The Frozen Circle

by Peter Watt

  Frustrated by the things going wrong with his mission, Batkin decided it was time to go inside to pick up the trail of the man he was shadowing. As far as he could ascertain, the girl he had recruited to assist him had not yet arrived and that annoyed him. It was almost impossible to complete his mission without Sarah Sakharov and it had been he who was forced to deliver a message that was meant to be Sarah’s task. His English was not as good as her grasp of the language. At one stage in the afternoon Batkin thought he had caught a glimpse of her in the milling crowd of festival-goers but when he hurried to catch up with the girl she was gone from sight. He had expected that she would have contacted him immediately upon reaching the town. She had no reason to avoid him.

  Batkin entered the hall to see the dance floor strewn with paper streamers, empty plastic cups. Drunken revellers were falling over themselves. He scanned the room and was disturbed to see that the British agent was nowhere to be seen. With a Russian curse for his lack of alertness, he turned and stormed from the hall. Mr Daniel Kildare had slipped by him. Was the British agent aware he was being shadowed or was he better trained than Batkin had estimated?

  The Russian stepped into the night and made his way back to the hotel. At least he would meet up with the girl in the morning, he consoled himself. Her email promised that much.

  Blue and red flashing lights cast an eerie glow in the distance as Morgan sped to the scene of the reported traffic accident. He slowed on the corners of a treacherous stretch of road winding through a series of hairpin bends in the hills until he came out on the scene by the road where the two officers who had been assisting him with crowd control at the festival held up traffic travelling in both directions. Morgan used his lights and siren to make his way past the stalled traffic to a point near the scene where he brought his vehicle to a halt. He leaped from the police vehicle and was met by a young constable he knew from Hume City.

  ‘We were on our way back when we got the call,’ the constable said, waving a long, black metal torch. ‘The ambulance got here first. A driver heading to Hume City saw the accident happen. I’ve got his name and address for a statement.’

  Morgan felt empty, staring at the crushed saplings at the side of the road, indicating that the vehicle had gone over the edge into a shallow gully.

  ‘Where is the body now?’ he asked.

  ‘Still in the car,’ the constable answered. ‘The ambos are going to remove it.’

  Morgan slipped his torch from his utility belt and clambered down the gully where the white-uniformed ambulance officers and blue-uniformed police officers were working together to prise open the smashed car’s door. It appeared that the car had slammed head on into a giant gum tree and from the extent of the damage Morgan guessed it must have been travelling very fast. He came to a stop next to the driver’s side and peered inside to see the body slumped forward. The head was smashed open and blood soaked the clothing of the dead person.

  ‘It’s not Monique!’ Morgan gasped with relief.

  He recognised the dead boy as one he had strongly suspected over a couple of stolen vehicles in recent weeks. Glancing at where the ignition key should have been, Morgan noticed it was missing. The car had been hot-wired.

  ‘Know him?’ an ambulance officer Morgan knew well asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Morgan replied. ‘Guess I will have to go back and tell his mother.’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ the ambulance officer grunted as a couple of officers from Highway Patrol helped the ambulance officers to drag the dead boy from the driver’s seat. His body flopped onto the ground and Morgan could see from the unnatural angle of his legs that the impact had also smashed his lower torso. Bradley Smithers was his name, Morgan remembered. Aged seventeen and his mother was a single mum. No doubt the rebellious juvenile had somehow stolen the vehicle although it was not yet reported as missing. As the accident had occurred in his patrol area Morgan knew he would be lumbered with the investigation for the coroner’s court. It would be a matter of calling the Accident Investigation Branch to carry out their own investigation as to possible cause of the tragedy. But first he would have to inform the dead boy’s mother and arrange for her to make a formal identification of young Bradley’s body.

  Strange, Morgan thought, that the vehicle would be stolen this night and totalled. Just a coincidence, he attempted to console himself, knowing that only the expertise of the police traffic investigators would be able to answer his questions as to the cause of the collision. After collecting as much information from the young constable as he could, Morgan returned to his car. He was about to undertake the worst job in the police force – telling a mother her son was dead. Better to face an enraged knife-wielding lunatic than have to knock on a door and say those dreaded words.

  EIGHTEEN

  Northern Russia

  August 1919

  The bullet slammed into the wooden door frame beside Maria as Joshua chopped down with the edge of his hand, catching Locksley’s wrist, forcing him to drop the pistol. ‘You mad bastard,’ Joshua screamed at the British major, swinging around to ascertain Maria’s condition. She was pale and shaking. Joshua scooped up the pistol as Locksley collapsed back on the bed. In a couple of steps he was beside Maria and placed his arm around her shoulders. She had suffered enough this day.

  ‘It was an accident,’ he attempted to soothe with a lie. ‘The major is still in a fever and did not mean to shoot at you.’

  Her mouth agape, Maria stared at the British officer lying on the bed, gazing at the ceiling.

  ‘You must kill her, Sergeant Larkin,’ he said in a calm voice. ‘That is an order.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Maria asked, not understanding English.

  ‘Nothing of importance,’ Joshua answered, slipping the pistol back into his jacket. ‘He is still delirious.’

  Maria did not look convinced but allowed Joshua to guide her to the chair to settle from the shock of being so close to death once again that day. She remained sitting while Joshua rifled through the cabin for anything of value to carry on the trek to Archangel. He cut off a sizeable slab of the smoked ham hanging from the ceiling and pocketed a slab of cheese along with a small loaf of hard, black bread. Satisfied that he had retrieved everything of assistance for the trip he told Maria to gather up anything that might be of importance to her. All that Maria collected was a small leather satchel and a bulging linen belt, which she secured under her clothing. Joshua wondered at both items.

  ‘Wait outside,’ he said quietly to Maria.

  ‘What about the major?’ she asked with fear in her eyes.

  ‘He is too ill to travel with us,’ Joshua answered. ‘I will speak with him when you are outside.’

  Maria understood that whatever transpired between the two men was not meant for her to witness but this did not reduce her fear. She did not want to ask the Australian soldier what he intended to do with the major. She had seen the ferocity of Joshua’s handiwork in the front yard.

  ‘You will not kill him,’ she blurted. ‘He is a very ill man.’

  ‘I promise you that I will not harm him,’ Joshua answered.

  Maria nodded and left the cabin while Joshua walked over to the British officer.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘But I think that you are too ill to travel with us and in your present condition I see that you may harm the girl – or even yourself. I am going to leave you with food, water and one of the Russian rifles. It is my intention to get the girl to England to join her relatives there.’

  Locksley’s soft chuckle turned into laughter. ‘When I rejoin the army at Archangel I will have you arrested and charged with disobeying a direct order while on active service, Sergeant Larkin, and you know what that means. You are no longer in the Australian army but under British military law. You can be shot for your disobedience but you still have a chance to kill the girl and redeem yourself.’

  ‘You have not given me any justification for executing an unarmed civilian, sir. Under the King
’s regulations I am justified in disobeying your unlawful order.’

  ‘If you only knew what you have got yourself into, Sergeant, you would see the justification behind my order,’ Locksley said, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Then, who is the girl?’ Joshua demanded, leaning towards the British officer. ‘She will not tell me, except to say that she once had contact with the Czar’s family.’

  For a moment Major Locksley appeared to consider answering the reasonable question truthfully but finally he said, ‘You are a soldier in the King’s army and have to accept that all orders from senior officers are made without the necessity of conferring with the lower ranks. That is all you have to know.’

  ‘I saw enough of that same bloody mindedness on the Western Front,’ Joshua growled. ‘I saw good men die on the whims of staff officers who had never set foot in the trenches, so don’t give me that rubbish. Goodbye, sir, I hope you make it back to Archangel.’

  With his parting words, Joshua turned on his heel, leaving a rifle and spare ammunition beside the bed.

  ‘Oh, I will get back to Archangel,’ Locksley shouted after him. ‘And when I do, Sergeant Larkin, I will hunt you and the girl down and complete my mission. Be assured of that.’

  Joshua heard the words fade as he trudged away from the cabin with Maria. He doubted that the major would live as he was still a long way from recovery and it was very possible that the Bolsheviks would stumble on him even if he survived the fever. The chances of him leaving the taiga were negligible. But at least Joshua knew that Maria had been the reason for their dangerous mission and that the major was indeed mad to want her dead. No, he would get her to Archangel where the higher authorities would arrange for her to be debriefed, and sent to England to join her relatives there. Joshua did not know why she was of interest but suspected she must know something of vital importance.

  Maria was strong and easily kept up with Joshua on the march into the depths of the forest. They would need a lot of cunning and luck to avoid the Bolshevik patrols but he felt that the girl beside him was up to the long and arduous journey.

  ‘Thank you,’ Maria said as they walked. ‘You have saved my life and you have not broken your word to ask no questions of me or my past.’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ Joshua sniffed angrily as they walked. He could not get out of his head that the girl had a link with the probable death of his friend and the confrontation with the major.

  Maria fell silent, sensing his brooding thoughts.

  ‘We have to make another path,’ Lieutenant Novotny said, stabbing at the ground with his sabre. ‘The enemy are deployed in force to our front.’

  George swallowed a mouthful of thick, black breadcrumbs from the ration he had been allocated, followed by a swig of brackish water from a canteen.

  ‘Not a chance that we could wait until night and slip through their ranks?’ he asked hopefully. They were within a few days’ ride of Archangel but the Bolsheviks were deploying in strength from what they had been able to observe from the cover of the forests.

  The Czech officer shook his head. ‘I am sorry, my friend, but I will have to double-back through the last two villages we past through. Our path will take us back to a place not far from where we found you. It is what the Bolsheviks will not expect.’

  George’s training as an officer told him the young officer’s planning made sense although it was disappointing to be so close to the safety of the city on the sea. There, he knew, the Allied armies would be in enough force to resist an attack.

  Novotny gave the order and his men remounted. They were weary but showed no sign of despair. George had to admire the fighting spirit of these mounted soldiers who he had learned had been fighting in Russia since the fall of the Czar.

  George swung himself into the saddle. His soreness was less today and he was even feeling at home astride his horse as the column moved out without the traditional jangle of equipment. Novotny had ensured that all of his men strap down anything that might make the slightest noise as they rode and the column moved silently with the exception of the occasional snorting or heavy breathing of the horses.

  On a compass bearing taken by the Czech officer that would lead them back to the vicinity where he had last seen Joshua and the major, George mused that they might bump into the two men again. But he quickly dismissed the thought as ludicrous. Russia was a big place and the forest swallowed all life. What were the odds?

  Joshua pulled together fallen timber to make a tiny hide for the night. Maria assisted by fetching the foliage to cover the spaces between the tree limbs. It was placed in a small depression to help conceal their temporary home and when the job was complete, Joshua invited Maria to crawl inside with him. Dark, heavy clouds were forming on the horizon and Joshua prayed that the storm would hold off as the hide would become very wet if it rained. Their concealment made it virtually impossible to see at ground level and he was relying on this to get a good night’s sleep as anyone lurking in the area would have to literally walk over them.

  ‘No fire,’ Joshua warned when Maria was facing him only inches from his body. ‘We eat the ham and cheese and get a full night’s sleep.’

  Maria accepted the intimate conditions, knowing what Joshua meant. They would not have to take turns staying awake as sentry duty. Her exposure to soldiers had taught her much about military tactics.

  Joshua produced the ham and cheese, cutting off slabs with a small sharp knife he had found in the woodcutter’s cabin. He passed Maria the food and they ate in silence, listening to the night sounds of the forest. When he pulled his coat over both of them, Joshua could smell Maria’s breath on his cheek.

  ‘What did you do before you became a soldier?’ she asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘I was a pencil pusher. A clerk in Sydney.’

  ‘You do not act like a clerk,’ Maria said. ‘You are as brave and good as my father’s imperial guards.’

  ‘Your father was an officer?’ Joshua asked.

  ‘My father was the Czar of Russia,’ Marie replied quietly. ‘Your King George and his family are who I am to join in England.’

  At first Joshua thought that he was hallucinating. ‘Your father was the Czar Nicholas?’ he echoed disbelievingly.

  ‘Yes, I am Princess Maria,’ she replied simply. ‘All my family were murdered at Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks – except for me. I was kept alive as a hostage but I was able to escape.’ She paused and Joshua sensed that she was remembering something she would rather not be. Maria turned away, tears streaming down her face. Joshua wrapped his arms around the girl and held her to him. Maria sobbed in his arms as he stroked her hair. He was confused and did not know what to think of her story.

  ‘How did you get this far?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Just after I fled the city I was found by a hunter. He knew who I was and helped me journey between villages until I was able to reach the woodcutter’s cabin. He was able to smuggle a message through the Bolshevik lines to Archangel. When you came for me I thought I was saved but I fear that there must be people in England who want me dead and I do not know why.’

  Joshua’s mind was still reeling from what Maria had told him about her identity. He was sure that it had been the major’s intention to kill her but that still did not make sense. Why would the British want the last surviving member of the Russian royal family dead? The answer was beyond Joshua’s comprehension and so he dismissed the idea. The British major had been truly insane, Joshua convinced himself, and now it was up to him to deliver Maria into the hands of the English.

  That night as they huddled into each other for warmth Maria whimpered in her sleep and when she did, Joshua would soothe her with soft words. She awoke in the early morning hours to hear his steady breathing. She could not see his face in the dark but every line was burned into her memory. Maria wondered at this man from a place so far from Russia. He had asked nothing of her and had proved his readiness to sacrifice his life to defend her – even when he wa
s not aware of her royal status. He was handsome in a rugged way, she thought. And both gentle and savage. Maria felt a growing attraction towards the Australian, realising that he alone stood between her future and the possibility of a cruel death in Russia. Impulsively Maria reached over to stroke his whiskered chin. Joshua stirred briefly, scratching at his chin but fell back into a rhythmic breathing. She felt such deep affection already for this man whose very existence protected her. She sighed. It was easy to feel safe in the arms of this Australian.

  The skirmish with a mounted Bolshevik patrol took the lives of four Czech cavalry men. They had bumped the enemy patrol crossing a clearing and both sides were taken unawares. The disciplined Czechs charged the Bolsheviks who outnumbered them at least two to one, but they were able to smash into the enemy’s assembling line before they were fully formed to resist the shock of the Czech attack. In the ensuing hand-to-hand fighting from horseback George had fought with a ferocity that impressed his comrades and the column had succeeded in routing the Bolsheviks. Novotny had roared the order to allow none to escape alive and the Czechs rode down the Bolshevik survivors who threw up their hands in surrender.

  Led back, the surviving enemy were ordered to dismount and Novotny gave the order to shoot the bewildered men who were standing in a close circle. They fell, screaming for mercy. George no longer felt pity for them. The column had just passed through a village that the Bolsheviks had occupied where all the town’s male population over ten years of age had been forced into the local Orthodox church and burned alive. It had been a lesson to the surviving women that all Russians who were not actively with them would be considered counter-revolutionaries. The local men had not even been given the choice to join the revolution. This mattered little to the Bolsheviks who stood by, impassively listening to the agonised cries of the men and boys inside. Nothing could be too brutal to further the aims of the revolution.

  It was when the Czech column had entered the devastated village that George lost any pity he may have had for enemy prisoners. He only hoped that these men they had executed were part of the Bolshevik party that had carried out the atrocity in the last village.