Lenin's Roller Coaster, page 10
“Not yet, but it’s only a matter of days,” Strakhov answered, causing Volkhov’s lips to pucker in what might be disapproval.
McColl wondered if the lack of a star in Volkhov’s lapel meant the man was not a Bolshevik. A Left Socialist Revolutionary perhaps. Last he’d heard, they were all for fighting on. “What if it isn’t?” he asked, looking at Volkhov. “What if the Germans and Turks take Baku and cross the Caspian and advance along your railway? Will you just let them walk over you?”
“That won’t happen,” Strakhov answered him, sounding almost too convinced.
“It may be unlikely,” McColl conceded, “but if it does happen, would you let your revolution die rather than accept our help?”
“Why would the British ruling class help our revolution?” Volkhov asked, speaking for the first time.
“Because we share a common enemy. No more, no less. We don’t have many troops in Persia, but those we have would double the number at your disposal,” McColl continued, veering off into fiction. In truth he had little idea what forces either side possessed. “And we could provide more weapons for your troops,” he added, “as we did for your first revolutionary government.”
Volkhov’s shrug was not entirely discouraging, but Semashko was having none of it. “And I suppose that once the battle was won, your troops would hurry back to Persia,” he said scornfully.
“They would,” McColl insisted. “We are only interested in stopping the Germans.”
“And there’s nothing else you would want from us?” Strakhov asked incredulously.
McColl admitted there was. “If we agreed to fight together, then my government would expect you not to sell your cotton stocks to the enemy.”
Strakhov’s smile was bitter. “The stocks left over from the last two harvests still belong to the mill owners. For the moment at least.”
“But the soviet will have the final say,” Semashko interjected.
“I don’t understand,” McColl said. “The cotton belongs to the wholesalers, but they need permission to sell it?”
“Something like that,” Strakhov said with some irritation. “You make it sound stupid, but why should those with capital always have the final say?”
McColl didn’t feel equipped for an ideological discussion. “Have the Germans approached you?”
“That is our business,” Semashko said flatly.
“Is your government prepared to make an offer?” Volkhov asked, causing Semashko to roll his eyes.
“Yes,” McColl said. “We have no way of transporting the cotton,” he added, “but we will pay for the stocks to be destroyed.”
“Pay with what?” Semashko asked.
“The weapons you say you need. Or notes of credit on a London bank. Whichever you prefer.”
“I don’t believe it,” Semashko said flatly.
“If we ask for payment first, what do we have to lose?” Volkhov asked.
Strakhov considered. “The two of you will be taken downstairs while we talk this over,” he eventually decided.
A samovar was bubbling in the office below. “So how much of that did you get?” McColl asked Cheselden in English, once they’d begged a glass of tea.
“Not a lot. Hardly a word, if I’m honest.”
McColl went over the conversation.
“Do you think they’ll bite?” Cheselden asked doubtfully.
“I’ve no idea. Volkhov—the big one on the right—He isn’t happy about Russia quitting the war, but I don’t know why. It might be ideological—some of the other socialist groupings are against any sort of peace with what they see as reactionary governments—or he might have personal reasons for hating the Germans or the Turks. A dead brother, something like that. The other two—I don’t know. Strakhov seems far from stupid, and I can’t see him wanting to close any doors until he’s absolutely sure. As for Semashko—he’d just as soon see us shot.”
“Well, let’s hope the others don’t listen to him.”
“You could say that.”
It took the troika upstairs only fifteen minutes to reach their decision. Which was, in effect, to put one off. The matter would be referred to the regional soviet in Tashkent, which, as Strakhov now informed them in a studiedly neutral tone, was the ultimate authority for all of Turkestan. It might take several days for that body’s reply to reach Ashkhabad, and in the meantime the two Englishmen were forbidden to leave the city.
No lift was offered back to the town, so they strolled across to the station in search of a phaeton. Finding none, they started walking.
It was Cheselden who eventually broke the silence. “That was a strange experience,” he said. “Meeting those men back there. I mean, I didn’t understand much of the conversation, but you get a feeling for people. Those men seemed decent enough—well, two of them did—but . . .” He laughed. “It was like being taken to task by servants. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it felt strange. To them as well, I thought. I mean, they’re railwaymen—they can’t find it easy suddenly being in charge.”
“My father was a railwayman,” McColl said.
Cheselden stopped in his tracks. “Oh, no offense, old chap.”
“None taken. When I was growing up, there were plenty of men like that who came to our parlor for one reason or another. Some of them were thick as planks, some were every bit as clever as anyone I met at Oxford. They probably knew less, but only because their lives had given them less opportunity to read or travel. And men like that are not used to being in charge, as you put it. But that doesn’t mean that none of them could handle it.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Cheselden said, eager to minimize any slight.
McColl didn’t answer. What had struck him was the depth of hatred that Semashko had plainly felt for them both. And not because they were foreigners. This went deeper than that.
When they finally reached the hotel, their watcher was back in position on the far side of the street, apparently sharing a smoke and a chat with his driver.
“So what now?” Cheselden asked once they were up in their room. “Do we just wait?”
“No,” McColl told him. “I thought Semashko looked a lot happier than Volkhov about referring the matter to Tashkent, which probably means that hard-liners like him are in control there. In which case we won’t get the answer we want. So we need some other irons in the fire.”
“The names we were given.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have to lose our shadow.”
McColl nodded. “Once will be easy—it doesn’t seem to have occurred to his bosses that the two of us might choose to head off in different directions.”
“True. We’re assuming he works for our railwaymen friends, but what if he actually works for the Germans? We know they’re here somewhere.”
“Maybe. But that would mean they were meeting every train just in case an Englishman stepped off. It seems more likely that the local police would have someone there, looking out for anyone suspicious.”
Cheselden shrugged. “I don’t suppose it matters. They’re all enemies.”
McColl extracted a crumpled sheet of paper from the lining of his suitcase, smoothed it out on the solitary nightstand, and carried it into the sunlight. “It looks as though our cotton wholesaler’s office is only a couple of streets away.” He turned to his partner. “I suggest that you take another trip to the station. While you’re there, you can make a copy of the timetable and maybe check the yard for any cotton. If our friend below goes with you and I take the back way out, then our railwaymen friends should be none the wiser.”
“How do you know there’s a back way out?”
“I was awake in the middle of the night, so I had a good look around. There’s another staircase at the back and a way out through the kitchen.”
Cheselden was surprised. “I didn’t think the hotel had a restaurant.”
“It’s knee-deep in dust, just like the kitchen. Which makes it all the easier.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
Standing at the window, McColl witnessed the watcher’s reactions when Cheselden came out alone. The man stared at the door for several seconds, willing McColl to follow, then glanced up at the window, hoping to see him still in the room.
McColl obliged, but not too obviously, standing still with his back to the window for the better part of a minute. When he finally looked out, Cheselden and the watcher were almost out of sight.
He met no one on the back stairs. The disused kitchen’s outside door led into a dusty alley and this to a small street of mostly shuttered shops. Several men suggested that he stop and peruse their wares, but he passed them by with a smile, his eyes in search of street signs. As far he could tell, there were none, and by the time he found a Russian speaker who knew where Azadi Street was, he had walked two blocks past it. The office, when he eventually found it, was on the ground floor of a small brick building.
Opening the door, he found a young Russian woman typing at her desk.
“I’m looking for Alexei Lutovinov.”
She gave him a worried smile. “You are . . . ?”
“A friend of a friend,” he said reassuringly.
At that moment a door opened and a middle-aged man walked in.
“This is my father,” she said.
McColl offered his hand, explained how he’d come by Lutovinov’s name and the purpose of his visit.
The Russian gestured for his daughter to leave the room. “The British government will pay me to destroy my cotton,” he said once the door had closed behind her, in a tone that suggested he couldn’t quite believe his ears.
“As far as we’re concerned, anything’s better than having it fall into German hands.”
“I am only one owner.”
“We will offer the same deal to all the owners. I am hoping that you could tell me who they are and how to contact them.”
Lutovinov gestured McColl to a chair and sat down himself. “I understand what you want,” the Russian said, “but you must appreciate that this is not a simple matter. The current government would have to approve such action.”
“So I was told this morning.” McColl explained Strakhov’s description of the current situation.
Lutovinov made a wry face. “That is where we are. The government has not taken ownership of the cotton lands or industries, but it has passed new laws giving the growers and workers greater influence in how these are run. How much influence remains unclear and in practice varies from place to place. This state of affairs might last, but I doubt it. Only last month the Tashkent soviet seized several mills, only to hand them back a fortnight later, presumably at Petrograd’s behest, but my colleagues and I think it’s only a matter of time before we find ourselves ousted completely. So if a deal could be done at all, it has to be done very quickly. How will payment be made?”
“Accounts will be opened for you and your colleagues in a London bank,” McColl explained, knowing that this would prove acceptable. Lutovinov and friends would be well aware that they had no future in a Bolshevik Russia.
“I will talk to people. The other owners, at least the ones I can reach. And there are people in the new government—the soviet—whom I can sound out. But don’t worry—I will be careful.”
“Have the Germans already approached you?” McColl asked.
“Of course. They’ve had agents here in Ashkhabad for several months and have built up quite a network of informers. And they’re not only offering money. They have promised to reinstate the old regime here in Turkestan.”
“That must be tempting,” McColl suggested.
“It would be if we believed it possible.”
“Have they also approached the soviet?”
“Of course.” Lutovinov grinned. “And promised support for their regime.”
“What was the reply?”
“The soviet is divided. Those three you met this morning—Strakhov and Semashko are Bolsheviks, but of very different types. I knew Arkady Strakhov at school—he has more sense than most, and he seems sincere enough. I’m sure he believes he’s changing the world for the better.”
“And Semashko,” McColl prompted.
Lutovinov grunted. “He’ll say the same, but what really excites that man is tearing the old world down.”
“He did seem resentful,” McColl agreed. And perhaps with good reason, he thought—the old Russia had been a punishing place. “What about Volkhov?”
“Sergei Volkhov is the local leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries. And like his leaders in Petrograd, he’s in favor of continuing the war. He’s our best chance of doing this deal.”
“Strakhov told me the three of them had agreed to ask Tashkent for instructions.”
“Hmm. I doubt Volkhov was in favor of that.” Lutovinov paused. “And other things may happen first,” he added mysteriously. “We may see a change in who controls the soviet before too many weeks have passed.”
Having offered this hint, Lutovinov refused to elucidate. “You should talk to Volkhov,” was all he would add.
McColl elicited the relevant address, then took his leave.
He went for a walk around the town, aware that this was likely to be his last chance to do so without a shadow. The streets were pleasant enough but essentially uninteresting, and the only building he came across of any aesthetic value was a Baha’i temple. McColl had vaguely heard of the Baha’i but had no idea what they believed in or why they should have built a temple in a city as remote as this one. The man at the gate spoke just enough Russian to refuse him entry, so McColl wandered around the perimeter, peering through gaps in the balustraded walls at the surprisingly lush vegetation and the mosquelike dome and minarets.
Half an hour later, he let himself in through the hotel back door and ascended unobserved to their room. On the other side of the street, a new watcher was busy biting his nails, and McColl had to stand in the window for several minutes before his presence was registered with a twitch of the head. He thought it unlikely that his absence had been noticed and was sure of it once he’d checked the hair in the clasp of his suitcase.
His partner soon returned. Cheselden had made a note of the passenger-train times—there were two a day in each direction, west toward Krasnovodsk at 1:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., east toward Tashkent at 3:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. He hadn’t come across any mountains of cotton.
After hearing McColl’s account of his meeting with Lutovinov, he had only one question: “Was the daughter pretty?”
“Yes,” McColl told him absentmindedly. He was wondering whether to follow Lutovinov’s suggestion and pay Volkhov a visit.
“I’m not really interested in other girls,” Cheselden was saying, having laid all he could of himself on his mattress. “I really miss my Soph,” he added, flexing the feet that hung over the end.
Late that afternoon the two of them used a stroll around town to pinpoint Sergei Volkhov’s home, a one-story bungalow on the southern edge of a built-up area that reminded McColl of the India cantonments. They ate once more at the same Persian restaurant—chicken and rice heavily flavored with saffron—then returned to the hotel and waited for darkness. Once that had fallen, McColl slipped down the back stairs, out through the disused kitchen, and zigzagged his way across the town, using only the smallest streets and alleys.
As he walked, he rehearsed his pitch to Volkhov, a promise of British support for the Ashkhabad Socialist Revolutionaries, against the Germans and the Turks on the one hand and the Bolsheviks on the other. Such a promise would, he hoped, encourage Volkhov and his party to take control of the local soviet. And, once they were in power, permit the destruction of the cotton stockpiles.
His hopes were misplaced. Volkhov was certainly surprised to see him, but there was anger there, too, and more than a touch of fear. Rather than invite McColl into the house, he gestured him toward the seats on the dimly lit veranda. When McColl tried small talk, asking after the various plants in pots and barrel bottoms, the Russian merely grunted, “My wife would know.”
It was easier to find common ground when it came to the war. Volkhov was vehemently opposed to a “shameful peace”—“How can we tell those millions of mothers that their sons died in vain?”—but had nothing new to offer in the matter of the cotton—“Tashkent will decide.” When McColl casually suggested that the soviet in Ashkhabad might choose to go its own way, Volkhov stared at him in silence for almost a minute before saying McColl should talk to the wholesalers. “Discreetly,” he added, as if to himself.
Behind the soviet’s back, was the implication. “Discretion is difficult when our every movement is followed,” McColl said.
Volkhov again looked surprised. “Not by us,” he insisted.
“Are you sure?”
“I am in charge of the local police. We have no men watching you.”
Cheselden had been right, McColl thought as he made his way back to the hotel. The Germans had been keeping them under observation, using local helpers.
He reentered the building as he had left it and wearily climbed the stairs. Their door was slightly ajar, and the smell of blood hit him as he pushed it open. Cheselden was facedown on the floor, his head surrounded by a large and glistening pool. Dropping to his knees, McColl could see that the throat had been cut.
A sudden noise spun him around, but it was only the door’s rusty hinge.
He moved across to close it, keeping his head low to avoid being seen. As he did so, one of the two candles gutted out. Crawling over to the window, he inched an eye around the frame to scan the street below. One watcher was still there, the other probably reporting in.
Checking his bag for the Webley service revolver, he found only the oilcloth in which he’d wrapped it.
He went back to Cheselden, lifting him up and away from the puddle of blood. After closing the young man’s eyes, he sat and stared at the body, trying to take it in. In death the gangling young man looked no more than an overgrown boy.
