Bloody Sunset

by Bloody Sunset (retail) (epub)

  ‘If we’re questioned – and if we have to answer – we can give them the stories we’ve worked out. No more than we have to – take care not to seem eager to tell all, Bob. It’s a mistake people make – because they’ve prepared a story it’s there on the tip of their tongues, they start spouting it all out. Whereas a man with nothing to hide’s usually a bit reticent, he resents having to account for himself… But of course, if it’s a Cheka agent, for instance – or any official – and if he insists – well, I’d tell him something about Askhabad, and you could touch on your activities in Persia, if you had to. Well, you would have to, as you don’t have papers. That’s – unfortunate… But even in those circumstances it’s more believable if you’re a bit – grudging, you know?’

  ‘You sound like an expert.’

  A shrug. ‘I’ve had some experience. On the journey to Petrovsk, you know; and before I set off I talked with people who had advice to give.’

  ‘I’ll leave our talking to you, as far as possible.’

  ‘The important thing is to act in character with the part you’re playing. You’re a Persian, so be a Persian, think of yourself as one. Mind you, if we meet other Persians—’

  ‘Didn’t you agree it’s unlikely?’

  A nod. ‘But it’s still possible. Incidentally there’s a goodish quota of Persian blood in the Astrakhan people. As well as Russian blood, Armenian, Kalmuck – and Tartar, of course, it was all Tartar land originally… Anyway, just keep your eyes and ears open – you might have to be a Russian sometimes.’

  Up to only an hour or so before they’d started they hadn’t thought of using the boat. They’d been going to leave it where it was and set off on foot. Solovyev had said – watching the sun inching down towards the flat, heat-hazy green of the delta, ‘We’d better let it get properly dark. Men on the move here in daylight would stand out like sore thumbs.’

  ‘Who’d see them?’

  ‘Maybe no one. It wouldn’t be worth risking, anyway. For instance, fishermen might come down from Krasni-Yar to see if our friends might have left anything worth salvaging.’

  ‘The boat, for instance.’

  ‘Oh.’ He’d put a hand to his head. ‘Yes – damn it…’

  ‘It’s not identifiable. We made sure of that, in case it was found wherever you’d have hidden it.’

  ‘Well – that’s something… And I suppose there’d be no reason to connect it with the explosion. No positive reason?’

  ‘No.’ He thought about it. About some recent conclusion on the subject… ‘No – because as you said yourself, Nick – unless I dreamt this – they wouldn’t believe anyone could’ve survived. So there’d be no question of any connection.’

  ‘And it mightn’t be found for a long time. If it was left here all summer – well, like everything else it’d be iced up for the winter months. Duck-hunters might find it, I suppose… Then in the spring floods when the ice melts it’d be lifted off here, washed out to sea.’ The green eyes narrowed and slid back to stare at Bob: ‘You don’t think we might want it? Later, to get away from this coast? If we took it now to where I was going to leave it?’

  At first sight the notion was easy to dismiss. Two of them plus five female passengers, setting out to sea in a twelve-foot boat with one pair of oars, no sail…

  On the other hand – when one had no assets – above all, no idea of any possible way out – why throw away the one thing you did have? However small its potential… And – beginning to think about it, consider it as even a remote possibility – a single night’s hard rowing even with that load on board ought to get one out of this delta. Guardships permitting… Then – well, it would still be a longshot chance, but certainly on their way in in the CMB there’d seemed to be no kind of offshore surveillance or patrolling.

  But – from this coast to the flotilla’s patrol area – what, a hundred and fifty miles, or not much less? And no way of communicating, to arrange a rendezvous. Maybe a faint possibility – daydream, never-never land – that by that time Dunsterville might have his flying-machines up here and operational, 72 Squadron machines that were supposed to be coming up from Mesopotamia, with some idea of establishing an advanced base at Petrovsk. The airy-fairy picture in one’s imagination being of some intrepid birdman winging out over the Caspian and spotting this small boat, crammed to the gunwales with young women.

  Crazy. Could even be the effects of mild concussion…

  Wagging his head: ‘Good idea, Nick. Save us some time, too.’

  It had. Half an hour’s rowing to the head of the inlet must have saved about two hours of floundering over bog. And the skiff was now high and dry, hidden in thickish undergrowth under the bank of a stream that was only a trickle now but which in April would be a torrent.

  Trekking on. Telling himself to forget the daydreams, that there were no miracles on the way, that getting out of this (a) was highly problematical, (b) if there was any chance at all, it rested in one’s own hands and ingenuity – wishful thinking… Thoughts none the less all over the place – from what lay ahead of them at Enotayevsk, and worry about his own lack of identity papers – this had been in his mind ever since the Count had mentioned it earlier in the day – to visions of two fuddy-duddy old men scratching their bald heads in Glasgow. They – McCrae and McCrae, Public Notaries – would presumably have had notification from the Admiralty of the death of Alexander Cowan. He’d have had them listed, as well as Bob as next of kin, on the ‘blood chit’ he’d have had to sign before being allowed to take passage in a warship. And in due course – maybe quite promptly – they’d write or would by now have written to Robert Cowan, their long-standing and highly-esteemed client’s sole heir, expressing deep regret and also stating their intentions as regards winding up the estate and seeking probate, and as likely as not telling him what he knew already, that he was his father’s heir, and now the head of Cowan Investments Ltd, which pending receipt of any instructions which he might care to give them they would of course continue to administer – or anyway, something along those lines. So it was going to knock the old boys sideways when in a day or two they received yet another communication from Their Lordships, this time informing them that Lieutenant Robert Cowan, RNR had been reported missing, presumed killed.

  He wondered what happened to a large estate and profitable company, in these circumstances. Perhaps they’d dig out some very distant, hitherto unknown relative. Or anyway advertise for one, and spend a year or two checking through hundreds of phony claims.

  Poor old devils. They were decent men, in their bumbling ways. When Bob had been a cadet in the Merchant Navy training ship, from age thirteen onwards, they’d doled out the fees and the money for his uniforms, and his pocket-money and other expenses, and reimbursed the families of fellow cadets with whom he’d spent his leaves, and so on. And if those short-term foster-parents had not been available or willing to act as such, the brothers McCrae had assured Bob’s father they’d always see to it that the boy had a roof over his head and food in his belly – although after Bob at his father’s urging had once visited them in Glasgow, he’d fervently prayed that no such contingency would ever arise. He could still shiver at the recollection of a cold and gloomy stone-built suburban house, the brothers who’d seemed old even then, their grim-faced women and shy, whispering children.

  The McCrae brothers’ father, old William McCrae, had looked after Bob’s father’s parents, right from the time when Alex Cowan as a young man had first realized he had more than a pound or two to send home and had been canny enough to set up an investment company and invite ‘old Will’ to administer it. After the old folks’ deaths the company had remained in being, surviving William McCrae’s decease as well; it had been very much a going concern by that time, virtually all the profits from the Russian company going back to it and some deals being negotiated through it – even the buying and later selling of a ship or two.

  The McCrae ‘boys’ would be really stumped, Bob thought, when
they did get notification of his own death. It would be worded ‘missing, presumed killed’, of course, but in the circumstances nobody could have much doubt about it.

  * * *

  ‘Hold on…’

  Stopping suddenly: then squatting down – becoming, at least as it seemed to oneself, invisible. Having seen – without as yet any notion as to what it might be – a wall of darkness darker than the night. The Count’s hand on Bob’s arm – as if he thought it necessary to restrain him – and both of them straining their eyes…

  No sounds, and no lights anywhere. It could have been a wall of some kind. But – in this wilderness, miles from anywhere?

  Mentally picturing the map as sketched out earlier by the Count… Krasni-Yar would be to the south of them. Six, eight miles, roughly. Seitovka north-west, perhaps ten miles away, and the road linking those two places – and which they were intending to follow to Seitovka once they came to it – something like two or three miles ahead. He checked his bearings: using Polaris again, up there to their right, altitude about forty-five degrees. Their course up to now had been about west-north-west, and that dark barrier lay at a slight angle across this line of advance: north-west to south-east, say.

  ‘Come on…’

  As they approached it, he was guessing it might be a dike – a barrier against the spring flooding, built here to protect the road they were looking for, perhaps.

  Or a levee, carrying the road.

  ‘Couldn’t be our road, could it?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Embankment. It was a levee. And it was new – no vegetation on it, only a thirty-degree slope packed with rock. Scrambling up it, hard edges making themselves felt through the soft rubber soles of his grossly unsuitable footwear… Crouching again, at the top, starshine glinting on steel rails running ruler-straight in the north-west/south-west direction.

  ‘That way to Seitovka – right?’

  And to the south-east – well, a fairly good guess was already forming in his mind. Initiating – at the moment rather vaguely, it had to be left until one had a chance to think it out – a whole strategic concept, starting with the proposition that this was a supply-line to the military base/stores depot where Johnny Pope had run his CMB on to the first cable.

  The Count murmuring, ‘Our road will be that way – about two miles. We could save ourselves that distance, follow this railway instead. It must connect Seitovka to that harbour place?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Road access to it would be from Krasni-Yar. Because since there was an established road from Seitovka to Krasni-Yar, they’d only have had to build a fairly short extension to link it to the base. Whereas the only railway out of Seitovka slanted down to Astrakhan, so if they’d needed one they’d have had to build it from scratch.

  An expensive undertaking – both in material and manpower. Indicating that the planned move eastwards against Guriev was of major importance in Bolshevik plans. Which made it even more imperative to get the intelligence out to Baku: and frustrating that at any rate in the foreseeable future there wasn’t a hope in hell of doing so. ‘Where will the moon rise, Bob?’

  ‘There. Roughly.’

  ‘So we’ll walk that side.’

  ‘All right. Won’t be up for a while yet, mind you. Three-thirty. Sunrise about five… Time now?’

  ‘Two forty-five.’ Stumbling down to the level ground on the embankment’s far side. ‘Might eat our last sandwiches now, d’you think?’

  ‘Well…’

  Plodding on, then, with the embankment providing some feeling of security – cover from some of the starlight now and from the moon when it rose in an hour’s time – as well as the certainty of a dead-straight line of march to Seitovka. Bob’s thoughts meanwhile setting out again on their independent travels. Back via the McCraes and thoughts of his father’s company and its assets which whatever they amounted to – it would be a substantial amount, he guessed – would now be his – if he got back there, ever – to recollections of that long train journey with his father fifteen years ago, from St Petersburg through Poland, Germany and France to Calais and the cross-Channel steamer on which he’d been violently sick, his father consoling him:

  ‘It’ll not be for a lifetime, laddie. Not unless you decide on your own it’s what you want. Mind you, though – don’t tell ’em this, don’t ever let ’em guess you may not be spending your whole life ploughing yon ocean wave… But it’s an education, d’ye see. Education as such, to begin with – a damn sight more of it than I ever had, I’ll tell ye! And beyond that, boy, you’ll see the world and some of its people and what makes the whole mess tick. Four or five years o’ that, and you’ll be ready for dry land under your feet again; I hope ye’ll join me, then, as likely as not in Scotland by that time – or London, maybe, I don’t know – Russia’s been kind enough to me, God knows, but the future – well…’

  The old man had lived through the revolution of 1905, of course. Bob had been a cadet in his Merchant Navy training ship by then – having entered at thirteen, after a year’s English schooling – but the old man had witnessed some of its horrors, then seen the scars and wounds patched up, glossed over, to all intents and purposes forgotten. Bob remembered that deep voice growling – to the McCraes, in that dim, cobwebby office of theirs, on a visit a year later, the old man explaining the reasons for his wanting to transfer as much of his reserves and profits as he could to investments outside Russia – ‘I’m no seer, gentlemen, I may be shooting wide of the mark, but it seems to me that by no means all that particular lot of writing was ever washed off the wall.’

  Bob wondered – his thoughts taking another jump – whether the Admiralty would have their records up to date and at their fingertips, or whether in the next day or two they’d be sending his own next-of-kin – Alexander Cowan, of the British Embassy currently at Vologda in North Russia – one of those sombre telegrams… Because by now the Commodore would have telegraphed a report to London. Eric Barker wouldn’t have broken wireless silence until he’d had Zoroaster back on the patrol line; he’d have got back there by say eleven o’clock this morning, and by midday the Commodore would have conferred with Dunsterville. Supposing the signal had been despatched then: allowing for five hours’ difference in time, London would have had the news – telegraphed via Baghdad – right at the start of their working day.

  So the Popes would have had their telegram in Hampshire. And the McNaughts in Aberdeenshire. Poor souls…

  Boots scraping on stone: and voices, a murmur of Russian, some way off. Bob and the Count already flat on their faces by this time, in deep shadow at the foot of the embankment. Stones scattering as the boots scrunched closer. More than one pair.

  Forget Hampshire, and leave Aberdeen to the Aberdonians. This was the real world – the one that mattered, the world one was in oneself – without ever having volunteered to be here, for God’s sake: and wishing to God one was not…

  A Russian voice growled despondently, ‘So when I’ll get to see her again, Christ only knows.’

  ‘Well, that’s war for you, comrade!’

  ‘Some fornicating war…’

  Left, right, left, right… A slow march, though, and not in unison, heels dragging, nothing soldierly about it – more like a slow slouch, by the sound of it. The Count murmured, ‘Guarding their new railway. Better sit tight a minute.’

  Bob wondered what sort of treatment a British prisoner might get. Not being in uniform, might one legitimately be shot as a spy? Or did this not apply between countries that were not at war with each other?

  Then again – might be better not to admit to being British. Having Russian birthright anyway.

  They’d interrogate you, in any case. And if it was a Cheka interrogation…

  Well. You’d tell them.

  But – second thought – not about the Tsar’s children, the young girls. At least one might hope one wouldn’t… In fact you wouldn’t be able to tell them anything – except lies, whi
ch might not fool them – because anything near the truth would lead them to that house.

  What are you doing in our country? Why did you come here?

  He’d left his reefer jacket in the delta – literally in it, holding it under to get it waterlogged. If it was ever fished up, it could have come from the CMB – which made this as good a place as any for dumping it. And it was too obviously naval – even without its stripes – and too well-fitting, and if he’d offered it as a trade-in any storekeeper might have been suspicious, wondering why he’d wanted to get rid of it. So the Count had said: and the night had been a warm one, he hadn’t needed it.

  ‘We can push on now, Bob.’

  The Count was the boss. For one thing because this was, as he’d pointed out at some stage, his country, and for another because he was a soldier. As distinct – Bob told himself – from a fish out of water.

  Quite a few miles from any water worthy of the name, too, by this time.

  A thought then – sudden and so obvious one should have had it before. Although it hadn’t apparently occurred to the Count yet either… ‘Nick. That foot patrol…’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Foot patrol. And we’re still – what, eight or nine miles from Seitovka, eight from Krasni-Yar? What are they – marathon walkers, like us?’

  They saw the answer less than an hour later. The land had been rising, the up-gradient never all that noticeable but tending upwards as they moved inland, and the levee, built to carry the railway line above the level of springtime floods, had become equivalently lower. By the time the moon rose, yellowish half-moon climbing out of the marshlands in the south-east, there was no cover from it whatsoever – and no natural feature in the north, either, to hide the military camp that sprawled beside the line a few hundred yards ahead.

  Wooden huts, spaced out in lines of ten or twelve, the lines receding so that from this angle one couldn’t count them. Perimeter fence – posts anyway, he could see this nearer corner. No lights anywhere… It occurred to him that the inlet where they’d seen the tugs and the crane had to be an embarkation point as well as a storage depot.