It was Kobi who was on the side of the cab next to the gold train, that was the way it’d worked out. His was the judgement. If he got it wrong we’d be marmalade on the rails.
“Now!” he shouted and was gone, knife in his left hand, to grab hold of the gold train’s handrail with his right hand and haul himself along the footplate and into the cab.
I was a second behind him, stumbling as I hit the footplate because Kobi jumping first had the best of the target. Grabbing a stanchion—swinging round—off balance—I glimpsed astonished faces in the train we’d deserted. Then my foot got a hold of something solid and with a heave I was in the gold train’s cab, Luger in my fist.
A fantastically red face was staring at me, blue eyes half an inch out of his skull, mouth wide open, dreadful teeth. I shot him, two in the belly, without thinking.
Kobi, on the other side of the man, said drily, “Thanks, Doig. Lucky for me he’s so fat,” and jerking out his knife, gave him a push so that he fell past me, outwards onto the clinker. He grinned across at me. “Head for home now, shall we?”
I looked at the pressure gauges, expecting to find a good head of steam. However, this was not the case. What had that driver been thinking of?
“Shovel for your life, man,” I shouted, and ripping open the firebox Kobi did so, with swift savage strokes of the long-bladed shovel, not wasting a second of time, not bothering to spread the coal evenly in the corners of the firebox.
I smoothed the throttle forward. Christ, was that engine cold, heaving out these dense lethargic gasps as if on the point of death.
Behind us, in the godown, the driverless Red train smashed through the buffers into the river, a sensational noise of plunging water and steam and cavernous thumping explosions even amid all the gunfire.
Risking a glance out of the cab, I almost had my eyebrows shot off. The White soldiers had recovered from the surprise, were coming up the line from the godown—running fast, dodging in and out of the wagons. The Czechs on the barges out in the river began shooting. I flung myself onto the floor of the cab, dragging Kobi down with me.
Move, bastard wheels! Move faster!
The night was thinning. Dawn couldn’t be far away. There was no time left—we were in minus time. Maybe the great bugaboo had caught up with me at last. Maybe it was the end of luck: konets—the end.
Lying there I closed my mind to everything except the hiss of steam and the oily suck of the dilatory pistons. You know how this is in a steam train, the small initial tugs as the slack between the wagons is taken up and the reluctance with which the first revolutions are accomplished as the engine assesses the weight behind it.
The bullets arrived like raindrops. The sand buckets were riddled before we’d covered five yards. Both lamps above my head were shattered. Shards of hot glass rained upon me. I covered my head with my hands.
There’s not much room down there on the floor of a locomotive cab. Kobi’s face was inches from mine. I could see not only every single hair sprouting from the mole on his chin but the flecks of coal dust in among their roots. Did I actually like this man? What would we do when everything was over: say goodbye and walk away as if these extraordinary adventures had never occurred? He’d saved me from death. He’d killed everyone I’d asked him to. Our adventures had been truly colossal.
Might we die together—here, side by side? Was that what Fate had in mind?
I thought, Please, Fate, let me kill Glebov first. Afterwards—
Then, no, by God, not even then would I give in. Fate should take the dog for a walk and get herself amused by something else—by the shape of the clouds or by a fox running off with a live chicken in its mouth. Eventually these bad times would end. Either I’d see them off or they’d peter out of their own accord. When that happened, I wanted Kobi beside me. We’d try our hand at being professional mercenaries. Our knowledge of death would be second to none—
The pressure had to be higher by now. Reaching up I pushed open the throttle lever.
The Czechs had grabbed a couple of launches from somewhere and were coming up the river after us at speed. Maybe it wasn’t their bow waves out there but those of Trotsky’s torpedo boats. It didn’t matter which. Everyone was after us, Whites, Reds and Czechs. OK, that had been my plan, so that Shmuley and Mrs. D. could swim into the godown at their leisure and cut loose a barge. Who was going to bother about one boat drifting away downstream when wagon after wagon of gold was disappearing in the opposite direction?
However, success was coming at some risk. Before long someone would think of blocking the line or shifting the points to stick us down a siding.
“No bloody Fokker’ll shit on us this time,” grinned Kobi from his coal-smudged face. “They love the gold too much.”
I grinned back. We had pressure on the dial, were fairly rocking along. I had good feelings. Within every successful man a buccaneer is always stretching.
I said, “What do you say we just go on?”
“Till the coal gives out?”
“Further.”
“Make a run for it, you mean?”
“Yes. Mongolia?”
“With the gold?”
“Yes. Hire ourselves an army. Conquer a territory. Pass suitable laws.”
“You’re teasing me, Doig.”
The long slow bend I’d picked out on the map was coming up. There was no question of halting the train with that sort of pursuit behind us. They’d smell a rat. The Whites I wasn’t afraid of, but the Reds and the Czechs—they’d send their hard men after us into the city. We wouldn’t have a chance. Nor would my girl. And then Glebov would go unpunished.
Some buildings were coming up on the river side of the line. They’d screen us for a bit. That’d be our chance to jump, when we slowed to make the corner. I stuck my head out, hand on the air-brake lever.
The bullet went past my head with a quick dry whistle.
Fifty-six
I TOOK BACK everything I’d been thinking about home and dry. Kobi said, “Where did that—?”
I slammed on the air brakes, the handbrake, Emergency Only. The wheels locked and screamed. Sparks bloomed, I could see them in the mirrors, whole necklaces rippling away. The wagons cannoned against each other violently, slamming shit out of the buffers. That sniper had to have been a mountaineer or a gymnast to have hung on through all that. But was he alone?
A lump of coal hit the floor right at my feet. I looked up. A hand shot out to stop the whole lot sliding down. Filthy, but a hand and not mine or Kobi’s.
“Christ,” I shouted, “they’re everywhere, like fucking serpents.”
Kobi had his knife out. I cupped my hands and up he went like a bird and grabbed that man’s hand and began to sever it at the wrist. Next, they were rolling around at my feet and the coal was falling in a black landslide and the train was rocking because of the bend and some bad joints in the rail and I couldn’t make out which body to shoot as they were both like survivors up from the Underworld with the coal dust all over them—but then a knife appeared that I recognised and I knew what was what immediately.
The two of us alone in the cab again, Kobi laughed his great deep laugh and said, “If you hadn’t braked he’d have had us both. Leaned over the coal stack—one pop, two pops, both of us dead.”
I said, “Time to leave,” and racked the throttle up to give someone a hard time when they tried to stop the train. Then we grabbed our rifles and jumped, I hard on Kobi’s ass.
A terrific pang, darkness as complete as death, then Kobi was standing over me throwing foul-smelling ditchwater onto my face from his cupped hands. I flexed my arms, legs, back. He said, “You caught my boot as we landed.”
I felt my face, felt the texture of the blood on my fingertips. I arched my head back, trying my neck. I saw a steep bank. We’d hit the ground exactly where a culvert came out that led the topside water underneath the railway. I stood up, felt everything again, flexed my legs, ran for a few paces on the spot.
&n
bsp; “Kobi, I don’t feel so good.” I didn’t collapse but I was close to it I was that dizzy. I got myself sitting down and then lying down, flat on my back.
Kobi shouted—so it seemed—“You’ve got a date with Glebov, remember? Will I have to look after you for the rest of my life?”
I said, “Why are you shouting?”
Then I heard it. No one else could have. Only I, with my heightened sensitivity after the bang on my head, could have heard the change in the pitch of the water coming through that culvert. It couldn’t have been a big flow to begin with. We were still in summer conditions—7 September. But it had been dammed up and released. Swish, I heard it go and presently a freshet of water came out, not two yards from where I lay.
I put my finger to my lips and pointed at the mouth of the culvert—tried to convey to Kobi the motion of someone crawling through it. We’d gone down one side of the track and the White I’d shaken loose had gone down the other. That’s how it had to be. Then he’d hit off the culvert, put his head to its mouth, heard us talking, had a brainwave. Bold fellow.
Was he on his belly? Unquestionably. He’d have wanted to come out in a position to shoot.
So he’d dragged himself along by knees and elbows, shoulder blades pinched together, getting as wet as a herring. He’d have paused, maybe to put his rifle off safe, have felt that pulse of water surge away as he started to move again. He’d have heard our voices cease. He’d have thought, I’m a dead man, I’ll be drilled either by a bullet from in front or by a bullet from behind. He was doing what he’d signed up to do—being a soldier. And now he was bottled up in a culvert, unable to stand or run or do any single thing that would physically dissipate his sense of fear.
Maybe he had no fear. But I did not see how this could be for someone on his belly in a death trap.
There was a slab of concrete, railway detritus, balanced at an angle against the mouth of the culvert. Kobi pointed to it and told me in sign language what he wanted to do. His face was alive with merriment, his teeth as white as daisies.
I saw his idea immediately. If the man didn’t want to be drowned, he’d have to crawl out backwards—he’d never get himself turned in that pipe. And I saw the reason for Kobi’s laughter, for who would undertake to crawl backwards out of a dark hole in a civil war, when men are especially unparticular? Ankle tendons, hamstrings, testicles, asshole. One by one these targets would present themselves to the interested party.
I nodded.
Taking care he didn’t get shot at, Kobi lowered the slab over the mouth of the culvert.
What could that fellow be thinking now he was in total darkness? His pay was fifty kopeks a month, enough for forty cheap cigarettes. Was he considering the relationship between money, risk and life? Was he thinking that a stipend of forty cigarettes was putting his life at too great a discount? Was he furious? The only life he was ever going to have and he’d been bamboozled into surrendering it for forty gaspers?
Kobi was fishing around in the spoil from the culvert for lumps of clay to block off those gaps—to make it watertight and drown the man.
I said to him, “Leave a hole for him.” There was no reason why the man should die so long as he didn’t get in my way. After all, we were both fighting the Reds.
Lying head downwards on that steep bank, I put my mouth to the lip of the culvert and shouted, “You’re lucky I’m Charlie Doig. Find your own way out.”
He must have been able to pick out the edge of my skull against the lighter shade of the night. The bullet struck the concrete slab at my side, almost making me deaf from the crack of its impact. I threw my head back, feeling a tiny sliver of concrete hit my forehead. The bullet must have ricocheted back up the culvert and struck the man, for there was a muffled roar. But that could just have been his anger at missing me.
I stood up. What spirit that man had! I said to Kobi, “I could do with a hundred men like that.”
Kobi said to hell with that, we should move out pretty damned fast. The Whites wouldn’t be far behind. Besides, I had that appointment with Glebov. We climbed up the bank onto the railway, crossed the track and set off at a trot.
Fifty-seven
BOLTIKOV WAS in a bad way. His arms were clasping the steering wheel, his forehead resting on them. Had he thrown down his cards—given up—prepared himself for death? A year ago he’d been the fat fellow who’d had a chocolate named after him. Now he was half the weight. I had the sudden feeling that maybe all that vanished flesh had contained the essence of Boltikov. The warehouse in Constantinople that was going to be choked with bales of furs and Bokharas and tapestry rolls— lidded chamber pots clanking with incredible chunks of Siberian gemstones—the awesome calculations of profit—had his capitalist ebullience been lost without trace?
I hauled him up, looking for clues in his shrivelled eyes. Maybe it was just the loss of blood, even a lack of sleep.
I said, “Next stop Odessa. From there it’s an easy boat ride to Constantinople.”
In a pale voice he said, “It’ll take more than Annushka Davidova to get me right... Looks like you need her too.”
“A gash when I left the train, then a chip of flying concrete.”
“That whole business looked terrific from where I was. The way you jumped from one train to the other and left those Reds to go into the river. It was worth a St. Andrew’s. The blue sash— you’d look good in it. I’ll send you a citation—from Heaven. That’s where I’m off to. Not long now.” He groaned terrifically—turned his shoulder to show me his blood-drenched sleeve and the pool of blood on the floor.
But I thought this was all far too positive for a dying man. And I was right. For when I’d re-dressed his arm and let him have a couple of Mrs. D.’s madeleines, he began to perk up. It was then that I discovered the reason for his poor sentiment.
He said, “You see, Charlie, something turned inside me when you gave the train to the monks. I couldn’t say anything: it just wasn’t the moment. But all my stock was in that wagon. The entire picture collection of the Benckendorffs plus some carpets you know nothing of plus other similar items. Are you aware that you gave the monks a Rembrandt? The self-portrait of him and his dog Betsy? It was Benckendorff’s, filthy but unmistakable. Now God has it. I can’t bear the thought of God owning my Rembrandt. He’ll never spot it, He hasn’t got half the eye that I have.”
“It’s not God but the Reds who’ll have your Rembrandt.”
“You’re making it worse.”
“What’s the answer then, Alexander Alexandrovich?”
“Get Glebov. Make a start on the bastards.”
“Poshli— let’s go.”
Somewhere just off the dockyard a church clock struck six. It was the time I’d given Glebov.
I had Boltikov drive me and Kobi over the causeway to Kazan proper. About a couple of hundred yards from the Lobachevsky square he let us off. I told him to wait and keep off the bottle.
I never doubted that Glebov’d turn up. Historical inevitability would be impossible to resist. Also, he’d come out of inquisitiveness. He’d come because the Bolsheviks were winning. And he’d come to renew an old enmity.
He wouldn’t want to walk up the hill as I was doing. He was too fat, too short in the leg. And he was a vain man, wouldn’t dream of arriving panting at a rendezvous.
No, he’d walk out alone from the Uspensky Cathedral. His men would keep to the shadows, pretending not to exist—the threat of the firing squad having been stated for anyone who emitted the smallest human sound apart from breathing. He’d go to any lengths not to scare me away. He’d want me to believe so sincerely in this piece of theatre, which would be that of two adversaries staging a philosophical tourney beneath the statue of the man who achieved fame from his discourses on Euclid’s Fifth Postulate, that I’d come trotting out doux comme un petit agneau and so deliver myself up to death.
He might bring a photographer along. The tripod on its silent rubber ferrules—the black drape—then the
bulb snatched at instead of being squeezed, someone being too excited by this moment, which was unrepeatable, which was of the very highest drama available to mankind: my execution.
Fifty-eight
THE DARKNESS had changed to a broken grey. A long pink strip of tomorrow was stretched across the horizon like a measuring tape.
“Remember, he has a moustache now,” muttered Kobi.
We’d taken over a tea house on the square. Once it must have belonged to a wealthy merchant for there were cornices in the rooms, plaster cartouches of flowers, trumpets and Cupids above the windows, and outside balconies with ironwork as intricate as lace. Now it lay deserted, its windows blown out, shit on the floor, the walls pitted with bullet holes. Only the cake stands and the chandeliers had proved sacred.
We were on the first floor. Kobi was going to put up a flare for me: I didn’t want to be blinded by it so I’d taken up a position on the opposite side of the room. We were half in and half out, the muzzles of our rifles resting on the lowest curlicues of the balcony.
The stock of the Mannlicher .256 was cool against my cheek. I looked through the telescope. Soon it’d be light enough to do without a flare.
One shot. Then run like hell. One shot—my best.
The bust of Lobachevsky, head and shoulders, was directly in front of me on a tall black drum of granite. To its left one of the cobbles stood out through having been painted white. A mark for the bandmaster at parades?
I caught it in the cross hairs. So what type of moustache would I see down the scope? Would I actually notice? I’d be going for a body shot. With one of the new expanding bullets I’d wreck him, would utterly destroy the rapist.
Below the statue a circular metal table had been placed. A chair was tipped against it to keep the seat dry. Was it for him or me?
Cold Blood Page 27