‘One sleep and the other keep watch?’
‘Not necessary. I’ll show you, in a minute. Here – give me the reins?’
He drove about four hundred yards into the wood, angling this way and that to pass between the trees, and avoiding the more open areas where snow lay. Then they stopped, took Mishka out of the shafts, put a bale of fodder and a blanket on her back, led her some distance northward and tethered her in a place where she’d have room to move around and to lie down and roll if she wanted to. Schelokov then went off to bring the tent from the cart, leaving Bob with instructions to clear the compacted snow from Mishka’s hooves and rub her down, then tie the blanket on her. She was already munching, and seemed to take these various attentions for granted.
Schelokov came back with the tent, which they pitched a few yards clear of Mishka’s field of movement. Then there was more gear to fetch – rations, rifles, cooking utensils, bedding… He asked Bob as they trudged back for it, ‘D’you see any method in my madness yet?’
‘Well. You’ve parked the dvukolki where anyone tracking us would just about fall over it—’
‘They’d find it, investigate it, and we’d hear them. Hear them arriving anyway – before that, I’d hope – and the dvukolki will delay them while they search it. As long as they’re no cleverer than most… We won’t be able to see them at that stage, but more importantly they won’t see us.’
‘But they’d search around, and—’
‘I’d pitch the tent much farther from Mishka if I could. Problem is the wolves. On her own – and tethered—’
‘God yes.’
‘Also she’s our warning system. Ten to one anyone coming after us would be on horseback, and she’d let us know. All right, maybe they hear her – but even then, before they’ve located her you and I are in cover, ready for them, we know what we’re up against in terms of numbers, we’re watching them over the sights of our rifles – and they have not seen us… Those just-in-case rifles, Bob?’
He smiled. ‘All right.’
‘But you see – seriously, there’s no reason to think they’d have the advantage. Unless there were literally dozens of them.’
He nodded. ‘It’s good thinking.’
‘Some more of the same for you, then. Those tracks we’ve left – I’d be happier if we hadn’t, obviously. But it’s quite on the cards that nobody’ll pass that way before it snows again. And unless they’re looking for tracks they’re no danger to us anyhow.’
Setting-up camp and settling Mishka down took about an hour. Dawn was well established by the time they’d finished. Schelokov by that time had a small fire going and a pan of snow-water on it for the tea; a bigger pan of packed snow would be left on the embers finally, to provide a later drink for Mishka. Supper meanwhile was a tin of corned beef divided between them and eaten cold, with black bread baked at the letuchka – conceivably by Mary Pilkington and Katherine Reid.
Who’d have spent a comfortable night, Bob hoped, in the train at Kupyansk. Might even be on their way south in it today, if the CO – whatever his name was – had managed to get their engine back… But it was a good feeling, to have got those two out, to have achieved the purpose of the mission. In the RAF people’s hands they’d be safe enough. Budyonny’s cavalry might be a threat, but those aviators could be counted on to extricate themselves, all right.
Extraordinary, though – staring into the fire, on which the water had begun to boil at last, Schelokov lifting the pan in gloved hands to pour it on to the tea-leaves in another – astounding to realize that only three days ago he’d been on board Terrapin, had only just up-anchored and left Sevastopol.
Three days. Incredible…
‘Here you are… I regret we have no sugar.’
‘My God, the hardships…’
‘Black tea – a Russian drink for a half-Russian.’ Schelokov poured his own. ‘Tell me, Bob – your mother—’
‘Died in childbirth. Not mine, a second one. I was – oh, nine, then.’
‘In St Petersburg, you said.’
He nodded. ‘You know all about me, now. What about your own family? You’re not married?’
‘It was unusual for any but the most senior officers in a regiment like mine to marry. For one reason and another.’
‘In the Navy they call it being married to the White Ensign. But – what about your parents, then?’
Hesitating. Covering it by trying to sip at tea that was too hot to touch. ‘I suppose – if you really want to know…’ He put his mug down. ‘My father – Vasil Timofeevich Schelokov – was a general. He spent his life in the regiment in which I myself also served, but he retired before the war started. He was quite old, over fifty when I was born. The – er – syndrome I mentioned – late marriage? And – well, my family’s estate was at Tsivylsk – between Kazan and Novgorod. I’ll confine this to the very recent past, Bob, if you don’t mind. He was in a wheelchair – had been for several years. And – they sent him down a long flight of stone steps, in the chair. Broke his neck – I hope it did, an eye-witness, former servant, later told me that it did. I say I hope because they – did other things to his body afterwards.’
‘Some crowds of Bolsheviks – did this…’
‘Peasants inflamed by Bolsheviks. They marched in great hordes from one estate to another – picking others up along the way, so the vast majority of them wouldn’t have been local people. They’d have to join in, though, or they’d be for it… He’d been good to all his tenants, left to themselves I’d be astonished if there’d been a hand raised against him. Friends in the neighborhood used to tell him he was too generous and easy-going, made them look bad… An officer in the old style, you see – it was natural to such a man to look after his own people.’
‘And your mother?’
A long breath… ‘I don’t know, exactly. Nobody seemed to know. Or it could be that they wouldn’t tell me.’
‘Christ.’
‘It’s hard to know what to say, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry I made you talk about it.’
‘No harm done, my friend. It’s in one’s mind in any case.’
‘Yes – I’m sure.’
A nod: eyes on the fire. ‘A lot of the time.’
‘Any – er – brothers, sisters?’
‘One brother, older than me, killed in ’15. No sisters, thanks be to God. But my mother – she was there, some of those creatures were holding her – physically holding her – when they pushed the old man over. It’s a very long, steep flight of granite steps, leading down from the front of the house, which is built on a hillside. And they dragged her into the house afterwards. She was – much younger than my father. And beautiful – elegant describes her well…’
*
It took him some time to get to sleep. Mental imagery of the old general and of his wife – alone and defenceless in a mob of brutes. The beginnings of a clue perhaps to Boris Schelokov’s motivation? His having stayed with Markov’s letuchka, as he’d said, at least partly because of the two young English girls and what he’d seen as their extreme vulnerability: if you know our Bolshevik friends and their little ways… And his readiness now to come to the others’ help. Nadia’s – in one’s own mind. One said they and them, but one meant she and her… Dozing off, then, with Nadia talking to him from wherever she was now, her calm grey eyes smiling into his, and her whisper Don’t worry, my darling, I’m waiting for you, we’ll be together soon…
Then he was wide awake – instantly, having been asleep by this time for hours – wakened by Schelokov who’d pushed at him, muttered urgently ‘Hear? Hear?’ Their two pallets filled the ground-space in the tent and he’d woken him in the course of moving – crawling out, shedding a blanket that had covered him. They’d both slept in their overcoats and gloves. He was on his left side, half out of the tent and reaching back right-handed to pull the rifle up to where he could use it while Bob groped for his own – listening to hoofbeats, hooves drumming on snow-cov
ered ground, jingle of harness or weaponry. Wheeltracks like a scar on the surface of the brain as Schelokov glanced back, beckoned and then crawled on out. Following: fur hat on, at the last moment, and pausing between the tent’s flaps, seeing Mishka with her head up and ears pricked, then Schelokov ten or twelve yards away looking back and pointing, telling him silently that way… Into cover, one that side and one this, and where Mishka would not be in the line of fire if they approached from where you could hear them now.
Where the dvukolki’s wheeltracks entered the forest. Or near there. They’d find no tracks from the trees’ fringes inwards. They’d push straight on in: or wait long enough to spread out like beaters. Depending on how many of them there might be…
A voice called – something indistinguishable – from farther away than one might have expected. Outside the forest, he guessed. Not that you could be sure… But everything else had gone quiet, by this time – so quiet that the sound of the top round of .303 slicking into the breech and the bolt clunking forward and over – which he’d tried to do quietly – was almost explosive in the stillness. Safety-catch off. Nobody had answered that distant shout. High branches moved in the wind and ice-particles rattled down. He was prone, on his belly and elbows in a fuzz of undergrowth, with a tree’s roots for cover to the front and forest litter as camouflage around the rifle’s barrel.
Waiting…
Hearing nothing now except forest sounds. Wind in the tops of the firs, and branches rubbing against each other. He decided that when there were targets in sight he’d wait for Schelokov to start it. Unless circumstances decreed otherwise. But two rifles, each with ten shots before you had to change the magazine – if this was only a small patrol, and you had them in clear sight before they knew it…
You’d have to kill them all, he realized. For the simple reason that one could neither take prisoners, nor let any go.
Still no sound, and nothing moving.
Might have been just two or three of them, and they’d decided they needed a stronger force to make a job of it. Could be scouts for a larger troop: they’d have ridden back to bring the others up. Or – there could be half a dozen of them creeping into this forest – with eyes and ears no less sharp than your own – worming from tree to tree…
But Mishka had relaxed. Her head was down, and she’d shifted round so that the tethering rope was now quite slack. She wouldn’t surely have lost interest so completely, he guessed, if there’d still been other horses in the offing.
A lump of snow or ice fell heavily, hitting a branch and dislodging a shower of ice crystals. Schelokov’s voice then: ‘Coming your way, Bob.’ Visible, then: half up, brushing dirt off himself and his rifle as he approached, stooping slightly, through the trees. ‘No battle this afternoon. Thought we were in for one.’
Bob pushed his safety-catch on as he got up. ‘What d’you think—’
‘God knows.’ A shrug. ‘Except they were on the edge there, then took off.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I don’t think they came into the trees at all. But I’ll tell you when I’ve had a look. We aren’t the only ones who leave tracks. And look at Mishka. She knows they’ve gone… I’ll be five minutes.’
Bob was with Mishka when he came back. Keeping her company, and watching the forest. When he saw Schelokov coming – after nearer fifteen minutes than five – he went to meet him.
There’d been four or five horsemen, apparently, they’d come up around the outside of this wood from the south and must then have seen the dvukolki’s tracks; they’d milled around, cutting the snow up over a wide area and generally confusing the picture so that it had taken Schelokov some time to sort it out.
‘That was when we were hearing them. But then instead of following the tracks into the forest, they went the other way, as if they thought we’d come out of it. Maybe assuming the dvukolki would’ve been going the way they’d been heading themselves, but inside the trees. The tracks did seem to slant out, rather. But they’re still idiots!’
‘Mishka’s hoof-prints?’
‘Exactly. They have to be real clowns!’
‘But the odds are they’ll catch on, sooner or later, and come back?’
‘Possibly. Depending on – well, one, the depth of their stupidity, and two, what their orders are, what latitude they have. If they were en route from say Karlovka to
Zmuyev, for instance, as distinct from patrolling this area… But – who knows. They might come to their senses. For one thing, before they get very far those wheeltracks are going to vanish. From where it was snowing? At that end the tracks will have been covered. If their corporal or whatever he is has any vestige of a brain, wouldn’t that tell him something?’
‘So do we wait for them, or move?’
‘I’d say move. Northward, as far as we can through this forest, then stop for a meal and to rest Mishka, then set out again when it’s dark.’
‘Will we be crossing open ground then?’
‘Unfortunately – yes.’
‘Leaving more tracks.’
‘Unless we have more snow. But – short of flying – which in a dvukolki nobody’s yet managed, that I know of—’
‘Hang on… I’m only thinking – we can’t help leaving tracks – if it doesn’t snow – but we don’t have to do it with four men on our heels. If it is only four or five, why don’t we wait for them and get it over with?’
‘It’s a tempting alternative.’ Schelokov nodded. ‘I thought of it too. Location and timing according to our choice, not theirs… But do we want a battle? I thought you especially did not.’
‘I want to get there – that’s all. Quickest way possible. When we talked about it then we weren’t thinking of this kind of complication, were we? But you’re the expert, so–’
‘Well, I say we move on. If we wait, it could be for nothing – wasting time… But moving on now we still have the option – if we find they’re still after us?’
11
Dusk seemed to be starting at ground level and growing upward through the trees – whose tops were hardly moving, when you looked up into that greyish light overhead, looking yet again for signs of snow. All afternoon – during the slow transit through the forest and then here in camp – praying for it…
It was time to start now, tracks or no tracks. Mishka had eaten all she wanted, and sucked up most of a pail of snow-water. She was between the shafts of the dvukolki and Bob was buckling the straps, telling her – in Russian, of course – what a beauty she was. She wasn’t: not by a long chalk. Short-legged, wide-beamed, rat-faced, shaggy… The only pretty thing about her was her name, the Russian equivalent of Teddy Bear.
‘No snow tonight, Mishka. Trust to luck, that’s all…’
He’d stopped, listening.
‘Hear it?’
Schelokov – he’d been loading pots and pans into the back…
Hoofbeats.
‘Bob—’
‘Yes.’ He’d already thrown the rope of Mishka’s halter back around the tree where it had been before, and was flipping two half-hitches into it. She’d heard, meanwhile – had her head up, came up against the rope as she tried to turn – Bob leaving her, grabbing his rifle as Schelokov thrust it at him and pointed at thicker cover on the far side of the small clearing. ‘There—’
They weren’t more than forty yards from the forest’s edge. You could see the last of the daylight there, fragmented by the dark verticals of the trees. There were no wheeltracks to lead the horsemen in at this point – in several miles of thick forest, there was absolutely no reason they should ride in here.
He was ready for them, anyway. As ready as one ever could be. Skull pounding with the drumming hooves – rhythm of several horses cantering – and taking long, slow breaths to slow his heartbeat. In less tense circumstances – targets either cardboard or, at sea, floating tins and bottles instead of flesh and blood – he’d excelled at this… Safety-catch off, crouching behind a wide-boled fir ten yards
from where Mishka was doing a little dance between the shafts, craning her neck round against the tension of the rope. Schelokov was somewhere beyond her, and in the centre of the clearing a low mound of earth and snow covered the place where their fire had been.
This would be the same bunch, he supposed. They’d have been back over those tracks, but probably farther than that too. Following the wheeltracks to where they’d have been erased by last night’s snowfall and then returning to the starting-point – having realized their mistake – wouldn’t have taken much more than an hour, or two at the most, and the interval had been – six, seven hours… Might have been back to their base, wherever that might be. Not the farmstead, which would be too far, but wherever it might be, to change horses – or stand-down, in which case this could be another troop that had taken over the duty.
Though why the interception of some cart seemingly on its way north should be thought worth such effort…
They were pulling up. The tempo of the hoofbeats slowing, then disintegrating. And a shout… He squirmed down, full length, with the rifle-butt tight into his shoulder, cold smooth wood and metal against his bearded cheek. Recalling Schelokov’s We still have the option: even if the ‘option’ had been forced on one…
Sounds were confused now. Horses jostling around, and men’s voices – none of it distinguishable. Then one clear shout of ‘Turn back here, do we?’
Guessing – because they’d reached this corner of the forest?
He wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. It couldn’t be a big group out there – Schelokov’s ‘four or five’, probably – and if they’d come into the forest the action might have been effectively on one’s own terms. Shooting from cover, when although they’d be looking for you they wouldn’t know where to look: and would be dead – some would, anyway, before they did know.
On the other hand – if one didn’t have to…
Neither the killing nor the chance of being killed was all that attractive. And at stake beyond one’s own survival was – please God – hers.
Look to the Wolves Page 18
