Cold Blood (37 page)

I now see that survival is too lofty an idea for the bourgeois. It's only when travelling in the bilges that one can perceive with total clarity what the alternative is.

Bread is survival. I'd rather have bread than morals.

That boy—the look on his face moments before I shot him. He knew he was doomed, yet hadn't there been a residue of hope in that quick lick of his lips as he decided to try escaping down the ladder? Some tiny notion of survival?

Or was it my fancy? Was I trying to make out I'd given him a chance?

I said sorry to him again, I said it twice.

Then I went to the compartment to tell Xenia that I was leaving her in the monastery till I'd finished. She was on her knees, praying—had been crying. I said, “No time for that,” raising her and kissing the tip of her nose.

“What was that shot for?” she said, knowing very well what the answer would be.

“The boy we picked up from those Reds—our safe conduct to Stavka.”

“Did you have to?”

“It was him or us. That means you as well.”

It wasn't the first death she'd been close to. Maybe it was the boy's age that was affecting her.

She said, “I saw his soul going up to Heaven wrapped in a grey cloth—like a bubble released from the floor of the ocean. I heard the shot—then I saw him, split seconds afterwards.”

She had her case packed. She was good like that. I picked it up. She said, “Charlinka, do you believe you're going to meet Elizaveta when you die?”

I thought I knew where she was heading, that she'd been dwelling on her position as my future wife and was jealous of Lizochka and my love for her.

I said jocularly, “Are you afraid you're going to be the wife who didn't make it to Heaven?”

She gave me a confused look. She disapproved of my attitude
to religious matters though still acknowledging the advantages of being married to me. That was how I interpreted it.

We went along to the dining car where everyone except for Shmuley was gathered, all in Red Army uniforms. Mrs. D. pulled the hem of her skirt up to show me her bathing costume. Strong legs, getting stronger as they rose, well able to sustain Shmuley.

“Black was the only colour my mother allowed me,” she said. “None of us could have guessed how important red would become.”

I said it looked fine.

“This OK too?” She shook a lilac bathing cap at me.

“Yes, but black your face and arms. Engine grease or soot from the stove, get Shmuley to do the same. Kobi?”

He'd been quiet of late, there being no demand for heroics until now. He was leaning against the door to the galley, his face as cruel as a cat's. I asked him about the track to the monastery. He said, “There were two men guarding it. I cut their throats. Neither was in uniform. Impossible to say which side they were on.”

“Tornado?”

“Look outside. But the lady'll have to ride him astride, legs apart. There's no woman's saddle for her.”

Beside me Xenia drew in her breath sharply. It hadn't occurred to me that my little shopkeeper might never have been on a horse before. “Just this once, no distance to speak of,” I said to her. To Kobi, “Where's the Rykov flag, the one we brought from the palace?”

“In the same place it always was,” he replied, a little nettlesome.

I checked with Jones that the wireless van was running properly.

Stiffy said, Did I have any further duties for him, by which he meant sending out messages but not wanting to say as much in case the women thought about black Fokkers homing in on us and got jumpy. Yes, I said, the most important one of the lot. He blew on his fingers and did a little exercise with them as if preparing to play the piano.

All that remained was the armoured car and even as the
thought crossed my mind, I heard a great rumble as Shmuley took it down the wooden ramp to the platform.

I said to my people, “Got everything? If things go right, we won't be seeing the train again.”

They were silent at this, thinking about the alternatives, about how the hell I was going to get them out of Kazan.

T
HE HILL
rose above us, on top of it the monastery within its battlemented walls, the domes of its churches robed not in their usual nocturnal shimmer but in that violet colour that had been with us since Chirilino. Then it had been something of meteorological interest. Now it was sinister, even a portent.

Xenia looked up at the monastery. She looked up at Tornado. She looked at me. “I refuse.”

I said, “You'll be riding pillion behind Kobi. All you've got to do is hang on. There's the track. There's the monastery. Half a mile max.”

One would have said there were no bones to Kobi, just old tanned leather, supple as the wind. When on horseback he became part of a horse. They loved him. Even as I was pondering over Xenia's little rebellion, Tornado turned his head to Kobi and snuffled among his clothes—for food, reassurance, or maybe hinting at a need for orders. Kobi spread his fingers round Tornado's muzzle. The horse and the hand made love to each other as Kobi waited for my command and Xenia stared up at the monastery.

She began to say something—pugnacious by the way she set her mouth.

I nodded to Kobi. In an instant he had one hand gripping her coat collar and the other cupping her ankle and had flipped her onto Tornado's back. Squealing and terrified, she clung to the reins, to his neck, his mane, to anything.

“Don't look down,” I said to her cheerfully.

Kobi said, “She's OK. She's that frightened she won't dare try moving.”

But she did. Gingerly getting herself upright—but not letting go of a thing—she yelled at me, “Why don't I get to ride in the car like any other woman would?”

I said what was true, that Stiffy and Jones didn't want a woman in the wireless van. No offence but that's the way it always was in the armed services, the presence of women being liable to lead to a loss of concentration. I myself would be going in advance in the armoured car with Boltikov, to force our way into the monastery. “It could be dangerous,” I said. “There's no knowing if the Reds aren't already in there. And if they are... well, my little peach, I'm just not going to let you do it.”

“So how's Annushka getting to the river? You're going to make her ride horseback as well?” Her dander was up. She was enjoying looking down on me, which was certainly a change. “And on the way back?”

That last bit was getting too clever. I said, “Don't blow your knickers off, lady. Everything'll work out fine for Annushka . . . Kobi, if you hear nothing, follow in five minutes. Mrs. D., Shmuley, fit yourselves into the armoured car. Boltikov'll sneak you down to the river after we've taken the monastery.”

“Yeah, first let's beat up some monks, get our eye in,” Boltikov said to Kobi.

“Joseph, you stay with Stiffy. When he's finished transmitting I want you to help him start dismantling the wireless. We won't be taking the van with us. Leapforth, you come with them as far as the monastery. You're going to be Xenia's bodyguard while I deal with Glebov.”

He smiled. I'd have needed to be a decrypt expert myself to have made anything of that smile.

I went on, “Remember, everyone, darkness is our friend. We need to be out by dawn and not a second later. Any questions?”

“Well?” said Stiffy. “What about it then?”

I realised I'd failed to give him what was crucial—the last message for Glebov. So I did that, stuffed it crumpled into his hand and ran to the armoured car for I was in a hurry now that I'd reminded myself about the dawn deadline.

Boltikov was the driver. With Mrs. D. and Shmuley in a turret apiece, I had to squeeze in beside him. Getting in and out of those Austin armoured cars was hell. Only a snake would have
found it easy. I was on the point of inserting myself (which had to be done feet first) when Stiffy shouted over, “Can't read this, sir. Is it Lola? What comes after that? Lola who?”

“Lola shit. Lobachevsky, idiot. Has a statue near the French Hotel, off the main street. Where I'm planning that Glebov and I will meet. You cock that up and I'll strangle every breath in your neck. Repeat the guy's name.”

“Lobachevsky, SIR!”

Boltikov engaged gear as I slipped in beside him. The windscreen was open, up on struts, and I kept it that way. Boltikov had brought one of the machine guns from the train and had Shmuley rig it up so that it could be fired from the driver's seat.

We went rumbling up the stony lane. When we reached the top of the hill it was to find the whole of Kazan revealed to us.

“A gun emplacement up here and you'd soon force an enemy out,” I shouted to Boltikov over the roar of the engine. “This is where Trotsky should be.”

Which made me wonder why the Reds hadn't made a beeline for it, but it was too late to turn back now as the monastery's iron-studded gate was bang in front of us and if a regiment of Bolshies were only waiting until they could see the whites of our teeth, they'd be opening fire any minute now.

Boltikov was fingering the gun, wanting to give the gate a burst. But I knocked his hand away. We halted facing the gates. Boltikov said, “They'll open inwards?”

I pointed at the judas gate in the left-hand one and told him to cover me.

Inside was a small wooden lodge house with a window to receive food and alms and all that keeps a monastery functioning and monks plump. Peering in I made out a night-watchman, asleep in front of the remains of a coal fire. Not an old man, but getting that way. I rapped on the glass. He gave a great start, looked around in alarm and seized his rifle.

He came out full of hostility. I said if I'd been a Bolshevik I'd have shot him as he slept. He quietened down, and a small present of money completed his surrender. He replenished his fire and as he did so began to tell me about his previous job, which had been keeping the birds out of a grove of apricots with a wooden rattle, how his son had been his assistant, how
the grove had belonged to an Armenian, how it had been valued at fifty thousand roubles per desyatin, how that was a lot more than the value of the monks' apple orchards—

The door behind me flew open. It was Boltikov, angry as a swarm of bees. “What are you doing, for God's sake, reciting the Bible? You tell us dawn, and then slow everything down yourself. The horse is here, with Kobi and the woman. Come on, man, come on.”

“How many monks are there?” I asked the nightwatchman.

“Eleven, Excellency, and the Archimandrite. I was coming to that.” He bowed to me, palms conjoined below the tip of his brushwood beard.

Boltikov hustled him out. Lame and muttering, he shuffled over and unbarred the gates. Kobi riding beneath the old vaulted archway with Xenia hanging onto him, the old man took his bow so low that you'd have supposed he'd mistaken my Mongolian killer for Christ the Redemptor.

He wanted to get going with more stories but I grabbed him. Gesturing round the compound, I said that if he wanted to live, he should tell me what the buildings were used for.

On the north side was the refectory, dormitories and offices, a long low building on two floors. On the other side, its towers, turrets, crosses and cupolas lording it over the city, was the main church of Zilantov—All Souls.

There were no lights showing anywhere, not even a glim where some late-night praying could have been going on. In fact, that nightwatchman could have been the greatest humbugger in existence with all that stuff about guarding apricots: there could have been a thousand Bolsheviks lying in wait for us. At any moment we could have heard the snickety-snick of their rifle bolts driving home the bullet. At any moment, Glebov's soupy voice, “At last, Doig.”

We were grouped in the shadows of the gateway, the four of us and the horse. Behind was the armoured car with Shmuleyvich and Mrs. D. The gunfire down at the wharves was brisker than ever.

Boltikov nudged me. “A racing man would give longs odds against any of us being alive in twenty-four hours. Just a feeling I have.”