ITORE UP the permits we’d been given for Uralsk, tore them across and across. “Best thing for them,” grunted Boltikov, sitting opposite. We’d got our hands on some more beer at the Moderne. It was helly hot in that compartment of mine.
“It’s the only way to deal with these chinovniks—flat-arses,” he said. “It’s the clerk class that’s brought Russia down. Papers, papers, papers, they stifle a man’s desire to do better for himself. Every other clerk should be impaled in public as a lesson to the rest.”
Joseph entered and picked up all the scraps of paper. He read aloud, “ ‘Rail Permit Good for Uralsk,’ “ observed that it would be worth money to someone were it pieced together and went out backwards, not disturbing the order of the torn papers, which he’d placed on the flat of a book.
Boltikov went on, “Open another beer for me... That gold, is 690 tons still too much for you to think about?”
A fortnight ago I’d have given him the usual reply: Glebov first. But these doubts I had about ever finding him were growing stronger daily and I said, “We should think about that, you and I.”
And a voice in the doorway said, “Well, 690 tons ain’t too much for me.”
It had to be the American, Jones. I gave him a brief look and said to Boltikov, “How’s your English?”
“A few business phrases—‘My very last offer.’ ‘Twenty per cent minimum.’ ‘When dividend last paid?’ “
“That about deals with everything important,” the fellow said in English. His voice was so deep and measured that it could only belong to a really solid citizen. Then he said to Boltikov in Russian, “But I can handle your language. Anything except chess problems.” He said it humorously but slowly, with a strong accent, as if in pain.
He wasn’t as tall as I was, but he was well framed, had an open face and brown eyes and hair. He was wearing an army necktie, which made him unusual in Strabinsk.
“Leapforth Jones at your service. Captain attached to Military Intelligence, Section 8. That’s the Bureau of Cryptography. The Black Chamber, as we call it back home.”
He looked me over carefully. “I guess you’re Charlie Doig. Our friend Blahos has been talking about you.”
He recognised the provenance of our beer, which had on its label the picture of a man in a dark green fedora smirking through a triangular moustache, the sort of expression that showed he was pleased to have made the sale. Jones yelled out of the door, “Hey, Ivan, bring me one of those.” Then he pulled up a chair and said to me, “Anyone who gets fired on by the Reds is a friend of mine. That’s what’s important to us, to know who’s on our side and who isn’t. Darned tricky in a place like this. All the coming and going—in these guys’ heads, I mean. How to make out what they’re actually thinking, where the truth lies—”
Joseph arrived with a bottle. We eyed Jones as he drank from it, trying to divine how much of the sucker was in him. He belched and smiled on us, dazzlingly, teeth like cliffs of chalk. Then, tipping his chair back as a man walked down the corridor, “Hey, Stiffy, I’ve made us some friends at last.
“Meet my wireless operator, Timothy H. Brown, known by all as Stiffy. My small genius, I call him. Heck no, that came out wrong. My wireless operator who though small is a genius. That’s better. Came from your side of the Atlantic once, Charlie.”
Brown wasn’t a dwarf but he didn’t have to duck for doorways, put it like that. Wide, light blue eyes, and lank, gingery hair that he’d grouped into a few thicker strands raked carefully across his skull.
“Tell our friends about yourself and get it out of the way,” commanded Jones.
Stiffy gave the three of us a vague salute, trying to fit everyone into its scope. Looking at me, “The ‘H’ in my name stands for Hardman, sir. So I’ve been Stiffy from my first day at school, Stiffy on the steamer to the Americas and Stiffy in New York. Now I’m Stiffy in Siberia—sir!” He came to attention and saluted us again.
Jones said, “I meant it when I called him a genius at his wireless. He can read thirty words a minute. If we were sailing across the ocean and saw a pod of whales, Stiffy’d only have to put on his headphones and twiddle a few knobs to tell us what the ninth whale was digesting. Yeah, he’s good—the best I know.”
Stiffy said to me: “Sir, it’s not difficult. We all speak Morse.”
“Then I put on my thinking cap, that’s where I come in,” said Jones. “We do pretty well between us. Well enough to have the President of the United States of America send for us. Himself.”
“So who controls you,” I said. “Uncle Sam or the big White cheese, Kolchak?”
“You bet that’s Uncle Sam. The 27th US Infantry’ll be landing at Vladi any day now and he controls them as well. Plus he controls Mr Gray, who’s our Consul in Omsk, plus another guy down in Samara. Plus a few thousand more here and there in Russia, not wishing to be exact about these confidential matters. To hell with that Kolchak guy.”
Joseph brought Stiffy a beer without being asked. I didn’t want to run out of the stuff so I told him to take it back and bring us a samovar. It was my best one, the one I’d brought from the palace, a resplendent, boastful construction from the period of high empire with mahogany handles and a great silver belly on either side that Joseph still polished once a week. In my uncle’s time it had always been preceded into the room by a footman to prevent a child knocking against it and being scalded.
“Call me Leapforth, boys,” said Jones, watching Joseph make a space for the samovar. “Christ, that’s some urn, a real beauty. Only trouble, Ivan—it doesn’t leave much room on the table in case we want to lay out any papers. Just bring us the tea in glasses.”
“Not the same thing at all,” said Boltikov sourly, not having taken to Jones from the start.
“Yeah, I know you Russkis are tied to the old ways, but the tea’ll taste the same.”
There wasn’t a great deal of room in the compartment, the bed being for me and Xenia and not a fold-up. Boltikov and I sat at the table with our backs to the window, the two Americans opposite.
Jones went on tipping his chair back. It was a good one from the palace. I told him to stop messing it around. Joseph brought the tea and a plate of knish, fried dumplings filled with potato that Mrs. D. had knocked up. When he’d left, Jones leaned back and locked the door.
He took out his pistol, jokingly blew some imaginary smoke from the muzzle and said, “This country’s fuller of rats than a bin of wet corn.” He laid it on the table in front of him.
Then, “All the principals being in one place, let’s get things clear between us. First, what my good fellow citizens are paying us to do, second, how we do that, and third, how you and us are going to make a cooperation. Yessir, that’s how I see it, a multinational effort on behalf of international tranquillity. If you’re game, that is, gentlemen. No pressure. Just holler if you want to go your own way... Mr. Boltikov, you say if my use of the lingo isn’t clear.”
He took a sugar cube from the top pocket of his tunic and dropped it into his tea. “Now the Tsar’s dead, my only remaining commission is to report on the depth of the Bolshevik movement and the balance of strength between the Reds and the Whites. Will Russia become another Balkans? Are there outstanding national leaders either Communist or Tsarist whom our country should be seeking to influence? What are the policies of the Soviet leaders? These are some of the questions to which my government needs an answer.”
He sipped at his tea, grimaced and slipped in another cube of sugar. “I’d rather be paid by Uncle Sam than Uncle Muraviev. Not much sugar at the Moderne... You’ll want to know how we can accomplish this. The same way that we know about mostly everything that’s happening out here: by keeping our files up to date and our ears open. At the moment our information comes from the reports that the Red commander in this region files twice a day with HQ. Regimental identification, troop movements, some planning details—you can piece it together quite quickly once you’ve got the hang of their minds. Mind you, Charlie, t
hey’re hot stuff with their ciphers. They used to change them every other day but the trouble with that was that some commanders didn’t receive the new one by the due date or were just too plain busy with stuff like fighting. So now they change once a week, that seems to be their routine. At the moment they’re using a Variant Beaufort, which is about as low as you can get—”
“Thought you said they were hot stuff,” I said.
“Yeah, beats me why they’ve gone down to a Beaufort. Fifty years ago it was being sold to schoolboys as a bit of fun. Maybe they’re having trouble getting decent cipher clerks.”
“Explain it,” I said.
“In ten words,” said Boltikov, bored, picking the seeds from the raspberry jam at the bottom of his tea glass.
“The whole thing? Transposition, substitution, the ways a cipher alphabet’s constructed? Why, you could write a book just about the use of nulls—that’s letters you put in to confuse the enemy. They don’t have a meaning—or do they? You don’t want to know about cryptography, Charlie. The war can’t last that long.”
Stiffy said, “Repetition is straightforward, sir—with respect.”
“OK, Stiff, you’re right. I’ll give them repetition seeing how it’s the basis of everything. Now, boys, the only cipher that stands a chance of winning is the one that avoids it. OK? Start using the same symbol for one particular letter and you’re sunk. If the frequency tables don’t undo you, there’s any number of mathematical formulae that will. Short is good. Short wins wars. But the type of information that has to be sent by cipher is rarely short. That’s why ciphers are so complicated. That’s why I have a job... Codes and code words? Forget ’em. They’re for kiddies.”
Boltikov was lolling in his chair, snapping at flies with one hand and flicking their bodies into his glass. He caught my eye. He was waiting for the cooperation bit.
The heat was hanging on to the bitter end of the day. Without the trees, there was no baffle against it. It rolled in from the plains, filling the hollows in the fields and the river valleys, the streets, the courtyards, the houses, rooms, beds and at last the brains of everyone present in Strabinsk in those first days of August. It was why Muraviev drank champagne at ten in the morning, why the mastiff was humping the spaniel and why Leapforth Jones was fingering his pistol.
Thirty-two
HIS VOICE was deep, solemn, serene, all the effects for which men get trusted and called Uncle. His steadfast brown eyes rested patiently on mine. His tunic had come off and his tie. His khaki shirt had razor-sharp creases. He was wearing a wedding band. In every single respect the Captain was a skilled and wholesome employee of the US Army.
He said, “You don’t seem very curious about us. No questions? Like how did you guys get from the States to Strabinsk?”
Boltikov said in his heavy English, “We wait for pay day,” which made Jones smile.
“So tell us,” I said.
“When we left the US there were six in our unit. Four have copped it, three from tif and one from falling into Vladi harbour between two vessels. So I have to press-gang men as I go along to put up the aerial. Hundred and twenty foot to be swayed up and guyed. Not a job for Stiffy and me alone. End of story.”
“You want a labour force.”
“Yep, that’s it,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
Obviously the two were in it together, the wireless king and the cryptographer. They’d got hold of something juicy. Had to be the gold. Everyone was hot for it. Why should they be any different? They couldn’t bring it off by themselves: they needed us. To be precise, they needed my armoured locomotive and my driver and my workforce—nota bene, my reliable workforce, not dying of tif or getting squashed to death.
I said, “Leapforth, let’s not play games. Where’s the gold? Now, as we speak?”
That big white smile again. “I like a man who pitches fast. The answer is, Kazan. The Czechs and the Whites recaptured the city last week. They plan to ship the gold east in barges. Kolchak wants to have it where he can see it.”
“And what you have in mind?—let me see if I can guess... It’d be frowned on in the States?”
“Right on, Charlie.”
“But in Russia, where the rule of law has gone down the pan—”
“Down deep, man, real deep.”
“Anything goes?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Morality—forget it. You can’t find a trace of it in Strabinsk. You should see what I get offered in my hotel room—every night.”
Wanting to put him right on that I said, “Hold it there. I’m not here just for myself. If that makes me a man in a thousand, well, that’s the way it is. I’m here for one thing only. Revenge. Revenge, full stop. The man I’m after is People’s Commissar Prokhor Federovich Glebov. When I’ve nailed him, maybe I’ll have time for your gold.”
“Man in a thousand, eh? That’s a pretty high figure... OK, I wasn’t making enough allowance for the sincerity of your motives. So revenge is your game... yeah, well, looking round Strabinsk when the news got out about the Tsar, I’d have said every single person here is hot for revenge... You’ll have a good reason for going after Glebov, probably something he did to your family. That seems to be the pattern... So you’re not interested in this gold story, have I got that straight?”
“Glebov first.”
“I see... Maybe I can help you, Charlie? How would that be for a deal, if I helped you with Glebov and you helped me into Kazan?”
“We could discuss that,” I said warily.
The next thing he said: “You know, it’s a different class of winner that surfaces in a revolution. Sure, the guys with the usual unpleasant qualities’ll pop up, the vultures and the criminals, but to make it to the last cut... to have a chance at the big house... yeah, you’ve got to have one hell of a good story in a proper revolution, one where the whole system of living is up for grabs. Like you’re the first man to discover how to make bricks or the first woman with tits. You get me?”
Thinking he was shooting a line for himself, I asked him what his story was. But he shook his head. “Not me. Stealing gold ain’t much of a story these days. I was thinking about some of those Reds we could be up against, the guys who’ve made it to the top. Trotsky and this Glebov of yours. They’ll be as full of tricks as a pack of monkeys. Now, this is what I was thinking . . .”
The essence of his plan was to vanish from the US Army, he and Stiffy. Not to desert, but to get themselves artificially killed and thus disappear from the army’s books. That was what really made him nervous: having the US authorities on his trail. So once they were dead they’d buy new documents from the counterfeiter opposite Blahos’s office and when they made off with the gold, why, they’d just be regular desperadoes who’d got lucky.
“The papers, the witnesses to our execution, I can arrange them all. Then burial in a mass grave. I’ve got a photographer for that part, here in Strabinsk, name of Smichov. That’s all that’s needed. My wife’s not going to send her lawyer to Siberia to sift through a heap of bones just so she can have a good weep. The kids neither. Pa was a soldier, so he got himself killed, that’s how they’ll reason. Stiffy here’s only got a sister for a family—”
“Two.”
“OK, two. What’s the second one called, Stiff? Back in Bristol, so how was I to know that? Older or younger? OK, she’s the oldest of you three so what she’s going to say is, That little Timmy was never going to come to any good, not snotting like he did. It’s his just deserts. Forget about him . . . Listen to me, Charlie, Stiffy and I can check out of Strabinsk any time we want. Out of here, out of the army, out of our lives. No one’ll be any the wiser. Anything goes. You said it yourself.”
Boltikov, seeming asleep, opened for me one brusque, bright, intense blue eye.
Stiffy was twiddling a hank of his anaemic ginger hair round his index finger, girly fashion.
Jones, looking directly at a vertical line drawn halfway between me and Boltikov: “And you’re no
different, you two. You could vanish like us.”
I said, “Why’d I want to do that? I’m not the one in the US Army.”
“OK, maybe you don’t need to for the same reasons I need to. But you’ll be the very first man to exist if you don’t want— let’s put it like this—to renew yourself. You name me a man who’s not running away from something.”
“Didn’t I just tell you, I’m a man in a thousand?”
We regarded each other in silence. Had I bought the Cinema Lux, this would have been the bit in the movie where my Russian audience would have stopped spitting out their sunflower husks—when the four gunfighters played a card game, loser to be hanged in the morning. Through their fantastic system of eavesdropping, Jones and Stiffy had uncovered information that was available to neither the President of the United States nor the King of England nor the Pope, the Infanta nor anyone in the entire and teeming billions of the world save Colonel Zak and a handful of top Bolsheviks.
I looked round the table, moving my eyeballs only. Behind each of the others’ masks, I could make out the shape of a giant truth that was glowing red hot: that never again, though we were each to be immortal, would we possess the knowledge that could place 690 tons of gold in our possession.
Women—if you miss one, there are more on the way. Wealth isn’t like that. It’s not stacked up back to the horizon. It has to be earned.
Mouth at an angle, Jones said, “You ain’t no man in a thousand, Charlie Doig. That’s bullshit. You’re a scavenger just the same as Mister Ordinary.”
“Tell me what you know about Glebov. Blahos says he’s nowhere near here.”
Jones picked up his pistol, aimed it casually through the window at bossy Mrs. D. who was on platform patrol on that side of the train. “Good-looking dame, the big one . . . your friend Glebov, People’s Commissar for the Political Re-education of Prisoners, was in charge of the arrangements for the Tsar and his family. The late Tsar, God have mercy on him... You heard Glebov was doing anything different, you were being fed birdseed. He’s one of the Big Three. Lenin, Trotsky, Glebov, that’s the line-up. Glebov ran the show at Ekat. He had them shot. Except maybe his daughter Anastasia, the chubby one. I’m hearing a rumour that she survived and your fellow’s trying to organise a ransom for her.”
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