Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“We send a copy to Cunningham and friends, I assume. It’s your plan, my love.”

She made a sweeping gesture with her hand, as if brushing aside the endearment. “And Sergei and Brady? What will your people do with them once they know the plan won’t work?”

“I don’t know. They might send them back to Russia…”

“Or kill them quietly here?”

McColl shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Either way it’s a death sentence. I have to give him a chance, Jack. You do understand that?”

“Yes, but how?”

“I don’t know.” Another thought occurred to her. “And what about you? What will your people do to you?”

“Nothing good. But they have to catch us first.”

She let the “us” go by. “We could say that a copy of the photograph has been sent to someone—your detective perhaps—with instructions to send it on to a newspaper if anything happens to you.”

“If they call it off, then the photograph won’t mean a thing,” he told her. “We need to work out what our options are.”

Which might have been right, but was easier said than done. “Once we’ve seen this through,” she promised. And then she could go home. Wherever that was.

Piatakov was woken, as usual,by the sound of sweeping; first the soft brush inside the house, then the more rasping tone of the twig broom being used on the paths outside. On the other side of the nearby wall, sounding like faraway raucous birds swapping opinions, muezzins were calling the Muslim districts to prayer.

He climbed off the hard bed and washed himself as thoroughly as he could with the water left in the earthenware pitcher. Throwing a kurta over his head, he walked through into the kitchen, where one of the servants was already making him a glass of chai. He stirred in two chunks of sugar and carried it out to his chair in the garden.

Thick morning mist shrouded the river away to his right; the sun glowing through it was a fuzzy orange ball. The crows had begun their incessant crowing; the parakeets, as ever, seemed unsure which tree best suited their mood. On the lawn in front of their absent host’s house, another servant was flailing the grass with a bamboo switch to take away the dew. According to Brady, if this wasn’t done, the grass would scorch in the noonday sun.

Piatakov sipped at the tea and let his mind wander. Since their arrival in Delhi, he had spent the early morning hours like this, sitting and watching the sunrise, letting the mesh of light, sounds, and smells wash over him. It did him good, made him feel that somehow he was back in touch with something real. It might be—probably was—the equivalent of the condemned man’s last meal, but that didn’t seem to matter: it was enough to know he was still connected, however tenuously, to that sense of life’s possibilities that had made him a revolutionary.

He had sadnesses but, in the end, no regrets.

The mist was clearing, sharpening the sun. He heard light footsteps behind him and looked around expecting to see one of the servants.

It was a youth he’d never seen before, holding what looked like a letter. Piatakov reached out to take it, expecting the usual two-way mime, but the boy was instantly on his way, breaking into a run as he disappeared behind the house.

Turning to the letter, Piatakov saw his name in Cyrillic script in her unmistakable hand. For a moment he thought he was dreaming and just sat there staring at the envelope, his mouth hanging foolishly open.

He tore it open and pulled out the folded sheet.

“Sergei,” she began. No “dearest,” he thought in passing, just “Sergei, I must talk to you. Meet me in the European restaurant room on Platform 1 of the central railway station at one o’clock today. Come alone. For both our sakes. Caitlin.”

No kisses either.

He read the note again, still struggling to take it in. She was here, in India, in Delhi. Why? How? As the different emotions and thoughts jostled for precedence, he felt a sudden constriction in his chest from holding his breath for too long. He heard his own laughter and the hint of hysteria that bubbled within it.

“What’s going on?” Brady asked from behind him. “I heard someone running.”

Piatakov passed him the letter but didn’t say anything. Brady looked through it, his expression moving swiftly through curiosity, amusement, concern, and anger. “Your wife?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes.”

“But how did—”

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Piatakov said. Somehow Brady’s sense of shock was exorcising his own.

“It must be Komarov,” Brady decided.

“He’s dead,” Piatakov said flatly. “You shot him, remember?”

“I know. But he’s reaching out from the grave. Or it’s Peters. She must be here on your party’s behalf.”

“Maybe she’s here for herself,” Piatakov said quietly. Still trying to save him. The thought brought him joy and sadness in what seemed equal measure.

“Whatever. You can’t meet her.”

Piatakov looked up at the American, the shock of dark hair hanging over the angry eyes, a glimpse of the long-vanished child in the pouting mouth. “I have to,” he said. He hadn’t said good-bye to her in Moscow, and now he could.

“No,” Brady argued. “You could risk everything.” His hand reached almost absent-mindedly toward the place where he normally carried his gun, but he was still wearing his nightshirt.

Piatakov noticed but didn’t care. “I won’t betray you or back out, if that’s what you’re thinking. And since it won’t affect our business here, it has nothing to do with you.”

“It must affect our business here. How has she found you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the local party helped her look.”

Brady shook his head.

“Who else?” Piatakov asked. “The British won’t have told her.”

“It stinks.” Brady looked at the letter again. “Are you sure it’s her handwriting?”

“Of course I am. Look, what can happen in a station restaurant room? My guess is—they think they know what we’re planning to do, and she’s been sent to try and change our minds. She won’t. Okay?”

Piatakov got up out of the chair and looked out across the flats toward the river. “But I want to see her. And I’m going to,” he insisted, before walking off toward the house, leaving Brady still staring at the letter.

Colonel Fitzwilliam refolded the letter,replaced it in the envelope, and handed it back to Cunningham. “What do you think he wants?”

“Probably money,” Cunningham guessed. “To travel with,” he added.

“And what will he do if he doesn’t get it?” the colonel asked, helping himself to a chocolate biscuit.

“He doesn’t say,” Cunningham said pointedly, wondering if he and Morley would be offered biscuits. Or cups of coffee, come to that.

“But what’s your best guess?” the colonel asked tetchily. “I suppose you two want coffee,” he added ungraciously.

“Yes, thank you,” Cunningham said. As the colonel signaled to his hovering servant, Cunningham reached for the biscuit tin, and offered it to a surprised Morley before helping himself. “It seems to me,” he went on, “that McColl has very few options. The one potentially damaging thing he could do is give the story to foreign newspapers. They’d certainly be interested after the event, but the deed would be done, and we’d just have to manage the aftermath. It won’t be hard to discredit McColl as a source. He was recently in prison; there’s his history with the American woman who now works for Lenin. Etcetera, etcetera. Some Indians will hear the story, and some will believe it, but they’ll be the ones who think the worst of us anyway.”