* * *
Getting near the time to start, now. Maroussia had gone out to see how the moon was doing. One would know which way to go – more or less – because when they’d finished lunch Nick had drawn a map – of sorts…
Nadia had teased him: turning it upside down, pretending she couldn’t make sense of it. ‘A map of what, is this?’
‘You don’t appreciate great art when you see it. Look here. Here – Bob…’ He’d used the bottom of a cardboard box as his canvas. ‘See here, now. River. Meadows. House. Two protruding wings on the river frontage – the house faces just about due south. Pillars along the carriage entrance here: then this is terrace, with a big half-circle of balustrade: the meadow, and the willows along the river-bank there. This isn’t to an exact scale, of course… Here at the back of the house, now, this extension contains the storerooms which we’re told have been made into cells.’ He’d glanced at Maroussia. ‘How many Czechs have they got in there?’
‘Two. One’s an officer and one’s a sergeant. The officer looks like an orang-utan.’
‘When did you ever see an orang-utan, Maroussia?’
She told Irina, pointing at the Count, ‘Saw a picture – Nikolai Petrovich showed me, in a book he had, pictures of different animals.’
‘What a memory…’ He was smiling at her. ‘But – as a matter of interest – are there any other prisoners besides the Czechs?’
‘Not unless they’re being starved.’
‘Right… Now, Bob, the storerooms are reached through the upper part of the wine-cellar – this corner of the house, with the old kitchens and so on along the back here. But there’s no door from the outside so there’ll be no sentries in our view from here. This is where we are now – this rectangle is the coachhouse, with the stables along here. Between here and that corner – the storerooms – is about ninety metres. Gives you an idea of the distances – I’ll admit this is not to scale… But now the drive – sweeps round the front of the house, comes also to the north-east corner here – tradesmen’s entrance, used to be – and then on its way to the south entrance – where Nadia’s seen soldiers coming or going – it divides here, to pass on both sides of the coachhouse and stables. Behind us here, with beechwoods then all the way between it and the road – that’s where the burrow under the wall used to be. Here, roughly, the road’s along this edge, I haven’t room to show it…’
‘Why not concentrate on how we get to our steamboat?’
‘All right… As I said – coachhouse here. Joined to the stables this side of us – under Maroussia’s flat, right? Used mostly for firewood and stuff, Maroussia?’
‘The first stable here is Don Juan’s – in winter…’
Bob laughed. ‘That the donkey’s name?’
‘With good reason.’ The Count nodded solemnly. ‘In his younger days, before he was castrated…’
Irina protested, ‘Please, Nikki…’
‘Bob, we come out here. Cobbled yard, grass area beyond it, and the other loop of the drive – the two parts link up down here – can’t show it, isn’t room, but about three hundred yards to the west. Birchwoods there. The point is, we have to cross it. So – out of the door, turn right, along the front of the stables to the end, then a quick dash across this open area to the trees. Southward then through that wood, and over the drive about here. Then we’ll have willows for cover, the willows that fringe the lake. Lake’s here, you see.’
‘And the meadow where they pulled poor old Stukalin apart—’
‘Here. Remember it’s not to scale. Meadow’s bounded by – here, the front of the house, the drive circling round… Willows all along the edge of the lake. And here – east and south-east, the river.’
‘Where’s our steamboat got to, in all this artistry?’
‘Here. At the landing-stage. This.’
‘So we’ll get nearly all the way to it in the cover of those willows…’
* * *
Maroussia came back from checking on the light or lack of it; she told them, ‘Moon’s down. It won’t get any darker.’ They got up. Well rested: they’d all slept during the afternoon, in preparation for what might be a very long night. Bob said, ‘Remember about your shoes. Might be doing a lot of walking.’
He hoped they would not have much walking to do. His daydream for this departure was of the lorry pounding southward through the latter part of this night, of locating the skiff in its hiding-place sometime around dawn, lying up in that marsh all day and – weather permitting – pushing off after sunset.
It was a gamble – the weather especially. The odds were long against it ‘permitting’. He wasn’t letting himself think about it. If you did, you’d sit and do nothing. The essential was to get out of here, now.
Nadia had kissed the Count, said with a glance at Bob as she made way for Irina, ‘Good luck, both of you. Be careful.’ Irina was embracing her brother: ‘You’ll be back here soon, I hope.’ Bob meanwhile holding old Maroussia’s hands: ‘I may be back. In case I’m not – well, I can’t thank you enough, and – I wish you would come with us.’
‘Don’t worry about me. Worry about them. Are you ready now?’
In the coachhouse she unfastened the door, pushed it open and stepped out, stood outside it for a minute ostensibly enjoying the cool night air while her small, quick eyes probed the shadows. Bob and the Count waiting inside, behind the door. The girls had stayed down in the Hole.
A whisper: ‘It’s all clear.’
The Count led, Bob following a few yards behind, walking slowly, carefully, along the front of the stables to their right. Pitch black: to start with you were blind.
They stopped at the end of the line of stables. Scents of grass, trees, river. The river’s nearest point from here would be about five or six hundred yards away, but even over that distance you could hear it, the soft but carrying night-time murmur of moving water. And from this angle the side of the house was a high, black cut-out against the eastern sky, with ornate chimney shapes decorating the higher rooftop. The low part, single-storey, to the left – the back of the house – was the extension containing what were now prison cells. All dark there; but there were lights in other windows – big sash windows at two levels, much smaller ones above them, the attic floor which would have been servants’ sleeping quarters.
The Count held Bob’s arm, pointed at a black density of woods about two hundred yards south-west. ‘That way now.’
Taking it slowly, as they’d agreed, treating the darkness like water in a pool across which one had to swim with as little disturbance of its surface as might be possible. Following the Count’s quietly moving figure – knowing that if there were sentries for instance in the edge of those woods they’d be watching you come and you wouldn’t have even a glimpse of them until it was too late.
Off the cobbles now: in ankle-deep grass or weed. He could see the curve of the drive over to his left, where it came after circling the front of the house and led away around the far side of the spinney which they were approaching now. That was where they’d be crossing it, beyond that birchwood spinney. But at this point the drive ran along the edge of the meadow where Grigor Stukalin had had his grisly come-uppance.
One could imagine that scream: hear it in imagination – howl of agony splitting the quiet night…
Christ!
He’d stopped: baffled as to which had come first, the thought or the sound, but realizing in the next second as the breath unlocked in his throat, Owl, not howl… The Count had stopped too, glancing back – no doubt with a grin on his face… Starting off again now but changing direction slightly, aiming for the left-hand edge of the wood as if to skirt around it. It would be a strange experience for him, this clandestine intrusion in a place in which he’d spent so much of his childhood. One could imagine that if it had been one’s own, one’s father’s and forefathers’, there’d be little doubt in one’s mind that a day would come when one would repossess, conceivably live happily ever after.
A guest with an unseemly interest in his hostess.
Trees. The streaky patterns of silver birch.
A whisper: ‘All right, Bob?’
‘Thought that owl was Stukalin.’
‘That owl does it on purpose. Then it falls off the branch laughing… This way now.’
Through the edge of the wood, circling to the left. Better than going straight through – you could see where you were, more or less where you were going. The drive – not visible yet – would be closing in from the left, and you’d follow the curve of it until you had the lake – or rather its fringe of willows – right opposite you, on the drive’s other side. There was hard ground and a crackle of dead leaves underfoot, a breeze stirring the branches. The breeze came from behind – from the north – would be against one, therefore, on the way up-river. Wind and current: he hoped to God the steamboat would be usable. Would be there, to start with.
‘We’ll cross here, Bob.’
The blur of trees over there had to be the willows…
‘Hey—’
Engine-noise – from the right. A motor, and a flicker of light through the trees. And voices…
‘Down!’
Light – headlights, yellowish, flickery beams – with the birch-trunks jet-black verticals against it as it grew. Rattly engine reminiscent of the fishing-station’s lorry, and the lights coming up brighter, closer. Passing now… With drunken voices singing, that and the engine-noise in a peak of sound that was falling and the tail-lights fading, pink sparks finally invisible as the truck bore right around the edge of the meadow. A military truck, its canvas-covered rear section doubtless crowded with the comrades back from their weekend junketing in Astrakhan.
Gone now, anyway. And no more coming, nothing moving, except branches and foliage in the breeze…
‘Come on.’ Trotting: over hard, dry ground, then a turf bank, and stopping again with the willows’ twisted shapes all round them and a glitter of star-reflecting water just beyond. The lake – which Nick had said teemed with mallard… Lights in the north-east – at the house. That truck had stopped at its front, headlights yellowing the Palladian-style frontage, pillars extending from one protruding wing to the other and supporting a stone balcony. There’d be a splendid view from there, over miles of winding river.
‘Some cottage, you have there.’
‘Oh.’ Pausing beside him. ‘Not bad, huh?’
‘Remember I’ll be coming as your guest. Yours and Nadia’s.’
‘Damn sure you will.’ A fist thumped his shoulder. ‘Damn sure!’
‘Let’s get on.’
Slightly uneasy: with a sense of one’s own treachery. The mention of Nadia, and the doubt – from as much as she’d said herself – that she had any real intention of marrying her ‘Nikki’, whom one was following now through the erratically wandering belt of willows. Stukalin’s meadow was open to the left and the house in view across it, the truck’s engine audible again as it drove on and round the house’s south-eastern corner: it was dark again there now, and quiet.
But for heaven’s sake, he was devious enough…
He’d stopped. Pointing ahead, as Bob came up beside him.
That sheen was straight on the Volga’s moving surface. The riverbank sloped down at this point; when the river was high the water would be right up here, the landing-stage hauled in closer, between two lines of timber piles driven into the river-bed, one such barrier at each end of it. You’d need them too, he guessed – when the river was in spate… And that was a steamboat, all right. Not unlike one of the Royal Navy’s steam picket-boats. A tall, thin funnel with a belled top to it. Small wheelhouse, engine-room casing abaft it, where the funnel was – engineroom hatchway would be somewhere there, probably immediately abaft the wheelhouse – then coach-top, and a cabin down there that would be accessible from the open stern. You didn’t have to be any closer to be certain of that layout: a glance from this distance, with a sailor’s eye, was all it took.
No movement, and no lights. He felt for the knife on his belt – ensuring that he could free it quickly when he needed it.
‘Nick, listen… I’ll be quieter on my own. You keep lookout here, give me a whistle if there’s any problem – like people or other boats coming.’
‘All right. And if you need help—’
‘I’ll whistle.’
* * *
The timber piles, running like exceptionally large, wide-spaced fenceposts down the slope of bank and into the river, made for good cover en route to the landing-stage. The Count saw Bob’s crouching form melt into invisibility against the farther – downstream – line of them; the steamboat was nearer that end of the stage than this. He turned, went back into the cover of the willows and picked his way along through them, parallel to the bank and the landing-stage, to wait opposite that end of it.
Squatting down, he could still see the top of the funnel and the short, stubby mast above the wheelhouse. And the shine of the river beyond it, some distance out. River noise was loud here: from where it flowed between those piles, swirling around the timbers… This was the main channel, the deepwater one which all the larger ships would use when the river was at its lowest as it was now. On its far side you’d come to a big expanse of currently high-and-dry middle ground and then some other, narrower channels, and beyond them – back on mainland now – Selitrenoe, the railway halt where they’d seen the old man being pistol-whipped.
He started: froze… Then stood up slowly, listening hard…
Movement: rustling movement in the trees behind him – between his present position and the lakeside. Turning to face in that direction: his right shoulder against a willow’s trunk, hand sliding down to the haft of his knife, unsheathing it.
Louder movement: and heavy breathing. A slab of the darkness moved. Big slab…
Puzzled: but knife in hand, crouching, muscles taut…
Then he straightened – in a gust of stifled laughter… ‘Hey – Don Juan! Here, old fellow…’
The animal was motionless again. End-on. Having given him that scare… Could have ended up with a punctured hide – and what might Maroussia have said to that… The knife was back in its sheath now; he left his tree, approached the donkey. ‘It’s me, Don Juan, your old pal Nikolai Petrovich.’ Reaching to pat him. Don Juan had a white streak on his forehead, and it was visible through the darkness at this close range: although one would never have seen his drab-grey bulk if he hadn’t moved. And of course they’d come along the edge of the trees, the meadow edge – maybe fifty feet away, with a lot of willows in between. ‘There, old fellow – have to leave you now…’
The darkness filled. What had seemed like a void was – was not. Bewildering – as if one was hallucinating – like the ground itself rising, humping, here and there: then a man’s voice growled ‘What the devil… Igor, you awake? What’s – who’s that?’
‘You – stay where you are!’
Only the donkey hadn’t moved. Nick Solovyev motionless too now, though. He’d begun to move – with two men in front of him coming up as if materializing out of the roots of trees, he’d sidestepped away, instinctively to put the donkey between himself and them: and now found a third – diminutive, gnome-like – but with a rifle-barrel practically touching his face and a hoarse voice demanding ‘Where’d you spring from, comrade?’
‘Bugger’d have robbed us while we slept. Cut our throats, maybe.’ This one had a heavy local accent. ‘If it hadn’t been for the moke here – trod on my bloody foot…’
‘Where’ve you come from – you?’
Backing away, with his hands halfway up: the attitude of a man willing to surrender but sure he wouldn’t have to once they realized he was a friend, meant them no harm… One of them muttering something about lighting the fornicating lamp, and this other one poking at him with the rifle: ‘Well? Where?’
‘Came in a boat. Only looking for a place to doss down for the night. Why – what’s the fuss, comrades?’
He hadn’t thought about Bob in that moment. His priority had been not to say anything that could possibly point them at the coachhouse.
‘Boat, eh… Where from? Where you headed?’
‘Igor – see if there’s a boat there.’ Crouching over the lamp. ‘Bloody thing…’
* * *
Bob had boarded the steamboat right aft, into the wide stern. There was a gangplank further forward, abreast the wheelhouse, but that was all it was, a narrow plank, liable to shift and bang around when weight came on it. In any case access to the cabin would be aft here: and the cabin, which might be inhabited, came first, engineroom second.
Crouching, he crept slowly, as soundlessly as possible, to where the companionway door or doors would be. Finding when he got there that it was a pair of doors, one shut and the other latched open. So there was someone below.
He leant in, listened with his head inside the opening.
Someone was snoring.
He waited. One man snoring didn’t guarantee there weren’t two or three of them on board. Thinking about this, while continuing to listen in the hope of learning more, it occurred to him that the best thing might be to go back, collect Nick and bring him down here. As far as the landing-stage, anyway. Then go down inside. One man would be easy, two should present no great problem, but if there were more than that it might be as well to have some back-up.
Should have brought him down here in the first place.
He’d swung one leg over the side, pausing there for a moment just to check that the crewman was still snoring, when he heard a voice raised – not a shout, not loud, but on a note of alarm. Could only have been Nick calling to him – as agreed, and trying to make him hear but no louder than he had to…
Another voice: low-toned but again urgent-sounding. Bob by this time halfway up the slope of the riverbank, with the timber piles – thick as railway sleepers – on his left. Pausing at the top to listen: then forward again, cautiously… ‘Nick?’
Bloody Sunset Page 21