Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“Comrade!” a mocking voice shouted behind him.

Komarov whirled, and what felt like a sledgehammer hit him in the right shoulder. He tried to lift the arm, and realized the gun was gone from his hand. The soldier’s rifle clattered onto the deck.

Piatakov was standing some twenty feet away, holding his gun on both of them.

Hearing footsteps behind him, Komarov turned, hand on his shoulder. The American was walking toward him, a smile on his face.

“Deputy Chairman Komarov himself,” Brady said. “We are honored.”

Komarov stared stonily back at him. He could feel the blood coursing through his fingers.

“Start swimming,” Brady snapped at the soldier, who, with one guilty glance at Komarov, vaulted the rail and disappeared into the foaming water.

“He’ll make a useful hostage,” Piatakov was saying.

“I don’t think so,” Brady said.

Komarov examined his gore-soaked hand. Stretching away behind the American, the red-brown Oxus looked for all the world like a river of blood. As the other man pulled the trigger, his late wife’s face appeared in front of his eyes.

Realizing that his guard hadvanished, McColl had walked down to the landing stage. “If I fail,” Komarov had told him, “then you will have your chance.”

Aboard the receding riverboat, Aidan Brady and another man were standing over Komarov’s body, both looking back at the town. Then Brady reached down and dragged the corpse to the edge of the craft, before tipping it into the river with a thrust of his boot.

Caitlin lowered the binoculars, loweredher head. Her fingernails bit into her palms.

“They are escaping,” Kuliyeva said disappointedly, as if they were watching a film and the ending had proved unexpectedly sad.

“I’m going down,” Caitlin told her.

“But—”

“I’m going down.”

Kuliyeva stepped aside, then followed her down the stone steps and out through the crumbling gateway. In the middle of the river, a man or corpse was being dragged aboard the surviving skiff. The paddle steamer had passed from view around the next bend in the river, a hanging line of smoke offering proof of its passage.

Less than an hour had passed since Komarov had ushered her into Kuliyeva’s empty office, shut the door behind them, and told her he had no doubt of her loyalty to the revolution. He had, he said, already informed Ghafurov and Kuliyeva that they should, in the event of his and Maslov’s deaths, take their orders from her.

Satisfied that her English lover was interested only in thwarting his own people’s plot, Komarov had further arranged that McColl would be freed to continue the pursuit, should failure on his own part make that necessary. He hoped Caitlin would offer the Englishman any assistance he needed to reach the border. Whether or not she went with him was of course up to her.

As Caitlin started down the narrow road, she caught sight of Jack on the distant jetty, staring up the river, like someone who’d just missed a boat.

The tonga deposited Alex Cunningham at the end of the Kudsia Road. He lifted out his suitcase, paid the preagreed amount, and assured his young driver that there was no point in waiting. The boy turned the horse in a tight half circle, and offered up the usual reproachful look before gently twitching the reins and rattling off down the road.

Cunningham took a deep breath and started walking, mindful of the hot tropical sun and the strange, sweet scents of the flourishing gardens. Hundreds of invisible birds seemed to be singing their hearts out, and the distant sound of racket on ball, interrupted by bursts of excited laughter, offered evidence of human life behind the curtains of bougainvillea.

At a cursory glance, the Indian Political Intelligence building was just another European bungalow in the Delhi cantonment, but the soldiers lurking in the trees and the wireless mast reaching up to the heavens rather gave it away. A replacement had presumably been included in the plans for the new city five miles to the south, but Cunningham doubted the setting would have the same charm.

He had no sooner shown the soldiers his papers than a tall, fair-haired young man in a shirt and slacks appeared in the doorway. “Cunningham?” the man asked with a faint Yorkshire accent. “Morley, Nigel,” he said, offering his hand. “We’ve been expecting you.” He looked around. “You might as well leave your luggage here for the minute. We’ve got you a bungalow near the Ridge. Come this way.”

Cunningham followed him across the marble-floored hall and into a large reception room. “Help yourself to a drink,” Morley said, pointing out the decanters on the side table. “I’ll see what the colonel’s up to.”

Cunningham poured himself a generous whiskey and looked around the room. The creamy white walls were patterned by sun and shadow, the furniture a mixture of raffia and mahogany. Not a lot had changed since his last visit in 1918.

“The colonel will see you now,” Morley said from the door.

Another corridor took them through the bungalow and out onto a bougainvillea-draped veranda. Colonel Mortimer Fitzwilliam was sitting in an incongruously European chair with a polished walnut frame and burgundy velvet upholstery. His suit—the sort of limp white affair favored by tropical traveling salesmen—had rather less class.

Cunningham shook the outstretched hand and accepted the offer of a simple wooden chair. Morley remained standing.

“Glad you made it,” the colonel was saying. “How was the trip up from Bombay?” he asked, with the tonelessness of one repeating an oft-used phrase.

“No worse than usual,” Cunningham replied noncommittally.

The colonel smiled. “Ah, well, I expect we’ll be using airplanes soon.” He looked up at the sky, as if expecting one to appear at that very moment. “Ah, well,” he repeated, turning back to Cunningham, “I just wanted to welcome you in person. As to your business here”—the tone implied distaste, but whether that came from patrician breeding or a lack of sympathy with this particular endeavor wasn’t clear—“Morley here will fill you in on the current state of play.”

It sounded like a dismissal, and Cunningham got to his feet.

“At any rate,” the colonel said, staring at his garden, “it must be for the best that we’re all working together on this one.”

Cunningham presumed he meant Five, the IPI, and British India’s Department of Criminal Intelligence. “Indeed,” he agreed.

“You spent several years here, didn’t you?” the colonel asked.

“Three in Calcutta, two here in Delhi.”

“Then you know what we’re up against.”

“I hope so, sir.”

“Good, good,” the colonel said, finally signaling the end of the interview with a limpid wave of the wrist. A muttered “desperate remedies” floated after Cunningham and Morley as they reentered the bungalow.

Two short passages brought them to a small and untidy office. The walls were covered with maps, the desk with papers; a line of papier-mâché elephants sat atop a display cabinet packed with handguns that went back a century or more. Morley moved a pile of files onto the floor and offered Cunningham the newly empty chair.

It seemed hotter than it had outside, despite the fan whirring erratically overhead.

One of the maps was peppered with colored flags representing various expressions of political dissent. There seemed to be a lot of them, and more than half were red, depicting the highly serious kind. “How bad are things?” Cunningham asked.

Morley followed his gaze and shrugged. “Who knows? I think London’s been getting a trifle complacent lately. No offence, old boy,” he added with a crooked smile.