The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  The street outside was full of restaurants, but what he really wanted was fish and chips. Directed to a place near Baker Street station, he ate from the newspaper on a nearby bench, savoring each greasy mouthful. After washing his hands in the station toilet, he stood on the concourse just watching the flow of unrestrained people, wondering what to do. Visiting his friends in the disabled soldiers group seemed like a nice idea—there were trains to Wembley down the stairs—but explaining his early release might prove problematic. There’d be time enough to see them when he came back from Russia.

  He took a walk through Regent’s Park instead. There were a lot of people out strolling on the long summer evening, and there was a queue for the rowboats on the lake. The hundred-day drought he’d read about in prison was evident in the parched grass and undernourished flower beds.

  With the sun sinking, he found a pub and sat outside with a pint of beer and someone’s discarded paper. The news, as usual, was mostly bad. There were now over two million unemployed, and a similar number currently engaged in pay disputes—the promised country fit for heroes was apparently still at the drawing-board stage. A huge race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, had seen hundreds of negroes—men, women, and children—murdered by a rampaging white mob. Large parts of Russia, if this clearly anti-Bolshevik paper could be believed, were stricken by famine. And the English cricket team had just lost to Australia at Lord’s, despite two ninety-plus innings from Frank Woolley.

  Back at the flat, it took him three attempts to reach his mother before she finally answered. He expected to hear that she’d been at one of her meetings, but she’d actually been at the cinema, enjoying the new sensation Rudolph Valentino. Her delight at hearing he was out was somewhat tempered by the fact of a quid pro quo, which he didn’t try to hide. She knew better than to ask where he was going or why, merely queried how long whatever it was might take.

  “I should be back in a couple of months,” he said, hoping he was erring on the side of caution. “How have you been?”

  “Good enough. I seem to be slowing down a bit, but I suppose that’s the way of it once you get past sixty. I took some flowers to the graves today and had a word with them both.”

  His father and brother were buried side by side, which wouldn’t have pleased the latter, but which made things easier for his mother. And as one of McColl’s disabled friends had put it: “Your brother’s dead, so he won’t really mind.”

  After the call McColl went straight to bed, and slept surprisingly soundly for over nine hours. Up at seven, he had time for breakfast at a nearby café before another of Cumming’s helpers picked him up. His first briefer was a specialist in Russian current affairs; over the next few days he listened to several others and memorized numerous call signs. The number of wireless sets and operators that the Service had scattered across remote Central Asia was either truly remarkable or completely bonkers, and only time would tell which.

  More unusually, he also spent several hours memorizing photographs of other British agents. These included Secret Service personnel, whose pictures Cumming had on file, and agents who worked for MI5 or the Indian Department of Criminal Intelligence (DCI), whose likenesses he had acquired by means best known to himself. When it came to the plot in question, the loyalties of most men concerned were largely a matter of guesswork, but a knowledge of the faces would at least allow McColl to spot an interested party.

  On the day before his departure, he had a final meeting with Cumming himself. His old boss looked better than he had in the prison governor’s office, but still seemed unusually anxious about the matter in hand. They talked about cars as they always did, but McColl was out of touch, and Cumming’s interest seemed more halfhearted than usual. Their parting was friendly enough, but strangely tentative, as if each feared he wouldn’t see the other again.

  McColl took a farewell stroll down the river. It was a beautiful sunny day, the dome of St. Paul’s shining like one of Wells’s flying machines, the trains chugging in and out of Cannon Street as if posing for Impressionist painters. The Pool of London was full of activity, omnibuses queuing on either side of the raised Tower Bridge. The cell at Wormwood Scrubs seemed like a distant memory.

  He leaned against a balustrade and stared out across the busy river, wondering what he would do when he came back. He would be forty in a few months’ time—what did he want from the rest of his life?

  He didn’t know, which was somewhat depressing.

  Then again, he might not come back, in which case the question would have answered itself.

  Red into Blue

  The two men stepped aboard the tram.

  “Two kopeks, citizen,” the driver said sharply, as Sergei Piatakov walked straight past his window.

  Piatakov spun around to face him, feeling the all-too-familiar surge of resentment.

  “The city soviet has reintroduced the charge,” the driver added apologetically, arching back in his seat, as if half expecting a punch.

  Piatakov’s companion, Aram Shahumian, rummaged in his pockets, found the appropriate coins, and dropped them in the box.

  Piatakov gave the driver a last contemptuous look and walked down to the far end of the almost empty tram, putting as much distance between himself and the transaction as he could. “Is this what we’ve been fighting for?” he asked his companion. “To bring back the rule of money?”

  The Armenian shrugged.

  Piatakov wasn’t done. “You remember when Zinoviev gave that speech announcing that all public transport would be free. I was proud of us that day.”

  “Your party was never shy when it came to making promises.”

  Piatakov shook his head, but not in disagreement. “On my way to meet you, I saw this shirt in a shop window. On Arbat, it was. It was creamy white with fancy buttons and a floppy collar. The sort of thing a czarist gigolo might wear. And there was a little card beside it, with a neatly printed price. And do you know what it cost? Eighty rubles! In a city where half the people are hungry, where thousands are out on strike, in a country ruled by people who say they speak for ordinary workers and peasants, there are shirts on sale for eighty rubles! A month’s wages, if you’re lucky!”

  “You know what I think of our current rulers, Sergei. What I thought of them when we met. They haven’t done anything to make me change my mind.”

  Piatakov sighed. There was no denying his friend’s consistency. Since the two men had first spent time together, sharing a hastily excavated trench in the northern Ukraine, Aram had made no secret of his anarchist beliefs. The Armenian had happily fought alongside Bolsheviks, but had never been reticent when it came to damning what he considered their obsession with power. Piatakov had liked and trusted him right from the start, which was more than he could say for many of his fellow Bolsheviks. There were no airs, no affectations, about Shahumian; what you saw was what you always got, no matter how difficult the circumstances. “And it seems you were right all along,” Piatakov said wryly.

  “And how I wish I hadn’t been,” Shahumian murmured.

  Their tram continued on up Arbat, narrowly missing a woman and her sled, with its pitiful cargo of five or six rotten potatoes. Piatakov turned to the Armenian. “At least you never felt betrayed. That’s what eats at my heart.”

  Shahumian put a hand on Piatakov’s shoulder. “I know, Sergei. But it isn’t over—as long as we have breath, the fight goes on. Allegiances change, and methods. Even what we can hope to achieve in our own lifetime. But the fight will go on.”

  The tram turned onto Nikitsky Boulevard, heading north. At Strastnaya Square the two men got off and started walking south down Tverskaya.

  “So tell me what Brady’s been up to,” Piatakov said. The American comrade in question had fought with them both during the civil war, albeit on different fronts. When Piatakov had first met Brady in the early summer of 1918, he had learned that they already shared one comm
on acquaintance, his future wife, Caitlin.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “At the end of last year. We ran into each other in Petrograd, had a drink, and caught up. He was on his way to Ireland, to fight in the war there. Ours was over, so he thought he’d move on. I didn’t think he’d be back.”

  “A good comrade, would you say?” Shahumian asked, with what seemed like deliberate casualness.

  “He’s certainly one of a kind,” Piatakov responded. He had always found it hard to think of Brady as a friend, but the man had saved his skin on more than one occasion during their months together on the Volga front. “He has a way of getting people on his side,” Piatakov added. “And of getting things done. I wouldn’t want him for an enemy.”

  Shahumian grunted. “Not much chance of that. He’s as sick of the way things are going as you are. Maybe even more so.”

  “That would be difficult,” Piatakov said sardonically.

  “Ah, you were always too optimistic, my friend.”

  Piatakov managed a smile.

  “What does Caitlin think? I take it the two of you are still together.”

  Piatakov offered up a wry smile. “She says I’m in a permanent sulk. But it’s different for her—she has work that she believes in.” He shook his head and changed the subject. “Who else have you and Brady gotten together?”

  “Grazhin. You remember him?”

  “Ivan Vasilyevich? Of course. He’s a good man.” Grazhin had been in the same unit as Piatakov and Brady on the Volga. He’d always had his nose in one of Dostoyevsky’s novels, all of which he carried in his knapsack.

  “He’s with us,” Shahumian said, “though maybe not for long.”

  “His lungs?” Grazhin had never really recovered from the German gas.

  “Yes. The last few years—well, he should be in a sanatorium, but he swears he’ll give his last breath to the revolution rather than waste it in bed.”

  “That sounds like Ivan. Who else?”

  “Three Indians. They’ll be there tonight. They’re all quite young—barely into their twenties, I would guess—and very keen. No experience to speak of, but everyone has to start somewhere. They were part of the group that was being trained at the school in Tashkent—remember that? They were all brought back to Moscow when Lenin decided we had to be nice to the British. All their comrades accepted it—they think the sun shines out of Vladimir Ilych’s ass—but these three are really angry. They want a crack at their own revolution.”

  “Sounds good. So tell me what the plan is.”

  “I think I’ll leave that to Brady.”

  “Once he’s decided whether or not he can trust me?” Piatakov asked, not bothering to hide his resentment.

  Shahumian put a restraining hand on Piatakov’s arm. “Sergei, you are still a member of the party. Your wife is a deputy chair of the Zhenotdel. I know where your heart lies, and so does Ivan. But the Indians don’t, and Brady has to be sure.”

  Piatakov sighed. “Yes, of course you’re right,” he said. “My sense of trust has worn pretty thin, and I shouldn’t expect any better from others.” He managed another smile. “But it is good to see you again, Aram. I’m really glad you looked me up.”

  They reached the building that housed the Universalist Club. There was no sign outside, only a single door that led into a narrow corridor, and that led into a broad, high-ceilinged room. Chairs and tables occupied all the available floor space, with a refreshment counter at one end and a small stage at the other. The wall between them was covered by a futurist mural of an imaginary Russian paradise. The room was ill lit, smoky, smelly, and noisy; a ragtime tune was blaring from a gramophone.

  Piatakov had been to this particular club on several occasions in the months since Kronstadt, an errant Bolshevik among the various species of left oppositionists—LSRs, futurists, anarchists, imagists. They were all anachronisms, all as doomed as any prince, duke, or count of the old regime. And if, in his soberer moments, he sometimes wondered why he came, his heart was always there with the answer—that he always felt more at home in the company of rebels.

  He followed Shahumian’s winding path through the tables to the far corner of the room. The habitually thin Grazhin, his face lighting up in recognition, leaped up to embrace him. “Sergei, Sergei,” he almost sang, “come, sit beside me.”

  Aidan Brady also rose to greet Piatakov with a hug. The American looked thinner than he had the previous year, and the beard was gone, but the greenish-brown eyes were arresting as ever, at one moment full of interest and concern, at another surveying the world and its people from some remote Olympian height.

  The new Cheka ban on private firearms obviously didn’t worry the American; the butt of a large revolver was clearly visible inside his leather jacket.

  The two Indians present each offered a hand, and introduced themselves as Durga Chatterji and Habib Shankar Nasim. Chatterji was darker skinned, thin as Grazhin, with eyes that seemed to glow in his face. The more European-looking Nasim had a pleasant smile and relaxed manner. Both wore Russian clothes.

  No sooner had they all sat down again than the third Indian arrived. Muhammad Rafiq was a shorter, more compact version of Nasim, with a flop of hair that he kept pushing back from his eyes. He talked fast and nervously, flashing apologetic smiles at frequent intervals.

  They ordered chestnut coffee. Nasim had news from India, the importance of which only Brady and the other Indians understood. They took turns explaining matters to the others, and Piatakov was soon lost in a welter of unfamiliar names. He didn’t suppose it mattered. The rebellion that seemed to be gathering pace against the British was the important thing, and a single name seemed to dominate that, one that Piatakov had heard from his wife—Mohandas Gandhi.

  The Indian comrades hated this man with a passion.

  Gandhi, they said, was a Menshevik, a Kerensky, a reactionary. Oh, he might have the British on the run, but the Indian working class would never see the benefit. That would go to the English-educated Brahmins who ran the Congress Party, who would simply replace the British as a new ruling class. The flag and the faces at the top would change, but precious little else.

  And the new rulers would wear eighty-ruble shirts, Piatakov thought to himself. Were all revolutions fated to follow the same downward spiral?

  At that moment the lights dimmed, and a cacophony of catcalls and clapping resounded around the room. He turned to see someone clambering, with some difficulty, onto the small stage.

  It was, Grazhin told him, the notorious Sergei Esenin. The poet was wearing a black velvet smock, which threw his powdered face and wavy golden hair into even greater relief. He was more than a little drunk. Piatakov, who had read and admired some of Esenin’s work but never seen him in the flesh, at first felt something akin to dislike, but soon found himself, like everyone else, in thrall to the poet’s presence and voice.

  Verse followed verse, an avalanche of images. Esenin took them on a tour of a world turned upside down, introduced them to men turned inside out.

  The farmhouse is lonely without me,

  And my old dog is gone from the door;

  God sent me to die in the backstreets

  And I can’t go home any more.

  As he turned to pick up his drink, Piatakov’s eyes met Brady’s, and this time he found, unguarded, a blend of outrage and hurt at the state of the world that seemed to mirror his own almost too completely. There would be no happy endings, he thought. Not with Caitlin, not for Russia or himself. Which should have upset him, but for some reason didn’t.

  As some trench philosopher had told him once, revolutions were like candles—you lit one and it burnt itself down. And with the stub you lit another. And another.

  The idea was both sad and seductive.

  India, he thought.

  I’m still the same

 
; At heart I’m still the same . . .

  The lines cut through Piatakov’s thoughts. He felt for a moment as if Esenin were addressing him and only him, but the poet was in his own world, eyes glazed, feet unsteady, the foggy voice making common cause with the smoke that hung in the air.

  Blue world, oh blue, blue world!

  Even to die in this blueness would be no pain.

  The voice went on, seemingly for hours, and when the last line faded away it felt like all the poet’s listeners were waking from a common dream. Esenin’s spell had bound them together, and in its dissolution a feeling of intense sadness gripped Piatakov, a sense of limitless waste.

  Piatakov looked at Shahumian and Grazhin, and knew what they were feeling. At heart they were still the same.

  But they weren’t, Piatakov thought, not really. None of them were.

  Grazhin was ordering vodka for everyone.

  “Let me tell you what we’re planning,” Brady said quietly.

  She was still asleep when Piatakov got back to their room, the candle still burning on the chair beside their bed. He had told her often enough that one day she’d burn down the building and everyone in it, including herself. But here she was again, fast asleep with a guttering flame, work papers rather than sheets covering her body.

  She looked as lovely as ever, he thought. He sat down, pulled off his boots, and stared at her sleeping face, remembered their first meeting in Petrograd, more than three years before. He’d been one of the sailors organizing Dybenko and Kollontai’s wedding ride on the city’s frozen roller coaster, and they had ended up sharing a droshky and one of the thawed-out cars. She had seemed so exotic, this foreign comrade with chestnut-brown hair and the greenest of eyes, a woman who came from so far away and yet spoke the language of their revolution, and who seemed as much in love with it as any of its makers.

  He remembered the first time they’d made love, on one of his furloughs from the front, in the room she’d shared on Kalashni Lane. He could still see her face in the soft candle glow, the joyous shock of their coming together. Had he ever felt happier? He didn’t think so.