The Frozen Circle

by Peter Watt

  Without hesitation, Joshua stood over the semi-conscious man groaning in pain and brought the rifle butt down between his eyes. His forehead smashed open with a sickening crunch of bone and a sharp hiss escaped the felled man’s throat while his eyes closed.

  Panting from the adrenalin rush, Joshua stepped back to scan the surrounding forest. The forest appeared silent and serene in the early morning shadows so he recovered his revolver, quickly reloading before going to Maria whose eyes were opening as if from a deep sleep. Shoving the dead Russian aside, he kneeled and cradled her head in his lap. A trickle of blood ran from her lip, split from the punch to her face.

  ‘Are you badly hurt?’ Joshua asked gently.

  Maria shook her head weakly, sitting up and pushing her dress down over her thighs. Gazing around, she could see the carnage in the small clearing. When her eyes came to rest on the woodcutter she let out a small cry of distress. Joshua helped her to her feet and immediately she went to kneel beside the dead man’s body.

  ‘Oh, Ivan,’ she said softly, stroking his face tenderly. ‘I have cost you your life.’

  Joshua stood behind her, still alert to any other threat emerging from the forest. ‘I think we will not have time to mourn,’ he said, his hand resting on her shoulder. ‘I suspect that if we have four of the Bolshies here there must be more not far away.’

  Maria stood up stiffly and stared at the bodies sprawled in the mud of the clearing. ‘I don’t think these men were Bolshevik militia,’ she said. ‘I think they may have been deserters from either the Bolsheviks or the White Army. I remember when they caught me one of them said something like, this is better than taking orders from the officers.’

  Joshua tended to agree with her, given their very slovenly appearance. Deserters flowed across the countryside from either side and when they were in transit they acted as bandits raping, looting and murdering helpless non-combatants. If nothing else, the fact that the dead men may have been deserters gave Joshua a glimmer of hope that he would not immediately be facing more disciplined Bolshevik troops carrying out operations in the area. No matter what he considered, one matter stood out – they could not remain any longer in the district. Despite the gravity of his illness, Major Locksley would have to accompany them – or remain to face his fate in the taiga.

  ‘I am sorry for the death of the woodcutter,’ Joshua said sympathetically. ‘But he must have thought his sacrifice worthwhile to do what he did.’

  ‘Too many people have died because of my family,’ Maria retorted angrily, wiping at the tears streaming down her face. ‘I wonder if my life is worth more than theirs.’

  ‘It is to me,’ Joshua answered, reaching down for a rifle and stripping a bandolier of ammunition from a dead Russian. ‘Do you know how to use one of these?’ he asked Maria who also picked up the rifle lying beside her would-be rapist.

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said haughtily, quickly recovering from her introspection.

  ‘That’s good,’ Joshua said with a slight smile as they returned to the cabin to ascertain the British major’s state of health and prepare to leave for the trek to Archangel. ‘We might pass as Bolsheviks if we have to.’

  The horses splashed through the swamp while their riders held on with the expertise of men trained to cavalry. George Littleton had little difficulty keeping his seat as polo had been a game he had played often before his commissioning into the Australian army. He had in fact left a string of polo horses at one of his father’s many properties west of Sydney at Camden. Lieutenant Andrej Novotny spurred his mount forward to join George at the front of the column. ‘Corporal, you ride well,’ he said. ‘You sure you not cavalry?’

  George shifted in his saddle to greet the cheery Czech officer. ‘I failed enlisting in our Light Horse contingent,’ he replied.

  George had been finally accepted by the Czechs as being what he purported to be – an Australian NCO serving in the British army. As such he had befriended the young Czech officer who liked using his rather good English to reminisce about his student days in England before the war. He showed an interest in George’s life in Australia and they realised that they were gentlemen in the old tradition. A trust grew between the two men of different cultures but similar social worlds.

  It had been two days since the attack on them in the forest and George had been given a horse that had belonged to a Czech killed in the short but sharp assault on the flank of the Russians which had succeeded in killing many of the Bolsheviks and routing the rest. The handful of prisoners captured had been executed and George had been made to stand aside as the helpless men were forced to kneel before being shot.

  ‘We cannot take them,’ Andrej had explained calmly as he walked away from ensuring all their prisoners were dead. ‘We are cut off and must travel light.’

  George understood the military rationale; it was no less than what the Bolshevik commanders were doing to their own troops if they did not press and attack with what they considered enough enthusiasm.

  ‘Why were you out here?’ Andrej asked.

  ‘I was with a fellow Australian and a British major on a special mission,’ George confided, knowing that as he did not know what the mission was for he could not be divulging any military secrets. ‘I last saw them when I volunteered to lead off the Bolshies from pursuing us after we did some damage to them at a village some miles from where you found me.’

  ‘What was mission?’ the Czech officer asked bluntly.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ George answered, kicking his horse out of the swamp and onto dry ground covered in long grass. ‘Just to get to some place. After that – I don’t know what we supposed to do.’

  ‘We were supposed to search for someone,’ Andrej said, signalling a halt to his column of men who drove their mounts onto the dry ground, dismounted and checked their equipment.

  George dismounted too and patted the nose of his horse. She was a tough little mare with a long scar Andrej said had been inflicted by a Russian sabre weeks earlier in a skirmish east of their current position.

  ‘Funny,’ George said. ‘I always had the feeling that we were on our mission to find someone.’

  The Czech officer rolled his head and waved his arms to loosen the muscles which had cramped during the difficult crossing of the swamp. ‘We hear story that Russian princess escape from Ekaterinburg when we take the city,’ he said. ‘I put in charge, tasked to find princess. But no good. Just find many Bolsheviks and kill them.’

  George pondered the Czech’s explanation of his mission but dismissed his own as not having anything to do with searching for surviving members of the Czar’s family. After all, why would the British army only send three men on such an important mission? Like the Czechs they would have assigned at least a battalion to sweep an area if this had indeed been their mission. It had to be a coincidence that the Czechs were in the same area for that purpose, he thought, even if the fate of the Russian royal family was still blurred in mystery. The high command of men such as Lenin and Trotsky had not admitted to killing them all, only the Czar.

  After a short break Novotny signalled to his men to mount up and the column moved out. The port of Archangel beckoned and it was the safest way to evacuate from a land quickly being swamped in the red of a socialist revolution. Although George would have liked the Czech officer to assist him in finding his comrades he was powerless to convince him to do so. The Czech’s first priority was to his mission and secondly to his men. Searching for a couple of Allied soldiers was not in his orders.

  Joshua propped the British major up in the bed and spooned him cold soup left over from the night before. Locksley still had a fever but his eyes burned with resolve.

  ‘You up to making it back to Archangel with us, sir?’ he asked.

  Locksley sipped the soup and gripped Joshua by the sleeve. ‘We leave here together, but there is something you must do before we leave,’ he said with fierce determination.

  ‘What is that, sir?’ Joshua asked.


  ‘You are to execute the girl,’ the major whispered. Joshua thought that he had misheard and leaned forward.

  ‘Sorry, sir, but I thought you said execute Maria.’

  Locksley gripped Joshua’s sleeve with all his strength. ‘That’s right, Sergeant Larkin. You are to execute the girl. You are under my orders and my orders come from the highest circles in London. Do you understand?’

  Joshua pushed the major’s arm from his sleeve and stood up. He glanced around to see if Maria was within earshot but she was outside placing a posy of wildflowers on the body of the dead woodcutter.

  ‘Why in hell would we kill an innocent girl?’ Joshua flared, thinking that the British officer might be delirious from his fever. There could be no other explanation as they had risked so much to find her. How could a mere girl be considered of such importance that the British army would assign three valuable men to seek her out just for the single purpose of killing her?

  ‘You have my orders, Sergeant Larkin,’ Locksley reiterated. ‘It is not your position to question them.’

  Joshua shook his head, glaring at the British officer. ‘You would have to have a bloody good reason for me to shoot Maria,’ he said. ‘Your orders alone are not legal – under military law as you well know.’

  Locksley fell back on the bed and stared up at the dark ceiling. ‘I would have done it myself if I could,’ he said. ‘You do not realise just how dangerous it would be for British interests if the girl was able to reach England. It is not my decision but sanctioned at levels beyond simple soldiers. Just carry out my orders and we can return to England and report the mission was accomplished. After all, it appears it has already cost Corporal Littleton his life. Don’t make your friend’s sacrifice be in vain.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Joshua said. ‘I refuse to obey an order I consider to be unlawful. You have not justified why the girl should be executed.’

  ‘If you won’t do it, then I order you to hand over your service revolver, Sergeant Larkin. That is a direct command.’

  Joshua hesitated. He might be able to disobey the order to kill Maria but he could not refuse to hand over his revolver to a superior officer. Joshua reached in his coat and withdrew the pistol. Locksley stretched out his hand for it and the pistol slipped into the major’s grip.

  ‘I am not going to shoot you, Sergeant Larkin,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But you will have to answer to a court martial for your actions here. I appreciate that you saved my life back in that village but you and I have a duty to the Crown.’

  Joshua shook his head in disgust just as Maria entered the cabin unaware of the tense situation between the officer and NCO. Locksley raised the pistol. It all happened in a split second.

  SEVENTEEN

  Valley View

  Present day

  Miss Dawson,

  Is a warning life in danger. I am friend who will make contact with you. This is not jest. Remember this when I contact you. Is about your trip to London.

  A friend.

  Morgan re-read the note, wondering about its meaning. His experience with the SAS Regiment had put him into contact with former Warsaw Pact soldiers now selling their secrets to the wealthier capitalist West. Joshua Larkin had a good ear for nuances in language and this message too had an Eastern bloc accent to it. From what he had read of Larkin’s diary it was almost as if history was repeating itself. An eerie feeling that ghosts really existed crept into his mind, causing him to glance around at the shadows in his office. But he was alone and only the distant sound of the dance in the local hall pervaded the room. Who wrote the note and why? Morgan’s suspicion was that Monique must be a direct descendant of the highly decorated former Australian army captain and his wife Maria who, according to Larkin and the translated papers, was the Princess Maria of the Russian royal family – the only survivor of the slaughter which made Monique a claimant to any estates or the throne. But, as Russia was now a federation and no longer a dynasty, any claim would be moot.

  Morgan stood up to stretch his tired body. So how could she be considered a threat to anyone? She was English born and Australian raised and as far as he knew, had no links to Russia. After all, there were plenty of examples of members of former European royal families overthrown after the Great War who now lived as private citizens. But there was something else that did bother Morgan’s police instincts. Larkin’s journal outlined an incident in a cabin in the Russian taiga when he had been commanded to kill Maria. But he had never explained who was behind the order other than the British major. Had Locksley been operating on his own? He was after all, a Russian by birth and may in reality have been working for the Reds. Over the years, the British intelligence services seemed to have a dubious record of having highly placed traitors in their ranks.

  Normally any stranger to town would be noticed by the locals, but the folk festival had changed all that. The town was flooded with tourists, not only from Australia but also from overseas.

  Morgan glanced up at the clock on the wall and wondered if Cheryl’s service station would still be open. He was in luck. Cheryl was in the process of closing down when Morgan pulled up. One of her assistants was a boy that Morgan had recruited for an Army Reserve unit and he greeted Morgan warmly as he wrestled with a rack of oils he was trying to get inside the shop.

  ‘Young Matt,’ Morgan said. ‘How is the army going?’

  ‘The unit is going on a two-week exercise to Hawaii in January, Mr McLean,’ Matthew answered enthusiastically.

  Morgan smiled. The boy had rarely gone any further than the main town down the road from Valley View and now he was about to travel overseas with his unit and see a bit of the world.

  ‘I need a bit of help,’ Morgan said conspiratorially, catching the young man’s attention. ‘I am looking for someone who speaks a bit like this: “Is good, da.”’

  When Matthew blinked Morgan realised that he must have sounded silly. ‘I am looking for a man who speaks with what we call a Russian or Eastern European accent. They sound a bit like that.’

  Matthew’s face broke into a broad smile. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘There is this wrestler on cable TV who is the Red Terror and he talks like that.’

  Thank God for TV, Morgan sighed to himself. At least it taught Matthew what a Eastern European accent sounded like. ‘Have you had anyone in the shop who sounded like that?’

  Matthew frowned. ‘I have only been on since three this arvo,’ he answered. ‘But Cheryl has been on all day. She might have.’

  ‘Well, if you do come across anyone with an accent – male or female – give me a call. Better still, if they are driving a car take note of the numberplate. I will have a talk to Cheryl.’

  ‘Will do, Mr McLean,’ Matthew said, wiping his hands on his trousers.

  Morgan had a similar conversation with Cheryl and knew that the next day he would be repeating it in places all over town. At least he was now creating his own counterintelligence organisation, recruiting members of Valley View’s population.

  When Morgan returned to his station he met with the two police constables sent out from Hume City to assist with crowd control at the festival. Morgan did not mention his search for the Eastern European speaker as he hoped for Monique’s sake to keep the matter at a local level. The last thing she needed was publicity if news got out about the mysterious note.

  It was after midnight when Morgan decided that the town was settled enough for him to complete the car log and then head home. He had hardly dragged the blankets over him when the phone rang on the bedside table.

  ‘Senior Constable McLean speaking,’

  ‘Morgan, are you out of bed?’

  Morgan recognised the female voice at the other end as that of a radio control operative from Hume City police station. ‘Just got in,’ he answered. ‘What have I got?’

  ‘We have just been notified by the ambulance that you have a fatal about five clicks south of Valley View. A single vehicle accident and one dead occupant. The v
ehicle is registered to one of your locals – a Miss Monique Dawson.’

  Morgan sat up as if he had been shot.

  ‘I am on the way,’ he said, dropping the cordless phone back into its cradle.

  Monique dead! He gasped, overcome with guilt. Maybe he should have alerted Ken to the note and sought help. In seconds he was dressed and racing to the garage for his vehicle.

  Petrov Batkin flipped the glowing cigarette butt onto the ground and with the heel of his shoe, ground it out. People were coming and going around him at the entrance of the hall where the dance was grinding down to the last brackets. The air was chilly and the night sky ablaze with the stars of the southern hemisphere. The man that he had been shadowing was still inside as far as he knew and he would wait for him to exit before determining where he was staying.

  The email Batkin had received had come with an attachment displaying the man’s photo and a resumé. Russian hackers had been able to show the world that no one is safe in cyberspace. Links to Batkin’s neo-Nazi group had been able to tap into MI6 for a short time when the firewalls had been compromised by a highly skilled Russian hacker and what they had learned confirmed their suspicions of British intentions in Australia.

  Batkin had emailed back in a coded message, seeking permission to terminate the man he was following, but permission had been denied. The mission must be kept as low profile as possible and the death of a British agent on Australian soil would cause too many questions to be raised. Even what appeared to be an accident might open a door to things better concealed almost a century after the events in Russia.