Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

The man in the leather coat was the chairman of the Kerki Soviet. “How many men have you got?” Komarov asked while they were still shaking hands.

“These,” the chairman said, airily indicating the now-at-ease guard of honor. He was a Pathan, McColl thought, or maybe a Tajik. “You’ll take tea?” the man was asking Komarov.

“Tea? Oh, yes, I suppose so.”

“This way, comrade.”

They were led into the chaikhana garden, where a line of iron bedsteads topped with mattresses gave the usual impression of an open-air hospital. The woman disappeared into the building and shouted at someone.

“We have news,” the chairman announced importantly, once they had all sat down. “The Red Turkestan should be here sometime this afternoon.”

“How do you know this?” Komarov asked, obviously surprised.

“We have an airplane. Since the message arrived from Samarkand, our pilot has flown down the river each day and kept track of their progress.”

“Is the airplane armed?” Komarov asked.

“No.”

“A pity. But perhaps we could use it to drop explosives.”

The chairman looked uncomfortable. “I regret to say that we have run out of fuel. The pilot barely had enough for his last return flight.”

Komarov buried his nose in his hands. “When are the troops due back?”

A shrug. “Who knows? The garrison commander is a fool.”

“Probably not for several days,” the woman said, rejoining them.

“Twelve men,” Komarov muttered.

It was enough for Jesus, McColl thought flippantly. He sipped at the hot, sweet tea, staring up at the serried ranks of mud houses climbing the hill. He had the strange feeling that he was seeing Asia for the first time.

Maslov proved more oblivious to their surroundings. “What shall I do with the Englishman?” he asked Komarov, as if McColl were a piece of shopping they’d just brought home.

“There’s a lockable room in the barracks,” the woman said, eyeing McColl for the first time.

“That’ll do,” Komarov told Maslov.

As he was led away, McColl took a look downriver. There was no sign of the expected riverboat, but his ears picked up the faintest echoes of distant gunfire. It might have been hunters or the town’s absent troops trading fire with a band of Basmachi. Or maybe his one indisputable enemy, only a few hours away.

Piatakov watched the passengers wadeashore, still grumbling loudly. They didn’t know how lucky they were. Farther upstream a battle was waiting for the Red Turkestan , and thanks to him they were going to miss it. Brady had considered keeping them aboard as a disincentive to artillery, but had been won over by Piatakov’s counterargument that too many strangers would get in their way.

He went back to constructing a makeshift breastplate for the machine gun. Having already taken the cargo-space doors off their hinges, he lashed them to either side of the mounting to give himself some extra protection. It had already been decided that he would man the gun and that Chatterji’s first responsibility was looking after captain and bridge. Brady would go wherever he was needed.

The American was full of confidence, and Piatakov was inclined to feel the same. The captain had cheerfully warned them that Kerki had a sizeable garrison and that the river there was appreciably narrower, but as long as the ship didn’t run aground, it would certainly take some stopping. As Piatakov had discovered on the Volga, boarding a moving ship in the face of hostile fire was a daunting prospect for even the best-trained troops, and there wouldn’t be many of those out here in the middle of nowhere.

In Kerki the morning passedslowly. McColl had been shut in an officer’s room; it contained a bed, a cupboard, one pitted enamel bowl, and two books: The ABC of Communism and a volume of Pushkin’s verse. The door was not locked—to Maslov’s chagrin the key could not be found—and only a single soldier was presently standing guard outside, making escape to the nearby border a highly feasible proposition.

Yet here he still was. It might have been foolish—it almost certainly was—but he couldn’t bring himself to hightail it over the hill at this stage of the proceedings. It would be like leaving a nickelodeon with the heroine still in the villain’s grasp or walking out of Ibrox with Rangers and Celtics tied in the final minutes and a penalty kick about to be taken. He would slip away only when he knew that she was safe and that the final result was no longer in doubt.

The open window looked out across the river, and as the room grew hotter, McColl took up station beside it, enjoying the breeze that blew down from the mountains. He watched with interest as two antique muzzle-loading cannons were trundled past him and out of sight to the left. Around noon six soldiers assembled on the wooden landing stage and sat down on its edge, their feet dangling over the water.

Not long after that, his door swung open, and Komarov walked in. The Russian looked, if possible, even more exhausted than he had in the hour before they’d reached Kerki. He sat down on the bed and stifled a yawn.

“Will those guns actually fire?” McColl asked.

“I hope so.” The Russian massaged his chin with his left hand. “I have another question for you. Nothing important, just to satisfy my own curiosity.” He looked McColl straight in the eye. “After you lost your tail in Samarkand, why didn’t you make a run for it then? It wouldn’t have been difficult.”

“I’m sure you know the answer to that, Yuri Vladimirovich.”

“She means that much to you? You could not have stayed here, my friend, and she would not have left. Her work is here.”

“Women are no better treated anywhere else,” McColl said.

“Perhaps not, but she is part of this.”

McColl sighed. “She was. She may be still—I don’t know. I haven’t asked her.”

Komarov gave him a searching look and seemed satisfied with what he found. “I have a proposition for you. I have only twelve men out there, and most of them are boys.”

“I will gladly join you,” McColl said simply.

Komarov shook his head. “No, that would be misunderstood. I have something else in mind.”

After a short but surprisingtalk with Komarov, Caitlin spent the rest of the morning at the Soviet offices up in the fortress, talking, or rather listening, to the woman who had greeted their party at the landing stage. Her name was Shadiva Kuliyeva, and at any other time, Caitlin would have found the woman’s story as fascinating as it was inspiring. Only a year earlier Kuliyeva had been the veiled slave-wife of a local rice merchant, and now she seemed to be running the local Soviet—and the town of Kerki—in all but title.

She could certainly talk the average Russian under the table. Or perhaps it was simply the excitement of having a “comrade woman” to talk to. The flow of anecdotes and stories dried up only when Caitlin’s yawns became too frequent to ignore. “You must get some sleep,” Kuliyeva said, not at all offended.

“No.” Caitlin slowly got to her feet, still stiff from the two nights on horseback, and took a look out of the window. The river below was empty, but the view downstream was cut off by a protruding tower, so for all she knew the riverboat might be approaching. A swift descent to the quay was tempting, but Komarov had made her promise to stay out of harm’s way, for all of their sakes. “What time is it?” she asked Kuliyeva.

“Half-past twelve.”

“Then they should be here soon,” Caitlin said, mostly to herself.

“Is it true that your husband is one of the…?” the Uzbek woman asked.