Читать книгу The Golden Sabre - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 5

Chapter One

‘We could make you disappear, Cabell. Magic like that happens all the time in Russia. Who knows what has happened to our beloved Tsar? They say he is dead, but they have not produced his body.’

‘I’d remind you, General Bronevich, that I’m an American citizen.’

‘Then we’d make you an American magical act. Like your famous magician Houdini. I have read about him.’

‘Houdini is an escape artist, General.’

‘Ah, but he doesn’t walk about without his head, does he? Could you do that, Cabell?’

Matthew Martin Cabell was very attached to his head. It was his wits and not his size that had brought him all the way from Chicago’s Prairie Avenue to this town of Verkburg on the eastern slopes of the Ural mountains in Siberia. As a boy smaller than the other kids on his block, the only one who did not have an Irish name though he had an Irish mother, he had had to talk his way out of fights or, if it came to blows, fight dirty. His fame as a fighter of crafty viciousness had brought fight managers looking for a kid they could groom into a champion, someone of the likes of Joe Walcott, the Barbados Demon, or Honey Mellody. But the kid had been brighter than the managers: he wasn’t going to get his most valued possession, his head, knocked off to make money for crooked promoters. He had gone to the Armour School of Engineering on a scholarship and for a while he had thought he had chosen the wrong profession; engineers appeared to be bigger and tougher and more aggressive than he had expected and he had thought of changing to English literature or Art History where the personalities and the wrists seemed much limper. But he had survived, again by using his wits and the occasional dirty tactic, such as a boot in the privates or two fingers in the eyes, and gone on to be a geologist in the oil fields of Texas, Venezuela, Roumania and Baku, where sometimes he had lost a fight against a bigger, equally sharp-witted, just-as-dirty fighter. But he had never lost his head and he was determined not to lose it now.

‘General, all I want is to have my truck loaded on a train for Ekaterinburg – from there I’ll get another train for Vladivostok. I’m not a spy for the Bolsheviks or anyone else. I’ve been looking for oil around here and I haven’t found any.’

‘Who do you work for? Yourself?’ General Bronevich put out a hand and the dwarf who stood beside him gave him a fresh cigarette from a battered silver case. The General lit the cigarette from the stub he took from his thick loose lips, then dropped the stub on the floor. The floor was littered with crushed stubs, like bird droppings, and the room swirled with smoke that smelled days old. ‘You work for yourself?’

‘No, the American-Siberian Oil Company of New York.’

Bronevich looked at the dwarf. ‘What do you say, Pemenov? Have you heard of this company? Peregrine Pemenov is my chief-of-staff,’ he explained to Cabell. ‘He had an American mother, a whore who came from San Francisco to Vladivostok and married my stupid cousin. Unfortunately she only laid half an egg.’

The dwarf smiled a child’s smile, as if he found the cruel joke funny. The poor son-of-a-bitch, Cabell thought, he’s probably had to put up with stuff like that all his life. He was not an ugly little man, but Cabell found himself averting his gaze, as if he did not want to embarrass the misshapen Pemenov. The dwarf’s mother had subjected him to another cruel joke when she had labelled him with the ridiculous Peregrine.

‘The American-Siberian Oil Company is legitimate, General.’ The dwarf had a soft raspy voice, as if it too were misshapen, the larynx flattened. His broad Mongolian face had a straight, handsome nose, one of the few good things his mother had bequeathed him; his blond hair was cut very short to the scalp and surmounted with an embroidered pillbox cap he had stolen from an Hussar. He wore a grey silk blouse, with the sleeves chopped off just above the cuffs to accommodate his very short arms, and black trousers stuffed into what looked to be a child’s pair of riding boots. A silver dagger was in a decorated scabbard on his belt. ‘They have been in Siberia since just after the war against the Japanese. Never found any oil.’

‘Have you found any oil, Cabell?’

‘Not a drop. Now all I want to do is pack up and go home.’

‘You can do that, Cabell. But only after we have investigated you – Pemenov will do that. We can trust no one these days, neither Reds nor Whites. I keep telling that to my wives every day. And to my mistresses,’ he said, trying to look like a Siberian Don Juan. He was a Moslem with three wives, all of whom he was glad to leave at home. But his mistresses were a figment of his vanity, since no woman could stand more than one night of him and then only at gunpoint. ‘They all agree with me and there’s nothing like a woman’s intuition, is there?’

Not when she knows she’ll get her head chopped off if she doesn’t agree.

When Cabell had arrived in the Verkburg district three months ago he had been surprised to find that the regional commander was General Bronevich. He had been warned before he left Vladivostok that the White Russian opposition to the Bolshevik revolution was made up of many factions, most of them at vicious odds with each other. The most independent of them were the Siberian atamans, the Tartar Khans with their private armies who saw the civil war as the greatest opportunity for large-scale raping and looting since the hey-day of their ancestor Genghis Khan. Cabell had thanked his luck that he had managed to pass unmolested through the domain of the worst of the atamans, General Semenov. The White forces of Admiral Kolchak, the commander-in-chief, were already retreating east to Omsk and Cabell had had doubts about going on. But he had been assured before he left the States that there was little or no fighting in the area where American-Siberian were sending him and they wanted to know whether oil was there. If there was, American-Siberian, blessed with executives whose loyalty to governments was as slippery as their product, would come to an arrangement with whoever won the civil war.

Cabell had taken his truck off the train at Ekaterinburg, carefully not letting his curiosity get the better of him in the town where the Tsar and his family were said to have been murdered. He had put the truck on a branch-line train and come a hundred miles south-west to Verkburg and found that another ataman, intent on building an even worse reputation than Semenov, had moved west and taken over this region. Up till now Cabell had not been disturbed in his work, since he had spent all his time out in the hills west of town. He had found no evidence of oil and last week his employers had sent word that, because it seemed they could not pick the winner of the civil war, though they did not say that, he should give up and head back to the United States. So he had driven into town this morning, dropped off the two local men he had hired, gone to the railroad station to see about putting himself and his truck on the next train for Ekaterinburg and within ten minutes found himself in General Bronevich’s office in the town barracks.

‘Am I under arrest, General?’

‘That would mean putting you in prison, Cabell, and having to feed you. Food is short, as you know—’ Bronevich ran his hands down over his fat belly, tried to pull some creases into his uniform to suggest he was underweight; he failed, looked up at Cabell and smiled. ‘Well, food is short for some people, shall we say? No, Cabell, you will be free to walk around – you will have the money to feed yourself, I’m sure. If Pemenov’s investigation finds you are not a Bolshevik spy or an American spy or any other sort – the investigation may take weeks, of course, because there are so many spies—’ He smiled again, an expression that did nothing to endear him to anyone who witnessed it. He had the broad Mongolian face, a completely bald head, a mouth full of gold teeth and eyes that looked as if they could cut glass. It seemed to Cabell that he must have made a career of his ugliness, matching his character to his looks. ‘If you are cleared, you can take the train for Ekaterinburg. I shall see you get a compartment to yourself. The fare will be – What do you suggest, Pemenov?’

‘Two thousand American dollars.’ The dwarf’s intelligent blue eyes seemed to gleam with malicious humour.

‘Where did you learn to speak Russian, Cabell?’ said Bronevich.

‘I worked down at Baku for eighteen months before the war with the Germans. Will the two thousand dollars pay my truck’s fare, too?’

‘Ah no. What room would there be in a railway compartment for a truck?’

‘You shouldn’t be trying to rob me, General. I don’t know if you know it, but America is supposed to be on the side of the White armies.’

‘But we don’t need the Americans, do we, Pemenov?’

The dwarf smiled his child’s smile. ‘Not here in Verkburg, General.’ He addressed Cabell directly for the first time, spoke in English: ‘We don’t need the Americans anywhere at all in Russia, Mr Cabell.’

‘Are you a Bolshevik, Mr Pemenov, and the General doesn’t know it?’

The child’s smile flickered again on the big adult face. ‘Don’t be stupid, Mr Cabell. You’re too far from home and all alone – being insulting isn’t going to help you. No, I’m not a Bolshevik. I just hate Americans, all of you.’

Cabell looked at him, feeling a reluctant pity. ‘Your mother must have been a real bitch.’

‘She was, Mr Cabell. A real shit of a bitch.’

‘What a beautiful language!’ Bronevich blew out a cloud of smoke, rolled his head in ecstasy at the music he had been listening to. ‘I could listen to English all day. What a pity I don’t understand it.’

‘Two thousand dollars, Cabell,’ said Pemenov, this time in Russian. ‘The General will be waiting for it – after we have investigated you.’

Two minutes later Cabell was out in the square that fronted the barracks. The August sun pressed down like a bright golden blanket; the air was dry but so hot that it seared the nostrils and dried Cabell’s lips almost instantly. The bell in the tower beneath the green onion dome of the church at the far end of the square tolled noon; the iron notes hung on the heavy air as if cloaked in velvet. Soldiers lolled like dark shocks of corn in the thin midday shadows; a row of them looked as if they were stacked ready for loading on the two military trucks parked by the barracks wall. But Cabell noticed that each truck, decrepit antiques, had a wheel missing: the axles were jacked up on bricks. He knew then that he would never get his own truck on the train for Ekaterinburg. Battered though it was, it was still in better shape than the two military vehicles and General Bronevich wouldn’t let it slip out of his hands.

Shopkeepers were locking up their stores, getting ready for lunch; in a town full of soldiers they had learned to leave nothing unattended. Shutters were closing on house windows, locking out the heat. A peasant crossed the square at a slow walk, bent over beneath the load of firewood on his back: the heat didn’t fool him, he knew winter would have no memory of today and would freeze him if he was not prepared against it. An open carriage drawn by two black, sweat-shining horses came round the square and broke into a trot as Cabell, eyes blinded by the white cobblestones, stepped out of the shade to cross the road.

The horses were abruptly pulled up, rearing high, one of them almost knocking Cabell’s head off as its front hooves pawed at the air. Cabell fell back, just managing to keep his feet, and leaned against the side of the carriage as it came level with him. He looked up into the sun and dimly saw the shape of a woman pulling hard on the reins.

‘For crissakes, lady, why don’t you watch where you’re going?’

‘Watch it!’ said the lady, let go of the reins with one hand, swung her handbag on its long strap and whacked Cabell across the ear. ‘If you’re going to use that sort of language, you’re not getting an apology out of me. Out of the way, you lout!’

The carriage swept on and Cabell jumped back to avoid being run down. He held a hand to his ear, glad to find it was still attached to his head; his other ear was still ringing with the echo of the sharp voice that had spoken to him in English. It was not his day; first a general who suspected he was a spy, then a dwarf who hated him because he was an American, now an English-speaking woman who thought he was a foul-mouthed lout. He stood in the middle of the square, looked around him, wondered where he might find a friend; but two thousand miles of isolation stretched away from him in all directions. All at once he realized that he was sinking very rapidly into a very serious situation.

He walked across the square, still feeling his sore ear, swore at a dog that lazily snapped at him, and came to the line of plane trees under which he had parked his truck. It was not strictly a truck; it was a 1914 Chevrolet car which had had its rear seat and bodywork stripped away and a high-sided platform substituted. It had done more than its fair share of hard travelling and Cabell did not dare to guess how many more miles it had left in it before it fell apart from the battering it had taken in the past five years. It was a car that had been built for the soft dirt roads of America and not for the jungle tracks of Venezuela and the trackless rocky ground he had driven it over here in the Urals. The tyres, worn to condom thinness, had had forty punctures in the past three months; the brakes, when applied, were just a plunger pressed into a well of wishful thinking. He had intended taking it home more for sentimental reasons than because he thought it had many more years of usefulness left in it.

But it was useful now. He knew that the next train for Ekaterinburg did not leave for another three days; by then General Bronevich might have decided that he was indeed a spy. He turned his mind against any thought of what might happen to him. Houdini, the greatest escape artist of all time, always made sure that he did his magic in front of a friendly audience. He never attempted anything where the nearest applause was two thousand miles back in the stalls.

As Cabell approached the Chevrolet a soldier rolled out from behind the shadow of the tailboard, stood up, lethargically brushed the dust from himself and asked Cabell where he thought he was going.

‘Can you drive?’ Cabell said.

The soldier squinted and pondered, decided he understood the question and shook his head.

‘General Bronevich wants the truck round in the barracks yard. You better let me drive.’

The soldier looked around for guidance, saw that he was alone, squinted and pondered again. Then he shook his head and raised his rifle threateningly. It was a Krenk, an ancient one that looked as if it might go off without its trigger being touched.

Cabell smiled, feeling that his lips were splitting and his teeth falling out of their gums. ‘You can ride with me.’ He patted the front seat. ‘Right up there with the driver, Ivan. That should do wonders for your prestige with the girls around here.’

The soldier squinted and pondered once more. Then he abruptly nodded and was up in the front seat so quickly it was almost a feat of instant levitation. Cabell went round to the front of the truck, swung the starting handle, got the engine to fire at the first couple of turns, got in behind the wheel and let in the gears. He drove slowly round the square till he came to the street that headed out to the main road to Ekaterinburg. The gasoline tank was half-full and there were eight four-gallon cans packed in boxes in the back of the truck. If the tyres held he could be in Ekaterinburg in just over two hours, three at the most. A British consul was stationed there and perhaps he could be persuaded to shelter an American till the latter could board the first train going east to Vladivostok. Cabell decided he would make the Consulate a present of the Chevrolet.

As they reached the far side of the square Cabell, glancing across past the broken plinth that had once held a statue of the Tsar, saw General Bronevich come out of the barracks with Pemenov. There was a yell from the General and next moment a shot; a bullet hit the soldier in an arm and he dropped his rifle and screamed in pain. Cabell stepped on the accelerator.

‘Sorry, buddy,’ he said in English, ‘I think you’ll be safer on the ground.’

There were no doors on the truck. Cabell reached across, gave a hard shove as he took the truck round a corner, and the soldier went tumbling out and hit the cobblestones with a thud that made Cabell flinch guiltily. But there was no time for conscience or sympathy. He put his foot down hard and the Chevrolet leapt away up the road towards Ekaterinburg.

In the square General Bronevich was shouting Mongolian obscenities, than which there is nothing more obscene. An officer appeared out of the shadows and, hampered by his heavy riding boots, galloped across to the line of slumbering soldiers who, startled by the shot, were blinking themselves awake and looking for the enemy. The officer kicked them to their feet, yelling at them and himself, urged on by the yelling of General Bronevich. The soldiers, still only half-awake, stumbled towards the barracks stables and their horses.

General Bronevich, no runner, waddled back into the barracks and through to the barracks yard; Pemenov, following him, looked more agile despite his tiny legs. The General’s driver, having taken both front wheels off the General’s car to repair the tyres, had lain down in the shade of the car and fallen asleep. He had taken off his boots and in his sleep, dreaming of his wife’s sister, was sensually wriggling his bare toes. General Bronevich, beside himself and everybody else with rage, shot off three of the driver’s toes and waddled back into the barracks and out into the square as half a dozen soldiers, mounted now, thundered out of the stables and took the road for Ekaterinburg.

‘Get my car fixed!’ General Bronevich bellowed to Pemenov. ‘I want that American’s head fitted to the radiator!’

‘Yes, General!’ Pemenov whirled and his short legs blurred as they carried him back into the barracks at surprising speed.

Two miles up the road, the outskirts of the town already behind it, the Chevrolet was bowling along like the excellent car it had once been. Cabell, feeling better already as the wind drove in to cool him, began to think of home. In another month, six weeks at the outside, he would be driving down the road to Bloomington. His mother had died three years ago and since then his father had moved from Chicago to just outside Bloomington, where he had a small general store. If he was lucky he might even be home in time to take his father to see the White Sox play in the World Series. The Old Man’s last letter, picked up in Verkburg only this morning, had been dated June 1; but Jack Cabell had already been claiming then that this White Sox team was the greatest of all time, would be sure to make it to the World Series. Cabell had not seen a major league game since May 1912 and he was looking forward to seeing the men his father acclaimed, Eddie Collins, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Shineball Eddie Cicotte.

He was dreaming of heroes of the past, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, thinking what a nice clean war baseball was compared to this civil war going on around him, when the off-side front tyre blew out. The car swerved violently and it was only with tremendous luck that he managed to keep it on the road. He had just got it under control and on a straight course again when the other front tyre blew out.

[2]

Eden Penfold dusted herself off after the truck, its horn blasting at her, had sped by. The horses had shied, but she had managed to steady them, though they were still trembling and nervous as she got them back into a steady trot. Beside her the children were brushing dust from themselves and Frederick was cursing in Russian.

‘Watch it!’ she snapped in English.

‘But I don’t know any English swear words—’ Frederick was twelve, a handsome, dark-haired boy with a slim frame, an innocent expression and an attitude towards life that suggested his education had begun some years before his actual birth. ‘You are always saying, Miss Eden, that one should never hide one’s true feelings—’

‘There’s a time and place for everything, even feelings.’ Ah dear God, if I could only express my true feelings. After six years she had begun to doubt that she had a true vocation as a governess. Sometimes she found herself thinking thoughts that were as revolutionary as those being trumpeted in Moscow right now; though hers were social and romantic rather than political. So far she had managed not to reveal any of her thoughts to her two charges.

‘You have a double standard,’ said Frederick. ‘One law for the rich like us and another one for you.’

‘How on earth can you stand him?’ Eden asked Olga.

Olga, ten years old, already beautiful and waiting for the world to be laid at her feet, shrugged. ‘He’ll get worse, I’m afraid. But by then I shall be married and living on the French Riviera.’

‘You have a little while to go before that happens, my girl.’

Ah, what dreams we women have! But at ten she, living in the semi-detached house in Croydon, south of London, had been dreaming of nothing more than being the bride of the boy next door who, she remembered now, had had adenoids and a tendency to nervously pick his nose when spoken to by a girl. She had never thought of herself as of the stuff of which French Riviera beauties were made. But then she had also never thought that she would finish up here in Russia and Siberia as governess to the children of a Russian aristocrat.

It was another hour before they came to the first fields that marked the border of the Gorshkov estate. Once a month Eden drove into Verkburg in the carriage to see if any mail had arrived for herself or the children; it was a twelve-mile drive each way and she did not enjoy it in the summer heat. There had been no letter today for her from her parents, but there had been one each for the children from their mother and another one for her. The children had read theirs with excitement and delight; she had read hers with growing trepidation and despair. She turned the horses in through the white pillars of the gateway and drove up the long avenue of poplars and wondered how much longer she and the children were going to be isolated here, the children separated from their parents and she from the England that she had now begun to pine for.

She pulled the horses to a halt in front of the Gorshkov house. The house, built of a white-painted stone with a Palladian façade that had been added by the children’s grandfather, looked out of place amongst the wooden barns that surrounded it. Grandfather Gorshkov, the first Prince Gorshkov to add wealth to his title, had tried to buy taste at a time, in Europe, when taste was not at its highest. The Palladian-fronted house in itself was attractive; he had just not known enough to complement it with the appropriate surroundings. Plane trees threw shadows that softened the grey drabness of the barns and cow-sheds, and a few lilacs, faded now by the summer sun, added a touch of colour in the yard between the main barn and the house.

The Gorshkov estate covered fifteen thousand acres. It had been founded originally by a Prince Gorshkov who had been one of Catherine the Great’s lovers; he had lasted three months and had been known as the Wednesday Man, that being his day to perform. Arriving one Wednesday and finding he was in a queue, he had decided his time was up and left St Petersburg, exiling himself before Catherine disposed of him more permanently. He had come east, established himself and died here on the estate, leaving a wife, a son and two daughters. Following generations had built up the estate and in 1860, in the reign of Alexander II, they had moved back to St Petersburg and built themselves a small mansion just off the Nevsky Prospekt. The young princes had been educated in the Cadet Corps; the princesses went to the Smolny Institute. Though their names were never entered in the livre de Velours, they were close enough to flutter like loose addenda to that almanac of nobility. Princess Gorshkov, the children’s mother, whose family had been in the Livre de Velours, had impressed all this on Eden when she had first arrived in St Petersburg. Eden, who had not even met the Mayor of Croydon, had been suitably impressed at the time, though her awe had since worn off.

Far out on the rear boundary of the estate Eden knew the farm workers would be bringing in the harvest; tomorrow the traction engine in the threshing yard would be started up and today’s somnolent peace would be gone. This would be the first harvest since Prince Gorshkov had gone off to fight with General Denikin’s army. She wondered if the workers would demand it as their own property. No one knew these days what the workers were going to demand next.

As she got down from the carriage Nikolai Yurganov came across from the stables and took the horses’ heads. ‘Miss Eden—’

She turned back as she was about to follow the children into the house. ‘What is it, Nikolai?’

‘There’s a man in the big bam – I think you should see him—’

‘A man? What sort of man?’

‘A foreigner, Miss Eden. He has a motor car—’ Nikolai Petrovitch Yurganov was a young man convinced already that he would not last to be old. He was a Cossack from the Don who had come east to avoid the fighting and carousing that had been his family’s main pursuits. He had pale brown hair, already starting to thin, a long bony face, a body to match it and a soft girlish voice. He had a pathological fear of horses and one small glass of vodka stunned him like a blow with a rifle-butt. At his birth he had set the Cossack tradition back a millennium. ‘He drove in here a while ago. His tyres are punctured—’

Eden stood irresolute. In the nine months since Prince and Princess Gorshkov had gone off to Georgia she had had no major problems to face; the war was a long way from here and even General Bronevich’s soldiers had not come out of town to worry her and the children. Once she had been myopic to consequences, the essential talent for any sense of adventure; she would, if she lasted long enough, stand gasping with admiration for the sunrise on Judgement Day. But today’s letter from Princess Gorshkov had brought a sense of foreboding.

‘Can’t you get rid of him?’

Nikolai shook his head. ‘He won’t take any notice of me, Miss Eden – no one ever does—’

‘Oh damn!’ she said under her breath and, carrying her parasol, stalked across to the main barn and into its cool dim interior. She saw the strange truck at the rear of the barn, next to Prince Gorshkov’s car under its big canvas cover; then she saw the man in a blue shirt, bib-and-tucker overalls and a flat-crowned cowboy’s hat sitting on the running-board of the truck. ‘What are – Oh, it’s you!’

‘Well, well, if it isn’t the old handbag whirler—’ Cabell felt his bruised ear. ‘I’d like you beside me some time in a bar-room brawl.’

‘Just the sort of place where I spend most of my time.’ Why am I sounding so tart? She should be welcoming this man, whoever he was; he was the first non-Russian she had spoken to in over two years, ever since the Gorshkovs had fled St Petersburg for this estate. ‘I’m sorry, Mr–?’

‘Cabell.’

‘What are you doing here?’

Somehow he had suggested to her that he would be garrulous, as long-winded as Trotsky, whom she had once heard speak; instead, in what seemed to her no more than half a dozen sentences, he told her who he was and how he had arrived here in the Gorshkov barn. But even his brevity landed like a weight on her.

‘You can’t stay here! I have the children to think of—’

‘Miss Eden.’ Nikolai stood like a trembling shadow in the doorway of the barn. ‘There are horsemen coming up the avenue!’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Cabell. ‘I better be going—’

‘Going where?’

‘I’ll try and make it out there to the wheat-fields. Maybe I can hide—’

‘Stay where you are.’ Even as her decision was forming in her mind she wondered why she was making it. Was it just because the man spoke English? Did her charity lie only in her ear? She could not imagine herself being so impulsive about helping a Russian. ‘Put the horses away, Nikolai. And keep your mouth shut – you know nothing, you understand?’

She went out again into the glare, opening her blue parasol and raising it against the golden brightness. As the half-dozen horsemen galloped into the broad area in front of the house, Frederick and Olga came running out of the front door. ‘What’s going on? Why the soldiers? Are we being attacked?’

‘Be quiet,’ Eden said, and looked up at the sergeant leaning down at her from his horse. She recognized the men for Siberian Cossacks, the worst of all Cossacks. They wore their karakul hats, dirty grey uniforms and expressions that made her quail inwardly; sabres hung in scabbards from their saddles and all of them had rifles. The horses, crowding in around her, looked as wild as the men. ‘To what do we owe this honour?’

The sergeant peered and leered at her, split between appreciating this rich plum of a girl and wondering what she was doing here. A Turkic-speaking gentleman, he also only vaguely understood what she had said to him in Russian. He straightened up and nodded to one of his younger soldiers.

‘Question her.’

The young soldier pressed his horse forward, likewise leered down at Eden. She felt she was being visually molested as the horsemen crowded round her; Nikolai had warned her what might happen if these Tartars took it into their heads to come out from Verkburg and pillage the estate. Now here they were and if they found the man they were looking for, God help him. And, what was worse, God help her and the children.

‘I am in charge here—’ said Frederick.

Eden hit him with her handbag and the soldiers laughed and cheered. Frederick drew himself up and almost got another whack with the handbag. ‘Shut up, Freddie. What can we do for you, corporal?’

‘We are looking for an American in a motor car—’

‘That must have been he who passed us and covered us in dust,’ said Olga.

‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ said Eden, trembling inside, seeing two of the soldiers now leering at Olga. ‘Of course it was he, who else could it have been?’ She looked up at the young corporal. ‘He was travelling north at a great speed, out there on the Ekaterinburg road. He went by us in a cloud of dust and disappeared up the road.’

The corporal conveyed this information to the sergeant, who peered and leered again at Eden. She and the children were still tightly encircled by the horsemen. She felt more threatened now than ever before in her life; somehow she felt more endangered now than in the Revolution riots two years ago in St Petersburg; even the flight from that city had not had any close moments of danger. These Tartars, savages on horseback, could do what they wanted with her and the children and there would be no one to stop them. The estate workers were too far away, the house servants were probably already cowering in the cellars; Nikolai, she knew, was a reliable coward and the American, who had brought these men here, was an unknown quantity. She felt suddenly overcome by fear and the heat and was ready to collapse. She would be unconscious when she was raped for the first time, which was probably the best way to be.

The sergeant straightened up, snapped something to his men in his own tongue and all six of them suddenly whirled their horses about and went galloping off down the avenue, disappearing like evaporating ghosts into the shadows of the poplars. Eden, halfway to fainting, came back to full consciousness.

‘Just as well they decided to go,’ said Frederick. ‘I’d have shot them with Father’s gun.’

‘Just what we need,’ Eden said to Olga. ‘A stupid twelve-year-old hero. We’d have all been dead before you could have loaded the gun.’

‘It’s already loaded,’ said Frederick. ‘I’ve had it loaded for weeks, just in case.’

‘I had mine ready, also just in case.’ Cabell came out of the barn carrying a Winchester rifle. ‘Those bastards looked—’

‘Mr Cabell, could you please moderate your language?’

Cabell took off his hat and inclined his head. ‘Sorry. I’ve been talking to myself for so long, I keep forgetting … Thanks, Miss Eden. You could have given me up to those guys, you know. I wouldn’t have blamed you.’

‘Never!’ Frederick was a one-boy defender against the invaders. ‘Those men are barbarians!’

‘Do be quiet, Freddie,’ said Eden. ‘Mr Cabell, where were you intending to go?’

‘I was heading for Ekaterinburg. But I’m not going to make it now – when I blew my tyres I bugg – messed up the wheels. I’ll have to go on foot, unless I can buy a horse from you.’

‘We shall sell you a horse,’ said Frederick. ‘We have dozens – Ouch!’

Eden hit him with her handbag, but did not give him a glance.

‘Mr Cabell, if you go by horse you will have to travel at night. They will be watching for you all the way to Ekaterinburg. As soon as those men get back to Verkburg they will send a message through on the telegraph to all the villages and towns between here and Ekaterinburg. These White armies do fight amongst themselves, but they also co-operate with each other sometimes. We’ll give you a horse and you can leave after dark.’

‘Miss Eden, you are a peach. And very resourceful, if I may say so.’

Eden blushed under the compliment and Olga said, ‘I love to hear a man compliment a woman. It is the way things should be.’

Cabell raised an eyebrow, then bowed. ‘At your service, Miss—’

‘Princess,’ said Olga. ‘Princess Olga Natasha Aglaida Gorshkov.’

‘I am Prince Frederick Mikhail Alexander Gorshkov,’ said Frederick, not to be out-ranked.

‘And I am plain Miss Eden Penfold.’

‘Not plain,’ said Cabell, smiling. ‘And I’m delighted to meet a fellow proletarian. As for you two aristocrats, buzz off while I talk to Miss Penfold.’

‘We stay,’ said the two aristocrats. ‘This is our house—’

Eden raised her handbag again, but Frederick and Olga moved back out of range. Cabell looked at the two children, then shrugged. ‘Okay. Are there any servants here besides that guy Nikolai?’

‘There are four in the house, but they can be trusted,’ said Eden. ‘It is the workers out in the fields I’m not sure about.’

‘One of them is a Bolshevik,’ said Frederick. ‘That fellow Vlasov. He spits in the dust every time I pass him.’

‘So should I if I were not a lady. That doesn’t make me a Bolshevik. But Freddie is right – there are some out there who are not to be trusted. Nikolai has told me of some of the talk that has been going on lately.’

Nikolai had come across from the stables and stood just behind the two children. He did not understand the conversation in English, but he looked as worried as the others. He kept glancing down the avenue, waiting for the Tartars to come thundering back and kill them all.

‘The car under that cover in the barn,’ said Cabell. ‘Does it go?’

‘It hasn’t been driven since Prince Gorshkov went off to the war last December,’ said Eden.

‘What sort is it?’

‘A Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost,’ said Frederick. ‘There are only nine Rolls-Royces in the whole of Russia and the Tsar had two of those. But Father’s is the fastest of them all.’

‘A Rolls-Royce, eh? Then that means I couldn’t borrow it or buy it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Eden firmly. ‘You will take the horse and leave tonight.’

Cabell smiled. He was not much taller than Eden, just medium height, and though he had wide shoulders there was not much beef on him. Had the managers been able to sweet-talk him back in the days of his youth he would now be a middleweight, maybe fighting the likes of Mike O’Dowd and Harry Greb; whomever he fought, the situation would be less dangerous than this. He had black hair and a black moustache and sun-darkened skin that accentuated the white exclamation of his smile. His movements were a physical illustration of his personality, quicksilver in a tube that occasionally spilled its cork. Eden liked what she saw.

‘I won’t embarrass or endanger you, Miss Penfold. I’ll be out of here tonight. In the meantime I better start covering up my truck some way, in case those soldiers come back.’

‘Afternoon tea will be at four. I’ll send one of the servants for you.’

Eden had recovered her poise. She was perhaps a little stiff and starched, but that, Cabell guessed, went with being a governess. Under her straw hat he could see blonde hair drawn back in a bun; the style was severe but it showed her long graceful neck. She had dark blue eyes with heavy lids that made it hard for her to turn a glance into a stern stare; she had a slightly indolent look about her that was deceiving, an odalisque who cracked a whip; had Croydon had harems she might never have left England. Her figure was the sort that promised much even under the high-necked shirt and long brown skirt she wore; it was an unspoken and, to her, unrealized invitation to carnal thoughts in men. Cabell, who could have carnal thoughts with the best of them, shrugged philosophically. This was no time for getting randy.

‘Come on, children, time for your music lesson.’

‘I think I shall stay with Mr Cabell,’ said Frederick; then backed off as Eden raised her handbag. ‘Don’t you dare do that again! When we have won the war I’ll see that you go to jail with all the other Bolsheviks—’

‘Inside!’ snapped Eden, and after a moment’s further rebellion Frederick followed his sister into the house. ‘Forgive him, Mr Cabell. He’s not really a bad child. He just thinks, with his father away, that he has to be master of the house.’

‘Where are their parents?’

‘Princess Gorshkov is down in Tiflis, in Georgia, and Prince Gorshkov is somewhere with General Denikin’s army. I have no idea when they will be back,’ she added worriedly. ‘Princess Gorshkov wants us to join them in Tiflis. But how does one get from here to there, a thousand miles away?’

‘A good question,’ said Cabell; but he had his own problems.

‘I’ll be ready for tea when you call me. And thanks again, Eden.’

No man had called her plain Eden since Lieutenant Dulenko had called her that and my darling five years ago; not even Prince Gorshkov departed from the formal Miss Eden when he addressed her. But Igor Dulenko was long since dead and the love she had felt for him had withered away. It was strange that a strange man, using her given name so casually, should have reminded her of Igor and what she had once felt for him. For a moment she felt unutterably sad and she turned away from Cabell and went into the house without a word.

Cabell looked after her curiously, then he went back to the barn with Nikolai and began to think of ways of hiding the Chevrolet.

[3]

Cabell had been in the barn half an hour, had, with the willing help of Nikolai, pushed the Chevrolet right to the back of the barn and hidden it from casual sight behind stacked bales of hay. He had taken off his shirt from under his overalls and his skin, covered in dust, was streaked with a dark wash of sweat. He leaned against the shrouded Rolls-Royce and took the pannikin of water Nikolai brought him.

‘How is the war going, Nikolai? Are the Whites or the Reds winning?’

‘I don’t know, sir. We hear nothing down here. We have enough to worry about with that General Bronevich and his savages. As soon as the weather gets cooler they’ll start riding out this far and then we’ll—’ He did not finish the sentence, but shuddered.

‘Have you worked for the Gorshkovs a long time?’

‘Only three years. I am a Cossack from a little village on the Don.’

‘Then you’d be a good man to defend Miss Penfold and the kids.’

‘I doubt it, sir. My father used to say a fart would knock me down. He was a very vulgar man, vulgar and violent. He had seven sons, I was the youngest, and he said his spunk had run out by the time he got to me. When he was drunk he used to wail that he was the only Cossack along the whole Don River who had a fairy at the bottom of his garden. That was where he used to make me sleep, in the woodshed.’

‘Well—’ said Cabell; but was left with nothing else to say.

‘Well—’

Then they heard the sound of a car coming up the avenue. Nikolai raced to the doorway. ‘It’s General Bronevich and his soldiers!’

Cabell grabbed his shirt, hat and rifle and scrambled up the ladder to the loft of the barn. He heard the car grind to a halt, its engine whistling for a moment, then wheezing into silence; then he heard the jingling of stirrups and the murmurs of men as they steadied their horses. He crept across the loft and peered out through a crack in the timber walls.

The car’s driver had jumped down and opened the door. General Bronevich got out, followed by Pemenov. The sergeant and the horsemen who had been here earlier had returned, but they had not dismounted and remained in the background as the General went up the steps of the house and banged loudly on the front door.

Inside the house the servants, ears alert as yet-undiscovered radar, had once again fled to the cellars. Eden waved the children back up the stairs in the main hall and went fearfully to the front door and opened it. General Bronevich almost fell back down the steps in surprise.

He had been expecting some servant, as dumpy as himself, to open the door. Instead here was this pretty girl with hair the colour of Siberian buckwheat honey, a bosom that reminded him of the lower foothills of the Yablonois, and a body perfume composed of rosewater, starch and fear. He turned to Pemenov on the steps below him and said, ‘Come back for me in an hour. I shall interrogate this girl myself.’

‘Will it be safe, General?’

‘For me or for her?’ Bronevich’s smile was as obscene as an open fly, except that it was golden.

‘Yes, General. What about the men?’

‘Tell them to wait down by the front gates. I do not wish to be disturbed in my interrogation. You may take the motor car. Go for a drive and run over some peasants.’ He laughed loudly this time; he was suddenly in both high good humour and high tumescence. The afternoon was going to be better than he had expected, he had already forgotten why he had come here. ‘Get lost, as they say back in Skovodorino.’

Pemenov smiled, saluted, went down the steps, gave an order to the horsemen, climbed into the car and was driven off, followed by the six mounted soldiers. Eden watched all this, puzzled and still fearful, holding on to the front door for support while her legs seemed to get thinner and more brittle, so that she felt if she moved they would snap like dry twigs beneath her. She swallowed, trying to moisten her dry throat, while the palms of her hands felt as if they were holding a pint of water each.

General Bronevich gave her his bullion smile: gold gleamed in his mouth like a newly-opened reef. ‘I am General Bronevich,’ he said in Russian. ‘I am here to service you.’

Oh my God, Eden thought, does he really mean what he’s just said? She swallowed again, forced some words out of her arid throat: ‘What can I do for you, General? Your men have already been here—’

‘I am coming in,’ said the General and pushed past her and kicked the door shut behind him. He looked up and saw Frederick and Olga leaning over the balustrade at the top of the stairs. He hated kids, especially the kids of these nambypamby Russian aristocrats. He bellowed ‘Back to your room! I don’t want to see you again! Go!’

At the top of the stairs Frederick drew himself up; but Eden got in first: ‘Freddie, Olga – do as the General tells you! Go on, go back to your rooms – at once!’ Then she added, her voice thinning with the fear that was taking her over completely: ‘Please.’

Frederick hesitated, then abruptly he grabbed his sister and the two of them disappeared from the top of the stairs. General Bronevich winked approvingly. ‘You know how to handle children – good, good. Sometimes I think they should all be strangled at birth. But then we shouldn’t be here enjoying each other, eh?’ The gold came out again, carats of good humour. ‘Well, let’s see where we’ll have our little interrogation. Are there any bedrooms downstairs?’

‘No, General.’Should I scream for help? ‘Let us go into the drawing-room.’

The General, disappointed that he might have to take second best in the way of a comfortable rape, followed Eden into the drawing-room and shut the double-doors behind him.

It was a long, high-ceilinged room with a parquet floor on which rugs were scattered. A big blue-patterned ceramic stove stood in one corner; there was also a marble-surrounded fireplace in which logs were already stacked as if winter might strike at any moment. The furniture, painted white with gold trim, was solid rather than elegant; but the white grand piano in one corner stood on graceful carved legs and apologized for the heaviness of some of the other furniture. When the Gorshkovs had fled St Petersburg they had brought no furniture, but they had come heavily laden with ornaments. The rugs on the floor were Bokhara’s best, brought from the house in St Petersburg; a Corot and a Watteau, bought by Princess Gorshkov on one of her visits to Paris, hung on the walls; several minor pieces by Fabergé decorated the mantelpiece. But Bronevich, a man with a crude eye, saw none of these better adornments.

He walked to the piano, opened up the keyboard lid and struck the keys with hammer fingers. He nodded admiringly at the discord he had created, then looked around him. He saw the long couch facing the open french windows and the view of the wheatfields beyond. It was not as good as a bed, but it would do. He put his belt and holstered pistol on a side table and took off his jacket.

Eden, not quite believing this was happening, said, ‘General, what are you going to do?’

‘You,’ said the General and exposed his member, which, slant-eyed and bald-headed, looked as Mongolian as the rest of him.

Out in the barn Cabell, having seen Pemenov in the car and the six soldiers on their horses go off down the avenue, was wondering what was happening in the house. Down below him Nikolai had come back into the barn and was wandering up and down in a frenzy of fear and worry.

Cabell called down to him. ‘Go across and see what’s happening.’

Nikolai’s upturned face showed eyes as white as a terrified horse’s. ‘He will kill me—’

Then there was a scream from the house. Cabell, clutching his rifle, tumbled down the ladder, went racing out of the barn and across towards the open french windows. He leapt up the steps and plunged into the drawing-room as General Bronevich tried to plunge into the wildly evasive Eden.

Cabell shouted and the General, letting go his trousers, spun round and grabbed for his pistol on the table beside the couch. His trousers fell down round his ankles, he stumbled and fell forward on his knees and Cabell hit him hard behind the ear with the stock of the rifle. The General gave a grunt and went down on his face, twitched and lay still. Cabell kicked him over on his back, saw the General’s erection and modestly kicked him over on his face again.

Eden sat up on the couch, gasping for breath as she pulled her skirt down over her exposed legs. Her hair had tumbled down from its pins and hung wildly about the torn shoulders of her shirt; she looked nothing like the starched governess Cabell had talked to out in the barn. She glanced down at General Bronevich and saw the huge lump behind his ear from which blood was welling in a dark bubble.

‘Oh my God! Is he–?’

For the first time Cabell realized what he might have done. He dropped down on one knee and felt the General’s pulse. Then he rolled the Tartar over on his back, grabbed a rug and threw it over the now limp weapon that had threatened Eden, and bent his ear to the General’s broad fat chest. Then he straightened up, wondering if today wasn’t someone else’s nightmare that he had wandered into.

‘He’s dead!’

Then the door burst open and Frederick, a double-barrelled shotgun held at the ready, stood there with a wide-eyed, terribly frightened Olga at his shoulder. The two children looked down at the dead General, then Olga pushed past her brother and ran into Eden’s arms. Eden tried to comfort her while trying to pull herself together. Too much had happened in the last five minutes, she had been raped emotionally if not physically.

Cabell crossed to Frederick and took the gun from him. The boy stared at him, but there was no dispute. He would have fired the gun if there had been need for it; he was prepared to kill but he was not prepared for death. He had seen dead men before, the bodies of soldiers glimpsed lying beside the railway tracks as they had fled from St Petersburg, but he had never seen death up close. It was even more horrifying to have it here in the house with them.

‘We’ve got to get away,’ said Cabell. ‘When will that dwarf in the car be back? Eden, I’m talking to you!’

Eden’s senses, which seemed to have left her, started to work again. ‘The dwarf? Oh – he told him to come back in an hour. But—’

‘No buts. We’re getting out of here. You, me and the kids.’

Frederick drew a deep breath, took his eyes off the corpse on the floor and tried again to be the man he thought he was. ‘How? You said your motor car won’t work—’

‘We could go on horseback,’ said Eden. ‘But not to Ekaterinburg—’

‘There’s a British consul there – you’d be okay—’

‘But not the children—’ Her mind was in gear again. ‘The local commander in Ekaterinburg would not let the children go—’

‘Then we better head somewhere else. Does that Rolls-Royce work?’

‘Of course,’ said Frederick. ‘Every week I run the engine – Father asked me to do that. But we’d have to put the wheels on. Father took them off and put them in one of the big wine vats with french chalk on them, to stop the tyres from perishing,’ he said.

‘Okay, you come with me. Eden, you and Olga pack a bag. You better tell the servants to get the hell out of here – they don’t want to be in the house when the dwarf and those soldiers come back and find him.’ He nodded down at the dead General, just a mound beneath the Bokhara rug. ‘Can you see the road from upstairs?’

‘Yes, from the main bedroom.’

‘Olga, you stay at the window and keep an eye on the road. Let me know in a hurry if those soldiers start coming up from the gates. Eden, when you’ve packed your bag, get some food and water together. But first, get rid of those servants. Come on, Freddie.’

Cabell had no idea where he would head once (if) he got the Rolls-Royce started. But going on foot or on horseback would be futile; it would be like galloping off on a treadmill that would gradually grind to a halt beneath them. General Bronevich had probably been on the telegraph line to Ekaterinburg before he had left Verkburg; patrols would be on the alert all the way up the main road. To head west would mean going up into the Urals, into mountains that would offer no refuge; to go east would take them into the semi-desert steppes where they might run into another Tarter ataman’s army. The only imperative need was to get away from here and trust to luck, that some road would open up to safety.

As he crossed the yard towards the barn the full impact of what he had just done hit him. He pulled up sharply, as if it were a physical blow; then he hurried on, trying to shut his mind against the killing of Bronevich. He had injured men in fights, been injured himself; he was no stranger to violence in the often violent world in which he worked. But he had never killed a man before. What worried him was that as he had swung the rifle butt at the Tartar he had meant to kill him, though he hadn’t expected it would happen. He had never even thought of killing any of the men he had fought; but those fights had been over private, personal differences, some trivial. He had never fought over a woman. But it struck him now that he had meant to kill Bronevich because of what the General had been trying to do to Eden. He went into the barn cursing his chivalry.

When he threw back the cover from the Rolls-Royce he was amazed at the condition of the car. Its royal blue paintwork and huge copper-domed headlamps gleamed; its leather upholstery was uncracked. It looked ready to be driven off at once, except that it had no wheels and was mounted on wooden horses.

‘Nikolai washes and polishes it every week,’ said Frederick. ‘It was Father’s pride and joy and he told Nikolai he expected it to be as good as new when he came home from the war.’

In the next half-hour Cabell came to admire and bless the absent Prince Gorshkov, who had such blind faith in the future that he wanted to ride into it in the same style as he had ridden out of the past. He had left instructions that would have done credit to Henry Royce himself; nothing had been overlooked. The tyres, kept in french chalk, were in perfect condition. There were five of them with inner tubes, plus four others stuffed with sponge rubber balls. There were six four-gallon cans of petrol, a two-gallon can of Castrol oil and a box of spare parts. And there was a small single-shaft, two-wheeled wagon that could be attached to the back of the car.

When the car was ready to go, Cabell stood back. ‘Your father had some purpose for all this – he didn’t get all this ready for nothing. Did he ever tell you what he had in mind?’

Frederick shook his head; but Nikolai answered, ‘His Highness told me, sir. He said if ever the war was lost he was coming dack here and was going to drive the family to Vladivostok.’

‘Father would never have said such a thing,’ said Frederick. ‘He wouldn’t think that we could lose the war.’

Poor kid, Cabell thought. His Old Man protected him too well. The Russia of Rolls-Royces, even just nine of them, was gone forever. But Prince Gorshkov, wittingly or not, hadn’t bothered to tell his children. ‘We’re not going to try for Vladivostok,’ he said.

‘Where are we going then?’ said Frederick.

‘Christ knows. I’ll drive the goddam thing around in a circle and we’ll see what direction it comes out.’

Then Olga appeared at the doorway. ‘One of the soldiers is coming up the avenue!’

‘Where’s Miss Penfold?’

‘Here.’ Eden, dressed like Olga in a travelling suit, came into the barn carrying two large suitcases.

‘Where are the servants?’

‘They’ve all gone out to the fields. Quick – we must hurry!’

‘Is there any back road out of here?’

‘Yes – it goes down through the fields and out through the estate village.’

‘Goddam!’ Cabell went to the door, looked slantwise down through the poplars; the soldier, horse at a slow trot, was no more than a couple of hundred yards from the house. ‘If he sees us drive out of here he could cut across the fields and head us off. Nick!’

Nikolai was slow to respond; he was thick with fear. ‘Sir?’

‘Go out, see what he wants. Try and get him to come into the barn. Offer him a drink of vodka, wine, anything. But get him in here! Eden, get yourself and the kids out of sight. Come on, for crissakes move!’

Eden pushed the two children ahead of her towards the rear of the barn. Nikolai turned to follow them, but Cabell grabbed him and spun him round.

‘I told you – get out there and bring that soldier in here!’

‘I can’t, sir – I’m just jelly—’

‘You’ll be pulp if you don’t do what I tell you!’

‘You don’t have to do it, Nikolai,’ said Frederick gently. ‘I’ll go.’

He spun away from Eden and before she or Cabell could stop him he had run through the doorway and out into the yard. Cabell called to him in a low voice, but Frederick took no notice. Tears sprang into Nikolai’s eyes, ashamed that a boy had gone out to do what he had been afraid to; yet he still couldn’t move, stood there and wanted to die. Out in the yard Frederick stood with his back to the barn as the horseman came slowly out of the shadow-latticed avenue into the bright white dust of the yard.

‘Good afternoon.’ Frederick’s voice broke, ending on a high note; he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘Good afternoon, soldier. The General does not wish to be disturbed.’

The horseman was Pemenov. Thirsty, tired of driving around in the bone-shaking car, he had come back to the gates down on the road, where the six horsemen sprawled in the shade of the poplars. He had not wanted to drive up to the house in the car for fear its noise might disturb the General before the latter was finished whatever or whomever he was doing. He knew from experience how the General hated to be distracted while raping; it was one of his few sensibilities. The walk up the long avenue was too far for Pemenov’s short legs, especially on a day like this; so he had borrowed one of the horses. He had shortened the stirrup leathers and one of the soldiers had lifted him into the saddle; he knew that they laughed at him behind his back, but they would never laugh at him to his face while he was the General’s favourite. Now he sat above this arrogant aristocrat boy, his short legs sticking out on either side of the saddle, knowing he looked ridiculous and daring the boy to laugh. He would kill him if he did.

‘I want water,’ he said. ‘A drink.’

‘Water?’ Frederick was still having trouble with his voice. Cabell, listening to him, thought, The kid’s scared stiff. He looked angrily at Nikolai, but the anger died at once. Nikolai was still crying and behind the tears there was a look on his face that puzzled Cabell.

But Frederick was still managing to fool Pemenov: ‘Get down, soldier—’

‘Don’t keep calling me soldier. I am a major, Major Pemenov.’

This funny little man a major? But Frederick couldn’t laugh. ‘Major … Get down and come into the barn. There’s water there. And some of my father’s vodka, too.’

Pemenov nodded agreeably. ‘Vodka? That would be better.’ He smiled and Frederick gave a tentative smile in reply: they were like two children getting to know each other. ‘But with water, too.’

He slipped down from the saddle, landing with unexpected grace on his tiny feet. Leading the horse, he followed Frederick towards the open door of the barn. Frederick, for his part, suddenly realized he had no idea what Mr Cabell had in mind.

He faltered, stumbled, and the dwarf, still smiling innocently, as if eager to be a friend, reached forward and steadied him. Then they passed from the bright sunlight into the dimness of the barn.

Pemenov blinked, caught a glimpse of the gleaming big motor car, one he had never seen before, standing in the middle of the barn floor. He said, ‘It’s dark and cool in here.’

Then he saw the American coming at him. Cabell hit him with the starting handle of the Rolls-Royce and he went down into an even darker and cooler state. He dragged the horse’s head down with him as he fell face forward; it stumbled but kept its feet and finished up astride him, its hooves pawing nervously on either side of him. Cabell wrenched the reins free of the dwarf’s hand and threw them at Nikolai.

‘Tie the horse over there! Okay, everyone in the car!’

Eden pushed Olga up into the rear seat, dumped the suitcases in the trailer and clambered into the front passenger seat. Cabell dragged a tarpaulin over the loaded trailer, tied it down with rope. Frederick had already jumped up into the driver’s seat, closed the air tank switch and was pumping up pressure on the dashboard gauge. Cabell flooded the carburettor, then went round to the front of the car while Frederick set the mixture control to Strong, put the ignition control to Late and the governor control to Midway. Cabell gave the starting handle two complete turns, then Frederick switched on the engine.

‘Here we go,’ said Cabell. ‘Say your prayers!’

There was no need for prayers. Henry Royce’s engine started up at once, purred like some satisfied women Cabell had known. He ran round to get into the driver’s seat, but Frederick had one hand on the wheel and with the other was reaching to let off the hand-brake.

‘Out of there!’

‘I understand this car better than you! My father taught me how to drive it—’

‘Jesus, sonny, you’d turn the Virgin Mary into a Bolshevik! In the back, you hear!’ He stood on the running-board, reached down and Frederick, with a yell, went backwards over the seat and into the rear beside his sister. ‘You argue with me again and I’ll hit you with the goddam handle!’

He dropped into the driver’s seat, reached for the brake-handle and saw Nikolai standing in front of the car. ‘Sir—’

‘For crissake, Nick, get out of the goddam way!’

‘Sir, I want to come with you—’

‘There’s no room! You’ll be safer here – just disappear for a while—’

‘Let him come,’ said Eden. ‘We can’t leave him here. He’s a foreigner, even to the people on the estate – just like you and me—’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Cabell. ‘Okay, in the back!’

He let in the gears and the Rolls-Royce glided out of the barn, the only noise that of the small trailer bouncing along behind it on its iron-shod wheels, did a wide turn and went down between the barn and the cow-sheds and out on to the narrow dirt road that led down through the tall yellow sea of wheat.

‘Okay, we’ve started. Now where the hell do we head for?’

‘Mr Cabell, would you mind moderating your language?’

‘I will when I know where the hell we’re going!’

‘I think we should head for Tiflis,’ said Eden.

‘Jesus wept,’ said Cabell and lifted his eyes skywards. The immensity of the sky seemed to reflect the distances that lay ahead of them. He had always had love affairs with horizons, but this was heading for the edge of the world. ‘Tiflis!’

[4]

Pemenov got slowly to his feet. His head, always too big for his body, felt even bigger and heavier. He looked around, saw the tyre-marks of the Rolls-Royce as it had gone out of the barn into the yard. He felt the back of his head and cursed softly; he would kill the American when they captured him. Then he remembered the General.

He ran out of the barn and across to the house. He hammered on the front door, but there was no response. He raced down the front steps, round the side of the house; he came to the long narrow terrace and the open french windows. He went in, still running, and pulled up so sharply he skidded on the parquet floor.

It took him only a moment to learn the General was dead. He knelt beside the corpse, pulled the trousers up and covered the limp instrument that had led the General to his death. Tears came into his eyes as he looked at his uncle’s ugly, brutal face. The General had laughed at him, made cruel jokes; but he had killed three men who had made the same jokes at Pemenov’s expense. Pemenov’s mother had killed herself when she realized what she had borne; his father, always a drunkard, had been killed in a drunken brawl when the cruelly named Peregrine had been only five years old. For the next twenty-five years Yuri Bronevich had cared for his unfortunate young cousin, treating him as a nephew. He had laughed at him, abused him, belted him, but he had protected Pemenov against what the rest of the world would have done to him.

Pemenov threw the rug back over the body. He took Bronevich’s pistol from where it had fallen, went out on to the terrace and fired two shots.

In less than a minute the horsemen came galloping up the avenue, followed by the General’s car with its driver and, beside him, the soldier whose horse Pemenov had borrowed. Pemenov, who had now slung Bronevich’s gunbelt across his chest like a bandolier, shouted orders for someone to look after the General’s body; then he clambered up into the car and snapped at the driver to follow the tyre-tracks that led out of the yard. The driver let in the gears and the car, an ancient Mercedes that had never been properly serviced, wheezed out of the yard and down the narrow road that led through the wheat-fields.

It had gone no more than half a mile when its engine coughed, spluttered and died. The driver, a hulking youth who had never ridden in a car till a year ago, looked helplessly at the little man beside him. ‘No petrol, Major. I forgot to fill the tank when the General rushed us out here—’

Pemenov’s first reaction was to hit the driver with Bronevich’s pistol. But some inner caution, always on the alert from past experience, held him back; his only protector was dead back there in the house. He sat there in the car, in the midst of the blinding yellow glare of the wheat-fields, and wanted to weep tears of rage and frustration. Then, looking back, he saw the horseman galloping at full pelt along the road after them. He stood up on the front seat and waited.

The soldier reined in his horse in a cloud of dust. ‘We found a motor truck in the barn – it is the American’s! The Englishwoman lied to us!’

Pemenov almost fell off his perch in a swoon of rage. First the American who had knocked him unconscious, then the Englishwoman who had tried to protect the American. The foreigners had to be driven out of Russia. Or killed … ‘Give me your horse!’

The soldier reared back with his horse. ‘Why should I? Who are you now–?’

Pemenov levelled the General’s pistol at the man: Bronevich, though dead, still lent him some protection. ‘Bring your horse here by the car! Give me the reins. Now get down!’

The soldier glared, but swung down from his horse and backed away. Pemenov stepped up on to the side of the car and vaulted into the saddle. He gestured to the driver. ‘Give me the General’s rifle and the bandolier and his binoculars!’

The driver, careful of the gun pointed at him, did as he was told. The rifle was a Mosin-Nagent, better than the ancient Krenk in the saddle scabbard. Pemenov took the Krenk from the scabbard, unloaded it and flung it into the wheat. He adjusted the stirrup leathers, then he was ready to leave.

‘Don’t follow me or I shall kill you. Give the General a decent burial.’

He dug in his heels and turned the horse south. He had no idea where he was heading, except to follow the tyre-tracks in the dust for as far as they might go. If he lost them, he would just keep riding south anyway, into the steppes and oblivion if that was the way it had to be. He could not stay here: his life would be hell. Better to head south, ride after the American, kill him. He owed it to the General who could no longer protect him.