Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“And at least we know the bastard’s still in Delhi,” Morley said hopefully.

“Which makes it all the more disgraceful that he hasn’t been found yet,” the colonel retorted.

“We’re sure he’s not staying in any half-decent hotel,” Cunningham said unapologetically. “We’ve checked out the people we know he had contact with during the war. And we’re still waiting for London to check through any Indians he might have known at Oxford or met in his time selling luxury cars. There’s nothing else we can do, other than the obvious.”

“Which is?” Morley asked.

“Well, we do know where he’ll be”—Cunningham looked at his watch—“in two hours and forty minutes’ time.”

“We know where he says he’s going to be,” the colonel corrected him.

“What have we got to lose?” Cunningham asked.

McColl was picked up oppositethe Fatehpuri Mosque at a quarter past eleven.

“It is all arranged,” Mirza announced as the boy driver set the tonga in motion. The detective was wearing the usual white shirt and dhoti, this time topped off with a fez-shaped red cap. “Here is the camera,” he said, taking a worn leather case from the seat beside him. McColl undid the strap and took out the Leica that Mirza had offered to loan him. An Arab had stolen it from one of the Turkish army’s German advisers during the war, and Mirza had bought the camera a year or so later for a fraction of its real worth. He claimed—and McColl had no reason to doubt him—that it would take the picture required.

“And the place?” McColl asked.

“All fixed,” Mirza said with a smile. “You asked for”—he began ticking off fingers—“one, somewhere out in the open, which is, two, close enough for a clear shot of the faces and, three, not so close that we risk apprehension by the men concerned. And we have such a place—it is all as you wished.”

“Wonderful,” McColl said.

“I have been thinking about this business,” Mirza went on. “These people. One from your political police and the other a Russian revolutionary—there must be a simple reason why you want them to share a photograph, but I cannot deduce what it is.” He shook his head. “But I shall,” he added. “I shall.”

“Mr. Mirza,” McColl said, “you do understand that helping in this matter could get you into trouble with the authorities. I don’t—”

“Yes, yes, I understand. You told me this yesterday. Do not concern yourself. Holmes once said that it is worth committing a felony to save a soul, and I am satisfied that we are on the side of justice in this matter. The opinion of the authorities is of no interest.”

McColl couldn’t help smiling. “Okay,” he said.

They were approaching the Queen’s Road entrance to the station. Mirza tapped the boy driver on the shoulder, and the tonga was brought to a halt. The two men alighted, and Mirza led McColl through an unmarked gate and down a passage between temporary huts. A narrow alley in a row of offices brought them out into an open-air canteen, where Mirza was greeted by several of the patrons. “Many men from my regiment got work on the railways,” he told McColl in explanation.

They walked along two sides of a large shed and onto a loading platform packed with wooden crates. A line of empty freight cars, their doors flung open in expectation, blocked their view of the station.

They reached the end of the train as a locomotive approached from the east, belching grey smoke into the sky above the distant Red Fort. A minute or so later the line of packed carriages pulled into a platform three or four tracks away, wheels bouncing on the uneven rails. “Over there,” Mirza shouted in McColl’s ear, pointing out the signal cabin that straddled the tracks some fifty yards ahead and setting off across the shining rails like a man advancing on Turkish guns.

McColl hurried after him, remembering days as a boy risking the wrath of railway officials. This time there were no angry shouts, and soon they were climbing the stairway up to the box. The two men working among the gleaming levers greeted the detective like a long-lost uncle; their boss was in a small office at the other end. “My friend, Shah Ali Khan,” Mirza said, introducing the uniformed official. “And this is our hide, as you call it,” he added, swinging open a shuttered window. “There,” he said, gesturing outward.

The roof of the office on the northernmost platform was mostly flat, but the small raised section containing a door promised access from below. A man on the roof would be only ten yards away, and at roughly the same level. A train passing between them would be beneath the line of sight. Only smoke could spoil the picture, and for that their luck would need to be truly out.

“Yes?” Mirza asked.

“It’s perfect,” McColl said.

Piatakov arrived at the stationalmost half an hour early and sat for several minutes in the back of Sayid Hassan’s tonga, trying to let the whirl of emotions settle. It wasn’t easy. Assuming she knew what they intended to do—and her presence here surely meant that she did—he knew only too well what her objections would be. They’d had variations of the same argument over and over again during the winter and spring, and they all came down to a single judgment—whether or not their party was beyond redemption. She said it wasn’t, and he said it was, and that was all there was to it. So why would she travel thousands of miles to tell him something he’d already heard a dozen times?

If she’d come out of love… well, that would warm his heart, but it wouldn’t change his mind, and she had to know that. She who’d been fond of quoting Kollontai’s dictum that passion was transient, the political struggle unending.

It was a quarter to one by the huge station clock. He climbed down, told the servant-driver to wait, and walked in through the entrance arch. The booking hall was a seething mass, the adjoining platform just as crowded and noisy. After the garden’s serenity, the cacophonous racket felt like a physical battering.

At least the platforms were prominently numbered—a request for directions in Russian or schoolboy French would probably have gone unanswered. The restaurant room for Europeans was also easy to find and empty save for one middle-aged pair, presumably English, who gave him synchronous nods, as if they shared a puppeteer. He returned the gesture and chose a table as far from them as possible.

The room was surprisingly cool and quiet considering how few feet separated it from the heat and bedlam outside. He asked the hovering waiter for chai, knowing the word meant the same in Delhi as it did in Moscow.

The steaming cup arrived as the clock on the wall reached the hour. He handed the waiter the five-rupee note that Brady had provided with the air of a parent handing out pocket money, accepted the frown and small mountain of coins in exchange, and stirred in some sugar from the small brass bowl. The minute hand clicked again.

An Indian boy darted in through the doorway and handed him a note. The waiter moved to shoo the youth out again, but Piatakov held up an arm to stop him while he took in the message. “Come with this boy and wait for me,” it read. The writing was hers.

He followed the boy out onto the platform and up across a footbridge that straddled several tracks. After taking the last steps down and walking the length of the station, they finally arrived at what looked like a storehouse. The room within boasted a stack of red flags, shelves of paraffin lamps, doors to apparently empty offices, and a stairway to the second floor. Piatakov followed the boy up two flights of stairs, emerging onto a roof just as a freight train steamed majestically past. There was no one else there. The boy said something incomprehensible and promptly disappeared.