Nick shrugged. ‘It goes, that’s the main thing. And we needed that much cargo space.’ The two guards were arguing over which should go back to the gate and which should stay; Dherjakin stared at them disapprovingly for a moment, then turned and went inside. ‘Shut the door behind you.’ Following him into the building, Bob was thinking that this part, which might have been the trickiest, was turning out to be dead easy. One might have been feeling pretty good about things generally, at this stage. Might have… Dherjakin opened the first door on the right. ‘Come in here. But let’s make it quick, comrades.’
Bob followed Nick in, and shut the door. It was an office – Dherjakin’s own, presumably – containing chairs, a table, shelving, a roll-top desk, chart tacked to the wall. And a window to the front, unfortunately – uncurtained, the goldfish-bowl effect, with that sentry outside. The light was an unshaded overhead bulb: power from that generator, of course… Nick was murmuring, ‘— apologize for our appearance, Captain—’
‘Never mind that.’ A double-take, then: ‘Well – I see what you mean. Where the devil have you—’
‘It’s quite a long story, sir.’ Bob took over. Getting a closer look at him now. About five-nine, solidly built, with a square jaw and the pinkish complexion that often goes with ginger hair. Ginger stubble on it glistening in the hard light. ‘May I ask, first, what tugs or other seagoing craft you have immediately available?’
‘None. Nice short answer, eh? No – most of ’em left us in the last two or three days. I’ve half a dozen tugs here – four on the pier, two at moorings – that we’ll be working on through the winter, plus whatever else they send me before we ice-up – but…’
‘You say “working on” – but d’you mean there isn’t one of them that could get steam up tonight?’
‘Well – if it was a matter of life and death – and given a few hours – I’d have to turn out the maintenance crew – and I’d need an order from naval headquarters – which I can tell you I’d much rather not have…’
Shock, in Nick Solovyev’s expression… Bob looked back at Dherjakin – struggling to find a way around the impasse, looming disaster – recalling that during the long day they’d spent on the marsh some diesel craft had visited the scene of the explosion – which in any case it was now time to mention, as justification for this visit… ‘Captain – aren’t I right in thinking you have a diesel-powered boat of some kind here?’
‘Diesel launch, yes. You’re well-informed, my friend… But you said seagoing, didn’t you?’
‘Well – what length and beam—’
‘Twenty feet long, beam eight and a half… Why, what would you want her for?’
Gazing at him. Thinking: better than absolutely nothing. A lot better than the skiff, anyway. Still highly dangerous. But – a way out, of sorts.
‘Just one more question, sir. So you’ll know we aren’t interrupting your night’s rest to no good purpose. As you know, there was an explosion out there, one night last week. A British coastal motorboat went up on your mine barrier in the channel there.’
‘How do you know that’s what it was?’
‘We also know where it came from and who was in it and what it was here for. And the idea now is – well, you might say to forestall another attempt of the same kind.’
‘I’ll be damned…’
Reaching for a chair. And believing this, accepting them now. Bob adding, ‘So perhaps you can understand the urgency.’ He himself could understand, meanwhile, Dherjakin’s acceptance of this charade. It was going just as one had hoped it might. Basically, because it was easier to believe than to disbelieve. Even if Dherjakin had been tipped off about escapers on the run: escapers wouldn’t invade a military base, it was the last thing they’d risk. In fact the Cheka probably wouldn’t bother to tip off a commander in Dherjakin’s position. Everything at this point was right: just as he’d assured Nick it would be. Except for the boat question. And even there – well, all right, it was yet another gamble, but if the wind dropped, as it might…
Nick had reached to help Dherjakin with the chair, and the captain was fending him off: ‘Damn it, man, I’m not helpless!’
‘Sorry – sorry…’
‘Told you I was a cripple, did they?’
Bob excused himself, turned to look at the chart. This inlet and the base area had been outlined in red ink. The chain-boom was a dotted red line across the bottleneck entrance, and the small red square beside it on the east bank would be the winch-gear for raising and lowering it. He spoke over his shoulder, interrupting Dherjakin telling Nick that he’d lost his foot – only the foot, cut off at the ankle by a steel-wire rope on the deck of the battlecruiser Petropavlovsk – at Revel in ’15… ‘You do have a guardship on station here, comrade Captain?’ He touched the chart: the position where that destroyer had been lying that night was marked, also in red. ‘Here?’
‘Where you see. I’ve put a buoy there now, a permanent mooring.’
‘Keep a sharp lookout, do they?’
‘Of course. They’d be in trouble if they didn’t – since the incident last week?’
He nodded. Studying the chart… The destroyer hadn’t been keeping much of a lookout that night. But obviously they’d have learnt a lesson, might be a real danger now. If one needed any more dangers – more than the sea outside there… But one advantage of using the diesel launch was you’d have some chance of sneaking by – a lot more than you’d have had in anything like a tug. In one of those tugs you could have counted on the guardship giving chase; this had been in his earlier calculations, the fact he’d need to box clever, evade the bastard, be out of visibility range of him by sunrise.
So maybe there was something to be said for this. Except chances were you’d founder…
Have to damn well not founder, that was all. It would be touch-and-go, but possibly one’s seamanship would be up to it.
He turned from the chart. ‘Captain – do you have a wireless transmitter here?’
Dherjakin pointed with his chin. ‘End of the passage there. Why?’
‘Well – I’ll explain it all in a minute, as I say, but we’ll need to pay a visit to your guardship – to take that gear out to her. Might be as well – I think you’ll agree, sir – to warn her CO that we’re coming. So if I could get a signal off – then give you the explanation to which you’re fully entitled?’
‘Want me to send you out there in the launch, that it?’
‘Well, yes. If you’d be so kind. But – if we could talk about that in a minute – visit your wireless room first?’
To put the set out of action, which was obviously a priority.
Out into the passage. Away from that bare window – which was a step forward, in itself. Wrecking the wireless transmitter was of course going to involve breaking the bad news to Dherjakin now, an end to the pretence – which anyway might not have been easy to maintain for much longer. But getting on with it now: having – once again – no alternative…
‘Comrade Captain – this diesel launch of yours – is she berthed on the quay farther along there, forty or fifty yards from us here?’
A nod… ‘This end of the loading quay.’
‘And could you drive her – get her started, and—’
‘Me?’
Turning – with his hand on the door – having begun to open it. Bob explaining, ‘I only thought – if you’d come with us – we could handle her between the three of us, you wouldn’t need to turn a crew out – and you see, your authority with the CO of the guardship—’
‘What I see is that – that you have a bloody cheek, comrade!’
He’d stopped with his hand on the door: looking back at them, anger and suspicion mounting. Bob leant past him, opened the door and pushed on in, pushing Dherjakin in ahead of him more or less sideways, the three of them in a block, squeezing into this small, narrow room – windowless, airless, with the characteristic W/T-shack smell of electrics and a reek of cigarettes. Saucer full of crushe
d cardboard ends, beside the transmitter key. The set was on a table-height bench built across the end of the room, and a telegraphist was swinging round on his chair: middle-aged, bald, fat, unshaven, bulging out of a dirty singlet… ‘Comrade Captain!’
‘Get on that telephone – call the guard!’
There was a Nagant revolver on the end of the bench, in a holster on a belt which the telegraphist had taken off presumably for comfort, to allow his paunch to expand. Bob was close up against Dherjakin, his hand was on the butt of his .45 but with no elbow-room at all, in that instant and the confined space. He’d told Nick, ‘Shut the door!’ and Nick had rammed it shut with his shoulder: Dherjakin swinging round aggressively, gasping as he saw Bob’s pistol by this time halfway up, while the slobbish-looking telegraphist – not as slow in the uptake as you’d have thought he might be, but rash – was reaching not for the telephone but for the belt, the gun on it. Nick shot him. The Browning’s single cracking bark was loud in the enclosed space, as well as shocking. The fat man slumped, blood beginning to seep from the side of his head behind the ear: he slumped across the W/T bench with one pudgy arm still extended towards his pistol, and then slid down, bringing the chair over on top of him. Dherjakin frozen, petrified – mouth open, blue eyes wide with shock.
Bob picked up the chair, set it against the wall and gestured with the .45 in his other hand: ‘Sit down, Captain. I’ll tell you all about it now. Nick, pull all the wires out – wreck it. And the telephone. Captain, is anyone likely to have heard that shot?’
‘I – don’t know…’
‘Anyone else sleep in this building?’
‘No.’ He looked like a man about to have heart failure. ‘No. But—’
‘The sentry he left outside, Bob. Look, I’m sorry, I—’
‘God almighty, who are you, you—’
‘Captain – shut up. Please.’ He pointed at the body, with his gun. ‘You can see we aren’t playing games. I’ll kill you, if I have to. If the sentry comes along now, tell him a door slammed. I promise you, if you don’t do exactly what I tell you, I will kill you. I’d rather not, I’d like your help, like you with us – I mean really with us…’
17
Bob locked the door of the wireless room behind them, and pocketed the key. Nick had taken the dead telegraphist’s revolver. Dherjakin was still half-stunned.
‘And what then?’
‘You’ll see. Very soon.’ The news he hadn’t broken to him was that they were going to try to cross about a hundred and fifty miles of possibly rough sea in that open launch. He gestured with his .45… ‘Go on. Remember what you’re going to tell him?’
‘Yes. Yes…’
Nick had him by the arm, with the Browning in his other hand not far from his ribs. Nick seemed to be the real bogeyman, to Dherjakin, the one who killed without a moment’s hesitation. Bob told him, ‘Before long, Captain, you’ll realize we’re doing you a favour.’
‘Favour!’
‘Believe me. As long as you do what you’re told. Starting now.’
Nick opened the door to the roadway, ushered the stocky Captain out ahead of them. The rumble of the generator seemed louder than it had before. And the wind was more noticeable too. Either it was still increasing, or one had become more wind-conscious, with pictures in mind of what the Caspian might be like, down there below the delta. Possibly both factors applied… The van stood as they’d left it – rear doors still shut, was the first thing one looked for – in the light from the street lamp back there. The sentry rose up now into that light: he’d been sitting on the running-board on this near side, in shadow. The one with the rifle, this was. Dherjakin told him hoarsely, ‘You can – go back to your duty on the gate now, comrade. Tell – tell the guard commander all’s well here.’
‘Very well, comrade Captain.’ Slinging his rifle… Bob said – as if to Dherjakin – ‘We’ll move our van down to the other quay – with your permission, Captain.’
He’d said it for the sentry’s benefit. Otherwise when they heard the engine start they might wonder what was happening. The sentry muttered, slouching off, ‘Night, comrades.’
‘Goodnight. Thank you.’
So far, so good. For the moment… Bob moved up beside Dherjakin, told him quietly, ‘That was good. But listen now. As I’ve said – if you try anything, you’re dead. But you’d be silly to. You’re not the Bolshevik type, Captain. I don’t know how you got caught up with them, but you’re out of your element with this crowd. Remember a few months ago on your way here, you saved three ladies from Red Guards on a train?’
‘Ladies?’ Staring, open-mouthed; then recollection dawning… ‘I don’t – oh God, yes – as it happens, but how—’
‘You’ll be meeting two of the ladies before long. That’s how. And it’s why I’ve no wish to harm you. But also, think of this – we asked for you at the gate by name. And you’ve just dismissed that sentry. As far as they’re concerned, you’re in this with us. If we left you behind now, d’you think the Cheka would accept your explanation?’
Laboured breathing… Then: ‘What d’you want me to do?’
‘First answer a question. That chain-boom – is there a watch on it, or any alarm system?’
‘No. Physical barrier only.’
‘I thought so. So – we get in this van. Drive to your diesel launch. Some of us embark in her, and you get her started up. While two of us – there are more of us in the van here, you see – drive on to the entrance and winch the boom open. Hand-operated winch, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nick, you might do that job. Take one of the Czechs with you. Captain Dherjakin will explain the gear to you – now, as we drive along. Then you either drive back to us here, in which case we wait, or if we can pick you up at the entrance – Captain?’
‘Better to land from the launch and do it,’ said Dherjakin. ‘Two men to do the winching – I’ll show them. I’ll show you where we can land, just inside the boom.’
‘Even better. Still, might as well take the van as far as the launch… Get in, please, Captain. Nick…’
‘All right.’
He thought that in Dherjakin’s position he’d do what he was told… Dherjakin was in now, Nick having encouraged him in and now going on round to the front to wind the handle. Bob got in too, called back from behind the wheel, ‘You people all right? Nadia, Irina?’ Chorus of questions and a lot of scrabbling around, a spouting of French from the orang-utan, and Nadia’s ‘Have you done it, Bob, have you actually done it?’
‘Not quite. But we’re driving along to a boat now – stay where you are, only a minute.’
It seemed Dherjakin was going to co-operate – at this stage, anyway. His suggestion about landing from the boat, the offer to help personally… But he was a sailor as well as an engineer. When he heard it all – about putting out to sea – he was going to scream blue murder. And there was the guardship to get past, before one faced the sea: he might envisage the possibility of losing out at that stage, and what the Cheka might do to him thereafter. So – as advised by Nadia – don’t take him for granted yet. Even though he didn’t have all that many options either – the danger would be panic, unreasoning desperation… The engine fired: for a moment he’d thought it had shot its bolt and wouldn’t. Not that that would have mattered much, the old wreck had served its purpose… Nick climbing in, squashing Dherjakin over against Bob. He told him – needing his wholehearted co-operation, seeking therefore to strengthen his morale – ‘Plenty of jobs for experienced engineer officers, in and around our Royal Navy flotilla.’
‘Royal – Navy? English?’
‘I’m a Scot, as it happens. My name’s Cowan – Robert Cowan, Lieutenant, Royal Naval Reserve. I was in the CMB you blew up. This man here saved my life… But that’s the truth – you’d have a choice of good jobs ashore or afloat. And you’d be among friends, what’s more… By the way, there’s fuel in the launch’s tank, I hope?’
‘For how long a t
rip?’
‘You tell me – fuel for how far, how long? And what speed?’
‘Best speed about six knots. And the tank’s kept full. You’ve another of your Royal navy ships coming, is that it?’
They’d rounded the elbow in the quay; he stopped the van thirty yards beyond it. Agreeing with Dherjakin – to keep him happy for the moment – ‘We’ll be meeting one of our flotilla, yes.’
‘Close in here, huh?’
‘Well – not all that close…’
But a full tank of diesel would be plenty.
Disembarkation, then: all scrambling out of the back, milling around, stretching cramped limbs, asking questions, inspecting the surroundings, and Nadia – embarrassingly, in this well-lit area – trying to embrace him under the eyes of her fiancé. Whether he was or wasn’t, he thought he was. Bob held her off: reaching for Irina with the other arm, presenting Dherjakin with these two clownishly-dressed females: ‘This is Captain Sergei Dherjakin – he’s coming with us. Nadia – Irina – the man who saved you on the train.’
‘Captain – we’ve blessed you ever since that day!’
‘Talk in the boat, Irina. Or later. All aboard now…’
There were iron rungs set in the stone facing of the quay. Dherjakin pulling at his arm: ‘How far out d’you have to go? See for yourself – even as a harbour launch she’s small. So—’
‘Tell you the truth, Captain, our first problem isn’t the sea-state, it’s to sneak out past your guardship without being spotted. We managed it before, but as you said, they might be more awake now… Go on down, please, start up?’
He watched for a moment to see how he managed the ladder, with only one foot. But it was all right. And the launch looked sturdy enough, in her present setting. Broad-beamed, with the engine set more or less amidships – and enclosed, in a sort of box about the size of a large dog-kennel, wheel and controls at its after end. If there’d been any kind of canopy up forward to keep lopping seas out of her it mightn’t have been so bad; but there wasn’t, in any noticeable sea you’d be shipping water all the time.
Bloody Sunset Page 31
