Cold Blood (42 page)

Halfway between the barge and the wagon stood an overseer. In his hand was a knout. Every man returning unloaded to the barge was getting a flick across his spine. We were all in a hurry.

(A man near me was struck. The thump of a bullet striking flesh has a completely different resonance to one striking wood, for instance, or a sack of wheat. Flesh has a wetness to it.)

My worry was that if we were pinned down for long, the engine driver would get cold feet, decide to forgo his prize money and make a run for it. There were couplings to be attached for the snowplough. Only he knew how to fix them.

Then Boltikov—ah, Alexander Alexandrovich, my saviour! Let me be charitable, let me propose that the required angle of fire was too steep for the Maxim and that the parachute had
to drift lower before you could shoot. Let me not say you were sleeping and awoke... At any rate he opened up, a terrific and quite unexpected noise behind us, and demolished the parachute with his first burst. In the silence, as the flare plummeted into the Volga in a white streak, we heard the tinkle of his spent shells falling to the floor in the turret, brass upon iron.

The man lying next to me muttered, “That'll worry them hearing a Maxim so close. Next thing we'll know is shells coming our way.”

I leapt to my feet. I flung up an arm. I wanted only a sword and a scarlet shirt to be Garibaldi. “Hooray for Alexander Alexandrovich and his marksman's aim!” I banged on the armoured car for emphasis. Boltikov pushed up the lid of the turret and stuck his head out. There was enough light for everyone to see the sling knotted round his neck. “Wounded as well! Yes, comrades, braveness can be learned. He'll be covering us all the way in. He'll give those Whities a bellyful of lead. Remember, a bucket of roubles for each of you! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

Our train appeared with the snowplough, looking like an icebreaker. Kobi leaned out of the cab and gave me a good signal.

There was still some muttering so I went among the men whispering “Roubles, roubles,” and making the universal recognition signal between thumb and forefinger.

But even then I might not have done it had the gold train not chosen that moment to whistle. The idea went through them like an epidemic: it's going and with it my fortune.

Someone shouted, “Let's get on with it, Comrade Colonel. You lead and we'll follow!”

“Then let's move it,
zhivo, zhivo
,” and I scrambled up onto the footplate to join Kobi and the driver.

Kobi wanted to go down the track at full throttle. But I knew that if we hit the barricade at speed the front wheels would just ride up the rubble and we'd crash over onto our side.

So we went steadily towards the godown with the plough just skimming the rails. Of course we were being shot at from all angles. They were trying to put their fire through the portholes on either side, to get us in the mouth. But the Reds had thought of that one and had fitted up mirrors so we could take shelter
and still see what was in front of us—which was the barricade of rubble.

On the parallel track was the gold train. Behind was the black maw of the godown, figures scurrying, red spittle-spurts of fire.

“Medal time for the hero,” I said to Kobi and out went the engine driver, arms thrashing, like a child learning to swim.

“Send a thousand to the widow, don't forget now,” shouted laughing Kobi.

“Hold on,” I shouted back, there being a bit of wheel spin as we struck the rubble. Then the shattered bricks parted and we were through, covered in dust and sneezing, the godown eighty yards away and the Whites beginning to run like dysentery.

It was Kobi who was on the side of the cab next to the gold train, that was the way it'd worked out. His was the judgement. If he got it wrong we'd be marmalade on the rails.

“Now!” he shouted and was gone, knife in his left hand, to grab hold of the gold train's handrail with his right hand and haul himself along the footplate and into the cab.

I was a second behind him, stumbling as I hit the footplate because Kobi jumping first had the best of the target. Grabbing a stanchion—swinging round—off balance—I glimpsed astonished faces in the train we'd deserted. Then my foot got a hold of something solid and with a heave I was in the gold train's cab, Luger in my fist.

A fantastically red face was staring at me, blue eyes half an inch out of his skull, mouth wide open, dreadful teeth. I shot him, two in the belly, without thinking.

Kobi, on the other side of the man, said drily, “Thanks, Doig. Lucky for me he's so fat,” and jerking out his knife, gave him a push so that he fell past me, outwards onto the clinker. He grinned across at me. “Head for home now, shall we?”

I looked at the pressure gauges, expecting to find a good head of steam. However, this was not the case. What had that driver been thinking of?

“Shovel for your life, man,” I shouted, and ripping open the firebox Kobi did so, with swift savage strokes of the long-bladed shovel, not wasting a second of time, not bothering to spread the coal evenly in the corners of the firebox.

I smoothed the throttle forward. Christ, was that engine cold,
heaving out these dense lethargic gasps as if on the point of death.

Behind us, in the godown, the driverless Red train smashed through the buffers into the river, a sensational noise of plunging water and steam and cavernous thumping explosions even amid all the gunfire.

Risking a glance out of the cab, I almost had my eyebrows shot off. The White soldiers had recovered from the surprise, were coming up the line from the godown—running fast, dodging in and out of the wagons. The Czechs on the barges out in the river began shooting. I flung myself onto the floor of the cab, dragging Kobi down with me.

Move, bastard wheels! Move faster!

The night was thinning. Dawn couldn't be far away. There was no time left—we were in minus time. Maybe the great bugaboo had caught up with me at last. Maybe it was the end of luck:
konets
—the end.

Lying there I closed my mind to everything except the hiss of steam and the oily suck of the dilatory pistons. You know how this is in a steam train, the small initial tugs as the slack between the wagons is taken up and the reluctance with which the first revolutions are accomplished as the engine assesses the weight behind it.

The bullets arrived like raindrops. The sand buckets were riddled before we'd covered five yards. Both lamps above my head were shattered. Shards of hot glass rained upon me. I covered my head with my hands.

There's not much room down there on the floor of a locomotive cab. Kobi's face was inches from mine. I could see not only every single hair sprouting from the mole on his chin but the flecks of coal dust in among their roots. Did I actually like this man? What would we do when everything was over: say goodbye and walk away as if these extraordinary adventures had never occurred? He'd saved me from death. He'd killed everyone I'd asked him to. Our adventures had been truly colossal.

Might we die together—here, side by side? Was that what Fate had in mind?

I thought, Please, Fate, let me kill Glebov first. Afterwards—

Then, no, by God, not even then would I give in. Fate should take the dog for a walk and get herself amused by something else—by the shape of the clouds or by a fox running off with a live chicken in its mouth. Eventually these bad times would end. Either I'd see them off or they'd peter out of their own accord. When that happened, I wanted Kobi beside me. We'd try our hand at being professional mercenaries. Our knowledge of death would be second to none—

The pressure had to be higher by now. Reaching up I pushed open the throttle lever.

The Czechs had grabbed a couple of launches from somewhere and were coming up the river after us at speed. Maybe it wasn't their bow waves out there but those of Trotsky's torpedo boats. It didn't matter which. Everyone was after us, Whites, Reds and Czechs. OK, that had been my plan, so that Shmuley and Mrs. D. could swim into the godown at their leisure and cut loose a barge. Who was going to bother about one boat drifting away downstream when wagon after wagon of gold was disappearing in the opposite direction?

However, success was coming at some risk. Before long someone would think of blocking the line or shifting the points to stick us down a siding.

“No bloody Fokker'll shit on us this time,” grinned Kobi from his coal-smudged face. “They love the gold too much.”

I grinned back. We had pressure on the dial, were fairly rocking along. I had good feelings. Within every successful man a buccaneer is always stretching.

I said, “What do you say we just go on?”

“Till the coal gives out?”

“Further.”

“Make a run for it, you mean?”

“Yes. Mongolia?”

“With the gold?”

“Yes. Hire ourselves an army. Conquer a territory. Pass suitable laws.”

“You're teasing me, Doig.”

The long slow bend I'd picked out on the map was coming up. There was no question of halting the train with that sort of pursuit behind us. They'd smell a rat. The Whites I wasn't
afraid of, but the Reds and the Czechs—they'd send their hard men after us into the city. We wouldn't have a chance. Nor would my girl. And then Glebov would go unpunished.

Some buildings were coming up on the river side of the line. They'd screen us for a bit. That'd be our chance to jump, when we slowed to make the corner. I stuck my head out, hand on the air-brake lever.

The bullet went past my head with a quick dry whistle.

I
TOOK BACK
everything I'd been thinking about home and dry. Kobi said, “Where did that—?”

I slammed on the air brakes, the handbrake, Emergency Only. The wheels locked and screamed. Sparks bloomed, I could see them in the mirrors, whole necklaces rippling away. The wagons cannoned against each other violently, slamming shit out of the buffers. That sniper had to have been a mountaineer or a gymnast to have hung on through all that. But was he alone?

A lump of coal hit the floor right at my feet. I looked up. A hand shot out to stop the whole lot sliding down. Filthy, but a hand and not mine or Kobi's.

“Christ,” I shouted, “they're everywhere, like fucking serpents.”

Kobi had his knife out. I cupped my hands and up he went like a bird and grabbed that man's hand and began to sever it at the wrist. Next, they were rolling around at my feet and the coal was falling in a black landslide and the train was rocking because of the bend and some bad joints in the rail and I couldn't make out which body to shoot as they were both like survivors up from the Underworld with the coal dust all over them—but then a knife appeared that I recognised and I knew what was what immediately.

The two of us alone in the cab again, Kobi laughed his great deep laugh and said, “If you hadn't braked he'd have had us both. Leaned over the coal stack—one pop, two pops, both of us dead.”

I said, “Time to leave,” and racked the throttle up to give
someone a hard time when they tried to stop the train. Then we grabbed our rifles and jumped, I hard on Kobi's ass.

A terrific pang, darkness as complete as death, then Kobi was standing over me throwing foul-smelling ditchwater onto my face from his cupped hands. I flexed my arms, legs, back. He said, “You caught my boot as we landed.”

I felt my face, felt the texture of the blood on my fingertips. I arched my head back, trying my neck. I saw a steep bank. We'd hit the ground exactly where a culvert came out that led the topside water underneath the railway. I stood up, felt everything again, flexed my legs, ran for a few paces on the spot.

“Kobi, I don't feel so good.” I didn't collapse but I was close to it I was that dizzy. I got myself sitting down and then lying down, flat on my back.

Kobi shouted—so it seemed—“You've got a date with Glebov, remember? Will I have to look after you for the rest of my life?”

I said, “Why are you shouting?”