Sweet Love, Survive (38 page)

Seeing the panic, Apollo returned and took Kitty and the Cub gently in his arms. “Sweetheart, now listen to me. The doctor won’t come up here unless I fetch him. You know that. No one in Shura trusts the mountain men. And I can’t sit
here and watch my son die without help. Just take care of the Cub until I return.”

“But Apollo, if you’re recognized …”

He bent to kiss her gently on the forehead. “It’ll be dark by the time we reach Shura.” Placing a light hand on the Cub’s cheek, his fingers touched the feverishly hot skin. “Damn,” he muttered worriedly. The Cub was burning. “I’ll be back as soon as I can; eight hours at best.” With a light, brushing kiss into Kitty’s hair, Apollo turned on his heel and ran from the room, shouting orders as he raced down the wide stairway. Maybe if they tried the Erpeli-Gimri pass they could be in Shura earlier. Last week the snow was still too deep, but a week of warm weather in March could make a difference. It was worth the risk.

Before Apollo was completely dressed in
papakha
and
burkha
, Leda was being led from the stables and Karaim had appeared in the foyer. Immediately out the door and down the steps, both were in the saddle before the horses were completely packed with gear, Apollo impatiently brushing aside the additional equipment. He didn’t have time. Apollo dug in his heels and Leda lunged down the mountain trail. Bending forward, Apollo spoke softly into the mare’s ear. Straightening, he gave her her head and she plunged and skidded down the narrow track. At the valley floor, the golden Karabagh sprang forward like a released crossbow. Understanding the tone of urgency, the panic in her master’s voice, Leda responded with strength and heart.

“I hope you’re ready for a hard ride,” Apollo shouted to Karaim across the brisk and windy mountain air.

“I’ll stay with you,” Karaim shouted back, and side by side they rode like madmen.

They entered Shura four hours later, their horses lathered. The city was drifting into early winter twilight, the streets busy with workers on their way home. Avoiding the main thoroughfares they arrived at the doctor’s house undetected. Waiting in the back with the horses, Karaim kept guard while Apollo went inside to persuade the doctor to venture out on the dangerous ride up the mountains. The gold Apollo carried
was his most persuasive argument, although he was perfectly willing to use the pistols strapped to his hips if necessary. He fingered them impatiently while the doctor hesitated fractionally, and whether the gold or the threat of death proved more effective, the doctor went for his bag and coat.

After leaving the doctor’s residence the trio skirted the busy areas of town, keeping to the quiet side streets. They were nearly to the outskirts when one of the newly formed people’s security units suddenly appeared from between a livery stable and a tumbled-down tavern.

“Stop!” a heavyset, bearded man at the head of the group demanded. “Your papers!”

In a split second a score of alternatives and probabilties tumbled through Apollo’s mind, but the revolutionary fervor of these police squads was well known, and the possibility of successful debate with them was negligible. “One never escapes bureaucracy,” Apollo said, a faint, grim smile on his lips, and for a second a living flash of bereavement and farewell passed from his golden eyes to Karaim. Then his
nagaika
came down brutally on the flanks of the doctor’s mount and he screamed, “Ride, Karaim!”

In a swift, fluid motion only a lifetime in the saddle could achieve, Karaim stretched out on one stirrup, grabbed the bridle of the doctor’s horse, and, savagely manhandling the frightened animal, spurred his own mount. The two men careened at a gallop toward the deserted stretch of road ahead.

Apollo turned to fight.

He swung his horse frantically and went crashing into the rabble, firing both Mausers. Leda responded to Apollo’s commands, plunging, rearing, flailing out with lethal hoofs. When his pistols were empty, he laid on heads, faces, shoulders, backs with his sword and
nagaika
, managing to wreak disaster on the group before the squad’s sheer numbers overwhelmed him and he was hauled from Leda’s back. He fought every foot of the way down the street to the security commissar’s office; he fought when they dragged him down the hallway; he kicked and cursed when they unbolted the cell door. Then, their prisoner secure, the ruffian band jabbed at
him with sticks and rifle butts, lashed out with booted feet and clenched fists. A powerful blow collided with Apollo’s golden head, and halfway into unconsciousness he cursed the end of four years of phenomenal luck.

For days he lay in jail while the newly created commissars argued about the particular manner of executing him, several schools of manslaughter strident in their preferences. The hierarchy of authority was still very muddy and chaotic in the new Soviet Union, and control was frequently directly related to the loudness of one’s voice. The noisy, clamorous uproar was eventually resolved by a perspicacious new commissar who had the good sense to understand that supreme power still resided in the capital. He wired to Tiflis regarding the captured White officer and received an immediate reply: DO NOT STOP REPEAT STOP DO NOT STOP EXECUTE APOLLO KUZAN STOP SEND TO TIFLIS STOP. It was necessary to emphasize the negative since the utter dissolution of civil tribunals had resulted in every tree and lamppost becoming an instant courtroom, and Tiflis was very anxious to hang Captain Prince Apollo Kuzan with as much fanfare and publicity as possible. The execution might serve as an object lesson to the Dagestanis, who had been very slow—in fact, completely disinterested—in recognizing the new Soviet government. The reluctance of the Dagestanis to surrender themselves and their lands to the benevolence of Bolshevism was causing problems in Moscow. They must be made to understand who their masters were, and with the execution of their prince perhaps the point would be more readily taken.

The argumentative commissars in Shura did as they were told, and as it happened, on the day Apollo left for Tiflis, the train to the capital carried an inordinate number of Dagestani warriors.

    When Karaim arrived back at Dargo without Apollo, Kitty’s heart almost stopped. Light-headed with despair, she asked for details. Karaim assured her men were even now retracing the route to Shura; shortly, they would know what had befallen the Falcon. Whether to follow Apollo’s orders or
to stay with him and chance the Cub’s life was the hardest decision of Karaim’s life. Unyielding devotion to his prince’s orders had prevailed over his own personal inclinations. He tried to reassure Kitty in his taciturn way, but his spare phrases did little to comfort the shrieking terror echoing through Kitty’s numbed brain. Apollo gone? Captured? Maybe dead? How was she supposed to survive a loss like that? To have her happiness suddenly snatched away after only just finding it? Huge tears welled into her eyes and Karaim, in an uncharacteristic gesture, took both her hands in his dark leathery palms, saying gruffly, “We’ll get As-saqr As-saghir back for you, Countess. That I promise. But now … the Falcon’s son. Please. He needs you. He must live.”

Into the awkward silence, Kitty replied a little shakily, “Yes … of course,” her confused mind still dazed with the enormity of her loss.

“Go with the doctor,” Karaim said gently, pushing her toward the stairs, “and we’ll find the Falcon. I’ll return later with news.”

Kitty turned back. “Oh, yes, please. Come any time, Karaim. I’ll be up and waiting.” Her eyes were dark with fear.

“Sleep if you can. The Cub needs his mother in good health.”

Kitty knew Karaim was right, and while she grieved for her son in his illness, a part of her would die if she were to lose Apollo. “Have me wakened, then, Karaim, when you return with news. Anytime, please!” And Kitty took a deep breath to forestall the tears threatening to burst forth.

“As soon as I know anything, Countess.”

    Early the next morning, Karaim returned with the information: Apollo was being held in the jail at Shura, but rumor indicated a possibility he was to be transferred to Tiflis.

“Why, Karaim?” Kitty anxiously cried. “Are they going to spare him? Is it possible, since they haven’t killed him yet?” The flare of desperate hope was pathetic in its intensity.

“I don’t know, Countess. We must wait and see,” Karaim carefully replied, not wishing to inspire any unrealistic expectations.
“If he’s taken to Tiflis, we’ll follow and see if he can be freed at some point in the journey, or possibly later in Tiflis.”

“If you go, Karaim, I’m going, too.” Her voice was coldly determined.

Karaim was momentarily startled; he could never get used to the countess’s lack of understanding of the most elementary principles. Regaining his composure, he quietly remonstrated. “Impossible. The Falcon would never allow you to be exposed to such danger.”

“Say what you will, Karaim.” Kitty set her shoulders resolutely. “I’ll not stay behind and wait for tidings of Apollo’s … death.” Her lips quivered but she lifted her chin high. “Don’t think I don’t know why they want to transfer him to Tiflis. Bolshevik feeling against former White officers runs gallows high. It’ll be a circus, won’t it? A high-ranking White officer—a Kuzan and Iskender-Khan’s heir—being hanged. Like a public spectacle.”

“I don’t know, Countess,” Karaim said noncommitally, but he resolved to lead his rescue troop out of Dargo in the greatest secrecy. Neither Iskender-Khan nor Apollo would allow the countess to put herself in such a vulnerable and dangerous position.

    Meanwhile, with the doctor’s drugs, the Cub rallied, and within days he was well on the way to recovery. But his mother had been unable to smile, despite the gratifying improvement. She felt, disconsolately, that Apollo’s life was too high a price to pay.

    Two days after Apollo’s capture, nearly riding three horses to death, Sahin had reached Poti and dispatched a telegram through the underground route. The message was received in a grand château on the outskirts of Paris. The cryptic wire stated only: THE FALCON IS CAGED, but endless wheels were immediately set into motion. Markers were called in, gold exchanged hands where it would do the most good; influence was pushed to its limits. Even a beautiful woman in
the Crimea decided it was definitely worth her while to encourage the advances of a fat little commissar from Tiflis, who only hours before had filled her with loathing.

So Apollo languished in Metekhi Prison at Tiflis awaiting the convenience of the chief commissar currently on holiday near Yalta. The prince was ignorant of the fact that the date of his execution hung on the merest whim of frivolous fate and on the degree of erotic pleasure the commissar’s stunning new girlfriend could evoke.

Apollo wondered at the delay, but however abhorrent the incarceration, his will to survive valued each new dawn that arrived. He knew if it were humanly possible, Iskender would find a means to rescue him. The move from Shura to Tiflis, however, had been orchestrated in such a way that any attempt would have been suicidal as well as unsuccessful. A single armored car had been attached directly behind the engine and Apollo had traveled in that heavily guarded car. The remainder of the train had been armed with soldiers inside and atop the cars, machine guns at the ready. Should there be an attack, the cars behind the armored one were to be uncoupled immediately while the engine and Apollo’s vault were to speed to Tiflis alone.

Coincidentally, on the same day Apollo was escorted to Tiflis, the golden Karabagh mare disappeared from the police chief’s stable at Shura. “She was never meant for that worm, anyway,” a dark Dagestani warrior spat on a moonlit mountain trail. “She wouldn’t let him on her back.” Behind him, Leda shone silver gilt in the light of a new moon.

The police chief had mistakenly assumed the egalitarian principles of the Revolution included thoroughbred Karabaghs as well. But Karabaghs were bred only for princes, and if the police chief had forgotten that fact in the rush of revolutionary fervor, Leda had not. His pedigree was not to her liking.

Apollo had been in Tiflis now for almost ten days, and while he appreciated each day of life, he knew the possibilities of being liberated from the Metekhi were slim. The prison, formerly used for tsarist political prisoners, was completely in
accessible on three sides, built on a jutting precipice high above the Kura River. The Cheka guard, who came occasionally to make his life miserable, had gloated that no successful escape had occurred from Metekhi since 1822. Well, once each century, Apollo had thought optimistically, and then he had forced his mind to concentrate on pleasant memories of Kitty to evade the excruciating pain of the rubber whip striking his body with searing monotony. Flogging with the stiff rubber lash was one of the Cheka’s favorite torture devices, for it caused internal injuries and bleeding without external evidence.

Luckily the second in command at the Metekhi while the commissar was vacationing in Yalta regarded the Cheka as an inhuman aberration, and strict orders had been given—preceded by a curt telegram from Lenin himself—that the prisoner was not to be visibly maltreated. On the day of Apollo’s “trial” and public hanging, the Soviets wanted no broken, tortured ruin of humanity to appear before the people of Tiflis. Too many stories of torture and atrocities were finding their way out of the country, contributing to an unsuitable image abroad.

So the Cheka monsters who came irregularly to Apollo’s cell kept their hand in with forms of torture that wouldn’t break a man, only make his life grimly oppressive.

Apollo was now very white and only his fingers unobtrusively linked behind the chair back held him erect. His chest and arms were a bruised pulp, the feeling in his legs had disappeared an hour ago. While stubbornly proud, he wasn’t foolish. He knew he couldn’t last much longer; he was existing on willpower alone. With a kind of brutal persistence he braced himself for the next blow, his face set like iron. Father, Pushka, get me out of here, Apollo prayed for the thousandth time since noon.

The Cheka torturer heated another small iron rod.

“Hasn’t this game gone on long enough today?” Apollo said in a faint, gasping breath. “You can’t seriously think they’re going to want a charred corpse for trial. Think how unhappy Lenin will be.” For days Apollo had been trying to
get some response from the brute. The goading distracted his mind, however briefly, from the pain.