Cold Blood (43 page)

Then I heard it. No one else could have. Only I, with my heightened sensitivity after the bang on my head, could have heard the change in the pitch of the water coming through that culvert. It couldn't have been a big flow to begin with. We were still in summer conditions—7 September. But it had been dammed up and released. Swish, I heard it go and presently a freshet of water came out, not two yards from where I lay.

I put my finger to my lips and pointed at the mouth of the culvert—tried to convey to Kobi the motion of someone crawling through it. We'd gone down one side of the track and the White I'd shaken loose had gone down the other. That's how it had to be. Then he'd hit off the culvert, put his head to its mouth, heard us talking, had a brainwave. Bold fellow.

Was he on his belly? Unquestionably. He'd have wanted to come out in a position to shoot.

So he'd dragged himself along by knees and elbows, shoulder blades pinched together, getting as wet as a herring. He'd have paused, maybe to put his rifle off safe, have felt that pulse of water surge away as he started to move again. He'd have heard our voices cease. He'd have thought, I'm a dead man, I'll be drilled either by a bullet from in front or by a bullet from behind.
He was doing what he'd signed up to do—being a soldier. And now he was bottled up in a culvert, unable to stand or run or do any single thing that would physically dissipate his sense of fear.

Maybe he had no fear. But I did not see how this could be for someone on his belly in a death trap.

There was a slab of concrete, railway detritus, balanced at an angle against the mouth of the culvert. Kobi pointed to it and told me in sign language what he wanted to do. His face was alive with merriment, his teeth as white as daisies.

I saw his idea immediately. If the man didn't want to be drowned, he'd have to crawl out backwards—he'd never get himself turned in that pipe. And I saw the reason for Kobi's laughter, for who would undertake to crawl backwards out of a dark hole in a civil war, when men are especially unparticular? Ankle tendons, hamstrings, testicles, asshole. One by one these targets would present themselves to the interested party.

I nodded.

Taking care he didn't get shot at, Kobi lowered the slab over the mouth of the culvert.

What could that fellow be thinking now he was in total darkness? His pay was fifty kopeks a month, enough for forty cheap cigarettes. Was he considering the relationship between money, risk and life? Was he thinking that a stipend of forty cigarettes was putting his life at too great a discount? Was he furious? The only life he was ever going to have and he'd been bamboozled into surrendering it for forty gaspers?

Kobi was fishing around in the spoil from the culvert for lumps of clay to block off those gaps—to make it watertight and drown the man.

I said to him, “Leave a hole for him.” There was no reason why the man should die so long as he didn't get in my way. After all, we were both fighting the Reds.

Lying head downwards on that steep bank, I put my mouth to the lip of the culvert and shouted, “You're lucky I'm Charlie Doig. Find your own way out.”

He must have been able to pick out the edge of my skull against the lighter shade of the night. The bullet struck the concrete slab at my side, almost making me deaf from the crack
of its impact. I threw my head back, feeling a tiny sliver of concrete hit my forehead. The bullet must have ricocheted back up the culvert and struck the man, for there was a muffled roar. But that could just have been his anger at missing me.

I stood up. What spirit that man had! I said to Kobi, “I could do with a hundred men like that.”

Kobi said to hell with that, we should move out pretty damned fast. The Whites wouldn't be far behind. Besides, I had that appointment with Glebov. We climbed up the bank onto the railway, crossed the track and set off at a trot.

B
OLTIKOV WAS
in a bad way. His arms were clasping the steering wheel, his forehead resting on them. Had he thrown down his cards—given up—prepared himself for death? A year ago he'd been the fat fellow who'd had a chocolate named after him. Now he was half the weight. I had the sudden feeling that maybe all that vanished flesh had contained the essence of Boltikov. The warehouse in Constantinople that was going to be choked with bales of furs and Bokharas and tapestry rolls— lidded chamber pots clanking with incredible chunks of Siberian gemstones—the awesome calculations of profit—had his capitalist ebullience been lost without trace?

I hauled him up, looking for clues in his shrivelled eyes. Maybe it was just the loss of blood, even a lack of sleep.

I said, “Next stop Odessa. From there it's an easy boat ride to Constantinople.”

In a pale voice he said, “It'll take more than Annushka Davidova to get me right... Looks like you need her too.”

“A gash when I left the train, then a chip of flying concrete.”

“That whole business looked terrific from where I was. The way you jumped from one train to the other and left those Reds to go into the river. It was worth a St. Andrew's. The blue sash— you'd look good in it. I'll send you a citation—from Heaven. That's where I'm off to. Not long now.” He groaned terrifically—turned his shoulder to show me his blood-drenched sleeve and the pool of blood on the floor.

But I thought this was all far too positive for a dying man. And I was right. For when I'd re-dressed his arm and let him have a couple of Mrs. D.'s madeleines, he began to perk
up. It was then that I discovered the reason for his poor sentiment.

He said, “You see, Charlie, something turned inside me when you gave the train to the monks. I couldn't say anything: it just wasn't the moment. But all my stock was in that wagon. The entire picture collection of the Benckendorffs plus some carpets you know nothing of plus other similar items. Are you aware that you gave the monks a Rembrandt? The self-portrait of him and his dog Betsy? It was Benckendorff's, filthy but unmistakable. Now God has it. I can't bear the thought of God owning my Rembrandt. He'll never spot it, He hasn't got half the eye that I have.”

“It's not God but the Reds who'll have your Rembrandt.”

“You're making it worse.”

“What's the answer then, Alexander Alexandrovich?”

“Get Glebov. Make a start on the bastards.”

“
Poshli—
let's go.”

Somewhere just off the dockyard a church clock struck six. It was the time I'd given Glebov.

I had Boltikov drive me and Kobi over the causeway to Kazan proper. About a couple of hundred yards from the Lobachevsky square he let us off. I told him to wait and keep off the bottle.

I never doubted that Glebov'd turn up. Historical inevitability would be impossible to resist. Also, he'd come out of inquisitiveness. He'd come because the Bolsheviks were winning. And he'd come to renew an old enmity.

He wouldn't want to walk up the hill as I was doing. He was too fat, too short in the leg. And he was a vain man, wouldn't dream of arriving panting at a rendezvous.

No, he'd walk out alone from the Uspensky Cathedral. His men would keep to the shadows, pretending not to exist—the threat of the firing squad having been stated for anyone who emitted the smallest human sound apart from breathing. He'd go to any lengths not to scare me away. He'd want me to believe so sincerely in this piece of theatre, which would be that of two adversaries staging a philosophical tourney beneath the statue of the man who achieved fame from his discourses on Euclid's Fifth Postulate, that I'd come trotting out
doux comme un petit agneau
and so deliver myself up to death.

He might bring a photographer along. The tripod on its silent rubber ferrules—the black drape—then the bulb snatched at instead of being squeezed, someone being too excited by this moment, which was unrepeatable, which was of the very highest drama available to mankind: my execution.

T
HE DARKNESS
had changed to a broken grey. A long pink strip of tomorrow was stretched across the horizon like a measuring tape.

“Remember, he has a moustache now,” muttered Kobi.

We'd taken over a tea house on the square. Once it must have belonged to a wealthy merchant for there were cornices in the rooms, plaster cartouches of flowers, trumpets and Cupids above the windows, and outside balconies with ironwork as intricate as lace. Now it lay deserted, its windows blown out, shit on the floor, the walls pitted with bullet holes. Only the cake stands and the chandeliers had proved sacred.

We were on the first floor. Kobi was going to put up a flare for me: I didn't want to be blinded by it so I'd taken up a position on the opposite side of the room. We were half in and half out, the muzzles of our rifles resting on the lowest curlicues of the balcony.

The stock of the Mannlicher .256 was cool against my cheek. I looked through the telescope. Soon it'd be light enough to do without a flare.

One shot. Then run like hell. One shot—my best.

The bust of Lobachevsky, head and shoulders, was directly in front of me on a tall black drum of granite. To its left one of the cobbles stood out through having been painted white. A mark for the bandmaster at parades?

I caught it in the cross hairs. So what type of moustache would I see down the scope? Would I actually notice? I'd be going for a body shot. With one of the new expanding bullets I'd wreck him, would utterly destroy the rapist.

Below the statue a circular metal table had been placed. A chair was tipped against it to keep the seat dry. Was it for him or me?

Dawn was at my elbow now. I could make out the difference between the groups of bushes, could see that the beggars slumped sleeping on the lawns were actually piles of autumn leaves. I saw too that the chair had a metal frame and that its slats were wooden. In the centre of the table was a socket to hold a sunshade.

A faint gleam rose from the gold lettering of the inscription:

MATHEMATICIAN

NIKOLAI IVANOVICH LOBACHEVSKY