Cold Blood (21 page)

The pilot had seen that one coming. I should have had the Davidov man go first. Given him the choice, get shot by a Red or get shot by me.

I ran to the front of the loco, as best I could across the sleepers. Their spacing was awkward: one slip and he'd have had me for carrion. The bullets crackled off the rails and the armour-plating. They passed so close I could smell them. The shadow of the Fokker seemed to be sitting on top of me. That's what it felt like. There flashed through my mind two of the illustrations in my first Bible. They'd given me nightmares.
The Herald of Death
and
God Strikes a Sinner
. I thought, And I've still got to cross the open ground, switch the points and get back to the loco.

At last the shadow moved and went racing down the track in front of me. I knew the next bit. Another Immelmann roll and he'd be back. I'd be caught at the points. That'd be it. Six foot two, no real covering fire and clear light. Some part of me would get hit, couldn't be otherwise.

Kobi opened fire, but only for a short burst. “Come on, man, what are you doing, for Christ's sake?” I shouted.

Then I gathered myself up, tucked my head in and went
sprinting out from the front of the train. Death was chasing me. What would it feel like afterwards . . . ? Why hadn't they put the points closer to my bit of the line . . . ? How actually did the lever shift the moving rail, was there a cable—then my boot caught it and I went flying, got smacked face down into the clinker by my momentum. For a second I was stretched out like a man already dead. But I wasn't where the Fokker thought I'd be and his bullets went wide.

Next: Kobi had got his machine gun balanced and opened up. I was on my knees, scrambling—scrabbling—to put some fresh speed on. P-p-p-p-p-p—it was a great noise that, the clump of Kobi's gunfire. It was the best I ever heard. I was thankful, not almost beyond words but actually so. My tongue was frozen—God was holding it. Yes! It had to be God. At that instant I believed in God, in the Apostles, the Miracles and every one of the ten Johns.

Cautiously I looked around. What was even better than the rattle of Kobi's machine gun was the fact that the Fokker didn't care for it. Or maybe he was running low on fuel or was out of ammo. Whatever the reason, he rolled away, the red star bold on his fuselage. I glimpsed white teeth in a filthy face. The sun flashed on his goggles—he was gone.

I was shaking all over. Had the points offered any resistance, I'd have sat down and cried. As it was, the lever came sweetly over and Shmuleyvich, grinning broadly, passed the train onto the main line. I walked towards the cab—tottered, my calves like jelly.

I climbed the ladder. Kobi was still up there on the coal stack, his face streaked with black. He said, “Glebov, I know it was.”

I said that a man who'd broken his leg like Glebov would never be able to handle an aeroplane. He just wouldn't have the strength in his leg muscles. I didn't have this as absolute knowledge. But it seemed obvious. Moreover, Glebov was a commissar, not an airman. He wouldn't have time for that sort of caper. He might have had the pilot dispatched to patrol the railroads. It made perfect sense. I'd have done the same. But it hadn't been him in the Fokker.

Kobi said again, “It was Glebov. I was closer to him than you were.”

“You were? That's balls. I was up there at the same level as God. At His front door. Hammering on it for mercy. Give over, Genghis.”

But he stuck to his opinion and I wasn't going to argue. He'd been wanting a change ever since we'd got holed up in St. Petersburg. Let Muraviev take him off my hands, that's what I thought.

W
E QUICKLY
buried Valenty and Shmuleyvich took his place as driver. I told him to burn coal. I didn't believe for a moment that Glebov had been in the Fokker. But I didn't like the idea of being within range of the Bolsheviks' planes. So we went like hell for a week before easing off to pick up the news.

It was in this way that we began to hear more about the Tsar's imprisonment at Ekaterinburg, which was some way to the north and east of us. It was said that Commissar Glebov had charge of him, which fitted in well with what Boltikov had first heard. There could be little doubt about the Tsar's eventual lot unless Muraviev and the Whites could get to him in time. And whether that was possible—but here it became complicated. The Americans, British, French, Italians and Japanese had all sent forces to Siberia. Each wanted something different. As a result there were so many generals who might conceivably end up with the decisive role that I got giddy even thinking about them. There were too many arrows heading in too many directions—too much space for events to occur in. Something was needed to bring matters to a head and thus make Glebov accessible to me.

The death of the Tsar would obviously be one factor.

The other was brought into range not by kindly Fate but by the far from benign figure of Alexander Alexandrovich Boltikov.

I'd taken over Valenty's berth and there rigged up a drawing board on which I'd pinned a large map of Russia. On it I was shading the direction and extent of the Bolshevik advances as per the news that I judged reliable. I wanted to discover where that Fokker had been operating from.

“Charlie,” said Boltikov, coming in and looking unusually contrite, “I'm feeling guilty about my wife and boy.”

“Do you want to feel guilty?”

“No! I sleep so badly.”

I asked him what she looked like. “A beautiful
blondinka
, like a willow tree in spring. Her figure is sensational and her mind excellent. Therefore she is interested only in strong men. When I said we were leaving Russia, she said she'd go to Finland as an advance party and prepare things for my arrival. What did she do? She grabbed everything. Millions in cash. Plus my father's pictures. All the furniture, carpets, jewellery
und so weiter
. Said she'd wait for me to catch up. Ha! She'll have gone off with another man, I'm sure of it. That's her style. What I'm asking is this: do I have a duty to be loyal to her in the circumstances?”

“None.”

“May I forgot her?”

“Completely.”

“What about the kid? Six roubles to four says it's mine.”

“Then invest a proportion of your available love in him. And when you meet up with him as a young man, hand over the same proportion of your new fortune to him and say, ‘This is yours. Let's drink to our prosperity.' Next problem.”

He smiled slowly. Conspiracy was in his eyes. Leaning forward so I could smell the salted fish on his breath he said, “Well, Charlie, that was all chat. What I really came about is the information that's just come to hand.” He took the pencil from between my fingers and began sketching—thick, decisive slashes. “Here's Kazan and the Volga flowing down to Samara. Right? And here's Ufa, which is on the River Kama, which connects to the Volga not far below Kazan. That's the geography that concerns us. Think of nothing else but that triangle. Plus what Joseph's just told me.”

“My Joseph?”

“Yes. Your Joseph and my spy. He's made of earhole. Turn the map round so we can both see it. The thing is this... would it surprise you to know that in one of these three cities there's a vault full of gold? Maybe it's on flatbeds between two of these
cities, maybe in a string of barges. But the gold exists. ‘Next problem,' you say—I can read you like a book. It's this: how to make the gold ours. Yours and mine, Charlie Doig.”

I studied him. The existence of the gold didn't surprise me. He had a monstrous nose for money. “No. The first problem is its value. From that we know how much effort to make. Whether it's worth the risks.”

“That's the second problem. The first one is to get this dreary business of revenge out of your head . . . But let me tell you the story. When the German war started, our monarch did a wise thing and sent half the country's gold stock to Samara in case things went badly with the Hun. From Samara it was shifted to Kazan to join up with a small quantity of gold that was already there. That's how it got to these parts. Then the things happened that we know happened, like the Whites capturing Kazan. Now the Reds want to grab it and the Whites want to keep it and our brave friends in the Czech legion think they're owed it for all the fighting they've done.”

“What's it worth?”

“United States dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Three hundred and thirty million.”

I said, “That has to be hypothetical. Some will have gone missing. It always does.”

“Wrong word. Celestial, that's what it is.”

“Weighing? Even a million dollars' worth sounds heavy.”

“At $17.80 per troy ounce it comes in at 690 tons. Four-hundred-ounce bricks. That's thirty-three pounds each. The Russian double eagle on every single one. Purity—98 per cent as assayed. As fine as Britain's. Each brick stamped and dated.”

“Year?”

“Nineteen fourteen.”

“And the reddish colour to it, is it a stigma?”

“No. The British have taken shiploads of it in payment for arms... Why so negative, Charlie? Do you have a bad relationship with money?”

“I was a naturalist. I've never had any money.” I couldn't think why I should tell him about the diamonds in my boots.

Going on: “I'll tell you what makes me especially negative. Getting 690 tons of gold out of Russia without being hacked to pieces.”

“We don't have to take the lot. Ten million dollars would start me off. In five years it'd be twenty. Five-year doubling, that's my rule of thumb. What about you?”

His financier's eyes were trained on me saying, What sort of a problem is this that you have, and hurry up, and just think of a figure that'll give you everlasting happiness. Anyway say something, that's what his impatient stare said to me.

He continued, “You've shot Glebov or strangled him or pushed him through the ice. Now what? Going to retire and live out your life in poverty, are you? Of course not. Now's the time to think about your future. Test the horizon. Think of all the women you want to make love to, the wines you want to drink. Racehorses, bung a few of those in while you're about it. A decent house or two. Yacht? Of course, with a crew of a dozen and your own flag at the masthead. Don't stint yourself, man!”

Anyone who can't admit to wanting money has a blocked nature. But I foresaw trouble with that quantity of gold.

However, he was in no mood to listen. “Glebov'll be after the gold as well. He's only got to pop down from Ekaterinburg. Two for the price of one, that's what we could be talking about here. Looking at it from your point of view, of course, Charlie.”

The door opened. It was Xenia, come to look for me. I kissed the side of her neck, plunging at it. She smelt great, of laundered cotton.

“What were you talking about hidden away like this?” she said.

“Oh, the price of coal,” Boltikov said. But the words didn't ring true, and my girl stared long and hard at him as he went out into the corridor.