Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

McColl helped her into the tonga and, after climbing aboard himself, gave the boy driver their destination. As they rattled down the street toward the station, the boy let loose a string of shrill exhortations to clear their passage through the knots of evening strollers.

A glance at her companion confirmed Caitlin’s feeling that he was—if not quite in his element—much more at home in such situations than she was. She could see why he’d kept that job for all those years, despite a growing disenchantment with the cause it served. He loved thinking on his feet; as she’d now seen on more than one occasion, he functioned well in a crisis.

Well, he had one here.

The boy swung them around a corner and into an even busier street. Even in summer Moscow’s streets would have been practically deserted at this time of night—just a handful of drunks and Cheka patrols. As they rode between lines of still-open stalls, she remembered the last time she’d gone looking for Sergei, driving past the futurist flower stalls on Bolshaya Dmitrovka.

Moscow—Russia—seemed a long way away. Fall would be almost half-done, winter already looming. So much energy spent in simply keeping warm, so little light to live by. Yet so much warmth in people’s hearts, so much brightness in their eyes. A whole other world.

She found herself thinking how utterly Russian the revolution had been, how thin its subsequent claims to internationalism, no matter how sincerely meant. People like her and Brady, who came from a similar political tradition, could lend the Russians a helping hand, but what were he and she and Sergei doing here, far from any way of life they really understood? Scratching an itch until it bled?

Their tonga should have been a troika, she thought. Plowing through snow rather than dust.

She hugged herself against the sudden chill.

Her silence was slightly unnerving,but also hardly surprising. McColl hoped she was gathering focus and strength, like a last man waiting to bat, and not already saying good-bye.

The world had always divided them, he thought, as their tonga skirted the chaos of the station forecourt. In a room, a bed, there were no borders. Traveling across the Pacific, America, and Afghanistan, they had been like Lenin in his famous sealed train. But now that their lives were bound up with those all around them, the boundaries were slowly materializing, like invisible writing exposed to the sun.

In his more optimistic moments, McColl believed that things had improved, that during the years apart, their approaches to life had actually grown more similar. Their politics were certainly less incompatible, mostly because of the distance he had traveled. Her opinions had hardly changed in seven years, but then, events hadn’t proved her wrong. The future he’d been hoping for had died in the Flanders mud.

She had changed, though. The questing intelligence and almost reckless determination that he’d first encountered in China were still there, but they’d been tempered by age, work, and unhappy knowledge. All the brittleness was gone, leaving her stronger and surer of herself. She had come into her own in Russia.

Was that reason enough for her to go back? Over the last few weeks, they’d discussed the situation in Russia almost daily, and sometimes she seemed to be saying it was. At others she didn’t seem half so sure. Lenin’s Russia was changing, she said, and people like her might soon find it hard to get anything useful done.

But she had never said that she wanted to leave that country behind. Not once. Not for political reasons and not for love of him.

As he turned to look at her, she wrapped herself up in her arms.

“Are you cold?” he asked, surprised.

“No. How much farther is it?”

“Not far.”

“I just want it over. I expect you do, too.”

Part of him did, though what came after might be worse.

Assuming they survived. Going up against three armed men—at least two of whom were seasoned fighters—felt like a real roll of the dice.

They were passing the Queen’s Gardens, heading up toward Chandni Chowk. The town hall clock struck eleven as they turned onto the wide thoroughfare, too British a sound for such a hot night. The number of people still in motion was rapidly diminishing, the pavements filling with would-be sleepers and more than a few crying babies.

A hundred yards short of their turnoff, McColl leaned forward and tapped their driver’s shoulder. “This will do.”

The boy hauled back on the reins and guided them into the curb. A man on the nearby pavement raised his head in surprise, then gently laid it back on his makeshift pillow.

McColl paid off the boy and pulled Caitlin into the shadows of a shop front. “See that side street?” he said, pointing it out. “Number four is about twenty yards in. You can just see the corner of its roof from here,” he added. “Take the staircase right to the top—”

“And it’s the door on the left. I haven’t forgotten.” Farther up Chandni Chowk, the dark outline of a huge fortress was visible. “Your prince will come this way?” she asked.

“Yes.” He tried to picture it. Soldiers and elephants, rajas and banners. Presumably the homeless would be moved out first.

The veil was now a neck scarf. “So this is where we part.”

“Yep. But I won’t be far away. You just keep them talking.”

“Oh, I don’t think the conversation will flag,” she said drily.

“You are sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be.” She gave him a farewell kiss and was halfway across the street by the time he realized she was gone.

McColl pulled his service revolver from his waistband and checked it. “Time to be myself again,” he murmured, unwinding the turban and hanging the doubled-up strip around his neck.

She found the house withoutdifficulty. Her knock on the door brought an Indian, so she pointed upward. The Indian smiled, said something incomprehensible, and gestured her toward the stairs. She climbed to the top and found a door with a strip of yellow light beneath it.

She rapped on it softly, and after a few seconds, the light all but disappeared.

“Sergei, it’s me,” she said loudly, the words sounding strangely inadequate.

The door edged opened, and the familiar features stared out of the gloom. His face was a picture.

“Caitlin! What—”

“Get inside,” Brady said, bustling past them onto the landing, clearly intent on making sure that she was alone.

She followed Sergei into the room and watched as he turned the lamp back up. Their Indian comrade was staring at her, a gun hanging loosely in his hand.

“What in God’s name are you doing here, Caitlin?” Sergei wanted to know.

He sounded so distressed, as if her appearance was the worst thing he could have imagined. Which might even have been a good sign. “I—”

“First things first,” Brady said, striding back in and leaving the door slightly ajar. “Durga, check the roof. And you,” he said, turning to Caitlin, “will explain how you found us.”

She and Jack had expected the question. “With Indian comrades’ help,” she said curtly. “We knew the British would want to keep you at a distance, and finding two white men in the Indian town isn’t so difficult.”

“What were you trying to achieve with that business at the station?” Brady asked.

“That was aimed at the British,” she patiently explained. “We thought you might be playing into their hands, so we had to make sure they didn’t come out on top.”

Sergei looked like he might explode. “But who is this we? And what does this have to do with you?”

“I am here on behalf of the Cheka,” she told him, noting in passing that this wasn’t a sentence she’d ever expected to hear herself say. “The Cheka that your friend here once served,” she added with a contemptuous glance at Brady. “But I know I won’t change his mind. It’s you I’ve come to plead with,” she told Sergei. “The party— your party—the one you made the revolution with, the one you served for all those years. It opposes this. It asks you to think again.”