Cold Blood (34 page)

Vaska walking past, I told him to get a piece of wood and nail it over Blumkin's hole. “Nail it to his tongue if he argues,” I added.

Joseph remarked, “A storyteller, like every stationmaster I've ever known.”

Mrs. D. came marching through the grass in bare feet. She'd got hold of a pretty green summer frock that ended just below the knee. She had a healthy skin. Everything in her strong round face shone with the pleasure of life.

“When do you want to try the uniforms?” she asked.

I'd told her to sort them by size and rank and sew up any bullet holes. If Stupichkin had executed a general who stood six foot two in his socks and had a forty-two-inch chest then that was the uniform for me. Any medals in the pockets, I'd have those as well. I didn't want to look sloppy: didn't want to wear trousers that trailed behind me on the ground, like Lenin's.

“Got something for me then?” I asked.

She really had a lovely bloom to her cheeks that day. Her lips were pink and full. It was clear that mean thoughts and deeds refused to come near her. How could she have fallen for that spiv of a husband?

Smiling, she saluted me: “Destiny calls, Colonel Doig.”

T
WO RED
Vereys over a green one. Shmuleyvich, whose watch it was, lumbered down the train to waken me. Midnight exactly. He hadn't seen the flares themselves but he'd seen their reflection off the clouds. Like the aurora borealis, especially the green flare, which had left a flat stain in the sky for a good two minutes.

“It spooked me,” said the big man, “until I realised it must have been hanging from a parachute. I wouldn't have done that. Every minute it was up there was a minute for the Whites to have target practice.”

I said for him to get some sleep and call everyone at dawn.

“Thank God you didn't ask him about the coal situation or he'd be here still,” said my drowsy love, moving away from me.

“No coal, no hole—putting one's pole in the coal-hole—any hole's a goal—a man could go on for a long time on those lines,” I murmured into her ear, pulling her back so that I was right in there behind her power-station buttocks, my cock nestled up against her smutch and growing hard. But it was no good, for soon she was gruntling away as she dreamed of corsets and whalebones and of swanking through her shop with a tape measure round her neck.

I tried a few things to get her interested but they came to nothing. That was a pity for I was keen to have her, that midnight of 5 September 1918. Here's why, nothing to do with carnality.

The fact is, when a man's keyed up for some great ordeal, he's restless. He doesn't want to read a book or discuss a famous picture. Appreciation of form and beauty must wait for settled times. What he wants to do is to hop onto a woman and get
busy inside her. It's the combination of solace and power that he's after, the one in case he gets killed, the other to put him in the mood for victory. Only a woman can give him this. Only her incomparable organ, the one that's of the greatest importance to the world, far more than any other, including eyes and ears and even the digestive processes, can bring peace to a man's soul.

Say what you want but that's how it is, that's man for you.

God save all women! God bless and protect them and make them perfect and have them ready for when we return.

So I said to myself, despite my frustration. Then some other eve-of-battle considerations started to spin through my mind and before I knew it, I was having a hard time getting to sleep.

What part would the Czechs play? All sorts of stories were on the go about their armoured trains. Reinforced concrete behind the armour-plating—field guns being fired off flatbeds— machine-gun turrets that swivelled through a complete circle— five hundred men per train, each of them desperate—what the hell would I do if they set upon me? How was I to convey to them in their troublesome language that I wasn't after all the gold, just one bargeful?

Then again, what if Glebov didn't bite? How would it be if in fact he were the bloodhound and I the fugitive?

One thought led to another...

The next I knew was that the air was filled with the crash of cymbals and trumpets, with gongs, with factory hooters and earthquakes. I sat up sharply. Crackety-crack, crackety-crack, crackety-crack—it was the first of the Kazan refugee trains rocketing through with Vladivostok in their sights. Our siding was fifty yards away from the main line and concealed in a slight declivity. Nevertheless our windows quivered, the putty fell out of them and the cap on the pipe leading up from our stove bobbled like the lid of a kettle. The noise faded, with a last whistle as it raced through Chirilino.

That train was the first and it was the fastest, the rig of someone who'd had the foresight to purchase the coal and a driver before the rush. Not just any old coal but the best that was around in Kazan, leaving for the rest of the flighty the slack at the bottom of the heap, which was as hard to shovel as dust and burned poorly.

“They'll get slower and slower, you wait and see,” I said to Xenia, throwing back the covers and slapping her pink haunch. “The last'll be scarcely able to move.”

I was proved right. The rest of the refugee trains wheezed past us, moving so gently that one could examine the patterns of rust on the wheels as they passed. Stray dogs from the town ran alongside the carriages, snapping at the ankles of the refugees sitting sideways on the coach buffers, making them draw up their legs and cling to each other.

Here a question should be asked: Did any of us wave to these unfortunates or call out a cheerful greeting? How much of the good Samaritan was in us?

The answer is, Yes, Vaska, our young naïf did. When the first of the slow trains arrived he walked beside it saying things like “How are you?,” “Where do you come from?,” “The day's still young,” and other rural commonplaces, his wide peasant's face full of smiles and goodness.

But that was the last time he did it. Mrs. D. smacked him down fiercely, saying it would only encourage refugees to abandon their hopeless form of transport and take their chances with us.

“You ask the Colonel if he wants a bunch of useless hungry layabouts under his command. Go on. He's only five yards away.”

Bewildered, Vaska did just that. Of course I said No. And I looked at Mrs. D. in a different light from then on.

All day long the trains came past us, Boltikov scanning them avidly for signs of wealth. He wanted to believe that tubs of icons, tiaras, pearls, rubies, emeralds—every species of jewel, not to mention cloaks of Arctic fox and rolls of medieval Bokharas—were still being shifted out of the country. He'd already filled a wagon with stuff to sell from his dreamed-of warehouse in Constantinople.

“Kazan is rich. Think of the Tartar cattle merchants and the like. Don't tell me they still put their trust in bank vaults.”

I replied, “Alexander Alexandrovich, a for apple you'll be lucky to get to Odessa let alone Byzantium and b for baksheesh the goods that you seek will, for the most part, be leaving Russia not with their owners but through underground channels unknown to either of us but of a certainty in existence since conditions were primitive.”

He was not persuaded. “But Russia is so huge! Twelve days from Moscow to the Pacific on the fastest train! Think how much wealth there is around. Some of it must be in these trains. Let us at least stop and search them. It can do no harm. You never know—some of these Siberian gems, Charlie, you've never seen anything like them—just one prime diamond would buy us a palace on the Bosphorus—OK, every other train, then— OK, so we have to put the Kazan job back a day, what of it...”

I said he should go and open Blumkin's store to work off his appetite for profit. But selling candles and the like didn't appeal to him. He went to watch Kobi giving Vaska sabre drill.

We remained where we were, observing the movements on the railway. By the evening the refugee trains had ceased: the line to Kazan was clear.

W
E SHOWED
no running lights. A fuzzy patch of sparks above the chimney was all that gave us away as we slid through the belly of the night. Even the kerosene lamp that played on the water gauges had been hooded.

Pressure was right down. The dampers were virtually closed. We were just trundling along because Stiffy was at his wireless and bracketed to his wagon was its aerial, all 120 feet of it. For the moment we were travelling through open farmland with no bridges over the line to foul it. When we got nearer Kazan, we'd be close enough to Glebov to pick up his signals without it. In the meantime I wanted to know about every single piece of wireless traffic, Red and White. We had to have the aerial up and we had to travel slowly.

Dawn was my deadline: six thirty. By then Glebov had to be dealt with and the gold had to be ours. I didn't want us to be wandering round Kazan in daylight in Bolshevik uniforms.

In front the sky had a bruised tinge. Like the Verey lights that had signalled the Bolshevik onslaught, it was reflected onto the clouds over the city, turning them into huge violet pillows.

There could be no doubt: Kazan was burning.

No, said Shmuleyvich, it was some queer relic of the day's sun—to do with the coming of the equinox. He'd seen it before, in Siberia. But whatever its cause, it was a bad colour. “Pitch black would have suited us better for the gold.” Glancing at me, “Though perhaps not for the other thing.” He made a stabbing
motion with his hand. “For that you must be able to see clearly. No good guessing where the bastard is.”

There were just the two of us in the cab. Our rifles were propped in the corner, below the coal. The iron wings meant we were safe from anything except a grenade or a direct hit from a shell—or from gas. I hadn't heard of anyone using it in Russia but only the worst was to be expected from Trotsky.

For a moment Shmuley's face was profiled against the sky. Remarking to myself upon the strong nose of a man who enjoys women, I asked him the same question as I'd put to Joseph, How did he feel about being dead by this time tomorrow.