The Iron Angel

by Edward D. Hoch

  Still, the old Gypsy ways died hard, and one of Segar’s special treats on a spring afternoon was watching Michael and the others as they trained the horses. The races run in the old pasture near Michael’s house were as exciting as those he’d seen in Bucharest, and even in Moscow. It was after an especially exciting race won by Michael’s horse Rom Way, that Segar first mentioned his brother.

  “That horse should be racing for high stakes, Michael. He’s every bit as good as some those old plow horses that run at the Moscow Hippodrome.”

  Michael merely smiled, as he often did at Captain Segar’s pronouncements. “What do you know of racing in Moscow, Captain?”

  Segar, who’d spent half his forty years as a member of the government police, did not like to be thought of as a provincial man. “I have visited my brother there,” he answered stiffly. “Konrad is in the Agriculture Ministry in Moscow, and they run the Hippodrome. I’ve spent many days there on my vacations.”

  “I apologize. You may speak with authority.”

  “I say this much with authority, Michael. Rom Way could beat most of the horses in Moscow. Who is that young man who rides him?”

  Michael called to Tanti Slatina, the young Gypsy farmhand who served as his jockey. Tanti was short and lightweight, perfect for riding in races, and he had an irrepressible enthusiasm that made him willing to try anything. “Did I ride well?” he asked Michael, leading the big chestnut horse over to Vlado and Segar.

  “Very well, Tanti. You know Captain Segar, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” They shook hands and Segar studied the young man, barely out of his teens.

  “You like to ride, don’t you?”

  “Of course! I would rather do it than anything!”

  “He rode Rom Way at the district fair last summer when the horse was only two,” Michael said. “This year he’ll do much better.”

  But Captain Segar shook his head. “Rom Way and this young man are both wasted at district fairs. My brother from Moscow is visiting me next week, Michael. Let me bring him up here to see them run.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Perhaps he can advise you about the horse. This could be a money maker for us all.”

  The Gypsy smiled. “What sort of talk is that, coming from a socialist captain of police?”

  Segar waved away the words with his hand. He always resisted any talk of politics. Like many Romanian officials his attitude toward Moscow was ambivalent. The country had not endorsed the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and had taken part in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics boycotted by Russia but the two nations remained friendly. “Will you talk to my brother or not?”

  “Very well,” Michael agreed. “Bring him along. We’ll give him some good Gypsy food.”

  Michael Vlado was not the King of Gypsies in Gravita but the old man who held that title had long ago passed on all real authority to Michael. It was he who presided over the informal village court to settle disputes according to Gypsy law and he who took on the role of father and protector to his people in times of trouble. On the day Captain Segar arrived at Michael’s small farmhouse with his brother Konrad, the Gypsy was mediating a land dispute between two families. Michael’s wife Rosanna, a quiet woman skilled in the carving of wooden animals, spoke pleasantly with them until husband’s return, showing off some of her latest work.

  “This horse is lovely,” Konrad said, passing the carving to his brother. “Don’t you think so, Nicol?”

  “It is indeed,” replied Segar who rarely used his given name. Having Konrad back for a visit reminded him of more than his name. It reminded him of the family dispute twenty years earlier when Romania had disagreed with some Russian economic policies and Konrad, five years older than Nicol, had left home to work for the Soviets in Moscow. His rise in the Agriculture Ministry had been slow but steady though he was the first to admit he’d never pictured himself as one of those operating the Moscow racetrack.

  With Michael’s belated arrival, the tempo of the conversation picked up. He took them out to the stable to see Rom Way at once and within an hour Tanti Slatina had saddled the chestnut for a romp around the oval track

  “A bit makeshift,” Michael admitted to his visitor from Moscow, “but we make do with it.”

  Konrad Segar did nothing to conceal his interest. He was a big man, who clearly had led a better life than his brother. He asked about betting and about how Rom Way performed against other horses. When Michael staged an actual race, using the horse of a neighbor as competition, Konrad seemed genuinely impressed by the time of the big chestnut. “He is a Gypsy horse.”

  “That he is,” Michael agreed.

  “He should race at the Hippodrome,” Segar’s brother decided. “You bring him there.”

  The Gypsy laughed. “Moscow is nine hundred miles away.”

  “Since when was a Gypsy afraid to travel? You could drive that in one day.”

  “Not pulling a horse trailer.”

  “Two days then. I will furnish all the necessary papers to get you across the border.”

  “Rom Way has never run at an official track. He has never run in Russia at all.”

  “Our racing statistics are very poor,” Konrad Segar admitted. “The program lists the past five finishes and times, but not when or where the horse raced. Often even these meager statistics are omitted.”

  Young Tanti Slatina had caught the man’s enthusiasm. “Can we go?” he asked Michael. “Can I race in Moscow?”

  The Gypsy leader turned to Captain Segar, “What do you think?”

  “If you race in Moscow. I will come to see it myself.”

  Michael promised to think about it over dinner. Later Segar saw him consulting briefly with his wife and then he told Segar he was going out to speak with the parents of his young jockey. When he came back he was smiling. “All right,” he decided. “We are going to Moscow.”

  Racing at the Hippodrome was only three times a week – on Sunday afternoon and Wednesday and Friday evenings – and involved a complex mixture of trotting and conventional races run on an outer and inner track. Captain Segar felt he knew the operations of the track by heart from the time he’d spent there and from having heard his brother talk so much about it. He’d taken leave during the period in June when Michael and Tanti and Rom Way would be making the trip, planning to drive along with them, saying there was plenty of room in the car they were taking.

  Rosanna Vlado came out to see them off having packed lunches for them to eat en route. She did not seem overjoyed at her husband’s absence from home but apparently had made no effort to stop him. He had made his decision, and in a Gypsy household there was nothing more to be said. A horse trailer was hooked up to the back of the car and Rom Way was coaxed inside. The big chestnut seemed tense with anticipation, as if aware that big things were expected of him.

  “Are there gypsies in Russia?” Tanti asked as they reached the main highway and turned north toward the border.

  “A great many of them,” Michael Vlado assured him, “Though not as many as there were years ago. The Rom have always been well treated in Russia even under the Czars.”

  “What must I do to be a jockey in Russia?”

  “The rules for racing at the Hippodrome are quite loose,” Segar assured him. “Generally horses come from the state training facilities in the country or are trained in Moscow. Jockeys and horse trainers each receive a fixed salary of four thousand rubles a year plus about thirty percent of the horse’s winnings. Winnings are not large – a few hundred dollars at best – nor are the bets. The average jockey might race from May to August and then work in a factory the rest of the year.”

  “But Rom Way is not from a horse training farm,” Tanti said, perhaps fearful he would not be allowed to race at the Hippodrome after all, “and I am not even a Russian citizen.”

  “My brother has taken care of all that,” Segar assured them.

  Behind the wheel of the car, Michael Vlado smiled. “Perhaps he ex
pects to make a big killing on Rom Way.”

  “It could hardly be that. The maximum bet at any one window is ten rubles. A winning horse might return less than one ruble. Of course, bettors hurry from window to window to get down as many wagers as possible, but with as many as seventeen races on the card there is very little time between them. Often the horses are already loosening up on one track before the previous race has finished on the other track. There is no time to collect one’s winnings before the next race goes off, so bettors often operate in teams with one betting while the other collects.”

  They crossed the border into Russia and continued north, bearing to the east. At first, the countryside appeared much the same as it had in Romania, but as they traveled farther north they entered a more industrialized region and came upon a modern divided highway.

  After a night’s sleep along the road in the car, Michael tended to the horse and they ate a meager breakfast. Then they were on the road again taking the divided highway that would lead them directly into Moscow. As they approached urban areas, Tanti was surprised to see women with brooms along the highway, sweeping the grass free of litter and leaves.

  Once in the city itself they drove directly to Konrad’s apartment in a high-rise building of recent construction. As a government official his quarters were better than most and more spacious than the apartment Segar had seen on his last visit. As they entered a man was leaving – a small man who pushed past them without apology and hurried to the elevator.

  “Don’t mind him,” Konrad said lightly, greeting them with handshakes all around. “His name is Vladimir Kosok. He’s one of the trainers from the Hippodrome. With them there is always trouble of one kind or another. Come – sit down. What do you think of Moscow so far?”

  “The streets are so wide,” Tanti Slatina answered. “And so many buildings! I’m not used to the crowds.”

  “You had better get used to them if you are to ride at the Hippodrome. There you will see crowds, believe me.”

  He took them to dinner that evening at the nearby restaurant, and then showed them the one room apartment he had arranged for them in the same building as his own. Michael and young Tanti were to share it, while Segar stayed with his brother. Konrad had arranged for everything, including someone to stable Rom Way until he could be properly entered at the Hippodrome in the morning. Segar was pleased and he could see that his Gypsy friends were enjoying their first sights of Moscow.

  The Hippodrome was a massive monument to a Russia long past – a century and a half old and still showing a sort of squalid grandeur. It was located in Begovaya Street, northwest of the central city and not far from the Moscow zoo. At its entrance, a dozen high Corinthian columns supported statues of rearing horses but inside the grandstand’s marble steps were badly worn and its walls and floors soiled. The infield within the double track was overgrown with early summer weeds. Still, Segar thought, one could marvel at the columns supporting the lavishly decorated grandstand roof that dated back to Czarist times and imagine for an afternoon that one had entered another age.

  By Sunday noon, the place was already filled with some 5000 spectators in preparation for the 1:00 pm start of the first race. They seemed to be working people of all ages – old veterans wearing medals and brash young men in tight western styled jeans. Although no drinks were sold, some of younger ones drank vodka from flasks. It was a good natured crowd.

  Rom Way had been given stable space in the huge area that housed more than five hundred horses. He would work out on Monday and Tuesday in preparation for his first race on Wednesday evening. To Segar it all seemed too casual but he assumed Konrad knew what he was doing.

  “Is this a summer track only?” Michael asked as they waited for the first race down near the rail. “In Romania we hear of the harsh Moscow winters.”

  “No, we have learned to make money in the best capitalist tradition. It goes, after all, to subsidize the Moscow theater and the Bolshoi ballet. In February we hold troika races here, with horses pulling sleighs. And the harness racing continues year round.”

  A fountain in the infield began to gush water and the public address system came alive with martial music. Then a clanging bell signaled the start of the first race.

  Though Segar was hardly a betting man the small amount of the wagers frustrated him. Michael and Tanti managed to bet a couple of winners, but it was pure luck. The racing programs were incomprehensible and the computerized tote board – made in Finland, according to Konrad – indicated which horse had drawn the most bets but did not report the actual odds.

  Konrad appeared with a black caviar sandwiches for everyone – a delicacy sold for less than a ruble each at the track. “We took in twenty million rubles in bets last year,” he said proudly, “and we may top that this year.”

  The long card of races dragged on until 7:30 that evening but long before that they had abandoned the grandstand and were inspecting the stable area with Konrad. Along the way, their party acquired another member – a slender blonde woman name Alexis, who seemed to be on intimate terms with Konrad. Segar had known of his brother’s divorce some time, but he was surprised that this attractive young woman should find Konrad desirable.

  “Have you seen the sights of Moscow yet?” she asked as they strolled in the stable area, carefully avoiding the constant parade of horses to and from that track. “Lenin’s tomb, the Kremlin, the Bolshoi?”

  “We arrived only late yesterday,” Michael told her.

  She was obviously taken with his handsome dark features. “Konrad tells me you are a Gypsy, Michael. Do you travel in a caravan?”

  “No, I live on a little farm in Romania with my wife and children.”

  “His wife tells fortunes,” Captain Segar told them. “She has predicted a fifth child for Helga and me, but it has not come yet.”

  Konrad chuckled and made a ribald comment about his brother. Every-one laughed except young Tanti, who had not understood it. He was more anxious to get back to the horse he would be riding the following morning.

  The Hippodrome stables were under the care of a burly old man named Fritz Leiden, a former German soldier who’d remained in Russia after being freed from a prison camp after the war. He was good at his job and seemed to welcome newcomers he could impress. “You think you can race at the Hippodrome, boy?” he asked Tanti.

  “I hope so sir!”

  “A Gypsy jockey! A rarity, surely, but not the first we’ve had. We’ll see how you do on the track tomorrow and Tuesday morning.”

  “He’s passed his twentieth birthday,” Michael said. “He’s no longer a boy.”

  “We’ll see how he rides,” Leiden said. He walked with a bit of a limp and Segar wondered if it was from an old war wound or a balky horse. “This is the oldest and most important of Russia’s fifty two racetracks. Not just anyone can ride at the Hippodrome. Arabian horses from Turkey were running here when Karl Marx was still a teenager.” For all his pride he might have been a native-born Russian. “I will be at the rail in the morning, watching you, boy.”

  True to his word, Fritz Leiden was out at 7:00 am when Michael saddled up Rom Way and gave Tanti a hand up. There was no opportunity for sleeping in Konrad’s apartment once the alarm had awakened them, so Captain Segar was there too, feeling foolishly informal in casual clothes his brother had provided. “You look like a police captain Nicol,” he’d told him, “even out of uniform. At least wear this shirt and pants so you look more like the rest of us on a day off at the racetrack. You and your Gypsy friends are too colorful.”

  Michael led Rom Way onto the track where a dozen other horses were already working out. He spoke a few words to Tanti and the jockey took the big chestnut around the first time at a canter, letting him grow accustomed to his surroundings. On the next lap, at a sign from Michael, the horse was speeded to a full gallop.

  “Very good!” Konrad said, checking the time with his stopwatch. “He could be a winner against the second-rate horses here.”

>   Michael was looking beyond Konrad, at something in the grandstand. “It seems as if we’re not the only ones timing Rom Way. Isn’t that the man we saw at your apartment?”

  Konrad turned to follow his gaze. “Yes. Vladimir Kosok. I think I’ll see what he’s up to.”

  After another gallop around the track, Tanti pulled up the horse and Michael decided it was enough for the first day. “Walk him around a bit and we’ll give him another run tomorrow.”

  When Konrad returned to the group, Nicol knew his brother well enough to see that he was disturbed. “That Kosok is too interfering for his own good!” Konrad said. “He has some horses running on Wednesday and he’s afraid this Gypsy chestnut will run right over them. He wants us to skip that day and wait until Friday. I told him we would not.”

  “Did that satisfy him?” Segar asked.

  “Oh, he made some threats about reporting me. He seems to think I’m making money on this horse somehow.”

  “Why do you put up with him?” said his brother. “He’s only a trainer.”

  “We were friendly once. And we had some dealings. It was he who introduced me to Alexis and she is still a friend of his.”

  “Do you owe him anything?”

  Konrad thought for a moment and answered, “No, nothing. But in this country one must be careful of his enemies. A word spoken in the wrong place can be dangerous.”

  The conversation bothered Segar. As a police officer, he couldn’t help wondering if his brother was involved in something shady. Suddenly the whole journey to Moscow with the gypsies and their horse seemed a mistake.