Cold Blood (35 page)

He grunted. “If I could be certain it was going to happen, I'd want to lie in bed with my woman and smoke and drink simultaneously right up to the moment of death. That's what I most like doing. I'm a basic man, born from Adam's seed.” He chuckled. “My feet know where the ground is. There's nothing airy-fairy about Yuri Shmuleyvich.”

The night was smooth on my face. It was a companionable feeling being alone with this large, vigorous man. It was as if the two of us had sworn a pact to take on all of Trotsky's armies by ourselves.

He continued: “Any fool can have a woman at the same time as he's smoking. If he's taking a long time about it, she'll probably want a cigarette as well. The problem is with the drinking. Let's face it, we like to use our hands to get a grip on things, wouldn't be men if we didn't. And she likes us to get a grip, let's not forget that a woman likes being gripped. Annushka—”

“Annushka?”

“Annushka Madam Davidova,” he said with a chuckle.

At that moment the bell we'd rigged up to the carriages rang, barely audible above the noise of the engine.

I said, “Too bad. Will Annushka wait until next time?”

“She'd better, boss. She'd better wait forever.”

I went back through the coal tender and was met by Vaska. He led me down the train to the dining car. We had blackout stuff at all the windows—cloth from Blumkin's stores. Jones
was at the table with decrypt papers strewn all round him. His smile was ragged at the edges. He probably thought he should be in his bed.

“They've opened a new code.”

“But you broke it and here I am, Leapforth. No need to be dramatic.”

“Yeah, I broke it... in the end. They've moved on from the Caesar alphabets and all that Vigenère stuff. What they're at now—a polyalphabetical substitution. Greek and Russian only so far. Makes sense for the Russkis to use Greek. I guessed that one right away. Then they used a repeating keyword, which was kind of them.”

“They're through with Elizaveta?”

“It's only Propaganda who've been using it, I told you that. This was to Trotsky from the commander of the Northern Army. The Reds have captured the railway in two places. Our railway.”

“Doesn't surprise me. I haven't seen any foot traffic the whole night. Capture the railway and you capture the road, that's what it looks like on the map.”

The road ran alongside the railway, dead straight, no bridges, not twenty yards away. Even in that light we'd have seen movement. Handcarts, wagons, dogs, horses, donkeys—encampments round a fire with prayers and weepings and songs of death, animals and humans alike suspicious of the promises flying around. We'd have had to be blind not to see ten thousand refugees hoofing it east.

I said, “The Reds'll have done it to put pressure on the city. There'll be all these mothers and children and old people crying out for food and water. Getting in the Whites' way. Getting desperate.”

He said, “So it doesn't worry you that the line they've captured is the very one we're on? That we're shafted?”

I looked him over, chin resting in my palm. I said, “Why do you suppose we have all these Red uniforms? What's your game, Jones? You're not behaving like a man who expects to be moving out soon with 690 tons of gold. You're acting too sluggish. No modest man ever made a fortune. Keeping something back, are we,
plut
?”—that being slang for a confidence man.

“The false whiskers are in my pocket, Charlie boy,” he said, moving quickly out of his anxious mode and pouring that smile of his over me like syrup.

I shouted for Vaska and sent him back to Shmuley with orders to stop the train. We needed to prepare for meeting the Reds. I'd take the aerial down at the same time. “And then go through the coaches telling everyone to get changed into their Red kit. Run, boy!
Zhivo!”

Jones made to leave but I stopped him. “It's time you and I got things cleared up. Tell me straight what you're doing. Arrange the words so that I believe you. Otherwise I leave you behind.”

I took out my Luger and laid it on the table.

That got his attention. He opened his palms, spread them wide as if to show he was unarmed—or at least innocent.

“Sure I'm not after the gold. That sort of thing's for kiddies' storybooks. Stiffy thinks we are, but he's still got a lot of kiddie in him. All that playing around with wireless sets... Well, I guess I'm sorry for the deception, for undermining my commanding officer”—he laughed pleasantly to prove we shared a joke—“but what I've been sent to do is highly confidential, you get me, Doig? Top, top, top secret. I can tell you now because tomorrow I'll be out of your life. What's going on is this: my country and Lenin's lot want to have unofficial talks about the relationship between them—you know, what's to happen to property owned by American corporations, what's to happen to Serbia, Johnny Turk, the war with Germany—all that sort of heavyweight stuff. OK? Am I getting myself believed? However, there is a problem here for both sides: they can't be seen sitting down at the same table. For our President it'd be ruin and for Lenin likewise since the only reason he got where he is was by telling Russians that all capitalists were evil. It'd look like one big cheat if he suddenly showed himself as our buddy. So I'm the go-between. Me and Trotsky first. If that goes well, me and Lenin. Then maybe me and Lenin and the President. Now you see why I had to vanish from US Army records. These fellows at the top, they hate to have loose ends lying around that some busybody'll trip over.”

“So why are you telling me if it's top secret?”

He chuckled. “By tomorrow night you ain't going to be around no more. You and your crowd—believe me, you'll be food for the crows by this time tomorrow and it won't do you a blind bit of good looking to me for protection. I'll be gone. Underground. Me and Trotsky. Big time.”

T
HE GENERATOR
bulb glowed green in the semi-darkness of the wireless van. A chink of light came from the back where Stiffy had his box of tricks. I slipped into the canvas-backed chair beside him. The valves were burning gently, just right.

“What's on?” I mouthed. The time was 2 a.m., as near as makes no difference.

He glanced at me, the headphones making him look topheavy. He was on Receive, his fingers taking the dial through the wavelengths a hair's breadth at a time. Every fibre in him was concentrating on the diddidahs—on eavesdropping, on that other life of his.

His eyes held mine as he scribbled on a shorthand pad.

He pushed one headphone forward at an angle and said, “Muraviev.”

“Doing what?”

“His signaller. Asking Kazan for a fresh report on the Bolshevik regiments, identification thereof. Routine stuff.” He looked at his pad.

He could have married this wireless of his. I said, “Stiffy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have a problem sending a message in cleartext?”

“You mean, not encrypted at all?” He removed the headphones entirely and stared at me.

“Not at all.”

“Letter by letter? Standard Morse?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sir, as long as it's short... they'll have a direction-finder somewhere.”

“It is short. Trust me. I know what long is.”

“What call-up signal shall I use?”

“Same as for the Elizaveta messages. Same wavelength, same everything. Whatever that sender used, you use.”

“Let's have it then, sir.” He held his pencil ready.

“NEMESIS TO GLEBOV STOP...”

I paused, not having the next few words quite right in my mind. The nail of his index finger tapped nervously at his pad as he waited for me. He jumped up, tugged his trousers straight, dug around in his arse, sat down again—spat into his palms and rubbed them together. If he'd had five sets of fingers, they wouldn't have been enough to do all he wanted.

I snatched the pad from him. It took me a couple of goes before I got it right.

His hand glided to the set, clicked the switch to the right for Send. Finger above the black button—hovering, itching to be social...

He turned to me, his eyes very serious. “Sir, are we being wise?”

“Do you think he doesn't already know I'm here? Don't think your wireless is the only set of lugs in town.”

“But on his doorstep? When he could have a plane over us in ten minutes?”

“Stiffy, I have some advice for you. When in Russia, be a Russian. That means not being a fucking Anglo-Saxon and democratic and quibbling. When I say, Give Glebov a fright, you do it. Yes or no?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Your usual speed. NEMESIS TO GLEBOV STOP WATCH OUT BEHIND YOU STOP THE BIGGEST SHADOW IS DEATH—then the letter for goodbye. Or however you end a message. Go on, do it now.”

Every Red signaller'd pick it up, shake his woolly head and rush off to find out what it meant. Tension would be created. Look over there, the shadow in that doorway, it's Doig. Bang-bang, down he doesn't fall. Only Glebov would understand how profoundly I meant what I'd said. For all I knew there could be a hundred thousand people in Kazan tonight. But only two of us mattered. And then there'd be one.

S
CUNNERED, THAT'S
what my old man would have said of them. Yelling “Karl Marx! Karl Marx!” as they charged had turned out to be a worthless certificate of immortality. Sixteen inches of Czech steel, honed every morning to a frosty blue, had punctured that one. Other reasons for the poor Red morale: ammunition, victuals, morphine—nowhere to be had except by conquest. Boots—likewise. Their foot wrappings stank like a slaughterhouse in August. Nothing had happened as foreseen except for the flies, which had grown to the size of blackberries on the rich diet of flesh.

Victory, where was it, then? Where was the loot, where the tender white princesses who were now to be the property of all?

And that five-hundred-rouble payout that had been promised each man when Kazan was taken, what good was that going to be if a fellow could no longer enjoy it—if he'd been executed by Trotsky, got tif or had had his balls lopped off by a White sabre?