Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

The concourse was crowded, the Tashkent train at the farthest platform. “The three red cars at the front,” a Chekist at the gate told Maslov, pointing him down a long line of dark green coaches. High on the wall beyond the train, a series of futuristic posters announced the delights of the Moscow Circus.

The rear coaches were crowded with Red Army soldiers—around a battalion’s worth, McColl reckoned. Ahead of these were two flat trucks bearing mounted machine guns surrounded by sandbags. Five or six coaches for ordinary civilians followed, then a third flat truck, two box vans, an antique-looking dining car in faded green and gold, and finally, reaching beyond the end of the platform, the promised red carriages. Outside the first a suited man with a neat brown beard was smoking with a leather-coated Chekist, and in one of the windows behind him, a woman was stretching up to place a suitcase on a rack, emphasizing the trimness of her figure.

It wasn’t Caitlin.

Komarov was standing alone by the door of the second vermillion coach, checking his watch and looking impatient. There was no familiar face in the windows behind him.

Was the Cheka boss waiting for her? McColl certainly hoped so. After Komarov had acknowledged him with a nod and told him that his was the end compartment, he manfully resisted the temptation to turn and look back down the platform.

Stepping up into the vestibule, he walked cautiously on past the attendant’s cubicle and into a long and unpopulated saloon full of upholstered chairs and highly polished tables. There was a stove in one corner, a well-stocked bookcase along one partition wall. The Cheka apparently traveled in style.

He walked on through to the front carriage, which contained half a dozen compartments, each with a seat-cum-berth, collapsible table, and basin. His luck was in, McColl realized, closing the door. He could hide himself away until he knew which compartment she was in.

Which of course proved easier said than done—he had to stand with one ear pressed against the door for more than half an hour before he heard footsteps in the corridor outside. And then the voice, the faintest of American accents edging the excellent Russian as she thanked whoever it was who had carried her luggage.

Feelings welled up inside him, feelings he couldn’t deal with now.

He opened his compartment door and cautiously leaned his head out into the empty corridor. The third door along was closed, all the others open.

A step across to the window told him Komarov and Maslov were still on the platform. Should he go and see her now, and hope that the two Chekists would still be there when he reemerged? Or should he wait and hope for some safer moment? It occurred to him that Komarov might want to introduce them to each other.

Now would be better, but he would have to be quick, and there was so much to explain. A note, he thought. He would write one and push it under her door.

It took him five minutes to work out what he needed to say and how best to say it. The corridor was still empty, the Chekists still on the platform. McColl walked quietly to her door, squatted to slip the note under, and then had second thoughts. He told himself he had to be sure she was in there, that no one else would read the message. And he wanted to see her.

He rapped on the door with one hand, and pushed down on the handle with the other, hoping she hadn’t locked it. She hadn’t.

“What—” she began, then realized it was him. “Jack!” she said, her initial look of utter surprise giving way to a gamut of other emotions, anger foremost among them.

“I want you to read this,” he said quickly, offering her the note. “Before you do anything drastic,” he added.

“But—”

“I’ll talk to you later,” he promised, backing out through the door and pulling it shut. A few seconds later he was in his own compartment hoping he wouldn’t hear her leaving hers. Several agonizing minutes passed in silence, which presumably meant she was reading the note. Several more went by, leaving him pretty sure that she wasn’t about to betray him. Not without giving him time to explain.

He laid himself out on the long seat, hands behind his head, listening to the bustle of activity outside. She looked different, he thought. The girl had gone, at least for the moment. The green eyes and chestnut hair both seemed duller, her complexion even paler than he remembered it. Living as a Bolshevik these last three years hadn’t done much for her physical health.

But there was that feeling again, glowing inside him against all reason.

He knew what he should do. He should slip off the train while it was still in the station, somehow get back to Petrograd, and get himself over the Finnish border as quickly as he could. He hadn’t completed the mission, but once he’d reported all he knew and guessed, Cumming should find it easy enough to intercept Brady and his renegade partners.

So what was stopping him? The prospect of sharing a long train journey with an enemy who was smarter than he was? Not to mention the love of his life, whom he’d barely gotten over, and who he’d just discovered was married to someone else.

He’d be facing a firing squad or a rebroken heart. Quite possibly both.

Look on the bright side, he told himself. He hadn’t died in the war like Mac; he hadn’t succumbed to the flu like his brother. He was already living on borrowed time.

She might have broken his heart three years ago, but the damned thing was just about mended, and probably needed retesting. She might be married now, but the fact that her husband was one of the men they were hunting suggested the marriage had seen better days.

And then there was Fedya and Brady. Reason enough, he’d thought, when agreeing to the job. It still was.

A last adventure, he thought, and if he survived, he would try something different. He was almost forty, but these days that wasn’t so old. He would do something with the years he often felt he didn’t deserve, those years that Jed and Fedya would never get to live. Something grounded in kindness rather than cruelty. Something that wasn’t a game played by boys in adult bodies.

Outside a whistle shrieked, and a few moments later the train staggered into motion. He moved himself next to the window and, for the next fifteen minutes, watched Moscow’s bedraggled suburbs slide past. Soon they were steaming past scattered farmsteads and gentle birch-covered hills, the occasional dacha set beside a dull brown stream, an old manorial house clinging to a lee slope, surrounded by tall, waving trees. Of people the land seemed curiously empty—already the train seemed headed into a void, into that vastness where the Mongol arrows had whistled, south and east toward desert wastes and cerulean domes.

It had been light for over an hour, and the other occupants of the carriage seemed to be sleeping. Caitlin had already visited the kitchen three cars down, and sweet-talked the cook into bringing meals to her compartment. She would still have to leave her sanctum when nature called, but not for anything else.

She picked up the note and read it again. “Dear Caitlin,” it began, “I know that finding we’re both on this train will be a shock. It certainly was for me. And I’m sure that your first assumption—an understandable one considering our past—was that I’m here on some anti-Bolshevik mission. This is not the case. I’m here in Russia as a personal favor to my old boss. It’s all about Indians plotting something in India and has nothing to do with the Bolshevik government. In fact, as far as I can tell, your government has as much interest in foiling this plot as I do. If we can meet casually—on the platform at one of the stops might be best—I will explain the whole business and try to answer any questions you might have. After that—after we’ve officially met, so to speak—then we should be able to share the odd cup of tea without raising any suspicions. Love, Jack.”