Lenin's Roller Coaster, page 33
“I was called in and questioned by a man named Komarov. Brady must have seen you on the street and told the Cheka. It must have been him, because Komarov thinks we parted in 1914 and hadn’t seen each other again until last week.”
“How do they know we met the other day?”
“I admitted we had. He asked me, and I couldn’t take the risk that he already knew. I told him you’d only come to see me on account of the boy, that you wanted my help in finding an orphanage.”
“Did you tell him Fedya’s name?”
“I can’t remember. I don’t think so.”
“And the name of the orphanage?”
“No. He didn’t ask. I’m sure of that. But what does it matter? It’s you who’s in danger, not the boy. You have to leave.”
“I was planning to leave tomorrow, but not on account of the Cheka. I killed a man this evening, a member of the Trust—you know who they are? Well, they’ll be looking for me when they find out, and so will my own people.” He smiled. “Some servant of the Crown. As unreliable as you could wish for.”
She couldn’t help returning the smile. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad.”
“It’s worth everything,” he said shortly. “But you must go now. If the Cheka finds you here, you’ll never talk your way out of it.”
“I’ll go in a minute. Tell me why you killed this man.”
McColl went through the story as quickly as he could.
“You did the right thing,” she said when he was done, and she resisted the temptation to ask the obvious question: Had he really not known what kind of men he was working with? She asked if the shop would be safe for that night.
“No, but I’ll find somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You can’t stay with me. The Cheka might be watching the house.”
“I know.”
“Why not leave now? There’s always hundreds of people sleeping at the stations—you could hide among them.”
“I have to see the boy before I go. I promised him I would.”
She raised her hands in exasperation. “Jack—that’s crazy. I’ll go see him and explain why you couldn’t. He’ll understand.”
“I would like you to visit him after I’m gone, show him that somebody cares. But I have to see him before I go.”
She accepted defeat. “All right. But where will you spend the night?”
“I don’t know. But you really should go. Please.”
“I will.” She had to admit it: over the last few days, and especially over the last few hours, having him gone from Moscow had been high on her list of wants. But now that the moment had come, the prospect of a lasting separation was hard to bear. She wouldn’t go back on the choice she’d made, but there was no denying the cost. “I might be here for years,” she said, determined to be honest.
“However long it takes,” he said, but he looked like he’d been hit.
“I can’t ask you to wait for me,” she said, more coldly than she intended.
“You don’t have to,” he told her almost reproachfully. “I’ll be faithful,” he added lightly.
“Don’t say that!” she said. “I don’t want you to be, not in the way that you mean. I don’t want you to put your life on ice.”
“But . . .”
She saw the question in his eyes. “Look, we love each other. After all we’ve been through, how could either of us deny it?” And it was true, she thought, but not the only truth. Their love for each other wasn’t the whole of their lives, wasn’t all that they were. “I do love you,” she said, sounding almost surprised by how much she meant it. “And if we never see each other again, remember that,” she added, sounding more desperate than she intended.
“We will,” he said.
He clearly wanted this conversation over, and she could understand why. It suddenly felt as if door after door were closing.
“Write to me when you can,” he told her.
“I will.”
She put her arms around his neck and looked him in the eyes. “Be safe,” she said. “Say hello to Scotland for me.”
The embrace and kiss were all too short, the parting only sorrow.
After checking that no one was observing the shop, he watched her walk briskly away up Nikitskaya, wondering if he would ever see her again.
A passing droshky brought him back to the present. Could he risk staying in the shop? He didn’t think so. Back inside, he crammed his meager possessions—a spare set of clothes, a copy of Dead Souls he’d found in the shop, the letters Cheselden had written to Soph—into a battered suitcase that Luckett had left behind. The Cheka papers went into his pocket; the other two sets—which might still prove useful—he stuffed inside the book. The Webley went back in his belt, where the folds of his loose cotton jacket concealed it.
After locking up the shop and pushing the key under the door, he stood on the pavement assessing his options. Caitlin was right about the stations being crowded, but they all had Cheka offices. It was warm enough to sleep in one of the parks, but they had Cheka patrols, whose members might wonder why a fellow Chekist was living like a peasant. A hotel would make more sense. With his brand-new Cheka papers, he could demand a room with a view.
He didn’t get the latter, but the staff at the old Berlin Hotel did seem keen to please. The room was clean, the bed surprisingly firm; there was even a fire escape outside his window. It would do, he thought. He felt safe for the night, and—considering the outcome—strangely satisfied with the way he had handled matters since Bowers had first picked him up. All except for the meeting with Caitlin. The last for God knew how long. As he lay there unable to sleep, her words kept coming back, words with too many possible meanings, some of them hopeful, most of them not.
He was awake at dawn. Rather than eat breakfast in the hotel, he walked back to the canteen where he and Fedya had eaten most of their meals and where his presence would not seem unusual. As he devoured his bread and jam, he thought about the talks they’d had and how many times the boy had mentioned sharing the future. Whatever problems he’d had growing up, McColl had at least been blessed with a brother. He’d never felt truly alone, as he imagined Fedya now did.
His thoughts turned to Jed, who he prayed was still alive. There was more than a chance he might not be—in surviving as long as he had, his brother had already beaten the odds. And of course he might be maimed—a leg or an arm gone, his sight stripped away, his lungs burned out. It was hard to imagine. The picture McColl carried around in his head was over four years old, of a Jed who was young and full of himself, a Scottish Peter Pan eager to battle the Kaiser’s Captain Hook.
A posse of Red Guards crowded into the canteen, interrupting his reverie. These men were Russians and looked it, but physiognomy apart, they could have come from anywhere on earth—many populations were pushed to the limits of endurance by a heartless system and stupid, reckless rulers. The difference was that the Russians had fought back, and now here they were, wearing red armbands and hoping to build a brand-new world. Would they make their revolution work? Would the rest of the world even let them try? McColl suspected it would end in blood and tears, but that was who he was. He hoped he was wrong. All peoples came in shades of good and bad, but he’d come to admire the Russians and their instinctive generosity. They deserved better, and he hoped they got it.
It was almost eight o’clock. Outside, the sun was up above the horizon, the sky as clear as it had been for most of the summer. As he walked up Tverskoy Boulevard, he noticed that the Cheka car was gone. Two Chekists were guarding the spot where he’d parked it, for reasons best known to themselves.
People were hurrying to work, ordinary people in ordinary clothes, some of them smiling, some of them not. It was hard to believe that the Bolshevik realm was now a shrunken remnant, surrounded on all sides by vengeful enemies. They might not last the summer, he thought. Vasily and Viktor and all their friends would be back; Lenin and his would be swinging from lampposts.
Approaching the end of the narrow street on which the orphanage stood, he slowed his stride and cast a cautious look around the corner. At first he’d been surprised by the Cheka not asking for Fedya’s current whereabouts, but later it had made more sense. If McColl had only used the boy for camouflage, then why would he want to see him again?
The street was empty. As he slowly walked down it, McColl scanned the windows and doorways for watchers. None were apparent.
The same woman was sitting sentry in the lobby. She was uncooperative until McColl flashed his Cheka identity, then almost too willing for words. The Cheka were striking too much fear into ordinary people’s hearts, McColl thought. And the chances of their rediscovering any human kindness in the midst of a civil war didn’t seem that good.
He was shown into the familiar room, and a few minutes later Fedya walked in through the door. He looked healthy enough to McColl and even a little happier, or was that wishful thinking?
He sat the boy down and explained that he was leaving Moscow and couldn’t say when he’d be back. “I said I’d come and tell you, and here I am. Is there anything I can do for you, anything you want me to tell the people who run this place?”
“Are you going back to England?” Fedya asked.
“Probably, but I don’t know when. Eventually, yes.”
“Take me with you.”
“I can’t. We’ve been through this—”
“Please.”
“I can’t. Fedya, men are hunting me, and I won’t take you into that sort of danger.”
“You did before.”
McColl couldn’t help laughing. “You gave me no choice, remember?”
“It will be easier for you to get away if I’m with you—a foreigner would not be traveling with his son.”
It was probably true. “No,” McColl said. “This is your home now. This is your country.”
He expected more of an argument, but Fedya just hung his head for a moment, then abruptly got to his feet. “Good-bye, then,” he said, before almost running across to the door and hurriedly pushing through it.
McColl sat there for a moment, exhaled loudly, and followed him through the door. Fedya and the woman had both vanished, so he let himself out onto the still-empty street. What had he expected—hugs and smiles?
He started walking. His first idea had been to cadge a lift on one of the farmers’ carts that came in and out of the city, then catch a train from somewhere farther down the line. But on reflection it seemed better, and easier, to catch the first available train from the Kursk Station and get out of Moscow as soon as he could. Brady would have given the Cheka a description, but what could that contain other than average height, average weight, brown hair and eyes? As one of the Service instructors had told him, his distinguishing feature was the lack of one. And his Cheka papers should see him through any routine check.
It wasn’t a long walk to the Kursk Station, and most of it was down Sadovaya. He tried not to hurry—only a fugitive would rush in such heat—and he tried not to think about Fedya or Caitlin. Trouble was, each kept passing him back to the other.
The station appeared on his left, a long white building with two large domes in the middle, smaller ones at either end, and a wide open space in front. The latter was full of people—families, it looked like, as if several trainloads of Volga refugees had all arrived together—and McColl was some twenty yards from the edge of the crowd when he heard the shrill voice shouting, “Yakov!”
It was Fedya’s.
The boy must have followed him all the way from the orphanage.
Heartsore and exasperated in equal measure, he turned to see the side of Fedya’s head erupt in blood and bone.
“No!” he heard himself shout as the boy collapsed in a lifeless heap only five yards away.
There were two men walking toward him, both with guns in hand. One seemed familiar, and a split second later he knew. Aidan Brady without a mustache.
It was lucky the suitcase was in his left hand, leaving the right to ease out the Webley and get off a shot, after both men had missed him with theirs. Ignoring the shrieks in the crowd behind him, McColl took aim at Brady’s heart and hit him in the knee. As the American went down, McColl adjusted his bearing and put a bullet in the other man’s chest.
Ahead of him people were scattering, away from the wounded and dead, away from the broken boy, away from guns and what they could do.
Behind him the crowd was drawing back into itself, hoping he’d leave it alone.
He turned and strode toward the wall of people, wondering how his legs were still working, how his body was bearing its millstone of grief.
It parted before him, and myriad faces—fearful, excited, even admiring—invited him through their improvised guard of dishonor.
17
Roller Coasters
There was no mention of the boy’s death in the newspapers, and it was several days later when one of Caitlin’s colleagues mentioned the tragic shootings outside the station. After other acquaintances had supplied enough details to convince her that Fedya had died that day, she took a deep breath, walked down to the building on Bolshaya Lubyanka, and requested an interview with Comrade Komarov.
Much to her surprise, she was shown up to his office. More astonishing still, he looked pleased to see her.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, though on reflection it wasn’t hard to guess.
“It was you who told me about the boy.”
She sighed. “How did he get shot?”
He told her that it had been an accident, that two of his men had followed McColl from the orphanage, hoping that he would lead them to other foreign agents.
“But how did you know which orphanage?” she asked without thinking.
He let that go. “We checked them all for new arrivals. It wasn’t difficult.”
“I suppose not,” she said, a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach.
He continued the story. “The area around the station was crowded, and my men were afraid they might lose the Englishman, so they drew their guns and moved in to arrest him. And then the boy rushed past them, shouting out a warning. Shots were exchanged, and he was caught in the crossfire. Two women died as well.”
“Who was it that shot the boy?” Caitlin asked.
Komarov shrugged and looked slightly uncomfortable. “We’re not sure—different witnesses tell different stories. Does it really matter?”
Yes, she thought, it did. But she knew there was no point in pressing the matter. “How did McColl escape?” she asked.
“He just disappeared into the crowd. We had the station cordoned off in a matter of minutes, but somehow he got away.” Komarov’s sudden and unexpected smile seemed almost playful. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from him.”
“No,” she said, smiling back. She got to her feet and thanked him for his time. He was human for a Chekist, she thought, as she made her way back to the street. They would need people like him.
In the weeks and months that followed, things turned nasty. The Allied invaders, who now included Caitlin’s countrymen, opened up several new fronts, and the fledgling Red Army suffered several alarming defeats before Trotsky and his young generals managed to stabilize the front. Closer to Moscow, Allied agents launched a series of successful attacks on oil installations and food trains, stoking fears in the city of a cold and hungry winter. The Cheka’s unmasking of the Lockhart Plot, a British plan to subvert the Bolsheviks’ Latvian guard, was followed by another attempt on Lenin’s life, one that was almost successful.
Any one of these events might have proved the final straw—together they broke every bone in the camel’s body. The Bolsheviks, once lenient to a fault, went to the other extreme, letting the Chekas off the leash to maul and crush all opposition. Hundreds were shot—thousands, according to some—and that was just in Moscow. There were positive signs—Spiridonova was still alive, despite her ties to the woman who’d almost murdered Lenin—but they were few and far between. The revolution was choking on blood.
The reaction was mixed among Caitlin’s Bolshevik friends. Some thought it was about time, that bending over backward to be fair had gotten them into this mess, encouraging their enemies and putting the whole revolution at risk. Some said a killing spree could never be justified—hadn’t abolishing the death penalty been one of their greatest achievements? Others worried about the long-term consequences. Remember what followed the guillotine in France, they said. Did they want a Red Napoleon, a Red Genghis Khan?
Caitlin agreed with them all, and like everyone else she hoped that the terror would soon be over, that once the civil war was won, destruction would again give way to creation and the openhearted spirit of the early months would be restored. She immersed herself in work. Her journalistic career was in abeyance, every bit of her energy going into the all-Russia women’s conference that was scheduled for November. Just spreading the word was a major endeavor in a country so splintered by war, and getting the delegates to Moscow was a real logistical nightmare.
Kollontai finally returned. Her political reputation had been damaged by her errant husband’s chronic indiscipline, but she still had more determination than any ten of her comrades. Caitlin had missed her political energy and had missed her more as a friend. As someone who knew about Jack.
“What else could you have said?” Kollontai asked one night in the otherwise empty office. The conversation in the back room of the antique store was etched in Caitlin’s memory, and she’d just repeated it almost verbatim. “What else?” the Russian repeated. “That you loved him more than life itself and would follow him to the ends of the earth? You don’t, and you haven’t. You love him—of course you do. And from everything you’ve told me, I’m sure he loves you, too. But the love between you is something you both create. You’re its authors, and you mustn’t become its victims. Especially you, because nine times out ten that’s what happens to women.”
