But I was aflame. The Reds’d be attacking Kazan in the first week in September. Glebov would be there. I wasn’t like a woman who sniffs everything before tasting it, not just the milk. I was buzzing, cocked, hot to go.
Xenia was prickly, let go of my hand as soon as she was on the platform. I quickly discovered why: Stiffy had spilled the beans to her about the antics at the burial pits. She realised that she’d got into more than she’d bargained for—which was to have me look after her and set her up in business as a corsetière. She said she hadn’t understood the Bolsheviks’ true intentions. The black Fokker had really scared her and now this . . . It was disgusting what the two Americans had done. At least they’d been to the baths afterwards. Whereas I—
“I was never party to the change of identity,” I said, hearing the underlying change in her tone. “What’s it got to do with you anyway?”
“You’ve been drinking,” she said.
“I’ve had a scoop... What are you bawling about, you had enough men to protect you.”
“How can you go drinking and then tell Mr. Brown off for doing the same thing?” she said petulantly. It seemed the moon was dodging round the sky. One moment I could see her expression clearly, the next her face was in shadow—or what was worse, half her face, so that I was continually glancing from one side to the other to see where reality lay.
I said, “What’s biting you, lady?”
She didn’t answer that and didn’t have to. She was afraid, that’s what it was. The Thomas Cook railway tour of Russia that she’d signed up for had turned into something else. She was a shopkeeper. She was out of her depth. It’d be hell getting her to Odessa. She’d be a drag the entire way—and I’d proposed marriage to her.
I said with a kindly manner, “It was that attack by the Fokker, it’s just beginning to get to you, isn’t it?”
“I can’t get it out of my mind. We might all have been killed.”
“Then there would have been no cause for worry.”
“Do you want to make a scene out of this? Are you deliberately trying to misunderstand me? You... you... all I’m here for is so that you can reap me whenever you feel like it. Silly Charlie Doig, you’re so puffed up with yourself, so arrogant...”
There was more, a great deal more about my character. She got hysterical—and jealous of Elizaveta. So that was the heart of the trouble, not the Americans jumping into the burial pit. Everything came flooding out. It was crude of me to blame Elizaveta’s death on Glebov when the decision had been mine and mine alone. Glebov was obviously a pawn of Lenin’s, no worse than any other hired man. It had been I who was the bastard. I hadn’t done all that I could have done to save Elizaveta. I’d been brutal—selfish—lacking any sense of decency, even of morality. She’d seen this side of me time and time again: she’d had enough—she wished to return to St. Petersburg and Madame Zilberstein’s shop.
“My girl, my darling girl . . .” Penitent yet manly, I took her in my arms and chuckled her until Shmuleyvich came clattering back with the extra wagons and Stiffy’s wireless rig.
She was assuaged, but only somewhat. Most worrying from an operational point of view were occasional remarks about where my money was coming from. I thought, Did I let slip something about the diamonds in my boots when drunk? Had she unpicked the stitches and got in there with her little corsetmaker’s fingers? I didn’t think so. I bent to scratch my leg and found the stitches were intact. Nevertheless there was a sweetness in her voice that didn’t match up to her words—and I made a note to be extra careful. The moment Shmuley brought the train to a halt, I shoved her into a Pullman with my hand up her backside and said she could twiddle her thumbs for a bit.
Joseph sticking his head out, I told him he was in charge until I got back. I was going to take Boltikov into town to get hold of Kobi. I needed a full establishment. I wanted to get set up for action.
Forty
KOBI WAS no trouble. Not being a drinker, he had nothing in common with Muraviev’s mercenaries. We found him on patrol—six men altogether.
I said to them, “Which of you wants to get rich with me in Kazan?”
How rich, they wanted to know; what artillery would they have in support; which regiments would they be up against...
I made a mistake here: I spoke Trotsky’s name, not knowing that in Muraviev’s news-sheet that very day there’d been a quote from the bastard promising five hundred roubles and the enjoyment of a countess to whichever soldier raised the Red Flag above the kremlin of Kazan.
The patrol didn’t like the idea of fighting against men going for that sort of reward. They flinched, I saw it in their eyes. I asked them if they’d seen Blahos around. They shook their heads. They couldn’t have cared less about Blahos. They were thinking about five hundred in cash and making a countess squeal and which side was going to win.
I was sorry I couldn’t recruit them. Numbers make everyone more confident. I did a quick check. Kobi, Boltikov, Shmuleyvich and myself made four full-time operatives. Joseph and Stiffy would be wasted on the firing step but useful elsewhere. Jones was a doubtful asset. Xenia—nix. Mrs. D.—I’d score her half. She had guts. Anyway, not enough of us.
We got to Blahos’s yard, which was exactly as Stupichkin had described. A dog wanted to give the game away until Kobi had a quick word with it. Now everything depended on Shmuleyvich being able to get the armoured car going. I was relying on him: he was the fellow with engine grease down to the third layer of his epidermis. He viewed it thoughtfully.
“Well . . .” he said, stroking his chin.
I said, “You’ll be pushing it or else.”
Nettled, he opened the bonnet. I was keen to have this machine. It had two swivelling turrets set on the diagonal to make the car slimmer and a rear access door to them. Maxim machine guns. There was a headlight on the roof. Boltikov thought the glass in the front slots was bulletproof. We walked round it several times. Narrow wheels, so probably for road use only.
Shmuley called softly to me. He’d solved the problem of how ignition could be achieved in an Austin-Putilov 50 h.p. engine which had no key. It had fuel, he said, it had reverse gear: he could get it turned round and out in a minute, no more. He reckoned it’d shift along at about thirty, faster than anything else in Strabinsk.
The big man looked at us, smiling. He spread his arms wide. It was hard to say whether the shadows on him were shadows or puddles of oil. “Pochemu nyet? Why not, boss?”
He grinned, his teeth strong like the gates to a fortress. “God be with Russia!” he exclaimed—and the armoured car burst into life, volleys of oily black smoke blasting from its exhaust and its metal sides rattling like a charity collecting box.
Boltikov and I jumped onto the running board one side, leaving the other one for Kobi and it was exactly as Shmuley had said. No one could have possibly caught us as we went rumbling through Strabinsk.
At the brickworks siding, nothing had changed except that Joseph had put the ramp down. Shmuley roared up it. He cut the engine. I opened the rear access door to see how we were placed for ammunition.
He was crouched there, very young, very white in the face, very afraid. It was Vaska, Blahos’s nightwatchman.
I said, “How old are you?” He was sixteen.
“How tall are you?” He didn’t know.
So I had him come out of the turret and when he unfolded himself, showing that he was a good tall fellow and ruined only by starvation, I signed him up. “Vaska,” I said, “you’re mine. Go and get the biggest meal of your life from Mrs. D.”
Ten minutes later we were out of Strabinsk and going west— direction Kazan.
Forty-one
THE FIRST trick Glebov played on me—but before that I have to say something more about Xenia, who by this time had been my lover for nine months.
Her nature was open—also firm. I never knew her say anything that didn’t have a purpose. I don’t remember her ever venturing onto speculative territory, not even in relation t
o her religious beliefs. God was there in the same way that gravity was: nothing further had to be said. All that interested her about Lenin and his policies was the effect they’d have on the price and availability of the basic foods and on the future of shops like Zilberstein’s. The grand theories passed her by.
What I’m coming round to is that she was dull. She commanded no passionate arguments, had only niggling prejudices, wore no jewellery and had no feeling for bright clothes’ colours—by this stage a blouse of birthmark purple was her sunniest garment. And here’s another thing: she insisted on hanging her clothes up every night. Before she said her prayers, let’s not forget to mention that too. Tidiness is good and our compartment was modest. Nevertheless there are excellent habits which pall on a man, such as constant telling of the truth, obsessive hygiene and hanging one’s clothes up.
For a woman with such astonishing eyes, a fine figure and a good commercial mind, she didn’t make the most of herself. Not in conventional ways, I mean. That was because of her vice. Sex was her secret, the means by which she kept on good terms with the world.
One evening after we’d left Strabinsk, I came late into our compartment. She was sitting on the edge of our bed, fully dressed, holding in the candlelight a piece of foolscap covered with pencil jottings—figures for her planned shop.
I said something suggestive. I must have, I can’t hold quiet before a desirable woman.
She looked up. “You feel that way too? I was hoping so. I’ve got nothing on under my skirt.”
I said, “Show me then,” hurriedly sitting down to unlace my boots.
She carefully laid her paper down out of harm’s way. She stood upright on the bed. Crossing her arms, she pulled her skirt up to her forehead—then lowered it, peeping at me over its hem.
God! Her thick white thighs towering above me, her Hottentot’s bush, her smooth belly, the dark noisettes of her nipples, those spanking green eyes—and yet she was so straight, so pedantic, so prudent in her character.
The fact is that within her sexual soul all these limiting factors had been wiped out. There was nothing there except balmy welcoming air which gave her flesh a sort of buoyancy. You could see it in her face too when you knew what to look for— the fullness of her lips in particular, and the way they strove to make contact. This was her secret, and it was impenetrable to everyone, both men and women, who lacked the magic key. It was why she didn’t wear jewellery or fancy clothes: she didn’t want to clutter up what was important to her and make it unrecognisable to those who might be attracted to her sexually.
I expect she’d had women in her bed as well. With that buoyancy went generosity and an absolute appreciation of the importance of dedicating some inviolable part of one’s life to pleasure. In her case one part was consecrated to God, one part to screwing and the remainder to the struggle to remain alive. That was how she explained it to me.
So the “vice” was a form of genius. She knew she was rare among women.
“I can recognise lovers from some way off and they me. There are signs—in the way of walking, how the body is carried, that’s the first one. I never pay attention to the clothes, only to the person’s eyes. It’s mutual. We pair off immediately. There, in the street. One of us will know a hotel in the neighbourhood that caters for our type. Sometimes we don’t exchange more than a few sentences. I never ask a man’s name. I’ve never been disappointed.”
“Never?”
“Never. The best and only the best—oh, Charlinka, how lucky I’ve been. Not one man has wanted more of me than I’ve been willing to give.”
I can remember the conversation almost word for word. By then we were lying across the bed, both of us naked. My cock was splayed out across my thigh like a dogfish on the slab. She started to trifle with it.
Shmuleyvich had his foot down. The engine tugged, the greasy pistons acted and countered, the carriage swayed, rickety-tick rickety-tick. I looked down at her. Those exquisite lips came squirling up for mine.
“Only the best,” she murmured.
“Not for much longer. Top lovers will be executed by Lenin in the name of equality. We’d better hurry.”
“Will every man have to be equal to every other man? Is that what he means?”
“In all respects.”
“All?”
“I’ll have an operation,” I said.
“Don’t say that. I want you as you are.”
With perfect timing the train entered a tunnel. The rush of the wind changed tone and became hollow, boom-boom-boom, reverberating in my eardrums. We passed beneath an inspection shaft. For a second the noise emptied up it. Then with a sudden crack it was trapped again. Boom-boom-boom—and I entered the winner’s enclosure.
Her breath just beginning to scurry, she grabbed at my buttocks, said, “But equality is stupid.”
“What a thing to say now—”
“I like to have something else to think about in the middle stages. I’ve taught myself to hold the pleasure back for as long as possible, to heighten it.”
“And when it arrives?”
“It’s as if I’m in a canoe and suddenly I burst through a wall of jungle into the treasure cave. Whoosh—oh, Charlie, what you do to me—”
I was still on the long strokes. We were bucketing along, lurching and swaying but when we came to the place where the goods lines from the Kushka quarries joined, a real labyrinth of points, we had to hang onto each other to stop being thrown out of bed. Binding me with hoops of iron, she whispered:
“—entire shelves of treasure stretching as far as the eye can see, glittering and fabulous, lit by cunning little lamps and the light shuddering with the excitement of it all—and then I think of Solomon’s cock, which I see as sharp and tawny, not like a Russian cock at all, not thick and juicy, and that keeps me under control—oh my God, Shmuleyvich, get that whistle ready—” then she said nothing more, being busy with her orgasm.
We reached calmer waters. Her eyes cleared. The threads of longing dimmed from blood red to the colour of the air between us—air that had been somewhat jostled. I kissed in turn her little pink fruits and blessed them for their presence. Resting on my elbow, I traced the coastline of Africa round her tingling face, Libya being her forehead and the land of the Boer her doughty chin. Her great green eyes were the emerald mines of Xanadu.
She said, “Trim the candle, Charlie.” Then, in a low, replete voice, “We’re travelling west now. It’s towards trouble. I can feel it. Must you really have that gold?”
“What do you make of Mr. Jones?”
She smiled. I kissed her eyelids, wondering how I could ever have thought ill of her. She said, “I think he’s someone other than he seems to be. Putting a bullet through the window is the sort of thing a young aristocrat does in one of our novels.”
“He wants to steal 690 tons of gold and remove it from the country.”
“That’s a lot,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to help him?”
“A little. I’m after enough gold to get you and me to Odessa with some left over for when we reach London. Stupichkin gave me good advice. He said I should limit my ambition to what I can move and watch at the same time. A wagon, a barge, a suitcase, a canister. Makes sense.”
“So which are you looking out for?”
Talking to her was like having a corset fitted. A tuck here, an inch let out there, get it all lying perfectly. I said, “Best would be a barge. I know the rumour that the Volga’s got a fleet of Red torpedo boats on it but I’m ignoring that. According to rumour, the ground is clogged with their troops, the air is stiff with their planes and the sea black with their cruisers—believe all that and we might as well open our veins.”
“Keep death out of it, Charlie.”
“Disappointment is worse.”
“I know. England might disappoint me. Have you thought of that?”
“Keep England out of it. Odessa first, my peacheroo.”
There was a quick, sharp knock at the door. I wrapped a towel round my waist and opened it a slit. It was Leapforth. He said, “I think you should hear what Stiffy’s just picked up on the wireless.”
I said, “You tell me. Six words or less.”
“One’ll do.”
“Which one?”
“‘Anastasia’. It’s the keyword they’ve just used. Four identical letters in it. It breaks every rule in the book.”
“Then they wanted it to be intercepted. What does the message say?”
“Haven’t broken it all yet. Something about the barges lying in Kazan. Give me another hour.”
“Tell Stiffy he can listen, but if he sends out one single message he’s on the next train to Siberia.”
“Why’d he do a thing like that, Charlie?” he said in an insolent way.
I closed the door on him. Xenia, lying there with the sheet up to her chin, said, “When a Russian does a thing like that, there’s a trick within the trick,” which even a child could have told me.
Forty-two
TISHE EDESH, dalshe budesh as our saying goes: he who walks softly, goes far. I reckoned it must have been Glebov who’d sent that message. His spies would have picked up my trace in Strabinsk. It wasn’t a difficult guess that I’d team up with the Americans.
“What’s his game, then?” I was in Boltikov’s compartment, just the two of us.
“He’s after the gold. Everyone’s after it. Change the system and all you get is new forms of treachery. Nothing alters at the heart of things.”
“But why bring Anastasia into it?”
“The man’s waving to you.”
“Peekaboo?”
“Yes. He wants to lure you to Kazan so he can kill you. He’ll be eager to get you out of the way—to finish that episode completely.”
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