Cold Blood (48 page)

“Nope.”

“Two women then? A different woman each week? A Negress?”

“Nope.”

“Listen: last time we met you spared my life. Had you carried out your threat I would have killed myself, right there, in the forest. Without eyelids—no surgeon could have given me new ones. Without them—
nichevo
! I'd have preferred to stare at nothing—in fact, I'd have preferred death. I was trying to repay you by making you up to General. And a job on my staff, just when I'm at the peak of my career. Had you accepted, you'd have been assured of a long and fruitful life—”

“As your servant, let's get that clear.”

“But now... Well, I'll show you the sort of master you're turning down. I'll show you what generosity is—I'll still do you a favour. Today your life is spared, and tomorrow and every day until I'm established in power. Then I shall come after you and I shall kill you. Why? Because I cannot afford to leave you alive forever. There, let that be the treaty between us.”

He reached up and grasped my lapels. “You're too bold to be dead. You
impose
yourself so well on situations... Just you and I and the gold—we could pick up dead men's papers anywhere. Then disappear as Jones pretended he was going to do. We'll—how would he have put it?—we'll vamoose! We'll be the richest vamooseniks in the world. Your king—
nichevo.
That fat French crocodile—
nichevo.
Mr. Banker Morgan—
nichevo.
But me and you—
millioners.
”

“No.”

“For the last time?”

“No.”

“Then I shall kill you. When I feel like it. In a week, in a year, how should I know, I'm Russian. You have a chance to run away. I've said you can. I'm a man of my word. But you're a thousand miles from safety in every direction. I shall find you however well you hide. Then our acquaintance will end.”

There were four of us in that chapel—Xenia and Lili were standing arm in arm, watching. But suddenly, as we deliberated on those words, “Then our acquaintance will end,” it seemed as if a fifth person had entered the room and was occupying its very centre. I turned my head towards it, as did Glebov, as did both the women. No one spoke.

At length Glebov said with a sigh, in a soft, unlikely voice: “
Es wird vollbracht—
it will end.”

We still didn't move. That figure, that presence, remained in the centre of the chantry—in the shape of a pillar, that was how I conceived of it.

Was it Elizaveta signing off, was that the fifth person in the room?

I smiled. She'd helped me down the steps at Smolny when Lenin, Trotsky and Glebov were only yards away. Now she'd come to my help again. I bowed to her, bowed properly.

Glebov said harshly, “No need to do that. Just get out before I change my mind. Take the daughter. Enjoy her. Enjoy what time you have left.”

L
ILI TOOK
a pace towards me, looked back at her mother. Huge tears were starting in Xenia's eyes. They were the saddest eyes I've ever seen. Her cheeks began to pucker. Of a sudden she seemed to be six inches shorter. Weights were dragging her down, the weight of her past.

She said to Lili, “Go with him. Bear his children. The future needs rescuing. All of Russia's women must start preparing for that day.”

They embraced. Forlornly, they clung sobbing to each other.

Xenia broke away, her face aflood. “Charlinka, it was to preserve Lili that I sinned. I have lied to you. I have sold you so that my daughter may live. Forgive me. Now I give you Lili. It is my atonement. A daughter—no mother could give more.”

I said, “Go in peace with yourself.” It was goodbye.

I grabbed Lili by the hand and made for the door. I hoped Glebov had primed his thugs. I didn't want for us to be riddled by those big Browning bullets.

Behind us there was a scuffle. Turning I saw Xenia break loose from Glebov. Her face was on fire, her pink satin dress stained black with her tears. She was desperate, mad with grief. She ran past me like a wild animal, went straight through the room, past the guards and out of the far door.

Lili ran after her but I caught her halfway across the anteroom. She tried to pull away from me, a big strong wriggling girl. I said to her, “You'll meet her again. Just let her be by herself right now. She's seen God.”

“Ten minutes' prayer'll cure all that, not a serious condition,” said Glebov coming up behind us. “Here, animals from Latvia,
leave us alone for five minutes. I want to have some private talk with General Doig. Go find yourself a bottle... Lili, block your ears. What I have to say is not for a maiden.”

We were standing besides Jones's body, where he'd been flung to the floor. I leaned back against the desk, hands behind me groping for my Luger.

Glebov said, “Take it, Charlie. That shows how straight-forward I am. Anyway, I've got the bullets,” he chuckled, tossing one up and catching it. “But a nice weapon. Lovely balance. Handsome, too. The Germans are good engineers.”

Lili had paused with her hand on the doorknob. Glebov said to her, “Make up your mind then. In or out, which is it?”

She said calmly, “I'll wait for General Doig.”

He said to me, “You'll be far better off with a woman you can train from the very start. Speaking of which, or rather speaking of Nadya, or Xenia as you call her, do you realise that she's the second woman we've shared? Our destinies lie together and there's the proof for you. You should think again about my offer, General. I'm not going to repeat it.”

“You bastard murdering dwarf,” I said and as quick as a falling axe I grabbed the roses from the vase. I didn't feel a thing. Those stems could have been blades of grass for all I knew.

I wrenched his towel off. I caught him by his slick hair, pulled his head right back. His pale blue eyes staring up at me began to register a complaint—“Remember Elizaveta,” I snarled, then I snapped his head forward and with my right hand I harrowed him, yes, that's right, I dragged those lacerating roses and every single one of their bayonet thorns through his crutch and round his testicles and his vile rapist's cock. I
scrunched
them into his flesh, I
wiped
them up his cleft and round his jingle-bag, ripping and gouging until he screamed like a boar having its throat cut. I must have come close to circumcising him.

Lili cried out. Looking up I saw her cover her face with her hands. “Run, Lili, run like hell,” I shouted at her—and shoved Glebov's head down again.

I was panting. Between my breaths I was conscious of hearing my own voice, not shouting but hissing at him, “Elizaveta, Elizaveta,” as I raggled those roses again through his balls.
Looking down I saw his blood pouring, streaming down the inside of his thighs. Jamming his head even further down, I scraped the roses up his belly and round his face and stuffed them into his screaming mouth.

I could hear the Latvians pounding up the stairs. “For Elizaveta. On account.” Then I grabbed my Luger off the desk, wrenched open the door and ran after the girl.

But she was still there, bent over, doing something with her underwear. “For Christ's sake, get going,” I screamed at her.

She stumbled—then her drawers came free, were tossed away, and she had her hampering broadcloth skirt pulled right up, like a tyre round her waist, and was running in front of me. God, did she have movement in those buttocks. She could run all right, no girly nonsense about tripping along.

Down the stone staircase we went, bouncing off the walls, maybe not the only way out but the only way I knew, over the bowed threshold and across the courtyard to the gatehouse. Once guns have started firing all you can do is to run and hope. When they haven't, you run far faster, trying to outpace the bullets that you know'll be coming soon, or even to outdistance them. Did we run, oh how we ran through the early light of that September day, and she barefoot.

A little drizzle had fallen while we were with Glebov, so that the cobbles were greasy. I prayed neither of us would slip. Twist an ankle and what next? Would Lili stop and come back to lug me to safety?

She might have. She ran like a champion, stride for stride beside me, skirts hoisted and those strong pink legs pounding away in the corner of my eye. Head and shoulders back, breasts bouncing like coconuts.

Would Glebov keep his word and let me go after what I'd done to him?

My lungs were going like bellows. Every second I expected to be shot. I had the same fear as before, at Smolny: that Glebov would wait until I was a few yards from safety—until I thought I'd got there. Then wallop, and the sky would go black.

Kobi was shouting at us. He was lying on the cobbles by the gatehouse. He had a machine gun set up on a tripod. I thought— he put half a dozen rounds over our head—I thought, the body-guard
have come out and we're bang in his sight line. Lili had the same idea. We swerved left and right simultaneously and Kobi put in a long burst between us, the bullets fanning the air as they passed.

That must have sent them back inside. Then we were through the gateway and standing, gasping, in the shelter of the armoured car.

Boltikov was revving the engine. “Go go go,” I shouted and began to cram Lili into one of the gun turrets, made awkward by the Maxim's firing handles and the spare wheels stacked at the bottom. Humiliating Glebov had given me a buck. He'd be the laughing stock of the whole 5th Army when the story got around. Dead was best but what I'd done wasn't bad.

“Who needs sleep?” I said grinning.

“Not this one,” she laughed, showing me her fine young teeth, strong as a hippo's.

Then Kobi had me by the shoulder with a grip of iron. Annoyed, I tried to throw him off but he had me fast. He was pointing to the church and its bell tower and saying something I couldn't grasp.

“Don't piss on me,” I shouted above the noise of the engine. “I know she's in the church. She's saying bye-bye to her sins. What do you want, that I ask her along for a river trip?”

“Use your eyes! Up there on the bell platform, what do you see sticking out? Yes, Doig, the Reds have put two field guns up there.”

I couldn't believe it. Between my leaving for the docks to free the gold and my return to the monastery for Xenia, the Reds had had two three-inch field guns swayed onto the bell-tower platform. Over a ton apiece and then the ammo. Christ, those guys knew how to get things done.

“Where's the box of Happy Christmas?” I shouted at Kobi. “Charge, fuse—Christ, they'll shell the whole fucking city to bits unless we get them.”

“I already laid it,” he shouted back. “Charge set and ready to fire.”

“So what's stopping you?”

“The church'll go with it.”

“What's a church?”

“Your woman's in there.”

He'd stopped shouting. Was looking at me with those notunderstandable oriental eyes. I stared back at him, my head angled forward, like a vulture.

He said casually, “Your woman, your decision, Doig.”

I couldn't believe it. Within an inch of success and now bitched by the woman who'd betrayed me. I looked to see where Lili was. Not to be seen, fishing around somewhere in the bottom of her turret to make herself comfy.

Should I run across the courtyard and fetch Xenia out? The guard could shoot me on the way there, could shoot both of us on the way back. Would probably aim for my legs, to bring me down so that Glebov could play around with me.

I said to Kobi, “What lengths of fuse have you got?”

“Five minutes and half an hour.”

“Cut me a five.”

Sort of patting me for my decision, he said, “She'll get to Heaven quicker.” Then he was kneeling on the ground, matches ready.

But I could
drive
over there in the armoured car to get her and be in no danger at all. They'd be lucky to hit the tyres firing only with rifles.