Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

McColl nodded and turned toward the door.

“Are you Russian?” Ruzhkov asked.

“No, British.”

“Your Russian is excellent. My children, are they well?”

“They’re all fine.”

“Good, wonderful. Tomorrow you must tell me more.”

McColl went down the stairs. Tamara was standing in the hall, one foot on the ground, the other against the wall, smoking a cigarette. She returned his nod with a contemptuous glance and headed for the stairs. He wondered if Ruzhkov had mentioned killing the wife in England.

Outside the light was beginning to fade, which had to be good news. The Chekist on the train might have a memory for faces, but any likeness conveyed by phone could be only the roughest of sketches. Even if Miliutin talked, McColl was surely safe for a couple of days. He would keep the beard for thirty-six hours and shave it off when he had the new papers.

No hands roughly shook McCollawake during the night, and when he woke of his own accord, the sun was streaming in through the dormitory’s high windows. Some of the twenty-odd occupants of the other bunk beds had already departed; some were still snoring with annoying gusto.

McColl lay there for a while, wondering what to do with the day and night that lay ahead. He wasn’t due to meet Ruzhkov again until the following day, and until that time he was stuck with the identity papers he’d been given in Vyborg. But no one else knew the name that was on them, not even Miliutin. It would, he decided, be safer to stay another night than switch dormitories—two addresses would double the risk. And it was Sunday, which even in atheist Russia was a day of relative rest. Chekists should be thinner on the ground.

He would leave his suitcase there and spend the day out, preferably in crowded places. There was precious little chance of running into any Russian Muscovites who knew him from earlier visits, and all the English undercover men were gone. There was only Caitlin, who would probably see through the beard. Running into her would be disastrous, but also extremely unlikely, given the city’s million or more residents.

His mind made up, he went for a cold-water wash. After putting his clothes back on, he asked the babushka at the door for directions to the nearest communal canteen and was nodded down the street. There was a queue at the door, but it moved quite quickly, and a brief perusal of his papers ensured the provision of a free but decidedly basic breakfast. After begging and drinking a second glass of tea, he walked back out onto a sunlit Rozhdestvenka Street. Moscow was his for the taking.

It proved a mixed day. For reasons that McColl didn’t want to fathom, he felt drawn to the antiques shop on Bolshaya Nikitskaya that he and Fedya had shared for several days in the summer of 1918. It wasn’t far away, he told himself, and he had to walk somewhere.

In the event, the shop was gone, replaced by what looked like a private café. He resisted the urge to look inside, standing instead on the opposite pavement, more or less where Caitlin had stood when she’d waited to warn him that the Cheka was hot on his trail. It was the last time he’d seen her.

And the next day Brady had tried to shoot him, but had succeeded only in killing Fedya. At least the boy had died instantly, which had to be some consolation.

Enough, McColl told himself, forcing his feet into motion. It was done. Fedya was dead and Caitlin was gone. Had been for almost three years.

He walked down toward the Alexandrov Gardens, around the Historical Museum, and into Red Square. The huge space was relatively crowded and seemed, as it always did to McColl, like something lying in wait. He carried on down to the river, and wandered along the towpath, passing the spot where Caitlin had told him the czar had been murdered.

It took him about an hour to reach open country, and after a fifteen-minute rest in the shade of a riverside willow, he walked back the way he had come, the domes and spires of the Kremlin gradually filling the skyline ahead. A tram ride brought him to Sokolniki Park, which he remembered from earlier visits and which was now full of families enjoying the sunshine and sampling the many and varied entertainments. Fortune-tellers were out in force, and seemed to be intent on outdoing one another’s optimistic forecasts. Jugglers, musicians, and photographers competed for attention and kopeks; an old man in a thick winter overcoat played Tchaikovsky melodies on his flute without breaking a sweat in the ninety-degree heat.

In late afternoon McColl used the distant Sukharev Tower to guide him back to the ring road, and the stretch of it that housed the Sukharevka Market, his meeting place for the following day. Having reminded himself of the lay of the land, he was wondering what to do next when he noticed a cinema just down the street. The place was filthy but crowded, and McColl found himself wedged between a boy of about thirteen and a woman who smelled of onions. The propaganda short that opened proceedings provoked neither cheers nor jeers; the wartime Charlie Chaplins that followed almost brought the house down. Halfway through the second film, laughing so hard it actually hurt, McColl knew he was close to hysteria. Normal life, it seemed, was something he still had to work at.

Komarov got out from behind his desk and walked across to the open window. Prisoners were shuffling in the courtyard below, ravens circling in the blue sky above. As he was watching the latter, he heard Sasha clear his throat in the doorway.

“There was another call from Comrade Baranov, comrade. I told him you were in a meeting.”

“What did he want?”

“They’ve arrested one of the foreign agents. A man called Miliutin.”

Komarov laughed. “Not a very foreign name.”

“No. A Russian. He was discovered in bed with two prostitutes,” Sasha said in a thoroughly disapproving tone.

“Spending the money he was paid to bring the foreigner across the border,” Komarov guessed.

“Yes, and he was only too eager to tell Baranov’s people all about the man. An Englishman. And he was on his way to Moscow. Here’s the description,” he said, handing over a sheet of paper.

“But he doesn’t know what this Englishman intends to do when he gets here?” Komarov asked, just to be sure.

“Baranov says he doesn’t.”

“Okay. Get Borin, Yezhov, whoever else is free,” Komarov told him.

By the time Komarov had read the description, there were four Chekists gathered in front of his desk.

“We’re looking for an Englishman,” Komarov announced. “About five feet nine inches tall. Dark hair, beard, and mustache, brown eyes. He’s wearing either a shabby dark grey suit or a White blouse and leather breeches. His Russian is near-perfect. His papers are in the name of Anatoly Joseyevich Mazin, metallurgist, from Monchegorsk. Or at least, one set are. He may have others. And he’s armed.” Komarov paused. “Right. Divide up the city among you. Start with the dormitories; then move on to the hotels. If you draw a blank with both, liaise with the Vecheka about known White sympathizers, both their own and any real ones they’ve left out as bait to catch their comrades. Understood? Then go.”

Their boots tramped down the stairs and through the outer office.

Komarov looked at the new information again. This was better. This one they should find.

He leaned back in his chair, again thinking about Piatakova. Another foreigner, but one, as far as he could tell, who’d devoted her life to Russia and its revolution. She had irritated him—he couldn’t deny it—but over the last few months, he’d had a bellyful of party idealists so busy rearranging the world that they didn’t notice who was keeping it safe for them. That wasn’t surprising, but finding her desirable had been—it was a long time since he’d thought of a woman in that way. Those lovely green eyes and waves of chestnut-brown hair. That fluid way of walking—all graceful limbs and head held high—which reminded him of his wife. It had been almost two years since Mariya had died, and lately he sometimes found it difficult to picture her face without the help of a photograph. At other times she was right there in front of him, almost as real as she had been in life. Only much more accusing.