Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

Brady was lying close by on the deck, covered with a greatcoat he had found in one of the cabins. Piatakov had watched the American’s face age as he drifted into sleep and had thought that with most people it was the other way around: he remembered Caitlin’s hair spread around her pale child’s face. Most people, he guessed, reverted to childhood in sleep, dragged back by dreams to a simpler world.

Did Brady revert to childhood when he was awake? Now, that was a disturbing thought—people who found life simple were always dangerous.

The American seemed to be growing more savage with each passing day. Had the civil war made him that way or merely set free what had been in there already?

Several years earlier, as they’d waited to set out on a night infiltration, Brady had told Piatakov that he’d been born in the year Krakatoa exploded and that, according to his mother, he’d rarely seen sunlight in the first three years of his life. This, he had said, at least half seriously, was probably why he loved darkness so much.

Piatakov thought about his own mother, and the picture that came to mind was her sitting in the overgrown arbor at the bottom of their jungle-like garden. She had loved its wildness, hated formal gardens—the newly fashionable topiary had been one of her few pet aversions. Nature was everything.

What would she think of what he was doing? She’d never condemned, always encouraged. “You’re such a good boy.”

What was good? Fighting for what you believed in? Well, people got hurt when you did that, and could hurting people be good?

He let out a sigh. Lately so many memories seemed to be claiming his attention. Why was that?

It didn’t matter. There was nothing threatening about them. On the contrary, the way they tied his life together was strangely comforting.

They left soon after dawn,jolting their way through sparsely inhabited hills, skirting the occasional village that clung to their slopes. As the bright white sky slowly turned to blue, the land began to flatten out, and the cars could sometimes run side by side, sparing each the other’s dust.

The forty-five miles to Guzar took most of the morning. It proved a very small town, perched on the rim of the desert where dried-up rivers converged in a cluster of black elms and mulberry trees. Their arrival was unheralded and provoked a range of astonished glances and gaping stares from the watching inhabitants, few if any of whom could ever have seen an automobile. The local party official was eventually hunted down in the town mosque, where he claimed he’d been doing educational work.

He arranged refreshments with alacrity and eagerly asked for news of the wider world from each man in turn. He didn’t speak to Caitlin, but couldn’t stop staring at this strangest of creatures, the so-called “comrade woman.” Every other woman in town was draped head to toe in the usual shroud.

The road onward to Karshi followed the rapidly evaporating river out across the desert, passing through a few small villages, all with fortified towers in various stages of decay. The track had been worn smooth by several thousand years of caravan traffic, and they covered this thirty-mile stretch without mishap in a little under three hours, entering what looked like a war-damaged town late that afternoon.

The local Soviet boss was waiting outside his red-flagged residence, ready to explain. The Basmachi had attacked the town twice before the recent deployment of a garrison, blowing up several buildings and riding off with all the food and drink they could carry. As a consequence, the hospitality he could offer his eminent guests from Moscow was somewhat limited.

Komarov waved all this away impatiently and asked if everything had been arranged for their desert crossing. It had. The garrison commander would supply the details, but of course they would travel by night. Komarov asked to see the man in question immediately and advised the others to get some rest while they could.

Piatakov mopped his brow withthe front of his blouse for about the hundredth time that day. The sun seemed hotter than ever, beating down out of an ivory-colored sky, drawing agonized flashes of light from the rippling water.

They were approaching Burdalik, according to the captain, and the passengers had all been locked in their cabins. The desert had drawn back from the river over the last few miles, giving ground to reedy flats alive with wild birds and increasing stretches of cultivated land dotted with grey-brown houses and copses of mulberry trees. Every so often a small group of women appeared in the riverside fields, and when one spied the boat, they would all look up, then stretch their backs in unison, as if doing physical drills.

The Red Turkestan was inching around a shallow bend in the river when a posse of children appeared on the nearer bank, waving and shouting and running to keep pace with the boat. Two houses came into view, larger and closer to the river than others, and between them a road sloped down to a landing stage that extended some fifty feet out into the rust-colored water. Several small boats were tethered to one side, a large, flat ferry-raft to the other. A score and more people were gathered at its end. Some seemed to be arguing with a group of soldiers.

Three of the latter clambered into one of the small boats and pushed off into the current.

Brady appeared with the firing mechanism for the machine gun, and slotted it into place with a metallic clang. Piatakov watched the soldiers rowing out toward the center of the river. The gap between the two craft steadily shrank.

They must be mad, Piatakov thought.

Brady fired a burst, shattering the still air. The soldiers stopped rowing; the crowd on the landing stage rushed pell-mell for the safety of the bank. The children stood watching, every one on tiptoe; Piatakov could physically sense their excitement.

One of the soldiers raised a rifle, and Brady fired another burst, this time much closer. An argument broke out in the small boat, and the rifle was knocked aside. At that moment a bullet whined off the metal rail only inches from Piatakov’s hand.

He spun around. The young officer was taking aim with both hands, his eyes squinting against the sun, sweat pouring down his face. Piatakov dived to one side and was still reaching for his own gun when another two shots rang out in quick succession. Neither came anywhere near him.

He looked up to see the officer slide down the upper deck rail, his gun dropping onto the planking below and bouncing over the side. Chatterji walked off the bridge to examine the body and signaled that the man was dead by drawing a hand across his own throat.

The small boat was retreating toward the landing stage. Piatakov glanced across at Brady and found him staring straight ahead.

“Mountains!” the American called out, and sure enough, looming through the heat haze, a faint but enormous wall rose up to meet the southern sky.

The party left Karshi soonafter dusk. The garrison commander, with only ten fit men at his disposal, had refused to spare more than four without explicit orders from his military superiors in Tashkent. There had been no volunteers, and the chosen quartet, all local men, didn’t bother to hide their lack of enthusiasm. The guide, a local Turcoman of unfathomable age, was of a more sanguine temperament. He listened to Komarov’s instructions, translated in halting Turkmen by McColl, and nodded. “Two nights,” he said in Russian, holding up the appropriate number of fingers for emphasis.

They left town with the disused railway, but the tracks soon diverged and were lost in the rapidly darkening night. Their ponies were all stallions, and none, McColl noticed with interest, had been castrated. They were suitably frisky.