Bloody Sunset

by Bloody Sunset (retail) (epub)

  ‘No. None at all.’

  He’d noticed a certain tension in the staff and in the polyglot crowd of customers milling around this foyer and in and out of the hotel. Heads had turned as he’d come thrusting in: they were all jumpy for news of the fighting – even for news of a British evacuation, if that was what it had to come to. In which event, as well as mass panic there’d no doubt be instant readjustments of allegiances and attitudes. This town had, after all, been Bolshevik-governed until only a few weeks ago when the Dictatorship had taken over and asked for British help. Dunsterville had been kicking his heels down in Persia then, but he’d immediately sent off a small advance party and then followed – by sea from Enzeli in the President Kruger – with the rest of his force.

  That operation might be put into reverse at very short notice now, Bob guessed, as he gunned the truck’s rattly old engine, pulling out around the hotel and setting course for the military headquarters, a big villa on the northern edge of town which had been placed at the general’s disposal by its rich owner, one of the Dictatorship or one of their oil-rich supporters.

  There were plenty of very well-heeled citizens in and around Baku. All of them with a lot to lose. And evacuation could be imminent… Remembering his experiences in the earlier part of the morning, seeing again the taut anxiety in some of the faces in the Europa – and knowing how keenly tuned these people’s ears and instincts so often were.

  Not that there’d been a shred of anxiety in Leonide, earlier on. Recalling her surprised, almost indignant response to his own quiet pleading… ‘But – surely there can be no real danger – with your British army here to protect us? Your General Dunsterville surely wouldn’t just walk away and leave us to the mercy of the Turks?’

  She’d laughed at such a preposterous notion. He’d tried to explain: ‘There are very few of our troops, you see. Really, just a handful – and the deuce of a lot of Turks. Odds of something like ten to one, or worse.’

  ‘But we have Russian battalions as well, surely?’

  He’d baulked at telling her that her own people were more of a liability than an asset. It would have taken a lot of explaining, however carefully one had been able to approach the subject and even if she’d have been prepared to listen – which he didn’t for a moment think she would have been. What he’d have put to her – or tried to – was that nobody could accuse the individual Russian soldier of cowardice: Russians could, often had, fought like tigers when they were properly led. But they had no real leadership here, no discipline or sense of motivation, very little idea of what if anything they were fighting for – let alone might be fighting for tomorrow.

  In fact his visit to her had been something of a fiasco. He’d gone without prior warning or invitation, and found that she already had a caller – an Armenian of about Bob’s own age, well dressed, sure of himself, obviously not short of roubles. Name of – he stretched his memory – keeping his father’s image out of it, or at least no more than shadowy in the background – and got it: Gavril. Surname elusive…

  Then outside – Bob had said at once that he couldn’t stay, had only been passing and looked in on the off-chance, and she’d come out with him to the curve of white steps that fronted this rather grand house – she’d asked him, ‘Come this evening? Please do. My uncle would appreciate it very much, Robert Aleksand’ich, he truly would. Please?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean – that I can get away. But listen…’

  He’d told her what he’d come for – to persuade her to go back to Krasnovodsk before this place fell open to the Turks – and so on, so forth; they’d had that brief and clearly non-productive conversation between the front steps and his truck.

  Well – Mr Dewhurst’s truck…

  Dunsterforce HQ was in sight ahead now, set well back from the winding, uphill road amongst luxuriant gardens and with the Union Flag drooping from a slightly askew flagpole in front of the columned portico. He drove the truck into a space amongst other vehicles on what might until recently have been a croquet lawn, climbed out and headed for those front steps.

  ‘Lieutenant Cowan, sir?’

  A sergeant of the Royal Warwicks: he had one arm in a sling, doubtless the reason for his soft number here. And Bob’s naval whites stood out like a sore thumb, of course, in the military environment. The sergeant told him, ‘Been watching out for you, sir. I’ll pass the word you’re here. The Russian officer’s just along here, sir – you’re supposed to join him.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you, Sergeant.’

  ‘In here, sir.’ He pushed a heavy door open, and stood aside. ‘Captain – er – Sullivitsky, sir…’

  Bob saw a slightly pained look on the face of the uniformed Russian who’d been semi-reclining on a plush-covered sofa in this small anteroom. He was pushing himself up now: by the look of him might well have been asleep. Tallish, slim, with thick brown hair which he was smoothing back with both hands now, and regular, handsome features. He said in Russian, ‘I suppose you are Lieutenant Cowan. My name is Solovyev – not whatever that fool said. Captain Count Nikolai Petrovich Solovyev.’ They shook hands. Bob slow to speak: still preoccupied although he knew he had to clear his mind and concentrate on present business: whatever the hell it might turn out to be… ‘I’m Bob Cowan. Robert Aleksandrovich Cowan, if you like.’ He’d said it in full consciousness of its meaning: Robert son of Alexander… ‘I’ve no idea what this is about.’

  ‘I know you haven’t. I’m expected to explain it to you, so that then you can brief your naval commander and the General. I’ve already given him the bones of it, he knows why I’m here and – I think – what’s at stake. But his knowledge of Russian is – er – limited, eh?’

  ‘It is, rather.’ Solovyev was sitting down again, and waving Bob to a nearby chair, as if he was the host here. Which perhaps he was, in one sense… There was an attaché case on the table close to him, and a folded map on top of it. He was right about General Dunsterville anyway; the General was reputedly competent in the Russian language, but the competence didn’t extend far beyond a formal, purely social usage.

  Bob asked the Count, ‘Do you speak any English?’

  ‘Oh, my dear fellow – I can say please, and thank you, and how are you today… May I ask how it is that you speak Russian as well as you do?’

  ‘I was born and brought up in St Petersburg. My father settled there – from Scotland – when he was still a young man. And my mother was Russian.’

  ‘Are they still—’

  ‘No. No, they’re not.’ He dropped into the chair. ‘Tell me what we’re here for?’

  ‘At least what I am here for…’

  Bob guessed, settling down to listen, that Solovyev was probably a few years older than him. Thirty or so. Same height, near enough, but slimmer. More – the word might be ‘elegant’. It was not an adjective he’d ever have thought of in relation to himself, but it applied to this fellow, he thought. A twinge of frustration accompanied the notion that Leonide would undoubtedly find him attractive – with his brown wavy hair, regular features and that air of sophistication. And of course his rank – despite the fact that counts in Russia came at about a guinea a baker’s dozen. But you could see, too, that he’d been through it, that he was a soldier, not a courtier – as he was confirming, at this moment: ‘I’ve been with the Volunteer Army on the Don for the past seven or eight months. Notably in the fighting around Rostov – I’m glad to say we did rather well. But – if you’ll forgive my coming straight to the point – here’s what concerns us, at least what I hope and pray will concern your commanders here.’

  He paused, looking hard at Bob – with anxiety in his greenish eyes, as if Bob could possibly have set his mind at rest, or influenced anything here in any way… Frowning now: ‘I should mention to start with that I came down from Petrovsk last night, in the gunboat Ardaghan. Before that, I had made my way overland to Petrovsk – yes, through that murderous rabble…’

  Through the Bolshevik army i
n that sector, was what he was saying. And from General Denikin’s base in Don Cossack territory – probably all of five hundred miles, Bob guessed. Hearing him explain, ‘I brought with me a request from Denikin to Bicherakov that he should send me on to you here as fast as possible. That’s how I come to be talking to you, now.’

  ‘Quite a journey you’ve made.’

  ‘But listen, now. I received – nearly five weeks ago – a visitor. And my God, his journey… At that time we were re-grouping for the assault on Ekaterinodar – which when I got to Petrovsk I was delighted to learn has now fallen to us… But this visitor – messenger – when I’d last seen him was in Petrograd. He’d become a naval cadet just before the revolution: and my sister and this boy’s sister are the closest of friends. Anyway, he was now about nineteen years old, and he’d come from my family’s country house – what was our house might be nearer the truth – near Enotayevsk… D’you know where that is?’ Bob shook his head. ‘Not the foggiest.’

  ‘I’ll show you in a minute.’ Glancing towards the map: then reaching to it, opening it out as he continued. ‘He’d come from there, anyway, with a message to me from my mother – from my sister, in fact, it was my mother’s message but she was ill, it was my sister who’d sent Boris… My mother incidentally is the Countess Maria Ivanovna Solovyeva. I had heard nothing from her or of her since – well, a year, at least – but she and my sister must have found each other somehow. Oh, and this boy’s sister was with them too – and also, most importantly of all—’

  He’d checked. ‘I must explain to you first that my mother was First Lady-in-Waiting to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna.’

  ‘The Tsar’s mother…’

  Solovyev nodded solemnly. ‘Yes. And the message which this young man brought was to inform me that my mother and sister and Boris’s own sister, and the two children – were in hiding in – well, in some part of our house, and at the time he set off with this message my mother was gravely ill. I don’t know what kind of illness, only she couldn’t move from there. But – well, reading between the lines of what Boris could tell me – he was not at all articulate, as in a minute I’ll explain – they’d had a truly frightful journey down to Enotayevsk – by what route, with what privations, one can only guess but I suppose they had some reason to imagine they’d be safe there… You have a question?’

  Bob nodded. ‘You mentioned children. Relations, or—’

  ‘Good question.’ A nod… ‘I asked Boris Nikolai’ich the same – what children? – but by this time he was – wandering, in his mind and speech. He’d arrived with a badly infected wound – you could smell the gangrene a mile away and he was just skin and bone, hardly a breath left in his body. It looked to me like a bayonet wound – here—’ Solovyev touched his upper thigh, close to the groin – ‘and the doctor agreed with me. But also that the boy was’ – he hesitated – ‘not long for this world. From what he’d told me when he first arrived I deduced that he’d been a very long time on his way – may have been a month, two months even – and I believe he said that he’d been forcibly enlisted at one stage in some Bolshevik unit. In which case he must have got away from them after he was wounded. He may have been left for dead – or as no further use to them – I wouldn’t put that past them. He’d certainly had no medical attention – and either no food at all, or scraps… He had my sister’s message off by heart, or so it seemed, the way he whispered it – two or three times, exactly the same – and nothing else… And within two days he was dead. I was present, and the doctor was fighting to save his life or at least bring him back to consciousness – at my urging, I have to admit it was mostly in the hope he’d tell me something about these children. But—’ the Count shook his head – ‘no such luck. Luck enough to have got to me and delivered the message, I suppose. Then his strength gave out. It could have been only force of will that had kept him alive, I suppose the knowledge of the others relying on him for their lives.’

  Solovyev had stopped again. Gazing across the room… Then abruptly: ‘I went to see General Denikin. You won’t have got the point of this yet, but believe me, this was now a great deal more than just my personal concern for my mother and sister. I believed by that time, as I do now, that I have been entrusted with – well, in my own conviction, with the lives of two of their Imperial Majesties’ daughters. In all probability the only two surviving members of the immediate family. Of course you will have heard the various rumours – that they’ve all been murdered, that they’re prisoners, that they’re living in disguise as peasants in this or that district… Nobody knows, do they. But personally I wouldn’t have bet on any of them being still alive – until this message. You see, here’s the crux of it: my mother would never have named the children, if they are who I believe they must be. As I’ve told you, my mother was in close relationship with the mother of His Imperial Majesty – these girls’ grandmother. What could be more likely than that in all the confusion and danger besetting them, if the family were having to split up, my mother would have been the person to whom they’d have entrusted them. D’you follow me? And besides, if ‘the two children’ were anyone else – young cousins, or children of friends, whoever – why would she not have named them? Huh? D’you take my point? I feel certain that this was her way of telling me – her coded message to me. Do you see it, as I’m trying to explain how I see it?’

  He nodded. ‘Except – correct me if I’m wrong – are any of those four Grand Duchesses exactly children, now?’

  ‘In what would have been my mother’s use of the word – yes. In fact the youngest, Anastasia, is now I suppose seventeen. The others nineteen, twenty-one – that’s Tatiana – and then Olga about twenty-three. But in any case they are Their Majesties’ children. Also it’s not unlikely she was referring to the two youngest – the Grand Duchesses Anastasia and Maria.’

  ‘All right. You’d know a lot better than I can, but – I agree, it holds water.’

  ‘Of course it does. In fact it can’t be interpreted any other way. This was also the view taken by General Denikin, I may tell you. We discussed it from all angles – and what might be done and how, and by whom… But you see, to get there, to Enotayevsk – through not only the Bolshevik lines but through hundreds of miles of territory which at present they control – well, one man alone – even young Boris, just a boy, God rest his soul, and not particularly robust – but for an individual, or a team of fit men – fine, why not, with a bit of luck and nerve? But then – to come all the way out again – with women and children?’

  Bob agreed. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘But now look here.’ Solovyev leaned forward, shook the map open and spread it on the table. ‘Here. Here now – Enotayevsk. Exactly – here… The house is in fact a few versts to the south of it – about here. Right on the water’s edge. Very beautiful surroundings, by the way.’

  Bob focused on that area. Then checked against the distance scale. Getting an idea finally of what this was about, what was being proposed or was about to be proposed.

  ‘Must be – what, a hundred miles up-river?’

  ‘About that.’

  Up the Volga. A hundred miles north of Astrakhan, the Bolsheviks’ stronghold on the Caspian.

  Commodore Norris glanced at the Count, then back at Bob. ‘So what exactly is he asking us to do? Mount some sort of raid?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve explained – and he understands – that there’s no question of being able to get up-river. What he’s hoping is that we’d put him ashore – well, anywhere it can be managed, really, but obviously he’d prefer it to be somewhere inside the delta – and then to pick him up – with the ladies, touch wood – at some later date. Timing obviously subject to planning detail, and presumably a series of alternative dates, but – something of that sort.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Drumming his fingers on the map. ‘Just him – one man alone… Does he have a plan, any idea of how he’d get them out?’

  Bob turned back to the Count, to put this
question to him, but the General arrived at that moment: bursting in, slamming the door shut behind him: ‘Well, Cowan? Got it all straight for us, have you?’

  ‘Sir.’ Bob had stiffened momentarily to attention; the others were on their feet as well, the Commodore asking ‘How’s the battle going, sir?’

  ‘Battle’s over.’ A quick shake of the head, a scowl: ‘At much too high a cost, but – well, main thing is we’ve sent ’em scurrying – with their tails between their legs. If Turks have tails. Wouldn’t surprise me if they did.’ He laughed, a bark of laughter that filled the room, had them all chuckling with him. Lionel Dunsterville, major-general, was a smallish man with a narrow, bony face and a configuration of prominent nose and deep-set eyes that gave him a distinctly hawkish look. His last command had been of the 1st Infantry Brigade, on the North-West Frontier; and as a former schoolfellow at Rugby of Mr Rudyard Kipling he’d been the original ‘Stalky’ of Mr Kipling’s famous Stalky and Co. He told Bob, nodding towards the Count, ‘Ask him whether he knows if Turks have tails or not… No – on second thoughts, don’t. Intriguing subject, but we haven’t time for it. Give me the gist of what he wants of us – or of you, rather, it’s a naval matter, isn’t it?’

  Bob went over it all again. It was evident from the General’s quick and unsurprising acceptance of the story that he’d had a fair grasp of its basics before this, from his earlier talk with Solovyev. He’d be better at understanding Russian than at speaking it, no doubt. The part that did require careful explanation was the detail of the message where it mentioned children, the Count’s reasons for believing that his mother had been telling him a lot more than anyone else could have guessed.

  ‘His point being, sir, that his mother would hardly have sent a message to him that would have had no meaning for him. The reference to unnamed children had to mean something – and she’d know that he’d puzzle over it, and—’

  ‘Yes. Got it.’ The hawk’s eyes blinked two or three times. ‘And that’s a tip to us on the importance of keeping the whole business very much under our hats. Eh? The Bolshies want the Tsar’s family off the face of the earth – off Russian earth, anyway – so if they got as much as a sniff of this, Norris—’