway clinker. In a flash she had her arms round my neck. I kissed her hideous mouth, firmly, with full lips and a little dart of my tongue to show penitence.
Then I scraped her off. I held her at arm’s length. “Darling— I’m sorry. It’s goodbye.” And I ran for the train, which was already moving, Valenty hanging out of the cab and judging my speed nicely.
Somewhat out of breath I went to the dining car to meet the Davidovs. At last I was as well equipped as anyone on the railways. An armour-plated locomotive, fuel, men, money—I had them. Weaponry could be better. I would have liked to be pulling a flatbed with a three-inch howitzer. No matter, at least I could make an impression on events now.
Success puts a gloss on everything. I smiled wolfishly at Xenia, who was laying out the glasses for the samovar. The Davidov man was leaning against the wall, fingering his beard, sizing us all up with lidded eyes.
I said, “What are you any good at?”
Whatever he replied, it didn’t add up to what I’d expected. I thought, Shit, have I made a mistake getting these two? and barged into the cooking galley. This was of a decent size, the Pullman being appointed for royalty, but Mrs. Davidova filled it nobly—had Xenia stuck in the corner, a mite by comparison. I said straight out what was on my mind: “Are you as useless as your husband?”
Her blue eyes gave me the sort of tungsten look that said, I know you’re the boss but I’ll get you later.
“Well?” I said, flushed to have got a new loco so easily and standing my ground—in fact squaring up to her with my hands on my hips.
“Your wife said you needed a full-time cook. My friend here agreed”—she indicated Joseph—“so that deals with that. I am she. Also I am useful in another respect. For eleven years I was in charge of the children’s ward in the Protestant Hospital—at the end of Ligovskaya. So I can be your doctor as well as your cook. Is that sufficient, sir?”
Xenia put her hand to her mouth but I could tell from her eyes she was sniggering at me, confident that I’d found my match.
I said sternly to Mrs. D. that I’d judge her by her work and told Joseph to show them to a compartment.
The moment they were gone, Boltikov said, “I’ve remembered about him. He was involved in that new block of apartments on the west side of the Tavricheski Gardens. Something went wrong with the money. He had to retire to the country to avoid a scandal. Two years ago?”
“We’ll make him head waiter.”
“But she’s OK. And a survivor.”
Survival, here was the word again. Never used by my parents or their friends but now to be heard freely among all sections of their class. Two “v’s” in it, which was interesting. Vile, violent, V. I. Lenin—and now survival, which in Russian is vyzhivanie, to reinforce the position.
Add Venus to the list—I trapped Xenia’s eye. I wanted her very badly.
Suddenly—out of nowhere—like a thunderclap—the roar of an aircraft overhead, inches away; and its Spandaus bursting p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p into our chatter and self-congratulation and the racket drowning everything except the shattering of glass and the splintering of wood and Xenia’s scream as she dived under the table. As if by magic two lines of bullet holes appeared in the roof of the dining car. A foot apart, dead straight, immediately above my head. Had rain fallen vertically, a drop could have come through one of those holes and hit me in the centre of my eye.
Xenia had me by the ankle, was climbing up my trouser leg. Her lovely face appeared above the table, wide-eyed and frightened. “Where can we hide? Are we doomed?”
She fell to her knees and started to pray, hunched right over so that her hair brushed the floor.
The door crashed open. It was Kobi, drenched in a sheen of excitement. He’d come for the machine gun. He was going to set it up on top of the coal tender. “It came in so low, the angle would have been perfect. I could have shot it head-on, in the propeller, right in the guts.”
I understood now why the bullets hadn’t struck me: the angle had been too shallow. He should have come in at a steeper pitch and been prepared to be tough on his aircraft when pulling out.
Kobi went on: “It’s gone to shoot up our old train. We were being used for practice.”
I didn’t understand that. Having an armoured loco, weren’t we the more important target?
Xenia, having dispatched all her fears to God, looked at me as if I had three heads. “Oh, but they’re easier, that’s why. The pilot’ll have seen them lounging around. It’s what I’d do.”
It made sense and it didn’t make sense. But I didn’t follow through and started to wonder where the plane had taken off and what its range was. Were the Bolsheviks that close behind us?
Twenty-seven
VALENTY HAD the damper wide open. We were going at a good clip. Leaning on his shovel, the sweat starting from his forehead in blisters, Shmuleyvich said, “Don’t worry about the coal, Excellency. The faster it takes us away from that pig, the better. Look at him. Look back there, will you.”
It was a black Fokker triplane that was hammering our old train. (You can recognise them at any distance by the tail, which is shaped like the ace of clubs.) Taking its time, looping and swooping like one of the huge black velvety butterflies that we’d found throughout our Burmese expedition. (Another lifetime, the era of Goetz.) Hell, that was tough on the Benckendorffs, the jazz band and the rest of them. Sun, music, a snort of cocaine—visions and the beauty of being. Then out of nothing she’d come, Dame Death, to wake everyone up before killing them. Bloody black death, Fokker death.
Oskar would be dead. He’d never have made it to the forest in time, not over the rubble in his winter coat. The pilot’d have picked him out, gone specifically for him as he fled stumbling. That broad dutiful back, no Bolshevik could have resisted it.
The jazzmen would have been next, the Uncle Sam pants also irresistible to a Red gunner who’d heard he’d soon be fighting the Yanks. Black bastards, he’d have said to himself, thumb knuckles white on the firing buttons.
They’d been wrong, those two. Tunes were for winning women not wars.
We watched as that Fokker spun round the corpse of the train. Shmuleyvich said, “We’re getting the clean end of the stick.”
“So far,” I said—and immediately the Fokker pilot lobbed a couple of small bye-bye bombs on our old loco from the cockpit and headed down the line for us, dodging to keep in our smoke so that Kobi, who’d set up the machine gun on top of the coal tender, couldn’t get a fix on him.
I said to Valenty, “How far to the points?”
He peered through the porthole. We were on a slight bend. He couldn’t see. He leaned out, one foot in mid-air, hanging onto a bracket. His voice, v
ery small, reached us above the wind. “Hundred yards.” Then: “They’re against us. They’re set for the main line.”
He started to pull himself back into the cab. I heard the unhurried high-pitched beat of an aero engine. I heard the Spandaus open up. And I saw Valenty flung out of the cab, spun right round by the force of the bullet so that he was facing us, his young face wide with astonishment. Then his grip slackened and he fell, without one single noise.
Shmuleyvich’s massive hand pulled down the brake lever. The wheels screamed. Kobi came sprawling down from the coal pile.
The Fokker was turning in front of us. It arched up, flipped over in an Immelmann and headed for us, a little higher than before and straight out of the sun. Just a round black barrel getting bigger, that was all I could make out.
Kobi was scrabbling to get back up. The train was shuddering to a halt. That pilot had seen the points were against us. He only had to go round and round until we were forced to stop. Then he could finish us off at his leisure.
The points were forty yards away. Beyond them the main line glittered in the sun.
Shmuleyvich looked at me. I knew what the look meant: I keep the loco going, you get the points, boy. No Excellency this or Excellency the other.
The Fokker made a couple of passes down the train without shooting, to mock us. He had the new guns that were synchronised to fire through the propeller arc. I could see their slits quite clearly, jet black behind the grey blur of the propeller.
The pilot was alone in the cockpit, just his leather helmet visible. No canopy. Goggles. Must have got a mouthful of smuts flying into our smoke.
We were almost stopped. Now the Fokker was coming at us in earnest, with short bursts, the bullets singing off the rails like bees.
To Shmuleyvich—“How many levers for the points?”
“Two. One to release the rail, the other to move it. Could be stiff. Go out the wrong side of the train. You’ll gain yards on him.”
I looked up. The Fokker was putting in a new row of hemstitching down the coaches. My girl’d be under the table again. Joseph too, probably.
“Fuck off, Bolshevik prick.” I’d have it painted down the carriage roofs, scarlet on black, Elizaveta’s favourite combination. Krasni khui. Red dick, the cockerel. Then I leapt.
The pilot had seen that one coming. I should have had the Davidov man go first. Given him the choice, get shot by a Red or get shot by me.
I ran to the front of the loco, as best I could across the sleepers. Their spacing was awkward: one slip and he’d have had me for carrion. The bullets crackled off the rails and the armour-plating. They passed so close I could smell them. The shadow of the Fokker seemed to be sitting on top of me. That’s what it felt like. There flashed through my mind two of the illustrations in my first Bible. They’d given me nightmares. The Herald of Death and God Strikes a Sinner. I thought, And I’ve still got to cross the open ground, switch the points and get back to the loco.
At last the shadow moved and went racing down the track in front of me. I knew the next bit. Another Immelmann roll and he’d be back. I’d be caught at the points. That’d be it. Six foot two, no real covering fire and clear light. Some part of me would get hit, couldn’t be otherwise.
Kobi opened fire, but only for a short burst. “Come on, man, what are you doing, for Christ’s sake?” I shouted.
Then I gathered myself up, tucked my head in and went sprinting out from the front of the train. Death was chasing me. What would it feel like afterwards . . . ? Why hadn’t they put the points closer to my bit of the line . . . ? How actually did the lever shift the moving rail, was there a cable—then my boot caught it and I went flying, got smacked face down into the clinker by my momentum. For a second I was stretched out like a man already dead. But I wasn’t where the Fokker thought I’d be and his bullets went wide.
Next: Kobi had got his machine gun balanced and opened up. I was on my knees, scrambling—scrabbling—to put some fresh speed on. P-p-p-p-p-p—it was a great noise that, the clump of Kobi’s gunfire. It was the best I ever heard. I was thankful, not almost beyond words but actually so. My tongue was frozen—God was holding it. Yes! It had to be God. At that instant I believed in God, in the Apostles, the Miracles and every one of the ten Johns.
Cautiously I looked around. What was even better than the rattle of Kobi’s machine gun was the fact that the Fokker didn’t care for it. Or maybe he was running low on fuel or was out of ammo. Whatever the reason, he rolled away, the red star bold on his fuselage. I glimpsed white teeth in a filthy face. The sun flashed on his goggles—he was gone.
I was shaking all over. Had the points offered any resistance, I’d have sat down and cried. As it was, the lever came sweetly over and Shmuleyvich, grinning broadly, passed the train onto the main line. I walked towards the cab—tottered, my calves like jelly.
I climbed the ladder. Kobi was still up there on the coal stack, his face streaked with black. He said, “Glebov, I know it was.”
I said that a man who’d broken his leg like Glebov would never be able to handle an aeroplane. He just wouldn’t have the strength in his leg muscles. I didn’t have this as absolute knowledge. But it seemed obvious. Moreover, Glebov was a commissar, not an airman. He wouldn’t have time for that sort of caper. He might have had the pilot dispatched to patrol the railroads. It made perfect sense. I’d have done the same. But it hadn’t been him in the Fokker.
Kobi said again, “It was Glebov. I was closer to him than you were.”
“You were? That’s balls. I was up there at the same level as God. At His front door. Hammering on it for mercy. Give over, Genghis.”
But he stuck to his opinion and I wasn’t going to argue. He’d been wanting a change ever since we’d got holed up in St. Petersburg. Let Muraviev take him off my hands, that’s what I thought.
Twenty-eight
WE QUICKLY buried Valenty and Shmuleyvich took his place as driver. I told him to burn coal. I didn’t believe for a moment that Glebov had been in the Fokker. But I didn’t like the idea of being within range of the Bolsheviks’ planes. So we went like hell for a week before easing off to pick up the news.
It was in this way that we began to hear more about the Tsar’s imprisonment at Ekaterinburg, which was some way to the north and east of us. It was said that Commissar Glebov had charge of him, which fitted in well with what Boltikov had first heard. There could be little doubt about the Tsar’s eventual lot unless Muraviev and the Whites could get to him in time. And whether that was possible—but here it became complicated. The Americans, British, French, Italians and Japanese had all sent forces to Siberia. Each wanted something different. As a result there were so many generals who might conceivably end up with the decisive role that I got giddy even thinking about them. There were too many arrows heading in too many directions—too much space for events to occur in. Something was needed to bring matters to a head and thus make Glebov accessible to me.
The death of the Tsar would obviously be one factor.
The other was brought into range not by kindly Fate but by the far from benign figure of Alexander Alexandrovich Boltikov.
I’d taken over Valenty’s berth and there rigged up a drawing board on which I’d pinned a large map of Russia. On it I was shading the direction and extent of the Bolshevik advances as per the news that I judged reliable. I wanted to discover where that Fokker had been operating from.
“Charlie,” said Boltikov, coming in and looking unusually contrite, “I’m feeling guilty about my wife and boy.”
“Do you want to feel guilty?”
“No! I sleep so badly.”
I asked him what she looked like. “A beautiful blondinka, like a willow tree in spring. Her figure is sensational and her mind excellent. Therefore she is interested only in strong men. When I said we were leaving Russia, she said she’d go to Finland as an advance party and prepare things for my arrival. What did she do? She grabbed everything. Millions in cash. Plus my father�
�s pictures. All the furniture, carpets, jewellery und so weiter. Said she’d wait for me to catch up. Ha! She’ll have gone off with another man, I’m sure of it. That’s her style. What I’m asking is this: do I have a duty to be loyal to her in the circumstances?”
“None.”
“May I forgot her?”
“Completely.”
“What about the kid? Six roubles to four says it’s mine.”
“Then invest a proportion of your available love in him. And when you meet up with him as a young man, hand over the same proportion of your new fortune to him and say, ‘This is yours. Let’s drink to our prosperity.’ Next problem.”
He smiled slowly. Conspiracy was in his eyes. Leaning forward so I could smell the salted fish on his breath he said, “Well, Charlie, that was all chat. What I really came about is the information that’s just come to hand.” He took the pencil from between my fingers and began sketching—thick, decisive slashes. “Here’s Kazan and the Volga flowing down to Samara. Right? And here’s Ufa, which is on the River Kama, which connects to the Volga not far below Kazan. That’s the geography that concerns us. Think of nothing else but that triangle. Plus what Joseph’s just told me.”
“My Joseph?”
“Yes. Your Joseph and my spy. He’s made of earhole. Turn the map round so we can both see it. The thing is this... would it surprise you to know that in one of these three cities there’s a vault full of gold? Maybe it’s on flatbeds between two of these cities, maybe in a string of barges. But the gold exists. ‘Next problem,’ you say—I can read you like a book. It’s this: how to make the gold ours. Yours and mine, Charlie Doig.”
I studied him. The existence of the gold didn’t surprise me. He had a monstrous nose for money. “No. The first problem is its value. From that we know how much effort to make. Whether it’s worth the risks.”
Cold Blood Page 13
