Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“They work for different organizations, and Rafiq’s people knew nothing about our plans,” Brady said. “Still don’t, according to Suvorov’s bosses in London because Rafiq hasn’t filed a report since he joined us. But Rafiq’s people in London have sent someone out to contact him. Whether or not the man’s arrived, Suvorov doesn’t know.”

They were all looking at the stricken Indian.

“So what do we do with him?” Shahumian asked.

“Let him die,” Brady said simply.

“And if he doesn’t before we leave?” Shahumian asked.

“He will.”

There was a short silence. “Did Suvorov have anything useful to offer?” Shahumian asked.

“No, we’re on our own as far as getting out of Moscow’s concerned.”

“Then what should we do? Wait for morning or get going now?” Piatakov asked.

Brady didn’t hesitate. “Now,” he said. “We’re only five minutes away from the Paveletsky yards—that’s why we took this room in the first place—and a freight train’s our safest way out of the city. Two would be better, with some time in between. The militia must have noticed that Nasim’s an Indian, so Durga should be on the first. He and Aram should leave right away.”

Shahumian nodded. “And where do we meet?”

“Samarkand,” Brady decided after only a moment’s thought. “You can get there by train from the Caucasus or Samara, and the Cheka garrison there will be much smaller than the one in Tashkent. There’s a square with madrasahs on three sides called the Registan—I was reading about it the other day. Whoever’s there first, just keep turning up at noon until the others arrive. It’s in the native town, not the Russian one.”

“Which should we stay in?” Piatakov wondered out loud.

Brady shrugged. “We’ll be more noticeable in the native town but easier to find in the Russian. We’ll have to play it by ear.”

“And how long do we wait?” Chatterji asked.

“For as long as you have to. The journey could take a week, but a month’s more likely. And take all the coins you can easily carry.”

Once they had done so, Shahumian went to embrace Piatakov. “One last adventure,” he murmured with a smile. “I’ll see you in Samarkand.”

“You will,” Piatakov said, hoping it was true. From the window he and Brady watched the twosome walk away along the empty street. There didn’t seem to be any motor vehicles in the vicinity, and the distant chuff of a locomotive was reassuring.

Piatakov had wanted to travel with Aram, but the lots they’d drawn had decided otherwise, and leaving later with Brady at least offered one consolation—he could say good-bye to Caitlin.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” he promised after telling the American where he was going.

“You’re crazy,” Brady said.

“Probably.”

“Is any woman worth it?” Brady asked half-jokingly.

Piatakov stopped by the door, looked back. “Yes,” he said simply.

Caitlin knew it hadn’t beenone of Sergei’s shirts. But had it been his blood? Had he been hurt, or had he hurt someone else? The only good answer was neither, and that seemed unlikely.

North of the river again, she piloted the Zhenotdel Renault through Moscow’s dark and sparsely populated streets. On the door of an empty shop, someone had painted a huge bird in flight, a small biplane with German markings dangling from its claws. Farther down the same street, outside an abandoned hotel, a revolving door lay on its side like a giant’s abandoned spinning top. Here and there a working lamp illuminated a boarded shop front or a group of smoking militiamen; on one corner a huge poster demanding electrification of the countryside loomed across the stripped carcass of a horse.

As she drove past the New Theater on Bolshaya Dmitrovka the giant flower stalls constructed by the futurists seemed like strange growths swaying on the floor of a dark ocean.

She felt close to hysteria, as if all the weeks and months of her struggle with Sergei had engulfed her in one moment.

An errant child, that was what he was. She was angry with him. Frightened for him.

She had to bring him home.

After driving down Kamergersky Street, she turned onto Tverskaya and pulled up outside the Universalist Club. At the entrance she hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to remove the enamel star from her blouse front. Why? she asked herself. To hell with them.

She took a deep breath and walked into the building, down the narrow corridor, and into the main clubroom. Smoke, noise, and the smell of male bodies assailed her. The handful of women all looked like prostitutes, and the men who noticed Caitlin’s arrival were wondering whether she was one herself, if their head-to-toe appraisals were any indication. She didn’t see a soul she recognized.

She stood there, disgusted by the atmosphere. The tinkling jazz music, the smell of marijuana—it reminded her of the seedier clubs she’d visited in prewar New York. But they’d also been home to a wild kind of joy, and here the air seemed thick with the opposite, a lovingly cocooned sense of hopelessness. Was this what Moscow’s free spirits had come to?

She wanted to shout at them all, the way she’d shouted at Sergei.

A young man, obviously drunk, was leering at her. She turned to the next table, where two men were playing chess with homemade pieces, and asked them if they knew Sergei. They looked at her warily, shook their heads in unison, and bent back over their board.

“Are you looking for Piatakov?” a voice asked.

It was the drunk, teetering right behind her. She stepped back a pace. “Do you know where he is?”

“Why do you want to know?” he asked conspiratorially.

“Shut up, Belov!” someone shouted.

Belov tried winking with both eyes at once. “Has our party pretty boy got you pregnant, sweetheart?”

She’d smacked him across the face before she knew what she was doing.

He looked at her, astonishment turning to rage, then lifted a hand.

She hit him with her fist the way Colm had taught her all those years ago, right on the nose.

He collapsed backward, into a sudden silence.

“I’m looking for Sergei Piatakov!” she shouted, massaging her knuckles with the other hand. “I’m his wife.”

Heads turned away. She stood there, wishing she could hit them all.

“Come and sit down,” said another voice behind her, this one soft and sober.

She turned to find a middle-aged man with intelligent eyes in a battered face. He pushed out a chair.

She ignored it. “Have you seen him?”

“Not this evening. But he does come in most nights.” He paused. “Though I don’t think he was in yesterday either.”

“What about his friends?”

“Not them either.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. She had the absurd feeling that he was betraying Sergei.

“You asked.”

His face was somehow familiar. “Have we met before?” she asked.

He smiled ruefully. “A long time ago. At one of Volodarsky’s gatherings.”

She remembered the evening, the crowded room—Volodarsky had never been short of friends. “Thank you,” she said. “If Sergei comes in later, could you tell him I’m looking for him?”

“I will.”

“Thank you,” she said again. Turning to leave, she saw the drunk trying, without much success, to get himself upright. Resisting the temptation to kick his arm out from under him, she walked back out to the street.

There she stood for a moment, the last of her anger peeling away in the night air, revealing only a numbing sense of loss.

She climbed wearily into the car and sat behind the wheel wondering what to do, where to go.

The office, she decided. She could cope there. She could always cope there.