Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

Komarov had been back inhis office for a few minutes when Sasha appeared in the doorway, a bemused expression on his face.

“Tashkent knows nothing of an interpreter named Nikolai Davydov. Or of any local party member with that name. The only Davydov in their records is a retired soldier who grows fruit just outside the city. He’s almost sixty and has no children.”

Komarov nodded. “Don’t mention this to anyone else.”

“No, comrade.” Sasha turned to leave, but his curiosity wouldn’t let him. “So who is the Davydov here in Moscow?”

“A good question.”

“You’re not going to have him arrested?”

“Not for the moment. I think he’ll be more useful free.”

Once Komarov had left, Caitlinsat there fuming for several minutes, then went to tell Fanya what had happened.

“We guessed,” her friend said. “We couldn’t hear everything he said, but we didn’t really need to. Are you going to ask Kollontai to use her influence?”

“I’m not sure she has that much at the moment,” Caitlin said. “And what she has she should probably save for a better cause.” She gave Fanya a rueful smile. “I always wanted to see Turkestan, and now it seems I shall.”

“As part of a Cheka hunting party,” Fanya noted.

“I know, but that was the reason I stopped arguing with him. If they do catch Sergei, I might be able to help him if I’m there. Not that he’ll thank me.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Whenever the Cheka and the railways decide. Which could be an hour from now, so I’d better go home and pack some clothes.”

McColl was dozing on hisbed when the thunderous knock on the door woke him with a heart-sinking start. Fearing the worst, he opened the door and had his fears confirmed. Two hard-faced young Chekists pushed him back into the room, their pistols gleaming in polished holsters. It was the imperial throne room all over again, only this time it was him they had come for.

“Get your things,” one Chekist said curtly. “You’re coming with us,” he added superfluously.

One glance told McColl that questions, let alone protests, would fall on the deafest of ears. But as he obeyed their single instruction, he also found hope in the thought that captured spies were probably not invited to pack for a future.

All he had with him were a change of clothes and a couple of books, and once these were in the suitcase, the Chekists hustled him downstairs and out. The looks he received from fellow guests—sympathetic and sternly judgmental in almost equal parts—were hardly reassuring.

A car was waiting at the hotel entrance, a young and unfamiliar driver behind the wheel, an unsmiling Maslov sitting beside him. The two Chekists who’d collected him from his room loaded McColl into the rear seat and smartly stepped back. They obviously knew the driver, whose breakneck departure took no account of the lake created by that morning’s torrential rain and succeeded in drenching several less prescient passersby. Curses fading in its wake, the Russo-Balt headed up Tverskaya Street.

“Where are we going?” McColl asked, trying to sound like a man among comrades.

“You’ve been reassigned,” Maslov told him. “The deputy chairman has urgent business in Tashkent, and he’s asked for you as his interpreter.”

“Asked” was probably not the right word, McColl thought, but he still felt a whole lot better than he had five minutes earlier. Tashkent might prove a problem, but there was no obvious reason for Komarov to check his bona fides when they got there, and he knew the city well enough from the months he’d spent there on Secret Service business in the summer and autumn of 1916. “What about the Indian delegation?” he asked Maslov, thinking a query would be expected.

Maslov didn’t bother to answer.

McColl leaned back in the seat and let his body relax. It had turned into yet another beautiful day. The golden cupolas hung like decorations in the clear blue sky; the pastel buildings were brightly reflected in the puddles that had gathered in the hollows of unrepaired pavements and streets. The long line of tree stumps down the center of the boulevard reminded McColl of how lovely the city had been before the usual sources of fuel ran out.

On Kamergersky Street a crowd spilling out of an old church caused the Cheka driver to snort with derision and mumble something insulting. Most of the worshippers stopped on the steps as the car drove by; like a cat on a wall watching a dog pass below, they were not so much anxious as ready to be so.

“Mother wants to know how long you’ll be gone,” the driver said, revealing himself as Maslov’s brother.

“Tell her I’ve no idea,” Maslov said.

“You don’t sound very keen on this trip.”

Maslov grunted. “I don’t even know why we’re going. As far as I can see, it’s a job for our men in Tashkent.”

“It’s just you and Komarov going?”

“And our interpreter here. And the wife.”

“Komarov’s?”

Maslov laughed. “No, Piatakov’s. The American woman who works for the Zhenotdel. She knows Brady too.”

In the back seat, McColl’s heart skipped several beats.

“Why are you taking her along?” the brother asked.

“Who knows? I sometimes think Komarov fancies her.”

“A looker, is she?”

“I suppose so. I don’t imagine she’d be much fun.”

McColl was only half-listening by this time. There might be other American women working for the Zhenotdel, but surely none with a connection to Aidan Brady. Caitlin Hanley, the young American journalist he’d met in China at the end of 1913. The woman he’d fallen in love with and then betrayed by agreeing to investigate her Irish republican family. Who’d given him the second chance he hardly deserved, then whisked the rug from under his feet by putting her politics first and choosing to stay in Lenin’s Russia.

It had to be her. And she was married.

And why not? he asked himself, trying to ignore the sense of emptiness the news provoked. Three years had passed. Lots of time to meet other men, to fall in love, to plan a life together. Why shouldn’t she be married?

More to the point, he told herself, he and she were about to renew their fractured acquaintance.

How ridiculous was that? A week in Moscow praying that he wouldn’t run into her, and here they were, booked on to the very same train, for a journey that would certainly last several days, and maybe even weeks.

Which was not his most pressing problem. Her initial reaction might be the death of him, if Komarov or Maslov was there to witness it. She’d be as shocked as he was now, but without the time to rehearse a response.

She might of course choose to give him away, and he wasn’t sure he’d blame her if she did. The last time they’d met he’d told her he was quitting the Service, and the only conclusion she could feasibly draw from his undercover reappearance was that he’d either had a change of heart or been telling bare-faced lies.

If she did give him up on the spot, there’d be nothing he could do about it, but—fool that he might well be—he still found it hard to believe that she would. Giving him away accidentally seemed the more likely outcome.

What could he do to prevent it?

The car was approaching Kalanchevskaya Square, the home to three of Moscow’s stations. It was almost empty, unlike the day three years before when Brady had shot and killed Fedya, and McColl had managed to lose his pursuers in the milling crowd. The memory still made his blood run cold, but he forced his mind back to the present—getting himself caught or killed wouldn’t bring back the boy.

As they pulled up outside the Kazan Station entrance, McColl looked for her and Komarov, but neither was there. On the platform, then. If he and Caitlin came face-to-face with witnesses present, McColl just had to hope she was willing and able to conceal the shock. If fate was kind and that didn’t happen, he would have to find some way of announcing his presence in private.