The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  “She’s not here at the moment,” Caitlin told the M-Cheka voice. “No, she’s quite safe. You can tell her husband so.” She reached for a pile of homemade cigarettes and lit one, grimacing as she inhaled. “What do you expect us to do?” she asked angrily. “Send her back on the next train with instructions to be a dutiful wife? This is not . . . Yes . . . very well, I’ll talk to him. Yes, I’ll hold the line.”

  She stubbed out the cigarette. “Deputy Chairman Komarov wants to talk to me,” she told Fanya. “Remember him from that orphans’ home?”

  “He seemed almost human for a Cheka boss.”

  Caitlin grunted. “Ah, Comrade Komarov,” she said into the phone. “Yes, of course I remember you.” She listened. “Tomorrow morning? Very well . . . No, I’m happy to come to your office—it’ll make a change from my own. Fourteen Bolshaya Lubyanka. Ten o’clock. I’ll be there.”

  “It’ll make a change from your own,” Fanya echoed once Caitlin had replaced the earpiece. “So would walking into a tiger’s cage.”

  Caitlin smiled. “He suggested we talk through the problem.”

  “Fine, but why did you agree to go there?”

  “God knows. Because I didn’t want him here. Because I didn’t want him thinking I was scared to. I’m not, you know,” she added.

  “I know you’re not. Sometimes I wish you were.”

  “You may be right. But as Cheka bosses go—and I admit I haven’t met that many—Komarov seems pretty reasonable. And now I come to think of it, if Kollontai draws a blank, we might take Anna’s story to him. He owes us a favor.”

  Next morning Caitlin walked from the Zhenotdel offices to Bolshaya Lubyanka, refusing to let her anxieties about the impending interview spoil her mood. It was another beautiful day, the sun shining out of a cloudless sky. Next to the Vladimir Gate, a new billboard had been erected, and a giant poster in three sections was being pasted up. all united in a single front the first two read, and Caitlin paused to see the third one unrolled, taking guesses at what it would say. against lice was unexpected, but unfortunately all too apt.

  At the M-Cheka offices, she was shown into Komarov’s empty room and asked to wait by a polite young Chekist. She declined the chair, preferring to stand by the open window overlooking the empty courtyard.

  Komarov arrived a few minutes later. His hair was a greyer than it had been in March; his eyes, as she remembered, seemed to have a life of their own.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, comrade,” he said formally. After gesturing her into a chair, he took his own seat behind the desk and offered her a cigarette.

  “I’ve only been here a few minutes,” she said, matching his courtesy and accepting the proffered match. His cigarettes were no better made than hers.

  She watched him sort through a stack of papers and saw that the hand that held the pile was trembling.

  He found the file, a red folder with the Vecheka stamp on the cover.

  “Comrade,” she began, “I really don’t understand why the M-Cheka has chosen to interfere in Zhenotdel business.”

  He looked up. “No? What would you say the business of the Chekas was?”

  “The Chekas were set up to defend the revolution from counterrevolution. You’re not suggesting that Rahima Niyazi is a counterrevolutionary, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then . . .”

  “Comrade,” Komarov said quietly, “you’re not as naïve as that. Sadridin Niyazi is one of the few—one of the very few—non-Russian Bolsheviks in Turkestan. We cannot afford to alienate him.”

  “What sort of Bolshevik treats his wife like chattel?”

  “An Uzbek one, I suppose,” Komarov said mildly. “But that is beside the point.”

  That made Caitlin angry. “It is exactly the point so far as the Zhenotdel is concerned, comrade.”

  Komarov sighed. “If we lose control of Turkestan,” he said calmly, “the Zhenotdel will be powerless to do anything for the women who live there. You must know that. There has to be some willingness to compromise.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t object to compromise, comrade. When it is necessary. Are you seriously telling me that the rebels in Turkestan have any chance of success?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  “The Basmachi are not a spent force. Not completely at any rate. And anything that weakens our position in Tashkent will give them hope.” He placed both hands palm down on his desk. “She has to go back, comrade. But . . . I don’t wish to be unreasonable. You must have . . . How can I put this without causing offence? You must have taught her what she needs to know by now. And surely Turkestan is the best place to put that teaching into practice, back home, among her own people?” His hand wasn’t trembling anymore.

  “I think the Zhenotdel is probably the best judge of that,” she said tartly. “You may well be right. But there’s more to it than that. Her husband treats her like a slave. That’s usual in his culture—I don’t blame him for it, but the Zhenotdel cannot be seen to condone such behavior. We can’t—won’t—simply tell her to go when he calls.” She took another cigarette from his pile, and let him light it for her. “And doesn’t this worry you, comrade? If we make a habit of indulging such conduct just because we find the perpetrator useful . . . well, where does it end? We have to draw the line somewhere.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I distrust lines. I try to deal with each case as it comes.”

  “So where would you draw one in this case?”

  His smile was rather sheepish for a Chekist’s, she thought.

  “All right,” he said. “I won’t insist on her going back at once. But I hope you’ll persuade her that she should return soon. If not to her husband, at least to Tashkent.”

  “She doesn’t want to leave him.”

  “Then why . . .”

  Caitlin smiled. “Rahima Niyazi may be only eighteen, but she’s an extraordinary woman. She loves her husband, and she’s sure he’ll be proud of her—eventually—when he realizes that it’s much more rewarding being married to a free, independent woman than to a slave. I hope she’s right. He damn well should be proud of her. It takes a hell of a lot more guts to be a revolutionary Uzbek woman in Turkestan than a revolutionary Uzbek man.” She crushed out the cigarette and stood, feeling more than a little pleased with herself. “I will discuss the matter with Rahima and her sister at the earliest opportunity, comrade. I will let you know what we decide.”

  One for the Zhenotdel, she thought, shaking his hand and heading for the door.

  A Foreign Agent

  In the dawn twilight the hut by the forest’s edge looked like a setting for “Hansel and Gretel.” Inside it three Finns were sitting around a greasy oil lamp, apparently waiting for the world to end. They had greeted McColl and his guide, Miliutin, with politeness but little warmth; offered the two of them glasses of tea; and answered the Russian’s questions with a succession of shrugs. The mysteries of the world beyond the hut, their faces seemed to say, were hardly worth unraveling.

  As he waited outside for Miliutin to reappear, McColl wondered whether they might be right.

  The Russian came through the door, a tall, thin man with a bushy beard and unruly black hair. Thick, badly chapped lips and sharp black eyes were visible within the foliage. It was not a physiognomy to inspire trust, McColl thought.

  But the man had brought McColl safely across the border, and fifteen miles into Lenin’s domain.

  “This way,” the Russian grunted.

  They walked down between ramshackle huts to the railway tracks, where a rickety wooden shelter was posing as a station. As yet there was no one else about. Only one thin spire of smoke disturbed the serenity of forest, lake, and sky.

  Miliutin settled himself on the ground, his back against the shel
ter wall. He was not the most talkative of traveling companions, having hardly spoken twenty words since their first meeting in Vyborg.

  McColl broke his last piece of Swedish chocolate in two and offered half to the Russian. “What did you do before the revolution?” he asked.

  The Russian stretched a leg, then suddenly laughed. “I dreamed of the day,” he said. “You do not understand? I am an anarchist. It was our revolution, too, in the beginning. Now . . .” He shrugged. “They are all the same: czarists, capitalists, Bolshevists—a few people telling everyone else what to do. That is what a state is, my friend.” He wiped chocolate from his lips with the back of a hand, then sucked the latter clean. “It’s rather amusing, don’t you think, that now I make my living like this? Without states there would be no frontiers or people who needed to cross them without being seen.” He took a swig from his water bottle. “But no more. I will tell you—this is my last trip. With your English pounds, I can leave this wretched place. There may be nowhere a man can be free, but there are places where summer is long and you don’t have to dress like a bear in the winter.”

  This was more than McColl had bargained for, but he was spared the need to respond by the sound of their train approaching, and the sudden appearance of several more would-be travelers, most of whom eyed his guide will ill-concealed distrust.

  The train consisted of a wheezy engine and four mostly empty carriages, all of which seemed far too grand for a dead-end branch line serving small forest villages and lumber camps. Miliutin led McColl to a compartment full of polished wood in the rear carriage, and stood leaning out of the window until the train began to move. Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he sat back beneath the sepia photograph of Lake Baikal that McColl had been idly perusing.

  “At first I could hardly stop laughing,” the Russian said, as if their conversation had not been interrupted. “Those dainty little aristocrats begging me—me!—to spirit them away from the Bolshevik monsters. I felt like telling them: ‘Believe me, children, you have far more in common with them than you do with me. They find the masses as troublesome as you did.’ But what would have been the point? You know what all ruling classes have in common? Luck and utter stupidity. All these aristocrats—they know nothing about anything. In Vyborg these days, you can have a countess for a few kopeks, which sounds like fun, but they don’t even fuck that well. Outside a ballroom they haven’t a clue how anything works. I almost felt sorry for some of them.” He paused to pick something from between his teeth. “But not for long,” he said, flicking the offending scrap away. “I lost too many comrades in the Peter and Paul Fortress while they were marking dance cards.”

  “They’re not dancing anymore,” McColl murmured.

  “I suppose you find that sad,” Miliutin sneered.

  “Not particularly,” McColl said mildly. “I doubt I’ll be attending any balls on this visit.”

  The Russian laughed. “I suppose you’re here to sell Lenin life insurance.” He laid himself out across the seats, feet at the corridor end. “But what do I care?” He pulled his cap down over his eyes. “The trip should take about three hours,” he muttered. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  That seemed like a good idea, but McColl’s brain refused to shut down. His Russian companion was soon snoring with irritating gusto, so he took himself into the corridor and watched the trees go by. The train stopped every few miles, but few got on or off at the small village halts.

  He felt like a cup of strong coffee. He felt like a cigarette, though he hadn’t smoked since landing in prison. On his last trip into Russia, three years before, he’d felt traces of the old excitement, that adrenalin rush that went with pitting your wits and strength against whatever the enemy put in your way. That was what had induced him to join the Service—he hadn’t believed all the claptrap about King and Country since South Africa, and any residual illusions had been shredded by Caitlin and the war. But now there was no excitement either, just nerves and a grim determination. He might be working for Cumming again, but not for the Service and not for the fucking British Empire.

  The trees gave way to a lake, the lake to a lot more trees.

  He opened the lavatory door more out of restlessness than need and was astonished by the spotless luxury that greeted his eyes. There were even fresh towels on the rail.

  He examined his unshaven face in the mirror. “Good morning, Anatoly Joseyevich,” he told his reflection. The grubby white blouse, the black leather breeches, the old leather cap with the fur brim—they all looked exactly right. As they should have—each had come from a warehouse packed with secondhand émigré clothing in Vyborg.

  The train was jerking itself to a halt. Several voices became audible through the frosted window, indicating a larger-than-usual station. McColl waited for the train to clear the platform before flushing the toilet, remembering the day almost thirty years before when his father had pointed out a steaming pile of shit between the rails in Fort William station. “Most people are pigs” had been the observation.

  You couldn’t buy memories like that, McColl thought sourly as he yanked the chain.

  The rush of cascading water faded to reveal the thump of booted feet in the corridor.

  McColl gripped the door handle and waited, ears straining for danger signals.

  A shout turned into a high-pitched gurgle.

  McColl launched himself into the corridor, and straight into someone who was scrambling out of his compartment. The collision knocked him backward into the vestibule, the other man on top of him.

  For a second they looked at each other. The Russian was young, hardly more than a boy, and his eyes were wide with panic. He struggled to rise, to extricate himself, but the bandolier across his shoulder snagged on McColl’s arm, jolting the young man back and jerking free the cap with its gleaming red star.

  McColl brought up a knee, eliciting a heartfelt groan, and then threw a fist into the boy’s throat. The young Chekist arched back on his knees, as if he’d just discovered which way Mecca was.

  McColl glanced around in search of Miliutin, and the boy was on him again, the two of them clinched like drunken sailors in the swaying, rattling vestibule. McColl tried the knee again, following it with an intended pile driver to the stomach, which somehow caught the shoulder. The Chekist fell back across the handle of the outside door, opening it. He opened his mouth to yell, but his throat refused to obey. Then he just seemed to drop away, like someone who’d been horsing around on top of a wall.

  McColl’s first reaction was to whirl around in search of witnesses, but there was none: Had the noise of the train drowned out the sound of their tussle? He leaned out of the open door and looked back: his otherwise prone assailant was flapping an arm in the air, as if keen to point out he’d survived the fall.

  “Is he dead?” Miliutin asked over McColl’s shoulder.

  “I doubt it,” he answered, pulling his head back in.

  “A pity,” Miliutin murmured.

  In their compartment the other Chekist had died holding the stomach that Miliutin’s knife had ripped open. A case of us or them, McColl told himself—capture would have ended with a bullet. It didn’t make him feel any better, but then, feeling good wasn’t something that went with the job. Or shouldn’t be, he thought, remembering times when it had.

  Miliutin was folding the corpse in two. “Let’s get this one overboard,” he said.

  After they’d bundled it out through the door and done their best to wipe away the blood, Miliutin laid himself out on the seat again as if happy to sleep through the rest of the journey.

  McColl was astonished that no one had come to investigate. Admittedly they were in the last carriage, but they weren’t alone on the train—had nobody seen the Chekists ejected, or heard the dying one’s scream?

  “They may have,” Miliutin said when McColl asked the question. “But they won’t know who screame
d, and I doubt they got a look at the men we threw out. Where the Chekas are concerned, most people opt for discretion. Just being a witness can get you shot.” He closed his eyes again. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble.”

  He was right.

  Two hours later they were staring across the silver-blue Neva at the cupolas of Smolny Convent glinting in the morning sun. If there had been a welcoming deputation at the Okhta station, they had managed to avoid it, getting out on the wrong side and cutting through the surprisingly busy goods yard.

  On the towpath below, a succession of women were filling buckets from the river and carrying them back up the steps. “The Bolsheviks can’t even keep their city supplied with water,” Miliutin noted contemptuously. “This is where we part company,” he added. “You know where you are?”

  McColl nodded. Across the road a pyramid pile of wooden wheels was reaching for the sky. It could have been rubbish, might have been constructivist art. You never knew in Bolshevik Russia.

  Miliutin put a hand on McColl’s shoulder. “One piece of free advice: don’t hang around here any longer than you need to—the Cheka look after their own.”

  McColl watched Miliutin walk away along the embankment, then started across the Okhtinsky Bridge, feeling the cool gusts of air wafting up from the water below. He felt calmer than expected, which wouldn’t have pleased his old Service instructors. If your heart wasn’t racing, it probably meant you’d missed something crucial.

  A narrow street led through to the wider Suvorovskiy Prospect, where a banner announced that children are the flowers of our life. So why had Lenin never had any? McColl wondered, as he turned south toward Nevsky Prospect. Many of the shop fronts and office premises were still boarded up, and the road itself was empty save for an occasional clanking tram, but the pavements were crowded with hurrying people, and there seemed less tension in the faces than there had been three years before.