Cold Blood

by James Fleming

  Glebov said, “Thanks for leaving Jones and the woman so available. I suspected a booby trap. Nothing so interesting. Jones tried to run away. Mr. One-Step Jones the baboons call him. They’re quick off the mark. I had them stick him in the chair to make your nerves rattle. I said, ‘And get the American smile back on his face so he looks 100 per cent realistic.’ It was difficult. They had to put wooden wedges between his jaws. And you fell for it!”

  He got up and tried a quick cowboy draw, only the bearskin cloak snagged his arm. “Pow! Pow! A good bit of fun so early in the morning, eh, Charlie?”

  That was new, the Charlie bit.

  “Comrade?” I said.

  He rewrapped the towel round his waist, ran his fingers through his hair, became businesslike. “We’ll be quick about it. You must understand that Bolshevism is no different from politics anywhere. Theory is one thing. Reality belongs to another continent. And what’s real is this: there are 5,391 railway miles between Moscow and Vladivostok and our population is 155 millions. What do those two facts tell you? That we’re not some stupid little country like Britain, that’s what they say. We’re big. In fact we’re the biggest in the world. And what does that mean? It means power. Big always means power.”

  “What are the views of Vladimir Ilyich and Comrade Trotsky?”

  He seized the point of my chin, thumb just below my lip, and shook my face. “Who’s conducting this conversation?”

  “You, comrade.”

  “Good. Horses that believe it’s they who are in the saddle get shot. There’s another lesson in power for you.”

  “Yes, comrade.”

  “Sufficient power for the three of us is either in existence now or can be created. Our appetites are as normal as those of any other victor. The three of us will share our power and exercise it benevolently. We are no monsters, Charlie—good Comrade Charlie. Our achievement in Russia is without precedent. We have called into being a marvellous new world. Truly. Come back in a century and tears will spring to your eyes to see the way a just, contented society works.”

  I groaned, making him smile pouchily. “You know what? I agree with you! In a century! When we’re dead! What use is that? It’s now that counts. You’re the same as me. Now or never, that’s what men like us say every morning upon awakening. So you see... you and I... well, I’m not the man to turn away the chance of a lifetime. But you don’t have my knack. You’re not going to get any power unless it’s handed to you. This is where you and I can benefit from each other... you and I, Charlie... don’t you also get the feeling that we have a shared destiny?”

  He rose, went to the altar and fondled Xenia’s breasts, without intention, idly playing with them.

  She closed her eyes.

  He said, “To have supreme power over other people can be a terrible thing. One’s every dream is attended to. Want a woman: snap fingers. A boy: snap fingers. When a man no longer needs to try, his life becomes pointless, that’s what a philosopher will tell you. But should I therefore turn my back on power?” He laughed, a little bark of a thing. “Of course not! I want to have my way. I want to be on top.”

  “Yes,” I murmured.

  “The power exists. Am I to turn myself into a charity and hand it over to someone else? Well, I’m not mad, that answers that one. But to stay powerful I must keep in sight the man who most wants to kill me. There! That’s why I want you to work for me. No reason can be as good as that one.”

  I stood up. Things were coming to a head.

  “Those monks and that nice train you gave them—they did their best with the driving levers but God had no suitable advice for them. The mess they made of it, Charlie! Then they tried to run away—all in their robes—you can imagine how that excited Trotsky’s men. Immediately after that the gold train, which because of you had no driver, ran up its backside. Yes, a big smash and just at the wrong time. Unfortunately, the Czechs had more men in the area than we did. And so...”

  He sighed, his voice going soft. “You can guess what I want. Only you have the braveness and stupidity to lead such a mission. You can have as many of my men as you want. But you have to act quickly while there’s still liquidity in the situation.”

  “You’ll never get it out of the country. Even if you do, what’d you do with it?”

  He bent over Xenia, squeezed her lips into a bunch and kissed them. Smoothing back her hair and looking into her eyes, he said softly, “The young man wants to know what I can do with money. Darlingka, what an extraordinary question. He just hasn’t been listening to me.”

  “Well?”

  “Who said anything about getting it out of the country? You get the gold for me and I’ll give you ten tons of it right now.”

  “Nothing doing.”

  “Fifteen. It has the highest purity in the world, you know.”

  “Nope.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Let’s start again. Sixteen tons plus the rank of General plus a job as my Chief of Staff.”

  I frowned to disguise my elation.

  “Plus the girl,” he added quickly.

  I was sure now that he’d heard nothing about Shmuleyvich and Mrs. D. having cut loose the barge. He’d have made some reference to it. It’d have come into the bargaining somewhere, along with their lives.

  “The girl?”

  “Lili. Nadya’s daughter. My captive.”

  “What’s wrong with her? Blind? Lame? Harelip?”

  “Guards! Bring the girl in... Now, General Doig, you’ll learn the advantage of working for Commissar Glebov. Do as I say and promotion comes fast. General! It suits you, Charlie.”

  The door opened.

  Sixty-three

  WHAT CAN I say? What is believable from a man racked by sleeplessness, hunger and revenge? But it was no vision. I lightly pinched the flesh of her bare arm—above her elbow, avoiding a gentle blue nerve—and released it. The white print made by my fingers filled out and turned pink. It was real—it was Lili.

  She smiled at me without any coyness. The thugs who’d formed her escort, the abbot’s chantry, her gussied-up mother, Glebov in his bearskin cloak, it must have been an extraordinary scene for her. Maybe she was used to such circuses wherever she’d grown up.

  Maybe also there’d been no mirror in that house and she was unconscious of her beauty. She held herself so well—demure, friendly, unspoiled.

  I’ll call her fifteen, though I know Russian girls develop young. I glanced over at Xenia to take a cross-bearing on their respective ages. She’d swung her legs off the altar leaving the cloth all runkled. She was clutching at it convulsively, watching Lili and me intently. When her daughter came in, she’d gasped and her eyes had become radiant—then she’d clapped a hand over her mouth, as if to subdue or even eradicate her joy.

  So if Lili was fifteen, Xenia had to be—but what did it matter? She’d been spying on me, working for my enemy for a whole year. She was out of my life.

  She wanted to say something. I cut her off. “Keep ’em bouncing. You’ll always find a man.”

  Tears formed in her eyes, for God, for the girl, out of shame for what she’d done to me—I didn’t care. I waved at the pot of caviar. “Don’t get it on your dress. Caviar stains—irreversibly, like you’ve stained me.”

  Then Glebov was pushing Lili at me and saying, “But the daughter is an improvement, General. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to what her teachers have told Nadya. Go on, woman, tell the General.”

  When she refused to speak, he said, “I’ll tell you what they say—that Lili’s quite exceptionally intelligent as well as obedient and dutiful. Good mixture in a woman, eh!” He gave Lili another little shove. “Don’t be afraid of him. He’s only Charlie Doig.”

  Her face—broad, very Russian, with the same creamy skin of her mother. Hair—light brown, a little darker than tea-and-milk, sweeping back from her forehead in thick waves. Strong hair too, well rooted in her scalp and getting good nourishment from it so that the fibres were thick and glossy.<
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  Hands—unworked. The nails cut very short, like her mother’s.

  White blouse buttoned on the side, like a military tunic, with a narrow pleat masking the buttons. Full high breasts, lovely for cupping. Taut waist—a neat figure in her long dark broad-cloth skirt: about normal when she’d finished growing, perhaps even on the tall side.

  We stood facing each other. Her palm lingered in mine. I remember that very well.

  Such eyes! The blueness of wild flowers, horizon blue! All the gaudy colours of sainthood around us were in an instant obliterated. Gone! Just Lili’s huge young eyes left. They were bigger even than Xenia’s, had slopes on which the light glistened. And that blue—no sharpness anywhere, only the soft strokes of our northern latitudes.

  I was mesmerised.

  From a distance Glebov said, “A very great improvement on the mother, wouldn’t you say?”

  I wanted to ask Lili how much of Alexander Pushkin’s poetry she had by heart. Of course she was intelligent, one didn’t need a teacher’s report to realise that. One could see it in her whole attitude, in the way she was standing, in the firmness of her handshake.

  I became conscious that Xenia was making warlike noises in her throat, like a wild animal that sees its offspring threatened. I found she was glaring at me. I thought: mother and daughter, is there a law against it?

  Lili took her hand from mine. “Good morning, General,” she said. Her voice was as light and strong as her hair. When it deepened, it would resonate through a man’s life, maybe even through history. It was a voice that’d be able to halt runaway horses or kill flies.

  Without a tremor—I didn’t attempt to reason with myself: the necessity of acting as I did overwhelmed me—I said to Glebov. “Comrade Commissar, I decline all your offers of employment and I decline the rank of General.”

  He looked me over. “Twenty tons, then.”

  “Save your breath.”

  “A fixed annual sum? You must give me an idea. I want you. I want to hug you close to me. To the bosom—right in there, next to the skin.” He threw back his cloak and showed me his chest and lardy breasts.

  “Nope.”

  This revolting man spread out his arms. “Charlie, Charlie, be sensible. Does destiny mean nothing to you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Two women then? A different woman each week? A Negress?”

  “Nope.”

  “Listen: last time we met you spared my life. Had you carried out your threat I would have killed myself, right there, in the forest. Without eyelids—no surgeon could have given me new ones. Without them—nichevo! I’d have preferred to stare at nothing—in fact, I’d have preferred death. I was trying to repay you by making you up to General. And a job on my staff, just when I’m at the peak of my career. Had you accepted, you’d have been assured of a long and fruitful life—”

  “As your servant, let’s get that clear.”

  “But now... Well, I’ll show you the sort of master you’re turning down. I’ll show you what generosity is—I’ll still do you a favour. Today your life is spared, and tomorrow and every day until I’m established in power. Then I shall come after you and I shall kill you. Why? Because I cannot afford to leave you alive forever. There, let that be the treaty between us.”

  He reached up and grasped my lapels. “You’re too bold to be dead. You impose yourself so well on situations... Just you and I and the gold—we could pick up dead men’s papers anywhere. Then disappear as Jones pretended he was going to do. We’ll—how would he have put it?—we’ll vamoose! We’ll be the richest vamooseniks in the world. Your king— nichevo. That fat French crocodile—nichevo. Mr. Banker Morgan— nichevo. But me and you—millioners.”

  “No.”

  “For the last time?”

  “No.”

  “Then I shall kill you. When I feel like it. In a week, in a year, how should I know, I’m Russian. You have a chance to run away. I’ve said you can. I’m a man of my word. But you’re a thousand miles from safety in every direction. I shall find you however well you hide. Then our acquaintance will end.”

  There were four of us in that chapel—Xenia and Lili were standing arm in arm, watching. But suddenly, as we deliberated on those words, “Then our acquaintance will end,” it seemed as if a fifth person had entered the room and was occupying its very centre. I turned my head towards it, as did Glebov, as did both the women. No one spoke.

  At length Glebov said with a sigh, in a soft, unlikely voice: “Es wird vollbracht— it will end.”

  We still didn’t move. That figure, that presence, remained in the centre of the chantry—in the shape of a pillar, that was how I conceived of it.

  Was it Elizaveta signing off, was that the fifth person in the room?

  I smiled. She’d helped me down the steps at Smolny when Lenin, Trotsky and Glebov were only yards away. Now she’d come to my help again. I bowed to her, bowed properly.

  Glebov said harshly, “No need to do that. Just get out before I change my mind. Take the daughter. Enjoy her. Enjoy what time you have left.”

  Sixty-four

  LILI TOOK a pace towards me, looked back at her mother. Huge tears were starting in Xenia’s eyes. They were the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her cheeks began to pucker. Of a sudden she seemed to be six inches shorter. Weights were dragging her down, the weight of her past.

  She said to Lili, “Go with him. Bear his children. The future needs rescuing. All of Russia’s women must start preparing for that day.”

  They embraced. Forlornly, they clung sobbing to each other.

  Xenia broke away, her face aflood. “Charlinka, it was to preserve Lili that I sinned. I have lied to you. I have sold you so that my daughter may live. Forgive me. Now I give you Lili. It is my atonement. A daughter—no mother could give more.”

  I said, “Go in peace with yourself.” It was goodbye.

  I grabbed Lili by the hand and made for the door. I hoped Glebov had primed his thugs. I didn’t want for us to be riddled by those big Browning bullets.

  Behind us there was a scuffle. Turning I saw Xenia break loose from Glebov. Her face was on fire, her pink satin dress stained black with her tears. She was desperate, mad with grief. She ran past me like a wild animal, went straight through the room, past the guards and out of the far door.

  Lili ran after her but I caught her halfway across the anteroom. She tried to pull away from me, a big strong wriggling girl. I said to her, “You’ll meet her again. Just let her be by herself right now. She’s seen God.”

  “Ten minutes’ prayer’ll cure all that, not a serious condition,” said Glebov coming up behind us. “Here, animals from Latvia, leave us alone for five minutes. I want to have some private talk with General Doig. Go find yourself a bottle... Lili, block your ears. What I have to say is not for a maiden.”

  We were standing besides Jones’s body, where he’d been flung to the floor. I leaned back against the desk, hands behind me groping for my Luger.

  Glebov said, “Take it, Charlie. That shows how straight-forward I am. Anyway, I’ve got the bullets,” he chuckled, tossing one up and catching it. “But a nice weapon. Lovely balance. Handsome, too. The Germans are good engineers.”

  Lili had paused with her hand on the doorknob. Glebov said to her, “Make up your mind then. In or out, which is it?”

  She said calmly, “I’ll wait for General Doig.”

  He said to me, “You’ll be far better off with a woman you can train from the very start. Speaking of which, or rather speaking of Nadya, or Xenia as you call her, do you realise that she’s the second woman we’ve shared? Our destinies lie together and there’s the proof for you. You should think again about my offer, General. I’m not going to repeat it.”

  “You bastard murdering dwarf,” I said and as quick as a falling axe I grabbed the roses from the vase. I didn’t feel a thing. Those stems could have been blades of grass for all I knew.

  I wrenched his towel off. I caught him by his slick hai
r, pulled his head right back. His pale blue eyes staring up at me began to register a complaint—“Remember Elizaveta,” I snarled, then I snapped his head forward and with my right hand I harrowed him, yes, that’s right, I dragged those lacerating roses and every single one of their bayonet thorns through his crutch and round his testicles and his vile rapist’s cock. I scrunched them into his flesh, I wiped them up his cleft and round his jingle-bag, ripping and gouging until he screamed like a boar having its throat cut. I must have come close to circumcising him.

  Lili cried out. Looking up I saw her cover her face with her hands. “Run, Lili, run like hell,” I shouted at her—and shoved Glebov’s head down again.

  I was panting. Between my breaths I was conscious of hearing my own voice, not shouting but hissing at him, “Elizaveta, Elizaveta,” as I raggled those roses again through his balls. Looking down I saw his blood pouring, streaming down the inside of his thighs. Jamming his head even further down, I scraped the roses up his belly and round his face and stuffed them into his screaming mouth.

  I could hear the Latvians pounding up the stairs. “For Elizaveta. On account.” Then I grabbed my Luger off the desk, wrenched open the door and ran after the girl.

  But she was still there, bent over, doing something with her underwear. “For Christ’s sake, get going,” I screamed at her.

  She stumbled—then her drawers came free, were tossed away, and she had her hampering broadcloth skirt pulled right up, like a tyre round her waist, and was running in front of me. God, did she have movement in those buttocks. She could run all right, no girly nonsense about tripping along.

  Down the stone staircase we went, bouncing off the walls, maybe not the only way out but the only way I knew, over the bowed threshold and across the courtyard to the gatehouse. Once guns have started firing all you can do is to run and hope. When they haven’t, you run far faster, trying to outpace the bullets that you know’ll be coming soon, or even to outdistance them. Did we run, oh how we ran through the early light of that September day, and she barefoot.