The English Assassin (21 page)

Throwing the butt of his cheroot at the blasted fields, he stepped forward and tapped the driver on his naked shoulder. The thickset man turned reluctantly, showing a face covered in dirty fair hair; his red-rimmed eyes glared through the black mask of soot. He grunted when he saw that it was Pyat and tried to look respectful. “Sir?”

“What sort of time are we making?”

“Not bad, sir, considering everything.”

“And Kiev? When should we get there now?”

“Less than another eight hours, all things being equal.”

“So we’re not much more than a half a day behind schedule. Splendid. You and your crew are working wonders. I’m very pleased.”

The driver was wondering why they were bothering to go to Kiev in the first place, but wearily he responded to his commander’s attempt at morale-building. “Thank you, sir.”

Colonel Pyat noticed that, having tried for a second to look alert after they had noticed him, the guards had resumed their earlier slumped postures. “Mind if I stay on the footplate for a little while?” he asked the driver.

“You’re the commander, sir.” This time the driver couldn’t stop the sardonic, edgy note in his voice.

“Ah, well.” Pyat turned. “I won’t bother you, then.”

He ducked into the passage under the tender and stumbled through to the other side. As he tried to get the door open, he heard a faint cry from behind him. A rifle-shot sounded. He went back through the passage. Now both guards were on their feet, shooting into the air.

“Look, sir!” One of them pointed ahead.

They were almost upon the lowest of the foothills and something was moving just behind the nearest ridge.

“Better take it easy, driver.” Pyat grabbed for the cord to ring the alarm bell through the rest of the train. “What do you think they are?”

The soldier answered. “Land ’clads, sir. At least a score of them. I saw them better a moment ago.”

Pyat tugged the alarm cord. The driver began to slow the train which was now about half a mile from a tunnel running under a high, green hill. Even as they watched, a pair of racing metal caterpillar tracks appeared on the roof of the tunnel, pointing directly at them. Then they saw a gun-turret above the tracks as they descended. The long 85mm cannon swung round until it pointed directly at the engine. Pyat and the rest threw themselves flat as the gun flashed. There was an explosion nearby, but the locomotive was undamaged. The driver looked to Pyat for his orders. Pyat was inclined to stop, but then he decided to risk a race for what might be the safety of the tunnel (if it hadn’t been mined). There was a chance. The tank barbarians rarely left their vessels. Some hadn’t seen direct sunlight for months. “Maximum speed,” he said. The fireman stood up and dragged more logs off the tender. Pyat yanked open the firedoor. The driver pulled his acceleration wheel all the way round. The train hissed and bucked and lurched forward. Another 85mm explosive shell hit the ground, this time on the other side of the train. The tunnel was very close now. On either side of it there emerged a motley collection of land ironclads, half-tracks and armoured cars, mobile guns, all armed to the teeth. The vehicles were painted with streaks of bright, primitive colour and decorated with shells, bits of silk and velvet. Strings of beads, strips of ermine and mink, bones and severed human heads. Pyat’s suspicions were confirmed. This was the roving Makhnovik horde which, months before, had swept down from beyond the Volga, bringing terror and nihilism. The horde was virtually invulnerable. It would be pointless, now, to stop.

The train entered the darkness of the tunnel. Already Pyat could see daylight at the other end. Then, from behind, came a massive explosion and the locomotive was hurled forward at an incredible speed. They came out of the tunnel with wheels squealing, with the whole loco rocking, and in a few seconds had left the tank barbarians far behind.

It was only later, as the driver began to slow the locomotive, that they realised they had also left the greater part of the train behind at the tunnel. Evidently a shell had broken the coupling between the first carriage and the tender.

Pyat, the driver, the fireman and the two guards laughed in relief. The train sped on towards Kiev. Now there was a very good chance that they would not be off schedule at all.

Pyat congratulated himself on the democratic impulse which, originally, had led him to join the men on the footplate. There were some advantages, it seemed, to democracy.

Una Persson shivered. She wrapped her heavy black mink more tightly around her slim body. The silk Erté tea gown beneath the coat was cold and unpleasant against her flesh. She was feeling old. It was as much as she could do to stay awake. She smiled to herself and made a few long strides through the clinging fog, over the deck to the rail of the yacht.

She could see nothing at all of Lake Erie and she could hear nothing but the dull flap of the waves against the
Teddy Bear
’s white sides.

They were fogbound. They had been lying at anchor for days. The wireless had broken and there had been no reply to signal rockets, sirens or shouts. Yet Una was sure that a dark launch had passed close to the yacht at least twice in the last twenty-four hours. She had heard the purr of its engine several times during the previous night.

The yellow-white fog shifted and swirled like something sentient and malevolent. It was as if she were trapped in some dreadful Munch lithograph. She hated it and wished bitterly that she had not accepted the owner’s offer of this cruise. It had been so boring in New York, though. She really disliked Broadway much more than she disliked the West End.

She drew the red-and-black silk scarf off her tightly waved, short-cropped hair and wiped the moisture from her hands and face. Why was everything so frightfully bloody?

She went back to the companionway behind the wheelhouse, paused, shivered and then daintily began to descend on high-heeled slippers, trying to make as much noise as possible on the iron steps.

Arriving in the corridor leading to the guest cabins, she noticed that some wisps of fog had at last managed to creep in. Now it was scarcely warmer here than it had been on deck. A ‘brooding’ silence. Were they to die here, then? It began to seem likely.

She tried to pull herself together, straightening her shoulders, putting a bit of bounce into her long step, bearing up manfully.

She went into the owner’s large cabin, remarking, not for the first time, the incredible American vulgarity of it. It had been designed to look like a Tudor hall, with oak beams on the roof and pewter plates on the walls, claymores and tapestries. An electric Belling heater, built to resemble a log fire, only barely managed to take the chill off the cabin. The cabin had looked like this when the yacht had been purchased from its previous owner, but no attempt had been made to change it. It made her feel ill. It made her nervy.

The owner stood with his back to the cabin, staring out of the square, diamond-leaded porthole, into the fog. Once he leaned forward and, with his handkerchief, wiped condensation from the glass.

“Do you see any faces you recognise?” asked Una, attempting to sound friendly.

“Faces in the fog?” He glanced back at her and smiled. “All faces are foggy to me, my dear. It’s my loss, I suppose.”

Una gave vent to a dramatic sigh. “You and your old angst, darling! What would you do without it, I wonder?” She bent forward and pecked him on the cheek with her carmine lips. “Oh, it’s so
cold
.” She crossed to the genuine Tudor sideboard and picked at a dish of mixed nuts. “When
will
this boring fog lift?”

“Why don’t you make the most of it? Relax. Pour yourself a drink.”

“A tot of rum? I can’t relax. The fog’s so
sinister
.” She ended this sentence on her famous falling note but then she let it rise again, almost without pause. “I like to
do
things, Lob.” The pathos and the warmth in her voice was so strong that Prinz Lobkowitz was quite startled, as if he had found himself once again at the theatre where he had first seen her act. “I don’t mean silly things,” she continued. “Worthwhile things.”

“Good causes?” He was ironic.

“If there’s nothing else.”

There was a sound on the water. The faint putter of a motor.

She crossed eagerly to the window and, standing beside him, peered out. She moved her head this way and that as if there was a particular angle at which she would be able to see through the fog. She saw a gleam of water, a shadow.

He put his arm around her shoulders. She was so womanly at that moment. But she shrugged him away. “Can you hear it? A motor boat?”

“I’ve heard it frequently. It never comes very close.”

“Have you tried shouting to it? Using your loudhailer, or whatever it’s called?”

“Yes. It never answers.”

“Who can it be?”

“I don’t know.” He spoke almost in a whisper.

She looked searchingly up into his face. “You sound as if you have a good idea, though.”

“No.”

It was a lie.

“Oh, be as mysterious as you like. But you’re rather overdoing the atmosphere, don’t you think?”

“Not deliberately.”

She went back to the sideboard and helped herself to a Balkan Sobranie cigarette from the silver box, lighting it with a flourish at the flamingo-shaped table lighter. Puffing pettishly, she began to pace.

He watched her. He loved to see her act. She was so talented. He was glad they were marooned, for it meant he could watch her almost all the time.

“You’re wonderfully selfish,” he said. “I love you. I admire you.”

“I love you, too, Lob, darling, but couldn’t we go and love each other somewhere warmer? Couldn’t we go back to one of those cities? Chicago or somewhere? Couldn’t we risk the fog?”

“There’s a lot of hungry people waiting on the docks for unwary yachts. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be wise.”

The motor boat started up again and went away.

“If he can move, why can’t we?”

“He’s smaller. He’s got less to lose. I mean, there’s less risk for him.” From the pocket of his white silk dressing gown he took a white box. He opened the box and took a pinch of white powder from it, sniffing it vigorously first into one nostril and then into the other. He put the box back and continued to stare out of the porthole.

She went to the big radiogram and picked up a record. It was her own, from last year’s hit
Only You
. She put it on and listened to herself singing the blues number which came in the middle of the show, ‘Gonna Kill That Man’.

She smiled wistfully.

Gonna kill that man, if I can.

You have to be cruel to be kind.

I can’t get him out of my mind.

He’s the worst sort of guy you could possibly find

To his vices, I guess, I am utterly blind.

But if he should try to two-time me

He’ll discover that I won’t sublime be.

I’ll take out my gun

And I’ll stop all his fun.

I’m gonna kill that man—

If he loves a she who ain’t me.

It was not her usual sort of material, yet it had been the number they’d liked best, especially in London. She’d used a sort of Hoagy Carmichael technique for it. But she still didn’t think much of it herself. She stopped the record and turned it over to ‘Dancing on the Clouds’ which was much more
her
: bitter-sweet but essentially gay. Yet even this reminded her of the fog outside and she turned the Bakelite volume knob off with a snap, though she could still hear her voice, very, very faintly from the turntable. It was like a ghost. It made her shiver.

Her lover came towards her.

Was it all over? she wondered. The whole thing? Was she finished?

He was handsome in his white sweater, his white gown and white flannels, but he was pale. Another ghost in this foggy purgatory.

He embraced her.

“Una.”

They were going back.

Captain Nye steered the DoX over the choppy waters of the harbour. Behind them, Rowe Island lay in ruins, her airship masts buckled, her hotels blasted, her streets wasted, her mines and mine-workers buried under the tumbled granite of the great volcanic hill. The placid Indian Ocean, a sheet of burnished blue steel reflecting a brazen sun, remained.

“Well, that’s bloody that, then,” said Frank Cornelius, stripping off his coolie blouse to reveal a loud, orange pullover. He wiped the best part of the make-up from his corrupt features. “And that’s Jerry down the drain, if he isn’t very careful indeed.”

“I hope not.” Catherine stood behind the two men who had already taken their seats. She dried her face with a Rodier towel. “It’s such a beautiful day, isn’t it?” She wore an open-necked white shirt and white jodhpurs. Her calf-length riding boots were light tan. Her longish hair fell in two tight waves to her shoulders. She wore little make-up. She looked wonderful.

“Best weather in the world on Rowe Island,” said Captain Nye. “A great pity.”

Miss Brunner was absent, as was the skeleton of the child. Nothing had gone right, really.

Captain Nye switched on all the engines and opened up the throttle, roaring out to sea. The floats began to rear beneath them, the wing-flaps whistled, and up they went into the clear, blue yonder.

Catherine wandered into the ballroom which had been refitted as a spacious lounge. Nobody felt like dancing at the moment. There were violently coloured Bakst murals on the walls. She looked enviously at the rich, fantastic scenes of fairyland forests and exotic oriental princesses and Nubian slaves. It was a world she would feel happy in at the present moment. She was exhausted. She needed a rest, but she wanted a voluptuous rest. Hashish, honey and a handsome Hindu lover.

Professor Hira appeared, climbing the steps into the lounge and yawning. “I was asleep. I hadn’t realised we were taking off so soon.” His round, genial face held a faintly puzzled look. “How long have we been up?”

She nodded out of the nearest window. “Not long. You can still see the island. Look.”