Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

Their road, increasingly ill defined, wound its way through the rolling terrain. Seeing them by day, McColl had taken the humpbacked shapes for dunes, but there was nothing temporary about them. It looked like some passing Medusa had turned this sandy desert to stone, leaving the impression of an ocean petrified in midstorm.

There was life, though, and in abundance. Large, ratlike creatures with long hind legs and tails darted across the moonlit slopes; tortoises in astonishing profusion crawled out of the party’s path as rapidly as nature allowed. More worryingly, an immense number of fearsome-looking scorpions seemed to be lining their route like a gruesome guard of honor. McColl imagined them falling in line behind the procession, a swelling army of trembling pincers waiting to devour their prey at a site of their own choosing.

Every couple of hours a well tower would loom up against the night sky, and there, for reasons that seemed both clear and truly bizarre, they would pause to quench their thirst with water they’d carried from Karshi. The Turcoman told McColl that one well was 750 feet deep; two camels were needed to raise the bucket over the wooden pulley. McColl imagined the women weaving the seemingly endless rope, as the men delved deeper and deeper.

The tower that greeted them as the sky began to lighten was ringed by long-abandoned huts, and the guide announced that they would spend the day in the latter’s shady interiors. But only, he added, once the scorpions had all been flushed out. After the soldiers had been to work and pronounced the chosen huts clear, the Turcoman still insisted on a daylong patrol of the perimeter. Otherwise, he said with a knowing grin, someone was sure to be stung in his sleep.

Komarov claimed the first watch, and the others laid themselves out on the rock-hard ground. McColl was the first relief and, after sweating his way through an hour of invigilation and beating the odd transgressor to pulp with the butt of his borrowed rifle, passed on the weapon to Maslov and went back to sleep.

Piatakov heard it before hesaw it. He was sitting aft, half-hypnotized by the undulating reeds, when the airplane’s drone seeped out of the noise of the riverboat’s progress. Jerking his head around, he saw it, a biplane flying low over the water, coming downstream toward them, out of the yellow sky. He had no sooner identified it than the plane was above and past him, the clatter of its engine drowning the splash of the paddle, its shadow flashing across foredeck and bridge. Leaping to his feet, Piatakov saw it reappear, a flash of red above the ship’s superstructure, gaining height as it turned a wide half circle above the desert.

Brady was hustling down the steps. “Which way did it go?”

Piatakov pointed out the dark spot, fading southward.

“Looking for us, then.”

“Probably.”

The American wrung his hands with what looked suspiciously like glee. “Kerki,” he said. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

It was still light when McColl felt a rough hand on the shoulder and opened his eyes to see Maslov pointing a Webley straight at his head. “Come outside,” the young Ukrainian ordered.

McColl rose to his feet and made his way out into the early evening sunlight, where Komarov and Caitlin were waiting, the former’s face expressionless, the latter’s a study in torment.

“Would I be right in thinking your real name is Jack McColl?” Komarov asked.

There seemed no point in denying it. “You would.”

“And do you admit to being an English agent?”

Scottish, McColl thought perversely. And serving a man rather than a country. But why waste his breath quibbling? “I do,” he said.

“An imperialist spy,” Maslov said smugly, as if delighted that life had so generously lived up to his expectations.

“I have some questions,” Komarov said, squatting down on his haunches and idly picking up a saxaul twig.

McColl leaned back against the wall of the hut, wondering if anyone was still on scorpion watch.

“Are you willing to answer them?” Komarov asked.

“That depends on what they are.” He couldn’t tell from Caitlin’s face whether or not Komarov had already accused her of knowing who he was.

“Of course.” Komarov drew a circle in the sand with the twig. “What is your part in this business?”

“I don’t have one. Not directly. My old boss in London sent me here to find out what ‘this business’ is.”

Komarov drew another circle inside the first. “What is this man the boss of?”

McColl looked up at the rapidly darkening sky. He was more than ready to betray his King and Country, the one a pampered figurehead, the other a convenient fiction that had recently all but murdered a million of its citizens. “He’s the head of the British Secret Service. Which I used to work for.”

“I know of it. So why did this man send you into Russia? Why not one of his current agents?”

“Because he knew he could trust me. There is a second British intelligence agency, which is known as MI5—Five for short. Five deals with Britain and the British Empire, the Service with the rest of the world, which of course includes Russia. My boss discovered that some people in Five were mounting an operation that involved both Russia and India. He had no idea what the operation was; he didn’t know whether these people had the support of their own bosses or whether they were receiving help from Service people here in Russia. He sent me to find out.”

“Ah,” Komarov said. “And what is your boss’s name?”

“I won’t tell you that.”

“Who helped you get into Russia?”

“I won’t tell you that either.”

The Russian smiled. “Good. I was beginning to think you were too obliging to be true.”

McColl stole a glance at Caitlin, but the sun was sinking behind her, and he could hardly see her face. “Yuri Vladimirovich, I will not endanger those who helped me, but I’ll tell you anything else you want to know.”

“Miliutin was shot,” Komarov informed him.

McColl sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that. He was planning to retire,” he added inconsequentially.

“Someone telephoned his whereabouts to the Petrograd Cheka. One of your people, I think. Your Five, if what you say is true. And one thing you don’t know: a man with a knife broke into your room in Tashkent. A Russian named Polyansky who’d been hired by an Indian in Samarkand. Luckily for you, you weren’t in your room at the time.”

“I see,” McColl said, noting Maslov’s accusatory look at Caitlin and the stony stare she offered in return. It looked like he might have brought her down, too—if so, he doubted she’d ever forgive him, not that he’d live long enough to find out.

Komarov had other questions. “Who killed Muhammad Rafiq in Moscow?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Brady, probably.” He would talk to Komarov in private, McColl thought. Try to convince the Cheka boss that Caitlin’s only crime had been her failure to give him away. And that she’d only agreed to keep quiet once he’d convinced her that he meant no harm to their revolution.

“And the Russian at the hotel? Was it you who killed him and stuffed him under the bed?”

“Yes, it was. His name was Suvorov, and he did his best to kill me. I thought at the time I’d surprised him in Rafiq’s room, but he might have been waiting for me.”

“Because you threatened the operation?”

“I can’t think of any other reason. Suvorov certainly worked for Five, and it seems to be their operation.”

“I understand the Indian involvement, but why Brady and the other Russians? How did they get involved?”

“Five caught Brady in Ireland and gave him a choice between hanging and working for them. I can see why he chose not to hang, but I don’t understand his reasons for doing their bidding now that he’s beyond their reach.”