Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“So what exactly is this operation?” Komarov asked.

“They’re going to assassinate Mohandas Gandhi. The Indian nationalist leader,” McColl added, mostly for Maslov’s benefit. The sun was almost down, the desert a rapidly deepening shade of gold.

“Why?” Komarov wanted to know. “If the British want him dead, why not just arrest him and have him hanged for treason?”

McColl smiled. “That would turn him into a martyr. You don’t understand the beauty of this scheme. Brady’s team will be helped into India, given as many shots at Gandhi as they need, and then arrested. The hard-liners in London will have the proof they want that Russia has broken its promise to leave the empire alone. Those Indians who want to replicate your revolution will find themselves pariahs once Bolsheviks are accused of murdering the people’s hero. And Gandhi will be gone. Three birds with one stone.”

Komarov said nothing for several moments, and McColl could almost hear the Russian’s mind clicking its way through the facts. “I can see what the English in London and Delhi have to gain,” he said eventually, “and that Aidan Brady might hope to earn his freedom with such a deal, but why would men like Piatakov and Shahumian want any part of it? If Gandhi is truly a threat to your empire, why would they want to kill him?”

“That’s easy. None of the Indian comrades I met in Moscow had a good word to say about Gandhi. They called him a Menshevik, a false revolutionary, someone who’d put Indians in charge of the same rotten system, not change the system itself. And the Russians that Brady has recruited sound like men who think the same way, men who fought a revolution to change more than faces and who now believe that they’ve been betrayed by their leaders. They can’t do much about that, but they can stop it happening again in India.”

“So, a simple convergence of interests as far as Brady is concerned?” Komarov asked.

“I don’t believe he’s really working for Five.”

“Well, if they succeed in killing Gandhi, his true allegiance won’t stay hidden for long. Because that’s when the British will seize their scapegoats, and either he’ll be one of them, or he’ll mysteriously disappear.”

“True.”

“I don’t believe it,” Caitlin interjected. It was the first time she’d spoken since McColl’s arrest. “Aidan Brady may be a heartless bastard, but he would never willingly work for the British government—it would destroy his sense of who he is. And Sergei’s not stupid; neither was Aram for that matter. If we can guess what the British have in mind, so can they. And Brady won’t shirk from taking them on—he’s always had more confidence than any man’s entitled to. He’ll have something up his sleeve.”

“I agree,” McColl said. “But what?”

“Once we’ve caught them, we can ask,” Komarov said, rising. “It’s time to get moving.”

McColl liked the “we,” but doubted its use was deliberate. If he was going to be shot—an outcome that seemed inevitable in a strangely abstract sort of way—it would probably be in Kerki, though there also seemed a chance that he’d be taken back to Tashkent or Moscow for a suitably public trial.

As he looked to the west, the last slice of sun slipped below the horizon, pulling the night down across the desert. It wasn’t a place you escaped from.

The column of ponies movedacross the stony desert at walking pace, the starlight turning everything to silver grey. When they’d set off on their night trek, and no apparent restrictions had been placed on Jack, Caitlin had expected an early conversation, but as the miles went by, it became clear he had other ideas. He was, she realized, trying to protect her.

A nice thought, but a little late in the day. Komarov hadn’t said anything, but he knew. So why keep silent? She found it hard to believe he was playing with her, so perhaps he didn’t know himself. Or did he still think she might prove useful when they caught up with Sergei?

He had turned a blind eye three years earlier when she’d admitted not reporting Jack’s presence in Moscow—in those days comrades still forgave one another the occasional transgression. But he had also warned her that he wouldn’t do so again, and these were harsher times.

Should she talk to him, try to explain? She might end up admitting things he didn’t know and make it worse for herself. Or Jack.

If she was arrested, too, there wouldn’t be much she could do. Asking Kollontai for help might do more harm than good—there were plenty of men who’d jump at the chance of punishing her friend by proxy. She would just have to hope for the best—deportation rather than internal exile, internal exile rather than prison or worse.

She might have been kidding herself, but such prospects still seemed unreal. Komarov hadn’t said anything in front of Maslov, which might mean nothing, but certainly gave him the option of turning another blind eye and allowing her to resume her work.

And that, she supposed, was what she wanted. Or was it? When she’d been dragged away from Moscow, there’d been no doubt in her mind. Being press-ganged into a hunt for her renegade husband had been downright annoying, and she’d known the hunt itself would probably have a heartbreaking ending, but once it was over, she would soon be back at her desk on Vozdvizhenka Street.

The doubts had slowly crept in. Nemtseva’s fate had shaken her, and so had her comrades’ reports of cutbacks in Zhenotdel funding. The film show in Tashkent had restored some of the hopes dented by the delegate murders, but the riot and its aftermath had, for the moment at least, left those hopes hanging by a very thin thread. Were the Zhenotdel’s best years coming to an end? If so, if doors were now closing instead of opening, was Moscow where she wanted to be? As a sympathetic male comrade had once told her, pushing against a badly stuck door, you might force it open; banging your head against one that was locked would probably give you a concussion.

And then there was Jack. Would she be asking these questions if he hadn’t reappeared in her life? She had chosen the revolution over him, taken the once-in-a-lifetime chance it offered to do something utterly new, to make the most of herself and the world. But would she do so again, if the choice was now between him and years of frustration? If the postimperial Jack looked a better prospect than the man she’d abandoned in 1918, the revolution she’d abandoned him for seemed a poorer one in almost every respect.

She told herself that quitting Russia would not mean quitting politics, that over the next few years, the causes she wanted to fight for might do better elsewhere. That she would get to see her family, that she would finally get to live with Jack, after almost eight years of their on-off affair. That she wouldn’t be giving up, that throwing in a towel was okay as long as you picked up another.

And yet. She would be giving up; she would be conceding defeat. And conceding defeat wasn’t something she knew how to do.

She lifted her gaze to the star-filled heavens. As things stood, any choice she made was purely academic. Even if they allowed her to leave, why would they let Jack go? All governments believed in punishing spies they caught, and he had freely admitted he was one. Even if Komarov wanted to, he couldn’t just shove Jack across the border with a flea in his ear.

No, either Jack escaped or he was done for, and he must know it, too.

Was there anything she could do?

There was no one she could go to, no heads she could bang together. What mattered was what Komarov chose to do with Jack, and whether he caught up with Sergei, and what happened if he did. All she could do was wait, and as she knew very well, patience had never been one of her virtues.