The Red Gods

by Christopher Nicole

  How he wished he had searched the apartment after killing Bolugayevski. He could easily have done so; there had been, apparently, an extraordinarily handsome young woman, lying naked in bed, waiting for her lover-brother. Andrei had only ever killed two women in his life; both had been past middle age and he had disposed of each with a single shot. Killing someone young and beautiful — would have been a new experience and, he thought, an enjoyable one. He need not have used his gun, but his hands. Well, the opportunity had been there and missed. As for being afraid of a sixteen-year-old girl...that was nonsense. But he wished he knew where she was now.

  *

  The beerhall rang with the shouts of “Heil!”, repeated over and over again. The little man on the rostrum flicked a lock of dark hair from over his eyes and stroked his toothbrush moustache. Fie did not smile at the applause, but his face was bright and animated, his complexion was a little pale — he had recently completed a gaol sentence of several months. His companions on the platform, who wore brown shirts and black breeches tucked into their thick stockings, and black boots, and whose sleeves sported the swastika badge of the new political party, appeared much more eager; they stamped their feet and roared their enthusiasm with the rest of people in the hall.

  Alexander von Holzbach stopped clapping long enough to glance at Anna Bolugayevska. She was on her feet like everyone else, but she was not shouting or stamping her feet. Bringing her here had been an enormous risk. He could never tell what was going on behind that so handsome mask of a face, so he could never guess what she might do, or say, next; socially she was a disaster waiting to happen, and the disaster happened often enough. Yet he had never regretted appropriating her for a moment. It was not merely the enduring memory of her, kneeling naked by the body of her dead brother when he had arrived at the apartment, apparently only fifteen minutes after the murder. Nor was it the way she had surrendered utterly to his decisions as to what should be done.

  In fact, at that moment, he had had very little idea what should be done, save to recognise that if, as seemed certain, the assassin had not known she was in the bedroom, and his assignment had been to liquidate both Bolugayevskis, as equally seemed certain, he might well come back. Alexander’s sole ambition had been to get away from there as rapidly as possible; he had been unarmed, and he had a wholesome respect for Cheka assassins, as he knew this one had to be. Taking the girl had been a bonus. He would hardly have been able to leave her; she knew him and were she to be interviewed by the police she would almost certainly give them his name; he had no more desire to get mixed up with the Paris police than with the Cheka. Alexander had shed no tears for the Prince: they had both lived the past several years in an atmosphere of death and destruction; Colin, in his dream of overthrowing the Reds and regaining his lands, more so than anyone else.

  Well, the Reds had got to him first. Alexander had reckoned that personal survival was his principal duty. Thus he had told the girl to dress, bundled up as many of her belongings as could be fitted into a single suitcase, and hustled her out of the apartment building. At that time of the evening they had seen no one.

  Anna had raised no objections to their flight, even to abandoning her brother’s dead body. “His English relatives will come for it,” Alexander had assured her. She had made no comment on that, either. She had been in a state of shock. That had been a problem, as he did not know what she might be like when she emerged from her almost catatonic state. He dared not leave her alone, but he had in any event already determined not to attend the meeting.

  It had all worked out exactly as he had planned it, as he had dreamed it might. While Anna had been dressing, he had had a quick hunt through the apartment, and found Colin’s money, the equivalent of several hundred English pounds’ worth of francs. That had given him the freedom he had wanted. He had not even returned to the room he shared with two other exiles; with the money he could buy clothes as he needed them. Instead he had taken Anna straight to the Gare du Nord. There, in the privacy of a sleeper, he had surveyed his prize. She still appeared stunned by what had happened, had as yet not uttered a word, so much so that he had begun to wonder if she had been struck dumb by horror and grief. Before the train had pulled out, he had bought some bread and cheese and a bottle of wine, and to his great relief she had eaten, and drunk some of the wine.

  This far he had not touched her, save to hold her arm to urge her along. It was after drinking the wine that she had raised her eyes to meet his. “You saved my life,” she said in a low voice.

  “Perhaps,” he said modestly. “I did what I thought was best. And I promise you, Prince Colin will be avenged.” Then she had asked, “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Germany.”

  “You are a German. But how can I go?”

  “You have your English passport,” he pointed out. “As I have my German. There will be no trouble.”

  “You said we would avenge the murder of my brother.”

  “Yes. But first we must find a place to live. Do not be alarmed, I have family in Bonn. They will put us up until we can be settled. You will not mind living with me?”

  “No,” she said. “I will not mind.”

  Yet it had been three weeks before they had had sex. Alexander supposed the main reason was that he was afraid of her because she was a countess, and however straitened her present circumstances, she had once lived on a scale he could not even imagine; he was afraid of her because there could be no doubt that she had been having an incestuous affair with her brother, and he did not know if he would measure up; and most of all he was afraid of her because she possessed a quality of deadly concentration he lacked. She wanted vengeance for her brother’s death.

  When he had suggested that it might take them some time to discover who had actually killed Colin she had said, in that quiet tone of hers, “But I know who did it. I recognised his voice. He is married to my cousin. I wish to kill them both. We are going to do that, aren’t we, Alexander?”

  Alexander had realised that he had climbed on to the back of a tiger.

  *

  Alexander’s German relative was an uncle, his father’s brother, living in Munich. When he had first escaped from Russia, he had written his uncle, asking for money. This had been supplied, grudgingly, but Uncle Hermann had not taken to the idea of his nephew going off to Paris to drive a taxi and become involved in wild emigre plots. He had intimated that there would be no further money. It had been very necessary to approach the matter with caution. “We will have to say we are married,” Alexander explained to Anna. “Uncle Hermann and Aunt Elsa are very respectable bourgeois people. They do not understand how the aristocracy live. There is no aristocracy in Germany now. You do not mind pretending to be my wife?” he had asked, anxiously.

  “I have no ring.”

  If that was going to be her only objection, he had no problems. “I will buy you a ring, when we get to Munich. Would you like to be married to me?”

  “If that is what you wish,” she had said.

  They had slept together, as the sleeping compartment only had the one bunk, but they had not taken off their clothes, and while it had been most comfortable for her to lie with her back to him, so that he had put his arms round her waist, it had not seemed to occur to her that he might wish sex. And of course he could not wish sex — with a girl who only a few hours previously had been kneeling beside her murdered brother. Yet he could not stop himself from kissing her hair, or from closing his hands on her breasts as she slept.

  Uncle Hermann and Aunt Elsa were suspicious from the start, even if Anna was wearing a ring. They couldn’t be so rude as openly to demand a look at the marriage certificate, but it was plain they felt that the young couple were eloping.

  Yet they had, as good relatives, gone out of their way to be helpful, and Uncle Hermann had very quickly got Alexander a job; he still possessed some five hundred pounds worth of Colin’s money so he was quite a wealthy man. It was the night he had proudly announced to
the family that he was now employed that Anna had asked him, in the privacy of their bedroom, “Would you like to have sex with me?”

  Hitherto, although they had shared the spare bedroom, he had endeavoured to give her as much privacy as possible, and although they had equally shared the large four-poster double bed he had kept to his own side of it, no matter how erotic his dreams. Obviously she was aware of his desire: they could not be that private from each other. But it was an aspect of her personality — one of the things that made him afraid of her — that she would do things when she wanted to, not at anyone else’s bidding. Nor did it ever occur to him to attempt to force her: she was a countess. Now it seemed the most matter of fact business in the world. She generated enormous passion, moaned and twisted in his arms, scoured his flesh with her nails while she allowed his fingers to roam at will. But when he was spent, and lay on his back, she had risen on her elbow, and far from kissing him, as he had anticipated, had asked, “Have you ever heard of a man called Hitler?”

  “Of course.”

  “He is holding a meeting tomorrow night, at the Bergerbraukeller. I would like to go and listen to him.”

  Alexander had been taken entirely by surprise. “It will be a political meeting. You are interested in politics?”

  “This man hates Communists and Russians,” she had said.

  So now he asked her, “What do you think of him?”

  “I would like to meet him,” Anna said.

  Chapter 9 - The Gods at Play

  Joseph took the train from the Hook of Holland across central Europe in preference to travelling to Leningrad by ship. He had been to St Petersburg before and he did not really wish to see how much the city had changed under the Communists. He wished Priscilla could be with him, but then again he was heartily glad she was not.

  Sonia was someone who had to be exorcised from his system before he could possibly settle down to married life with Priscilla, supposing that was ever going to happen. But that was another aspect of his life which would be settled by this separation. In a remarkable fashion their lives had been turned inside out. She was the true Cromb, but to the Crombs she was the stranger, as they were to her. In a way he doubted any of them understood, she had soared out of their orbit when she had been only seventeen. She had visited Bolugayen with her mother and fallen head over heels in love with the recently divorced Prince Alexei. Alexandra Cromb had flatly refused to consider a match between her only daughter and a cousin who was not only old enough to be her father but also a Russian prince, a species of human being of which any self-respecting American Democrat had to disapprove.

  But when, voyaging home on the ill-fated Titanic, Alexandra Cromb had been drowned while Priscilla had survived, and Alexei had gone looking for the woman he wanted as his princess. Priscilla had been quite accurate when she had said that their attitude since the Revolution had contained more than a touch of ‘you had it coming’, even if the ‘you’ had not been directed against her personally, but against the entire class she had so joyously joined. Thus she had spurned them, and more, taking her example from the grandmother she so closely resembled and who she had adored, she had set out to shock them with almost deliberate purpose. She had also been aware, however, that for all her defiance, her marriage had been the mistake her mother had warned her it would be.

  Priscilla was still only thirty, still incredibly lovely...and now she had to consider that her second husband, whoever he might be, had to be stepfather to one of the premier surviving princes of Russia. He suspected that only fear of the unknown that America, and especially Boston, had become, had kept her in his arms this far. Now she was going back, at his bidding, to see if she could overcome that fear. But he had had to give her that opportunity.

  Thus when he came back...this would indeed have been a make-or-break separation. One which could only be resolved by exorcising Sonia from his mind.

  Joseph finally arrived at Brest-Litovsk on the Russian border. Then he travelled for two more days to reach Moscow. And in case he had any doubts about the immensity of the country he needed only to remember that he could continue for a further eight days, and arrive at Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean, without once leaving Russian territory. An immensity which was now in the hands of a collection of the greatest thugs the world had ever known.

  It was also a world in which bureaucracy had run riot. Joseph remembered that Russia had always been riddled with bureaucracy, but Communist Russia made Tsarist Russia seem the most laissez-faire society in the world. His passport was scrutinised time and again, usually by heavily armed men; nor did the fact that he carried a safe- conduct signed by the Commissar of the Army make the slightest difference, except that they scrutinised him even more closely.

  “They are tedious, are they not?” asked the young man. Joseph’s head jerked in surprise; he was in the restaurant car, but this was the first time on the entire journey anyone had addressed him, save to ask for his ‘papers’. He had seen this man before; he had joined the train at the border the previous evening; was quite good-looking in a Mongoloid fashion, and was well dressed. Now he was smiling at him. “My name is Leonid Nikolaiev.”

  “Joseph Cromb.”

  “You are not Russian!” It was difficult to be sure whether he was pleased or disappointed.

  “My parents were Russian,” Joseph said. “But I am an American.”

  Nikolaiev considered this tangled history. “And you have come back to visit your parents?”

  “My parents are both dead. I’m actually on my way to visit my sister. She lives in Moscow.”

  “I live in Moscow,” Leonid Nikolaiev said. “Perhaps I know your sister?”

  It was Joseph’s turn to consider. But this man was hardly likely to know what Gosykin did, even if he knew his name. He thought it might be interesting to see his reaction. “You may well do,” he agreed. “Her married name is Gosykin.”

  Nikolaiev shook his head. “It does not, how do you say, ring a bell with me. Still, as we will not reach Moscow until tomorrow, we have another twenty-four hours in each other’s company. Would you like a glass of vodka?”

  Joseph found the young man’s attempt to be friendly rather off-putting. “Thank you,” he said. “But I have some reading to do.”

  He returned to his compartment. When he emerged again, for dinner, Leonid Nikolaiev was not to be seen. And next morning, at last, the train pulled into Moscow Central...and Aunt Sonia.

  She was even more elegant than he remembered. The last time he had seen her she had been in the middle of a campaign, and her clothes, if good, had been crushed and soiled; today she was dressed in the height of fashion, her braided tunic, revealed as her sable fur coat swung open, and her highly polished black boots, as well as the round fur hat all set off her tall, dark beauty to perfection. He felt quite shabby as he stepped from the train. “Joseph!” She embraced him and kissed him on each cheek. “It is so good to see you. Have you had a pleasant journey?”

  “Interesting.” He could not help but be aware that they were objects of great interest. Sonia’s beauty alone would have accounted for that, of course...Leonid Nikolaiev was some distance away, looking at him with a peculiar expression.

  “I know,” Sonia agreed. “We are speaking English, and most people know who I am. I have a car waiting.” That too was rare enough in Moscow to have heads turning. “The Berlin,” Sonia told the driver, and turned to Joseph. “You do not mind staying in an hotel, I hope? The fact is that Moscow apartments are very small, usually only two rooms, and I do not think it would be a good idea for you to become quite that intimate with Jennie and Andrei until you have broken the ice, shall we say.”

  “You mean you live in a two-room apartment, Aunt Sonia?”

  “Well, no. I live with Trotsky. But I do not think it would be a good idea for you to move in with us, either. Trotsky has a long memory. And he is away at the moment. If he were to return and find you...”

  “Aunt Sonia...”

&nb
sp; She gave a quick shake of her head and nodded towards the back of the driver’s head. Joseph understood at once. “I will come up with you and make sure the room is all right,” she said.

  They were escorted by an under-manager and a bellboy, and shown into a two-room suite. “This is very elegant,” Joseph remarked, tipping the flunkies. “Was I supposed to do that?” he asked after the door had been closed.

  “No,” she said. “But you didn’t see them refusing it, did you? Yes, it is very elegant. It is a relic of the past, when there were so many elegant things in Russia.”

  “And no ugly things?”

  “Oh, of course there were ugly things. Now, only the ugly things are left, save for little pockets such as this.”

  “And people like yourself.” He held her hands. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for enabling me to come here. For enabling me to see you again.”

  “And Priscilla?”

  He released her and turned away. “I am either the most fortunate, or the most unfortunate of men.” He faced her again. “When can I see Jennie?

  “She knows you are coming, but not when. She certainly does not yet know you are here.”

  “Aunt Sonia...”

  She gave another quick shake of her head, sat on the settee and beckoned him. Frowning, he sat beside her. Then she put her arms round him and held him closely against her. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “This room is almost certainly bugged.”