Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

The Indian was fiddling with the dials, the headphones clamped against his turban. “Calling Red Fortress. This is the City of Gold calling Red Fortress. Come in, Red Fortress.” He repeated it several times. McColl could imagine some Indian dashing down from the IPI communications room to tell the former public schoolboy on duty that Samarkand was sending a message. He felt a wave of disgust with the whole business. With himself.

Ali Zahid was handing him the headphones.

“…is Red Fortress, City of Gold,” a voice was saying, in exactly the accent McColl had expected.

“This is Bonnie Prince Charlie in the City of Gold,” he said slowly. Bite on that one, lads, he thought maliciously.

The silence at the other end seemed to last a long time. “We’ve been expecting your call, Bonnie Prince Charlie,” the voice said eventually.

Like hell you have, McColl thought. The moon was easing itself out of the hills, washing the plain with spectral light. It was all absurdly beautiful. “Agent Akbar is dead,” he said. “The Good Indian team is headed your way.”

“Understood,” the voice in Delhi said.

Almost smugly, McColl thought.

“Where are they now?” the voice asked.

“Unknown. Probably still on Russian territory.”

“Understood. Does the opposition know of their plans?”

Which opposition? McColl wondered. Presumably the Cheka. “In general, yes.”

“Is the opposition attempting to interfere?”

“Yes.”

“Understood. You must facilitate their escape from enemy territory if possible, Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

“Please repeat that instruction.”

“You must facilitate their escape from enemy territory—”

“Understood.” Only too fucking well. “Over and out,” he said coldly, losing his turban as he ripped off the headphones. He hadn’t really expected anything else, but had, he realized, still felt a flicker of hope.

Not anymore.

Ali Zahid was looking at him anxiously, even fearfully. “Are there troubles to come?” he asked.

“Facilitate,” McColl muttered. “You speak better English than that bunch of bastards.”

The Indian’s smile was doubtful.

They returned the wireless to its hiding place and walked back to the city. Boy, mule, and droshky were still waiting patiently outside the carpet shop. “You should be in bed,” McColl said as he climbed aboard for the return trip. And so should I, he thought. Tiredness, hunger, and anger were congealing into a dull despondency.

He lit a cigarette as they rattled slowly up Tashkent Street, and recalled the impression that Gandhi had made on him all those years ago. And again, in 1915, when McColl had stopped to see him at the ashram outside Ahmedabad. Everything he’d learned firsthand about Gandhi, everything he’d read about him in the mostly hostile British press, told him that this was one of nature’s better men, a force for good in a world so full of the opposite. A troublemaker where trouble needed making.

But as far as the powers-that-be were concerned, the only good Indian was a dead one.

“Shashlik, mister?” The boy’s face was turned to his; they were outside an eating house. Probably the boy’s father’s.

McColl looked at his watch. Two hours had already passed, so what difference did it make? “Yes,” he said, his mouth suddenly watering at the prospect. He flicked his cigarette end into the street, and three young boys appeared out of nowhere to fight for its possession.

Caitlin lit another cigarette—she wassmoking far too much—and accepted another inch of whatever the local liqueur was. It had a kick like a mule, as her father might have said, and the hint of apple reminded her of Arbatov, who would now be commencing his five years of exile in apple-growing Verny.

She and Komarov were sitting in the otherwise empty hotel dining room. Her lack of sleep the previous night had left her tired enough for bed, but when he had suggested a drink, she had thought it prudent to accept. With enough of whatever it was inside him, he might let something slip.

Or not. The more shots Komarov put away, the more he seemed drawn to the past. “I once worked with a man named Dvoretsky,” he said. “Pyotr Dvoretsky. I was his immediate superior in the Investigation Department, and I knew him quite well. A good man, all in all. Kind to his family, always generous when the charities came to the office. No politics to speak of. The revolution didn’t fill him with joy, but it didn’t make him angry either. He was more bewildered than anything else, like many ordinary people.

“Then, at the end of 1918, his wife became ill. All four parents were still alive and all dependent on him. He convinced himself that he needed the extra rations, and from there it was a short step to buying coupons he knew were forged. Which made him an enemy of the revolution.

“He was caught almost immediately. And he sat there in my office, frightened of course, but not without dignity, and he said, ‘What would you have done in my place?’ And I had no answer for him. Or rather, no answer that would have been relevant. It didn’t matter what I would have done—how could my principles as an individual determine the rightness of his actions? He’d done what he thought was right.”

As Komarov paused and reached for his glass, Caitlin felt sure he could still see the man in question on the other side of his desk. “What happened to him?” she asked after several moments of silence.

“Oh, he was shot that evening. My duties as a Chekist were clear. That is the point. For a long time, I carried on interrogating prisoners like a policeman, treating them as people, because only in that way can you begin to understand their motivation. I hadn’t realized that motivation was now beside the point and that I could no longer afford to treat our enemies like people. The strain was just too much. Because they had principles, too, and theirs often seemed as consistent with who they were and where the revolution had taken us as mine were with who I was. It was impossible. We could have turned the prisons into endless seminars on political philosophy. Everything seemed arbitrary. Everything but power.

“I had the power, so my truth was the one that counted. I believed in that truth; I believed I was right, and that had to be enough.”

“We can never be certain,” she said tentatively.

“No, but we must act as if we are. So many comrades refuse to take that responsibility. ‘Power is the only truth’—that’s what they say. It sounds convincing if you say it loud and often, but it’s nonsense. Power may be essential, but it isn’t a truth. If we want a victory that lives up to our dreams, we can’t afford to forget the truth, so we simply have to suspend it. We have to split ourselves, keep the truth—in all its complexity—safe in the back of our minds, while we act as if there’s only the one simple gospel and one right way to do things. And since, when we choose our one and only truth, we are also choosing to condemn those who think differently, we must take the responsibility on our own shoulders and not pretend that history is making our choices for us. That’s one form of cowardice. The other is refusing to choose because all that means is that you’re passing the burden of choice to someone else.”

She gazed at him through the smoke from her cigarette. Was he testing her? she wondered. Did she deserve to be tested? “I understand,” she said. And she thought she did. “But what if the cost is too high?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

He wanted to hear her say it, she thought. For her sake or his?

“Take men like Arbatov and my husband,” she said. “They supported and fought for the revolution, but now even people like them refuse to abide by your simple gospel. Doesn’t that make you wonder whether we’ve narrowed the path too much, whether we’re closing the door on too many people? On too many ideas?”