Look to the Wolves
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
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Historical Note
The Russian Battles Series
Also by Alexander Fullerton…
Copyright
Look to the Wolves
Alexander Fullerton
1
When the racket of machine-gun fire jarred him out of sleep his waking reaction was to push his hand under the pillow to his Webley pistol: now he was on his back, listening intently, holding the weapon on his chest outside the bedclothes.
Lying still, listening – to unbroken silence – and noting that dawn’s beginnings were visible in the gap between the curtains. So – four-thirty, roughly. Dismissing the thought that the shooting could have been part of some dream: there’d only been that one blast, perhaps half a dozen rounds, but the barking of the gun still reverberated, echoed… And there was no mystery as to who’d have done the shooting – unless of course some person or persons unknown had caught Kotter’s man napping, if that had not been the Lewis gun which Kotter and his cronies had set up in the hotel foyer, its muzzle trained day and night on the street door.
If that was the case – if Kotter’s henchman had been the victim – intruders might now be on their way upstairs. He moved the other arm out into the cold – this thought having sparked action that was overdue – to jerk the top round from the pistol’s magazine into its chamber. Then he was still again: listening, with the arm back in cover.
Not that one could think of oneself as sufficiently important to be a target. At least, one hadn’t – up to this minute…
Nonsense, anyway. There probably wasn’t a single Red who even knew of one’s existence. Or would give a damn. But there were plenty of others in the hotel who’d surely qualify as enemies of the revolution. As many as fifty or sixty of them, all former Tsarists, now refugees and awaiting – begging, in some cases – sea transport westward. Having in most cases to grease French palms before they’d get their names added to the waiting-lists.
To the Reds, of course, the slaughter of such people could be virtually an end in itself. And the Crimea was swarming with Red infiltrators and sympathizers, only waiting for their time to come. As Kotter and his henchmen were well aware.
Go down, take a look?
He – Bob Cowan – slid out of the warm bed and shrugged his naval greatcoat on over his pyjamas. No need to switch the light on: the coat had been in easy reach, spread on the bed for extra warmth. Here at Sevastopol you had the benefit of the Black Sea’s tempering influence, but this was still December, with a Russian winter blanketing that vast hinterland to the north.
And everything going to hell again. White armies, who’d been riding high a few months ago, reeling back, the Bolshevik counter-attack gaining momentum on all fronts.
And she was out there somewhere…
He jerked the curtains open, to let in the dawn’s grey light. Too high and sheer, up on this second floor, to see down into the street from the closed window. No sound penetrating, meanwhile. If a patrol had heard the shooting – and surely one would have, there’d have to have been one within, say, half a mile – they must have turned deaf ears. Military policing here was shared by the French and the Greeks, but it was mainly French, and they tended not to risk their own necks or over-exert themselves when they didn’t have to.
So – cause and effect – you could say there was good reason for the existence of Kotter and his team of vigilantes. The plain fact was that the French were useless. The Russians – the Volunteer Army – loathed them.
He buttoned his coat, pushed size ten feet into old tennis-shoes that served as slippers, and the gun into his right-hand pocket. It was a Webley and Scott .455 automatic, advertised by its makers as possessing ‘Greater Smashing and Stopping Power than any other Automatic on the Market’, and it had been issued to him by Colonel Temple, Royal Marines, the naval intelligence officer in Constantinople.
At the door, now. Turning its squeaky handle as quietly as possible using his left hand, the right one in his pocket on the pistol.
‘Hah! Commander!’
Short, tubby, dressing-gown sash pulled in tight round his paunch, sparse ginger hair fringing a round, white crown: former middle-ranking diplomat, name of – Nyeporojhnii. Pompous little man, liked to air his French although he knew Bob’s Russian was as fluent as his English. The Nyeporojhniis’ bedroom door was ajar behind him: that camel-like wife listening to every word or move, of course… ‘What d’you think’s happening, my dear Commander – all that shooting?’
A nod: ‘On my way down to find out.’
‘Ah. Well. If you’re going down, I won’t—’
‘No.’ Bob told him, ‘Go back to bed, if I were you.’ He started down the stairs. These people seemed to regard him as their protector – despite the fact the Crimean port and the Black Sea coast to the west of it was in French mandate. It spoke well for the reputation of the Royal Navy, perhaps. And there was a British cruiser and a destroyer in the anchorage, as well as the French battleship Jean Bart and the Greek armoured cruiser Averov. People in dressing-gowns or overcoats were milling around on the landing below, and there was a murmur of low voices; and the Ukrainian girl, Aksana Lyashkova, was climbing the stairs towards him. Her room was on this top floor, next to the Nyeporojhniis’. She was in her mid-twenties, very attractive – more of a Georgian look than Ukrainian, one might have thought. In colouring, for sure: big, dark eyes slightly aslant, café-crème complexion… Addressing him now: ‘Commander – really, it’s too frightful! There’s a man dead down there, shot down just like a dog! Right here in the hotel, if you please!’
‘My dear young lady.’ Nyeporojhnii, smirking down at her over the bannister. ‘Don’t distress yourself. Those fellows know what they’re about, you know. Anyway, the Commander’s on his way down, don’t worry your pretty head, he’ll—’
‘Commander.’ She was ignoring Nyeporojhnii. Her quilted dressing-gown clung rather bulkily, unflatteringly: her figure was in fact – Bob had noticed, a couple of times – sensational. ‘If you could spare a minute – oh, perhaps not now, this minute, but—’
‘I do rather want to get down there.’ She had his left hand in both of hers now; the small, caressing movements she was giving to it might have been only symptoms of anxiety, a sort of fiddling. But her closeness to him, and the soft hands, the heady perfume had an effect, all right… He frowned: ‘Perhaps in the morning.’
‘Thank you, Commander…’
‘Excuse me.’ Her hands released him but her eyes and scent followed him down to the next landing. Nyeporojhnii’s wife summoning her husband back into their room, meanwhile, calling the little man to heel. The Lyashkova girl was probably a spy, Ashmore had said in the notes he’d left by way of a very skimpy handover to Bob. And having on top of that seen her strolling arm-in-arm with a particularly obnoxious Frenchman, one had dutifully stayed clear.
Until now.
But – even if Ashmore’s guess was wrong – in this snake-pit it would be lunacy…
Ashmore – Lieutenant, Royal Navy – had been gone by the time Bob had arrived here, a week ago, and those notes had been the only briefing that he’d had. Not that he’d come to take over the man’s job, in any case, he’d been s
ent here to concentrate on one specific task. He’d been on his way, taking passage from Constantinople in the destroyer Terrapin, when Ashmore had been summoned to Novorossisk by the Rear Admiral 3rd Cruiser Squadron, who was currently visiting that port with his flag in HMS Centaur. So Bob had found himself a stranger in a strange town with another man’s job on his hands and not much idea of how to set about it.
He had the hang of it now though, more or less. The job was to maintain a list of persons entitled to passages out of Russia in British ships, and allocate any available berths to them in such ships as called. One had also to beat off French attempts to extend their own system of bribes into the British operation. That was the basic, routine function. But realistically, you were in a last-ditch situation. There’d be no more refugees arriving, unless they came by sea – from Novorossisk or elsewhere in the Caucasus, for instance – because the Crimea was by now isolated. There was heavy fighting around Perekop, the narrow isthmus that was the land-bridge to and from Taurida and the Ukraine, and no certainty at all that the Whites would hold out there; while the eastern flank – the Kerch peninsula and the north and west coasts of the Sea of Azov – was being held only with help from the Royal Navy’s guns. Evacuation, therefore – although one wouldn’t so much as whisper the word, here in the Kist Hotel – was a contingency for which one had to be prepared.
His own special brief, which had been given to him by Colonel Temple, RM in Constantinople, had to do – for heaven’s sake – with governesses.
He’d thought Temple had been pulling his leg, when the subject had first come up; but it was nothing but the truth – when he came to think of it, casting his mind back to his own childhood here in Russia – that before the war there’d been many British women employed as such, both in St Petersburg – where he, Bob, had been brought up – and along the coast eastward from here, the sub-baked Yalta coastal strip where so many well-to-do Russian families had summer residences. Palaces, even. British governesses, nannies and nursemaids had been more or less standard furnishings in pre-war days, and quite a number of them had stayed on. Now there was some urgency – had been pressure from London, apparently, in recent weeks – some of the families demanding that their daughters should be found and shipped home – and – two, to be precise – had failed to respond.
‘Excuse me.’
‘Oh – Commander—’
‘Countess. Forgive me, but – I’ll be back presently. Please, excuse me…’
Like hens clucking, and a few nervous old roosters strutting around the fringes. Poor devils… He went on down the last flight of stairs. Maroon carpet, threadbare patches here and there, brass fittings on mahogany. Above him as he came on down a few residents hung around or craned over to see what might transpire, but he could also hear doors clicking shut as others drifted back into their rooms, satisfied presumably that no assassin had got in.
But maybe one had tried?
That one.
Sprawled on the carpet, just inside the door. White face with blood all over it, watery brown eyes open, fur hat still in place and a shard of glass hanging from a deep gash in the cheek. This was where the visible blood was coming from; the glass was a splinter from the top half of the street door, which had shattered.
Civilian overcoat, leather-trimmed and fur-collared. Boots heavily muddied. A revolver – a Russian Nagant – lay on the carpet close to the outflung right arm.
‘See, we’re not here just for our own amusement, Commander!’
Kotter himself. A big man – about Bob’s own height and weight – in Imperial Army uniform, greatcoat with shoulder-boards, breeches and boots, fur shapka adding a few inches to his height. The Armenian hotel manager looked like a dwarf beside him, and behind them both the one-eyed Grusjenko was sitting on what they called the duty officer’s chair, close to the stove and behind the Lewis gun. The chair was gilt, with spindly legs and red velvet upholstery.
A gesture towards the body: ‘Proof of the pudding – wouldn’t you say?’
Grusjenko chuckled, juggling spent cartridge-cases in one palm and looking delighted with himself. He’d lost the eye in the fighting around Kiev, in February – this year, 1919, just ten months ago – and he wore a patch over the empty socket. The Bolsheviks had taken Kiev. That was when the French had begun to think about evacuating Odessa, which they’d done in April with very little advance warning, leaving thousands to be murdered, entire families committing suicide on the quays as the ships pulled out.
The manager began ‘If you gentlemen will excuse me now—’
‘Did you telephone the Monsieurs?’
‘Not yet, Captain—’
‘Do it. Get this removed, for God’s sake!’
‘At once. At once…’
‘Does anyone know who this is – or was?’ Bob looked from Grusjenko to Kotter, as the manager withdrew. ‘Or what he was after?’
‘Burst in with that pistol in his fist.’ Kotter’s face was squarish, heavy-jowelled. Dark with stubble, now. He stood with a list to port, his weight on the stick he always carried. He’d taken a shell-fragment in his knee, and that leg didn’t bend. When he walked, he swung it out in a half-circle. Nodding down towards the Nagant: ‘It’s fully loaded. Wasn’t calling in to pass the time of day, was he?’ He swung round to Grusjenko: ‘Didn’t have time to ask him for his papers – eh?’
‘Certainly did not!’
‘Which, however –’ Kotter showed Bob – ‘here, see for yourself. Name’s Lapin – Alexis Lapin. Transport driver and interpreter, it says there.’
Bob gazed down at the soiled, creased document. Taking care, as the name Lapin struck home, not to react or give any sign of recognizing it. But Alexis Lapin was the name Colonel Temple had given him, the name of the man who’d been supposed to contact him here. In fact one hadn’t expected him to show up quite this soon. Temple, in Constantinople, had asked an individual by name of Reilly – Captain Sidney Reilly, who had a British passport and fluent, unaccented English but had been born an Odessan Jew – to put out enquiries as to the whereabouts of the two missing women. Governesses, nannies, whatever they’d been. Only two, because all the others had either come forward when invited to do so, presenting themselves for passages home to Britain, or had been found and brought out. There’d been about two dozen of them, initially. It was known that the missing girls had volunteered as nurses or nursing aides: which for Bob came close to the bone, since she had also gone back to nursing.
At least, she’d expressed an intention of doing so. In the same letter in which she’d broken it to him that she’d married Count Nicholas Solovyev.
Which made her none of his – Bob’s – business, now. As he was having constantly to remind himself. At every time of waking from sleep, for instance, it was a reality to be faced, accepted.
But the governesses – those two had been at the hospital in Simferopol as trainees, they’d gone off on leave and never reported back. The hospital people had made enquiries, found no trace of them and assumed they’d deserted, run away home to England.
He handed the dead man’s papers back to Kotter. Anything else on him?’
‘Nothing. Take a look, if you like.’
The linings of Lapin’s pockets had all been pulled out, as proof of their emptiness. Or to save the searcher looking twice. Not that this was any kind of proof that there’d been nothing to find in the first place. Nor for that matter that the whereabouts of a pair of British governesses – if Lapin had discovered anything about them – need have been any major part of his preoccupations or endeavours. Captain Reilly wasn’t employed by Temple or by British naval intelligence, more likely he was either freelance or Secret Service, or conceivably both; but he had contacts everywhere and he’d told Temple he’d entrust the investigation to a certain Alexis Lapin, with instructions to transmit anything he discovered about any of the women directly to Lieutenant-Commander Cowan at the Hotel Kist, Sevastopol.
And here he was.
Icy draft… Glancing at its cause, the shattered upper part of the swing door, he was surprised he hadn’t heard the glass breaking. Except that – well, from two floors up: and those bedroom doors were solid, heavy timber. The noise of the gun was a different matter, you’d hear that through concrete. He stooped, carefully removed the sliver of glass from Lapin’s unshaven cheek. The flow of blood from that small wound had more or less stopped, but on the dead man’s torso patches were darkening and slowly expanding in the fabric of the coat.
Kotter asked him, ‘You never saw him before, I suppose?’
Glancing up: allowing surprise to show, at the question that hardly deserved an answer. Kotter’s slits of eyes shifting to the body, then back to him… ‘Or heard the name?’
He straightened up, dusting the skirts of his greatcoat. ‘Should I have?’
Kotter studying him, the expression on his heavy face saying You tell me… Nobody trusting anyone at all: and usually with good reason. Bob wondered whether Lapin had, as Grusjenko had alleged, burst in with the revolver in his hand, or whether he might only have made an abrupt, noisy entry and Grusjenko’s finger tightened on the trigger – in reaction to sudden fright – as his single eye blinked open. Then they’d have dropped the Nagant where it lay now. Otherwise, wouldn’t it have been more natural to have picked it up and taken the shells out of it, rather than have left the stage set as it was?
He thought it would have been. Nobody in his right mind left loaded guns lying around. When you’d been used to handling guns, that sort of thing was more or less instinctive.
They might even have had some reason of their own for killing Lapin. Knowing these people, you couldn’t discount it as a possibility. Climbing the stairs slowly, putting his feet at the edges of each tread where the timber creaked less; he didn’t want to be intercepted again and bombarded with their unanswerable questions. Besides, they could sleep late if they wanted to, and he couldn’t. He had a problem now; and the answer to it was to get up early and out to the cruiser, Caledonian, whose captain was currently the senior British naval officer here, and arrange for the despatch of a signal to Constantinople to let Temple know that Reilly’s man had turned up dead.
Look to the Wolves Page 1
