Cold Blood

by James Fleming

  “Elizaveta.”

  “Yes, Elizaveta née Rykov, the same as your mother’s family. You did a brave thing. I could never have done that to either of my wives. I loved them too much.”

  We were drinking vodka. His drawing room was on the first floor. Below the window the soldiers were changing guard. The windows were open, the curtains undrawn except for a light muslin drape to keep the insects out. There was enough of a wind to make them bulge, a hot wind coming up from the deserts in the south.

  He said, “Everyone knows why you’re here. Blahos tried to get rid of you because he and Muraviev hope that when the gold pops out from Kazan, it’ll pop down their throats. They don’t want a man like you around.”

  I smiled and raised my glass to him.

  He said, “I can see why. When I first saw you, I said to myself, If he’s only half the man his father was, I’ll help him. Come to the window with me.”

  The floodlights were on. The compound was octagonal in shape. At each angle was a blockhouse covering the smooth glacis where they reckoned to kill any attackers who got through the coils of barbed wire.

  “The greatest danger is from within,” Stupichkin said. “One of these days the prisoners will attempt a breakout—and my guards will not resist. It’ll happen as I say. The Reds are certain to win. We have nothing to set against the notion of equality. When they do so, they’ll murder me as painfully as they can... Those machine guns of mine down there, they have a watercooling jacket that surrounds the barrel. In winter there is often no water, but there is always snow. The design of the jacket is so bad that it is impossible, or at least very hard, to stuff them with snow. If a soldier is in a hurry he can’t afford to boil up the snow. Otherwise they fire when wanted and will kill Bolsheviks if fired accurately. Therefore I am giving you two of them, here and now. Do you have a little...?”

  He stroked the palm of one hand with the fingertips of the other, smiling delicately as he did so. “Something in the Tsarist currency will keep my men happy... scarlet would be the best colour... yes, two thousand is a perfect sum. Now what else do you need, Doig?”

  “I have two objectives. The first, to kill Glebov—”

  “That’s what my information concerns. Second?”

  “To seize the gold in Kazan and get out of the country.”

  “For which purpose you will of course need to get into Kazan. If the Whites are holding it, you need no disguise. But if Trotsky,”—his wizened monkey’s face twisted passionately— “who is the most unprincipled monster in the universe, has taken it, you’ll need something. We can help you with Red Army clothing, from the men we executed... Also, ammunition for the machine guns, bien entendu. I will give you six boxes with a thousand rounds in each. What else does a modern caballero need?”

  I asked for an armoured car, at which he laughed. “If I had one, I’d set off in it right now for America. But I’ll tell you where you can find one—in Blahos’s yard. Go past his office keeping it on your left, down the lane that opens up in front of you and at the end you’ll find his compound. He may keep a soldier sleeping in the car... What else, what else to defeat the Bolshevik? Of course you know why I’m doing this. Because I’m as good as dead, because of your father, because—because I wish to make a clear and unmistakable contribution to the civilisation that has born and nurtured me. My country has served me well—it has kept me going for seventy-seven years! Now I shall return something to it... Horses! You must have your own cavalry! What can I have been thinking of!”

  He drained his glass, throwing his head back. He drew a handkerchief from the lace at his wrist and wiped his lips. He smiled up at me. “Smash them to pulp, Doig!”

  We started to move downstairs, when suddenly—

  “Wait! I haven’t told you about Glebov. The most important thing of all.”

  I now learned everything that Stupichkin had extracted from his prisoners.

  On the subject of Anastasia, the unaccounted-for princess, nothing was certain except that men had been withdrawn from each Bolshevik regiment to search houses round Ekat as well as every train that left the city. Some of the men sent to Stupichkin as prisoners had taken part in the train searches, pulling at women’s hair to see if it was a wig and making them stand up and be measured in their stockinged feet.

  “Where is the Princess? I don’t know. But Glebov doesn’t have her. I interrogated his driver. On 24 July, the day before Colonel Zak and his Czechs entered Ekaterinburg and a week after the Tsar and his family disappeared, Prokhor Federovich Glebov got into a Wolseley six-cylinder motor car with new tyres and was driven south-west towards Kazan. He was alone except for his bodyguard. At Sarapul the driver handed him over to another one. This man then tried to return to Ekat but was nabbed by Zak’s men at a roadblock and sent down to me. Glebov’s talk in the car concerned what was to be done if Kazan fell to the Czech forces. This has now happened. So we must suppose that he’s near Kazan, probably having joined Trotsky whom all reports agree is massing his armies for a counter-attack.”

  “Do you have proof that Glebov’s after the gold?”

  “That’s a silly question. Nothing can be proved during a revolution. There is one thing more, Doig. I have known you were on the way for a fortnight. Three separate men have told me of this. Blahos also knew it, independently of my information. Strabinsk is a nest of spies. Do you suppose that Glebov has heard nothing about you?”

  Something in his parchment face caught my eye, some flicker of ambiguity. I said suggestively, “I wonder what he’ll hear when I leave your house.”

  He sighed deeply and laid his hand on my sleeve. “The horror that we have of a violent death doesn’t stem from the fact of death itself but from our unpreparedness. When I die I wish to do so with dignity. For that I may need assistance from my enemy. There, you have your answer. During the long span of my life I have concluded that truth exists nowhere except in certain mathematical data. If I make two pronouncements with opposing meanings, it doesn’t mean that one of them is a lie. Whichever happens is the truth. Truth exists only in the past.”

  He calmed me, this small old man who didn’t even come up to my shoulder—“You wish to see an avenue stretching out before you and to know that this road only is the one paved with sincerity, honesty and decency. I’m sorry. It’s impossible to live without lies. Every human comes to realise this. Maybe you are starting to discover it too when you make love to your young lady. There may be times when you tell her something that is not up to the highest standards of Christian truth. If that is indeed the case then be tolerant, I beg you, and when you remember old Stupichkin, think of him as a radish—a red skin maybe, but round the heart and in all the vital areas, white as the snow. Now come. Let me give you these weapons I spoke about.”

  A duty soldier was at the door to his rooms. Stupichkin told him to go and fetch his sergeant.

  Thirty-eight

  THE MACHINE guns were to go forward of the cab on either side of the locomotive. It wasn’t ideal. Without swivelling turrets an armoured train has limited offensive potential but I didn’t have time to get into that branch of engineering.

  Moreover, two machine guns took up the services of two men. They could only be Boltikov and Kobi.

  I said to Stupichkin, “Muraviev’s got one of my men. Seen a Mongolian around the city? He’ll be unhappy by now, he’ll be chewing his whiskers.”

  He asked his sergeant. Yes, such a man had been seen. No one had been able to understand why a member of the great warrior nation had got mixed up with a layabout like Muraviev.

  The sergeant had got an off-duty detachment to wrestle the machine guns onto a large station trolley. Some sacks of Red uniforms were thrown on top of the ammunition boxes. A piebald was led round to be hitched up, not a handsome horse but with solid quarters and good bone.

  It shuffled forward into the floodlights with alert, suspicious movements of its head, which I saw were caused by the fact that it had a wall eye. Its name was B
uran, meaning gale or tornado. It regarded us each in turn, expressively, probably out of hunger. As he was being backed up to the trolley, I heard a seashore slapping noise and, looking beneath him, I saw that we had a stallion.

  “Christ, how did he get past the pincers?” I asked the sergeant, who was standing between me and Stupichkin.

  Stupichkin smiled—they both smiled. The cavalry requisitioning department refused to accept piebalds because they stood out so much. The enemy invariably concentrated their fire on them. No cavalryman would accept a piebald for a mount. Therefore all the farmers naturally wanted to breed piebalds and keep the requisitioning men away. Tornado was in demand.

  “Now you understand the fullness of my generosity,” said Stupichkin.

  “Whoa, Tornado, whoa,” I addressed him as he began to play up, I suppose having masculine pride about pulling a station trolley through town. “It’s dark, no one’ll see you.”

  Looking into his wall eye, I saw that it was exactly the same vivid blue as those of the man who’d been bludgeoned to death on the cart. The other eye was wonderfully quick and virile, almost human. I said to that horse, “Hairy hoofs or not, I must ride you through Kazan or die,” and because of Stupichkin’s vodka and perhaps also through being light-headed in reaction to the gruesome episode at the pit, I saw myself in a wall-eyeblue pyjama suit riding bareback on Tornado with Glebov’s severed head at my saddle-bow, his livid blood flowing like sauce onto my curling vizier’s slippers—

  Stupichkin had taken a pinch of my coat and was leading me out of the floodlights. He checked none of his guards were within earshot. “Kazan, sometime in the first week of September, that’s when Trotsky’ll attack. The Czechs’ll fight like rats. The second day’ll be chaos. That’s when you should go in.”

  This time I didn’t even begin to wonder how he knew that. I thanked him and said goodnight. However, he was reluctant to let me go. Did I want a hand or two of Boston? One for the road? I wouldn’t try any rough stuff with Blahos, would I? He’d be a vindictive adversary...

  In the end he gave up—grabbed and hugged me as if I were his son, I suppose also saying farewell to what could never be repeated, the Russia into which he’d been born. Tears were pouring down his cheeks.

  He stood back. He said harshly, “Well, goodbye then, Doig. We’ll never meet again.”

  I bowed to him—and led Tornado and the trolley of weapons away with the old feeling of machine guns trained on my spine. At the gatehouse the soldiers lamped back to the gaol for clearance to let me go. It came immediately—a stutter of flashes—and they conducted me through a maze of barbed wire and left me on the cart track that went up to the burial pits and thus to the railway.

  We set out for the train, Tornado and I, the horse at my elbow, snuffling and rattling his bit.

  The moon was riding above the city, our Russian moon. It was impossible to suppose that this was the same moon that shone over any other country, for Russia is a world complete in itself and has no need to share a moon with another nation any more than it needs to share its vast rivers, lakes and mountains, its language, its God, its savagery. How could there be any moon left over for anyone else after it had peered into our forests, silvered our endlessly winding rivers and climbed the peaks of the Tien Shan? It must have been possible, for every school textbook told us it was, but in my heart as in the heart of every Russian, the moon was ours, and so were the stars. It was in Russian pockets that God slipped them for the duration of the day, deep down there, tingling in the furs. And here they were once more on display, spread out above me, a wreckage of sparks scattered over the immenseness of our Russian skies— and I thought again how strange it was that in the pit of a civil war that could have been waged by no other nation on the earth, I should find two Americans bumping along with only the haziest notion of the dark forces around them.

  Could it really be as simple as Jones said? That the President had given them a wagon of expensive wireless equipment and said, “Go find out what’s happening at a little place called Kazan. Can’t be more than one of them on longitude 50. Off you go now, boys, and no slacking while you’re out of my sight.”

  Was that how power worked? And then the sweet odour of gold had risen to Leapforth’s nostrils and he’d jumped into a pit of corpses and lo and behold was now John S. Piler whom no one would ever finger for having once been Captain Jones of the Black Chamber.

  I said to Tornado, “Somebody came to me with a tale like that I’d say to him, ‘Do I look like a flat-earther?’ “

  Thirty-nine

  MY TRAIN wasn’t where I’d left it: Shmuleyvich had obviously taken Stiffy to the baths on the far side of town. Having no intention of leaving my new weapons unguarded and no wish to have Blahos wander by and find all these sacks of Red Army uniforms, I sat on the loading ramp of the brickworks and waited for his return.

  The moonlight bounced off Tornado’s good eye, giving him a rakish look. Tam o’ Shanter, my old father would have named him—probably with a few complimentary verses in his stalwart Scottish declaiming voice. It was a curiosity finding in the gaol of this frontier town a man who’d known him well enough to call him a scamp. Which man had given me two machine guns complete with ammo and the rectangular black japanned tin boxes that held all the different-sized spanners and keys with which to disassemble them—and a horse.

  Stroking Tornado’s nose, I said to him, “Don’t want to be uncivil, old fellow, but even if I had ten thousand of you, it’d make no difference. You’re old hat. There are subs under the sea, tanks on land, Camels and Fokkers in the air and a flotilla of motor torpedo boats on the Volga. Christ, there’s mechanisation everywhere. Consider the tank. Thereby, a soldier’s connection with the horse has been almost completely severed...”

  I babbled on to him about the tanks the Bolsheviks had captured from the Germans. They had red stars on them now and a name painted on the hull—“Sword of the Proletariat,” “Revenge,” that sort of thing.

  “Revenge is a good one. Mest’. Maybe I should get it painted on my loco. What do you say? And how come those bastards Jones and Stiffy were entitled to get a ride to the baths in my train, eh? Couldn’t they walk? Thought they already had the gold in the bag, did they? Stiffy all excited with my bottle of 60 per cent Vladimir and a sachet of Roget et Gallet’s Elixir of Carnations. To celebrate becoming Dave. I overheard him telling my woman about it. You’d never believe what men get up to, old fellow. Nor the lies they put about. That Jones and his damned smile—no woman could marry someone who smiled all the time like that. If you were a woman instead of a horse, could you lie beneath a man whose teeth were phosphorescent in the night like a shark’s? I’m telling you, Tornado... Yet he’s claimed a wife back in the States, in Grand Rapids...”

  I fell to wondering what the horse smelt of so strongly. It was stale, it was musty—yet it was something more, like the smell of a new roll of felt.

  He shook.

  A piebald horse shaking in the moonlight, the beams bouncing back off the areas of white hair together with a spray of dust and mites...

  So scampering Stiffy and toothy Jones had been chauffered to the baths at my expense and were steaming their impurities away without paying a blind bit of attention to the standard notice, signed by the Governor and therefore meant to be obeyed, oh my God yes, obedience compulsory except maybe in a revolution, “Strictly No Farting.” They’d have volleyed away as they gulped down my Vladimir and would return all clean and precious whereas I—

  I was rank, no other word for it. Was Xenia the same, was that why she didn’t complain—

  Like Cyclops, Shmuley came rushing out of the darkness, the single light on the front of the loco growing from the size of a small ball to a saucer to a bright white plate as he halted a few yards away, steam wreathing him as he leaned from the cab.

  “That you, boss?”

  “It isn’t Karl fucking Marx so go and find me a horse wagon for Tornado here. How long did it take you to ge
t round the loop and back to the station? OK, go round again. There’s sure to be wagons at the station. Get two—I’m going to try for an armoured car. If the stationmaster objects, shoot him. Hitch up to the Yanks’ wireless wagon while you’re about it.”

  “Boss, the spiv has bolted.”

  “What does Mrs. D. say to that?”

  “Only really special men from now on, that’s what she told me.”

  “Then that’s fine. Send Stiffy to me.”

  He appeared soused with Vladimir 60 per cent and Elixir of Carnations. He’d got a babushka to trim his eyebrows.

  I said, “Stiffy, I don’t give a shit that you’re now Dave Cram. You’ve an hour to get cleaned off. Then your wireless’ll be here and you’re going to listen at that set day and night until you get word from me personally you can stand down. Yep?”

  Hearing me speak, Xenia popped her head out of the carriage. I asked if she’d like to sit in the silky night air with me and Tornado for a while, but saying it in a rough voice from being tetchy.

  “Why?” she said, because that’s how her mind worked. I said to keep watch over two machinkas plus ammo plus Red Army uniforms while Shmuley went for wagons.

  She agreed provisionally—so long as I guaranteed there were no Reds operating outside the city at night. “If they crept up and cut your head off, where would I be then? This is exactly the sort of situation I fear most. I told you so, back in St. Petersburg.”

  I said, “I keep a spare neck up my sleeve, now come on out of there and join me.”

  She said, “Is that a horse?”

  I said, “Yes. It’s called Tornado and it’s got a complete set of balls. Now come on down before I get impatient.”

  Does one allow things to happen or does one force them? It’s always the question. An optimist does the former. Musket balls beat against his cuirass like raindrops and he smiles: “They’re doing me no harm, see, I’ve got my armour on.” Idle men are also tolerant people. They say to themselves, If I lie in bed for long enough I’ll die there, nothing worse can happen.