The Bloody Meadow

by William Ryan

  It took him a moment to gather his senses – he’d landed awkwardly on the useless machine gun, but apart from a few bruises he seemed to be intact. He reached for the Walther under his armpit and looked around him as a blast of machine-gun fire from some way off reassured him that Slivka was still alive and kicking. Good for her. The chamber was much bigger than the one he’d just been blown out of and three crumpled bodies, one of which had been flung backwards over an open wooden chest, were testament to Mishka’s and Slivka’s shooting abilities.

  He surveyed the situation. He was battered and bruised, and had suffered a scratch or two along the way, but he was alive for the moment. His firepower was reduced, but at least the Walther was reliable, unlike the jammed coffee-grinder, and he still had that Nagant as backup. He could hold the doorway here so long as they didn’t throw any more of their damned grenades at him. After all, the others should be back soon, or so he hoped.

  Wherever Kolya and Slivka were, the bandits were closer still – there was movement in the smaller chamber. He couldn’t see the men who were approaching clearly, but he could hear them well enough.

  ‘We got him,’ a nervous voice declared in a whisper.

  ‘Be careful,’ came the response. ‘He wasn’t on his own.’

  At least three of them, and maybe more from the sounds of quiet movement. Korolev stood with his back to the chamber itself, ready to turn and fire into the next room. There was more gunfire from Slivka’s direction.

  ‘That must be our boys giving them hell,’ the first voice said.

  ‘But where are they, then?’

  ‘That’s not one of them. That’s poor Borya.’ A different voice now.

  ‘Damn it, it is. Will I throw in a grenade?’

  ‘Are you mad? There’s a couple of tons of ammunition in there.’

  Korolev glanced around at the crates full of munitions of one sort or another and didn’t like the look of them one bit. There was another footstep – too close now – and he moved to fire two quick shots at a dark shadow, which dropped to the ground shooting as he stepped back. The others joined in and ricochets whined around the chamber behind him as all hell broke loose.

  It was time to give up this spot, he decided, pulling out the Nagant and, sticking his hand around the corner, firing three random shots into the gloom to a predictable response. Keeping low as bullets cracked and whined around him, he retreated as quietly and carefully as he could, stepping over a body and taking cover behind the crates. He kept his guns aimed at the entrance to the smaller room and kept moving until he reached the comforting dark of the far entrance. At least from here, he’d be the one able to see – and not be seen.

  The enemy must have come to the same conclusion as a bullet clanged into one of the lanterns that hung from the ceiling and it exploded in a ball of flame as it soared across the room, fortunately landing in an empty corner where it did no damage except to light the room even more brightly. Korolev felt sweat break out along his spine, and it wasn’t from the sudden rush of heat as much as the thought of what might have happened if the oil lantern had landed on an ammunition crate. The same thought must have occurred to the bandits, as there was silence for an appalled moment which ended with a shouted warning and the sound of three shots. Two of the bandits came backwards into the light, firing through the doorway they’d just come from. Korolev shot twice, missing both times, and before he could fire a third time one of the men was clutching a wounded arm, his pistol lying on the floor, and the other one had also dropped his weapon and raised his hands in surrender.

  Strange, thought Korolev, as he moved towards them, one gun covering them, and the other trained on the entrance they’d piled through. Very strange.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE GREEK wasn’t in a position, not having acquired the power of speech in the short time since Korolev had last seen him, to explain how he’d ended up in the passageway behind the bandits. But however he’d done it, it was his arrival that had resulted in a happier ending to the underground gunfight than Korolev had necessarily been expecting. The Greek clearly knew it as well, to judge from his pleased smile.

  ‘Good work, Greek.’

  Not taking his eyes from the prisoners, the Greek nodded his proud agreement. He’d appeared out of the dark entrance shepherding a wounded man, who’d joined the two earlier arrivals. The prisoners now stood against the wall with expressions indicating they’d already thought their futures through and they didn’t like the look of them.

  ‘Anyone alive back there?’ Korolev asked, pointing along the corridor.

  The Greek held up two fingers, before shrugging and reducing his estimate to a single finger. A tough man, the Greek – not that Korolev was complaining.

  Korolev collected the guns the bandits had dropped, an ancient imperial army Smith & Wesson revolver and a more recent Nagant, emptied the remaining cartridges onto the floor and threw the guns into an open rifle chest. He picked up his machine gun and worked the side bolt to dislodge the jam and loaded the last magazine. Then he held his torch alongside the barrel of the gun, before walking into the smaller chamber the Greek had appeared from. There were sounds from the passageway beyond, but they were the sounds of the half-dead rather than the living.

  Korolev was cautious, taking his time, playing the torch beam back and forth. Five dead, that was certain – a machine-gun bullet at close range was an unforgiving visitor and not many of the fifty odd he’d sent down into the mass of men seemed to have missed. But one man was still alive – Sergeant Gradov. One of the bullets had pulled an ear from his head, and others had torn at his thighs and an arm – but it looked as if he would live, and also as though he might be able to talk.

  Korolev took no chances, advancing slowly, picking up any weapons he came upon, emptying the ammunition they contained and throwing them behind him – all the time keeping his gun pointing at the sergeant. Korolev felt his jaw tighten as he stepped over dead men, a feeling of nausea rising in him at the smell of warm blood and cordite mixed with the chill damp of the tunnel. He’d killed these men. All right, they’d have killed him soon as blink, and no doubt about it – but still. He’d sent their souls to the Lord whichever way you looked at it, and who was to say the Lord wouldn’t look on them kindly for resisting the Soviet Power that had destroyed his Church? Korolev felt despair dragging at him, and reminded himself not to think about such matters – maybe things weren’t perfect in this Soviet State of his, but at least he’d done his duty. And that was all there was to it – thinking about right and wrong was a dangerous game these days.

  While Korolev was making his slow approach, Gradov had managed to push himself up so that he was now leaning against the tunnel wall, his weight balanced on one buttock, face haggard with pain and effort.

  ‘Go on, then – finish me off.’ His voice was hoarse as he summoned the energy to speak.

  ‘So, Gradov – a traitor.’

  Gradov adjusted his gaze to look behind the torch’s beam.

  ‘Captain Korolev?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I told them you were trouble, but they wouldn’t listen to me. “If he came all the way from Moscow, it must be for a reason,” I said. But they knew better.’

  Korolev took a step closer. He could hear voices from the room in which he’d left the Greek, Slivka’s amongst them. The battle was clearly over.

  ‘How did a fellow like you get involved in this? You don’t look the type.’

  Which was true – he looked like a brute and a bully, sure enough, but not the kind who would take a risk if it didn’t involve lining his pockets.

  ‘We all have a past, Korolev.’

  ‘They had something on you as well, did they?’ Korolev said, thinking of Lomatkin and how he’d been led astray.

  ‘They had me where they wanted me. If I didn’t do as I was told, there was a letter addressed to the Chekists with my name inside it. And proof I’d fought with Makhno and shot a commissar
or two one April morning back in ’twenty. Not just any commissars either. I picked some high-up ones, friends of today’s high-up ones, to make matters worse.’

  Korolev nodded. A past like that didn’t leave much of a future.

  ‘Well, they did for you anyway. Tell me who it was. That you owe them nothing is certain.’

  ‘They did for me? No, Korolev, you and that damned gun of yours did for me.’

  ‘I didn’t put you in this hole, Gradov, believe me. Others were responsible for that and you’ll give me their names if you have any sense.’

  ‘Don’t waste your time, Korolev.’

  ‘It was Mushkin, wasn’t it? He’s the link. He knew about you and he knew about Andreychuk – he even made sure you weren’t disciplined when you lost your gun.’

  The sergeant didn’t say anything, but Korolev caught the ghost of a smile before the wounded man looked away and spat. Then there was the sound of someone approaching from the passageway behind him, picking his way amongst the bodies, and he turned to see Kolya, the Thief’s face taking on a sudden look of anger in the half-light given off by the torch. Korolev didn’t even have time to open his mouth before the pistol in Kolya’s hand fired twice, each blast like a punch that pushed him backwards.

  ‘What the . . .’ Korolev began to say before his feet slipped on someone or something, and he tumbled backwards onto the sprawl of bodies, all the time waiting for the pain of the bullets.

  ‘Did he hit you?’ Kolya asked, before answering his own question. ‘No, he couldn’t have. What happened to you, then?’

  ‘What do you mean, “What happened to you?” ’ Korolev began indignantly, before he realized he hadn’t in fact been shot. He was still holding the torch and, pointing it at Gradov, he saw that a neat round hole had appeared in the centre of the sergeant’s forehead. He lowered the beam of the torch and saw a small automatic in the dead sergeant’s good hand, before turning it back to the newly minted bullet wound.

  ‘Nice shot,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘He pulled on you when you turned your back.’

  Korolev got to his feet, using the stock of his machine gun to lever himself upwards. The embarrassment and anger he felt at having made such a stupid mistake was one thing, but to have been helped out of the consequences by Count Kolya – well, that was another thing altogether. He thanked the Lord that the darkness gave him the opportunity to marshal what little dignity might be left to him.

  ‘You took your time – we had them coming at us from all sides while you dawdled along.’

  ‘So I can see. That gun of yours dealt with them, though. Was the grenade yours or theirs?’

  ‘Theirs. Did you get them all?’

  ‘We missed one or two – things were confused in the dark. Slivka and Mishka sent them running, but Fox’s men weren’t ready for them. We lost a couple of ours in the tunnel, and a couple of them got past – but you have your guns all the same and the battle’s won.’

  Korolev looked at Gradov. Six dead here, then. One in the next room, three in the chamber with the guns. Two of Kolya’s men and on top of that however many of the gunrunners who had been killed in the tunnels trying to escape. As quick and bloody an evening’s work as he’d ever heard of.

  ‘I hope it was all worth it.’

  ‘I’d say it was worth it, Korolev. They wouldn’t have been able to keep their fingers from the triggers of that weaponry, and they wouldn’t have been shooting at crows with them either.’

  But Korolev was just a bit too old for all this killing and that was the truth. He’d never been much good at it, if he was honest, but he’d done what was asked of him.

  ‘Are you all right, Chief?’ Slivka asked as he emerged into the relative light of the big chamber. She looked at his forehead with a frown, and Korolev remembered the graze he’d picked up during the shooting and lifted a hand to wipe away the blood.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, surprised by how much blood there was – his fingers were red with the stuff and he dragged them down the wall to clean some of it off. ‘We need to think what to do with these guns, Slivka. And these bandits for that matter. Greek,’ he said, turning to the doughty forensics man, ‘can you find your way out of here?’

  The Greek nodded.

  ‘And back as well?’

  The Greek nodded again.

  ‘I need you to get above with the prisoners. Slivka, you’ll go with him. Get our men down here as soon as possible. If a couple of them managed to get free, they might chance it and come back – so time is important. If you’re not sure of the way, Kolya will lend you his guide.’

  But Kolya shook his head when Korolev looked to him for confirmation.

  ‘That can’t be, Korolev. We worked together on this job because we had good reasons to – to go after these rats who were killing ours. But if I sent Mole with you, that would be something else again.’

  The other Thieves nodded their agreement, and Korolev understood. The Thieves’ code forbade them helping the Militia or any other representative of the State. Not for the first time Kolya had bent those rules when it came to Korolev, but the justification for it this time no longer existed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Korolev,’ Kolya said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘We’ll keep to our part of the deal.’

  ‘Come back as soon as you can,’ Korolev instructed the Greek, who nodded, looking deliberately at each of the Thieves as if to remember their faces. Korolev shared his concern, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

  ‘You’d best be off before our people arrive,’ Korolev said, as his colleagues and the prisoners left. All the Thieves’ eyes were on him now, and they seemed to be waiting for something. Mishka had that slanting smile of his that boded no good and Korolev found that his hand had slid under the belly of his machine gun of its own accord and that he was pleased to feel the cold metal of the trigger against his forefinger.

  ‘Yes, we’ll be off soon enough,’ Kolya agreed, leaving something unsaid – as if he were considering how to broach an awkward subject.

  ‘Off you go, then,’ Korolev said, moving backwards to lean against the nearest wall. He tried to do it nonchalantly, but it seemed he’d convinced few of his audience, and certainly not Mishka, whose smile broadened as he opened that hand cannon of his and discarded the empty brass bullet casings, dropping each one theatrically to the ground, where they bounced and rolled, and then filling the chambers left vacant with live bullets extracted from the pocket of his jacket.

  ‘We have something we need to take with us, Korolev,’ Kolya said eventually. Polite, but firm. Well, Korolev thought, bracing himself – at least the others were clear of this now, with luck.

  ‘I thought we had a deal, Kolya. Those guns are going nowhere.’

  ‘Not the guns, Korolev. The leather suitcases over there in the corner, I think. The guns you can keep.’

  Korolev saw the two bags he was talking about. Battered brown leather. No distinguishing marks. He looked round at Kolya’s men and saw that there wasn’t one of them didn’t have a gun in his hand. And the truth of it was if he tried to stop them, it wouldn’t make a difference. He’d done well to make it this far into the night, and there was a long way to go till morning.

  ‘What’s in them?’

  ‘Money. You can’t start a revolution with bullets alone.’

  Korolev nodded, looked around him at the determined faces and nodded once again.

  ‘What bags?’ he asked, when his mind was made up.

  ‘That’s very reasonable of you, Alexei Dmitriyevich,’ Kolya said.

  ‘I’m a reasonable man, and I have more important things to do this evening than worry about a couple of bags I never saw.’

  ‘Mishka, Fox?’ Kolya said, turning his head slightly to speak over his shoulder. ‘Take a hold of those things and let’s be on our way.’

  When Mishka and Fox had the bags in their hands, the Chief Authority of the Thieves of Moscow raised a finger to his forehead and saluted Korolev,
then followed his men down the far tunnel.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  KOROLEV looked at his watch – ten minutes past nine – and sat down on one of the wooden crates, wondering how the hell he’d got into such a situation. It was unheard of, really. Maybe in Chicago the gangsters had shoot-outs like this, but you didn’t expect such a thing in the Soviet Union. Of course, there were criminals here just as there were in the Capitalist countries, but this was extraordinary. To have so many dead in one place outside of a war was unbelievable. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, looking down into the empty eyes of one of the gunrunners. It made you wonder. It certainly made you wonder.

  The trembling that he’d managed to suppress until that point started up again in his left foot. He tried to stop it by wedging the toe of his boot into the gap between a crate and the wall, but that did nothing. The trembling spread up to his knees. He was cold, so very, very cold. What the hell was wrong with him? He pulled an arm across his face, feeling his coat sleeve pushing a layer of sweat across the skin as he did. He was worn out, that was all. Tired. And then this damned bloodbath. And how close death had been this evening. He looked down at the dead terrorist and thought how easily it could have been him lying there, an empty husk of cold skin and bone.

  When he was calm again, he gathered the dead men’s guns from the surrounding tunnels – for something to do as much as anything else. There were sixteen corpses altogether, and that wasn’t even counting the unwilling guide whose throat Kolya had slit before the main shooting had started. And all he wanted was to get out of this tunnel and out of this city and away from this place as soon as could possibly be managed. Back to Moscow, where he knew what was what, more or less.