Lenin's Roller Coaster, page 21
The surviving soldier turned his rifle toward McColl, who was still only halfway out from under the wagon. As a bullet pinged off the metal side above him, he pulled himself back behind the curve of a wheel, took careful aim at the soldier’s torso, and tightened his finger on the Mauser’s trigger.
The soldier uttered a squeal of dismay as he sank to his knees, then a heartfelt grunt as he folded forward, head kissing the cinders like a Muslim at prayer.
There was a moment—perhaps even several—of stillness and silence. Three prone bodies, two boys gaping. And a partridge in a pear tree, McColl heard himself think.
And then there were shouts in the distance, and a bell began tolling as if the end of the world were nigh. The two boys seemed to wake from their trance, turning tail and haring off into the distance before McColl could say a word. Their bag lay abandoned, having spilled what looked like a trio of cabbages.
McColl strode across to where Kerzhentsev was lying and found to his surprise that the Russian was still alive. But he was breathing his last, and he seemed to know it. There was no fear in the eyes, though. “Buggered that up, didn’t I?” he whispered. “Get the kids away,” he said, forcing each word out like it might be his last.
“They’re gone—” McColl started to say, but the Russian’s eyes had stopped moving.
There was no sign of the boys.
Grabbing the bag containing the bombs, he headed for the fence. There were sounds of movement away to his right, but buildings blocked the view. His prospective captors were still out of sight.
Reaching the wire, he walked toward the stand of trees, searching for the hole they’d cut. It wasn’t there. Retracing his steps, he finally found the well-disguised flap and forced himself through. Picking up the bag again, he resisted the thought of just leaving it there—if the boys were caught and tied to sabotage, their chances would be minimal. This was his risk to bear.
There was a yard-wide gap between the German fence and the walls of the properties beyond. He made his way along it, conscious of the lights now weaving patterns above the goods yard to his right and the incessant ringing of the sonorous bell.
No one had seen him, he told himself. No one but the boys. If they were caught and questioned . . .
There was no future for him in Kiev, but that didn’t matter—Cumming already wanted him in Moscow. It was just that getting from the one to the other was likely to prove more difficult than either of them had envisaged.
After hesitating for a moment, he turned left along a narrow passage between houses. This opened onto an empty street, which sloped down toward a bigger road. The one, he hoped, that passed under the lines near the southern end of the yard.
It was almost midnight, and there was no one about. At the bottom of the street, he paused in a shop doorway, then squeezed himself deeper into the shadows as a German motor lorry rumbled past. The driver seemed in no hurry, and the lorry’s presence was probably coincidental.
He assumed that the Germans would scour the depot and hoped they’d finish doing that before widening their search. He hoped the boys had gotten out the way they’d gotten in and weren’t huddling in some dark corner, praying the Germans would pass them by.
The street ahead was clear. He walked on, keeping to the shadows as much as he could, trying to avoid an impression of haste. Passing the road that sloped up to the depot, he saw the gate office blazing with light. A few yards more and a rifle cracked in the distance. Just the once. So . . . maybe a soldier shooting at shadows.
The bridge that passed under the yard was at least fifty yards long—a tunnel in all but name. Its dark mouth felt like a death trap, but the only alternative was walking across the open tracks. McColl hurried into the gloom, boots slapping on the stony ground. The place smelled of mold, even in June.
Somewhere in the middle, a memory of almost drowning appeared out of nowhere, and emerging at the other end he felt the taste of Loch Linnhe water on his tongue. How old had he been? Seven?
He turned right into the Solomenka railway colony. The bell, he realized, had stopped tolling. It must have done so while he was inside the tunnel. As he passed down the first row of houses, he could imagine the faces at windows on the opposite side, all wondering what was happening in the depot across the tracks.
Belov, of course, was able to guess. His host of the last three weeks looked appalled to see him, and maybe a little surprised.
“You can’t stay here,” the Russian said.
“I won’t,” McColl reassured him. “But I need my things,” he added, pushing his way in and heading for his room.
The thing he wanted most was the map of the local area that he’d finally acquired the previous day, after three long weeks of searching. “Always know the way out” was a maxim that had saved his life on more than one occasion.
There wasn’t much to pack—the map and a spare set of clothes, the letters to Soph and his two sets of papers.
Belov was waiting by the front door. “Are you leaving Kiev? Golubev will want to know.”
It took McColl several seconds to remember that Golubev was Davidson. “Yes, of course. I’ll head west,” he lied. “They won’t expect that.” He had left the other bag by the door. “I don’t suppose you want the bombs?” he asked Belov.
“Hell no!” the Russian exclaimed, taking an involuntary step back. “Why in God’s name did you bring them here?”
There was no answer to that. “Thanks for the hospitality,” McColl said, picking up the other bag and slinging it over his shoulder. After quick looks up and down the empty street, he pulled the door shut behind him and headed north in the direction of the station. He could almost feel Belov’s eyes on his back.
Once out of sight, he took a left turn. Five minutes later the houses were all behind him, and he was walking down a tree-lined track between fields. Here, at last, the reality of Kerzhentsev’s death came home, and he found himself wiping away tears. Perhaps it was the shock—and the fact that it could just as easily have been himself. But he knew it was also more than that. He’d known the Russian for only a few weeks, but in that time they’d shared things that mattered, things he hadn’t shared with many others. They’d been comrades in the best sense of the word.
McColl remembered Kerzhentsev saying that the picture of his wife that he carried in his head was all he needed. And the love in his eyes when he said it.
Stopping in the middle of the empty lane, McColl stared up at the heavens and said good-bye, then resumed his onward march. According to his map, which he’d studied at length the previous night, there was a ferry some twenty-five miles to the south.
•••
When he reached the Dnieper an hour before dawn, an almost-full moon was hanging low above the steppe beyond, casting reflections the color of clotted cream across the slow-flowing river. It was beautiful beyond words, but all McColl could think of was Kerzhentsev’s wife and children. He didn’t even know their names.
As the world grew lighter, he studied the landing stage below. There was no one waiting for the ferry, but he saw a simple rowboat tethered to a similar stage on the eastern bank. The river was about six hundred yards wide, the current difficult to judge. A hard row, but better than swimming.
When a man appeared on the other side, McColl went down to the empty stage and rang the bell that hung from the wooden post. The man waved back but showed no inclination to cross. He was, it seemed, waiting for someone to share the oars.
McColl sat down and waited, trying to keep his impatience in check. He wasn’t expecting to see any troops, but the local commander might have ordered a plane or two aloft. The shooting of two German soldiers wasn’t something he could afford to take lightly.
If McColl were caught up in a sweep and the boys had not been captured, the Khristian Vissotsky papers might be enough to keep him free. He had ditched the Arkady Belov papers in a foul-smelling pool not far from the river and after some thought had dropped the bombs in after them. Anyone taking a swim in such water was bound to have a death wish.
After about an hour, two would-be passengers arrived on the opposite bank and the ferry started off. The crossing took about twenty minutes, the ferryman steering the boat in a wide half circle to compensate for the current. By the time it arrived, the passenger who’d shared the rowing duties looked utterly exhausted.
The ferryman wanted to wait for another passenger and refused to proceed until McColl agreed to pay double. The trip was conducted in silence, which was fine by McColl, who needed all his energy for pulling on the oars. A sleepless night and a twenty-five-mile hike had not been the ideal preparation.
It seemed wise to get some distance from the river, so he walked for almost an hour before laying himself down in a small copse of trees. He was almost out when he heard the plane and blessed his luck in getting off the open road. The sleep that followed was fitful, but when he finally opened his eyes, the sun’s position suggested that six or seven hours had passed. He stayed where he was, eating half the bread he’d kept in reserve. A stream running along one edge of the copse provided some brackish water.
There were about two hours of daylight remaining when he decided to risk going on. The station he wanted to reach—the third to the east of Kiev on the route to Moscow—was around forty miles to the north, and by the time darkness fell, he should have managed ten. Another thirty overnight, and he’d be there by dawn, waiting for a train. Always assuming some were running. If none were, he had no idea what he’d do. Walk all the way to Moscow? He didn’t know how far it was, but five hundred miles seemed optimistic.
The sun was well below the western horizon when he came to the crossroads and saw the signpost. Many had mysteriously disappeared when the Germans invaded, but this one had somehow survived. There were four villages named, and one of them was Bucha.
Where had he heard that name?
The consul from Kiev. The dark blue Pathfinder.
McColl laughed. Surely it couldn’t still be there.
And if it was, there wouldn’t be anything like enough petrol.
And even if, by some wonderful chance, there was fuel enough to reach Moscow, surely the last thing a fleeing British agent should do was drive across the German-occupied Ukraine in a huge, shiny automobile.
If there were an easier way of drawing attention to himself, he couldn’t think what it might be.
It was a daft idea, but he couldn’t resist it.
According to the sign, Bucha was three versts—two miles—away. An hour or so later, having asked directions and bought some bread from a woman in the nearby village, McColl was gazing at the consul’s dacha, a cottage of around four rooms with verandas on three sides. It looked abandoned but was still in one piece, the windows shuttered, front door locked and chained.
The garage was around the back, a recent addition built in brick. This had also been padlocked, but someone had levered it open.
And presumably stolen the consul’s beloved car.
McColl pushed his way into the darkness and immediately walked into something metal. A lighted match confirmed it was the Pathfinder, which looked as splendid as its owner had claimed.
Noticing a pair of candles, he applied a match to each. And there, stacked against the far wall, were at least a dozen cans of Russian petrol.
The only complication was the boy in the Pathfinder’s passenger seat, now rubbing his eyes in the sudden glare.
11
Czars of All Sizes
After the mass shooting of the Bolsheviks at the wayside halt, the nightmarish quality of Caitlin’s journey across Siberia grew no less intense. Over the next twenty-four hours, her train arrived at two stations liberally littered with corpses, in one case those of Bolsheviks, in the other of their local White opponents. On each occasion a mass grave was dug by volunteers, the bodies all tipped in and thinly covered with earth.
Over the next hundred miles, she and her fellow passengers came across four armored trains—two Bolshevik, one White, and one Czech. Each delayed them for several hours, as far as Caitlin could see for no other reason than that they could. Only the Whites bothered to check the passengers’ papers, and then in perfunctory fashion. All were keen to hear about the other armored trains: where they’d been seen, how many men they carried, what sort of guns they had. Caitlin was spared the last question. As a woman she was not expected to know one gun from another.
Omsk, when they finally reached it, was still held by the Bolsheviks. The line divided here. The fork heading northwestward toward Yekaterinburg was in Bolshevik hands but closed for the moment, allegedly on account of a broken bridge. The other fork, which ran westward to Czech-held Chelyabinsk, was wholly under Czech control and supposedly still open for civilian traffic.
After their last experience with the Czechs, Caitlin and Brady were willing to take that route, but the Bolshevik-led railwaymen in Omsk, wary of losing a precious train, decided to suspend all further westbound traffic until the next meeting of the local soviet. This was in four days’ time.
Though frustrated by the delay, Caitlin lost no time in seeking out a decent bed and bath. Her Baedeker recommended the Rossiya Hotel, which was just as well, because most of the others seemed closed. From her window Omsk had the air of a ghost town, an impression confirmed when she went for a walk. The general post office was open for business, but only if the business was local—the world beyond was out of reach, whether by letter, phone, or telegraph. Letters for America—here a sad shake of the head—would be better posted from Moscow. Or perhaps from Vladivostok, depending which way madam was headed.
Madam was beginning to wonder. In Nikolskaya Square she found two elegant churches and a military school, all bedecked in slogans, all having suffered serious damage. She walked the length of Lyubinski Prospect, passing the closed Museum of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and a boarded-up municipal theater. Some of the original fortress was still standing, but not the part where Dostoyevsky had spent his four years of imprisonment and written Buried Alive: Or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia. Retracing her steps, she sought out the US consular agent, whose address was listed in her Baedeker. He was gone—several months ago, according to a neighbor—and Caitlin found it difficult to blame him. For those who weren’t locked up, Omsk didn’t seem like a hard place to leave.
The hotel was just about acceptable. There was hot water on only two occasions during her four-day stay, but the food was better than anything she’d eaten in Petrograd over the previous winter, and the bed, though lumpy, was a good deal more comfortable than any train seat. The Cheka officer who called to examine her papers was courteous to a fault and much impressed by her personal acquaintance with Yakov Peters. If he also seemed nervous and tense, then so did the town. Some of the people she spoke to were eager to welcome the Czechs, hoping, perhaps naïvely, that these foreign soldiers would protect them from their own warring countrymen.
The day of the scheduled meeting arrived. It was held around the turntable at the locomotive depot, the soviet delegates filling the adjoining tracks and cinder paths, a host of interested onlookers lining the footplates of the stabled engines. “Industrial theater” was the phrase that came to Caitlin’s mind. A workers’ Delphi.
The evening was hot and humid, and no one seemed in a very good temper, but all were determined to have their say. Caitlin had been to several such meetings in Petrograd, but this one felt different—in what way she wasn’t quite sure. Almost all those present were Russian, so why would the Siberian setting make any difference? It was, she decided, more to do with the passage of time. The Bolshevik revolution was now over six months old, and the papers she’d read in Omsk were full of the threats now facing Lenin’s government. The revolt of the Czech Legion had emboldened all its enemies, from anarchists and dissenting socialists to those who dreamed of restoring the czar. Add a few Allied troops to the mix, not to mention pots of Allied money, and further reverses seemed more than likely.
Bolshevism was on the defensive, was fighting for its life, and she could hear it in these voices. The joyous optimism had vanished, at least for the moment. Now there was defiance, and not a little fear.
Compared to this, the business of running which trains on which lines was something of a footnote. The decision was made to resume services on the Chelyabinsk section, partly to create some space in the overfull yards but mostly in the hope of securing a working alliance with the Czechs who held the western part of the line. The Bolsheviks were still in charge of Omsk, but without new friends or reinforcements their chances of remaining so were much in the balance, and they knew it.
The vote was almost unanimous—the first train would leave at seven the next morning.
•••
It left at ten. The endless forest seemed to be behind them; now it was steppe and occasional trees stretching into the distance. There were fields of wheat and rye close to the widely spaced settlements, but the overriding impression remained one of emptiness, of a land so vast it could never be filled.
They met their first Czech train in early afternoon and were soon given leave to proceed. A second encounter took longer, but the result was the same, and by the time darkness fell, Caitlin was thinking the Urals might soon be in reach. She woke around dawn to the ominous sensation of the train running backward.
This was Kurgan, and they were being shunted into a siding. It was midmorning before an explanation was forthcoming—all civilian traffic between there and Chelyabinsk was suspended, and their train would be held for an indefinite period. Brady went off to investigate and returned an hour later with even worse news. The Czechs had decided to use the train, suitably armored, on the diverging line to Yekaterinburg, most of which remained in Bolshevik hands. Its passengers were effectively stranded in Kurgan.
