Peter Higgins - Truth and Fear

The orchestra started up again with a crash of brass and drums. The Count snorted in disgust and switched the radio off.

‘Well!’ he said. ‘So there we have it! There we have nothing at all! Who is this General Rizhin. We have heard nothing of him till now. And what kind of a name is Rizhin? These idiots will do nothing. They will let the country burn and the raion with it. The time has come for action. Maroussia, we must talk. We look to you. You must step forward.’

‘Me? Why? What are you talking about?’

‘Because you’re a Shaumian . You’re the Shaumian, now. The Vlast is crumbling and the Council of Lezarye is nowhere. And if the Council fails, then what is left but Shaumian? The name alone will be enough.’

‘What does my name matter? I have no idea what you mean.’

‘But of course you do. You must. You are Shaumian of the House of Genissei. Protosebasta. Porphyrogenita. You have a claim, a reasonable claim, there is no doubt about it. It goes by the female descent.’

Maroussia stared at him, pale and silent. She opened her mouth to speak but found nothing to say.

‘Sandu? said Elena Cornelius. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘We must do something,’ said the Count. ‘And now–’ he looked at Maroussia ‘–now we have an opportunity. We must take it.’

‘Do what, Sandu?’ said Elena. ‘What, exactly? What are you thinking of?’

‘Resist! The raion must rise! There has never been a better time. The Novozhd is dead, and there is no obvious successor. The enemy is at the gates. Don’t you see? People of courage are ready to act, and now is the time. The aristocrats will come forward again, united under the ancient Shaumian name. We are not all dead. The people remember us. They haven’t forgotten. We can make peace with the Archipelago. The Vlast itself will melt away and dissolve like mist in the heat of the sun.’

‘No!’ said Maroussia. ‘I know nothing about my family, this name , and I want nothing to do with whatever you’re talking about. Nothing at all.’

Lom saw that her hands were trembling slightly. He went across and stood beside her.

‘Of course things must be handled carefully,’ the Count was saying. ‘There are men who will know what to do. Men of courage. I will call them together. You must meet them.’

‘This is madness,’ said Lom. ‘Worse, it’s lethal madness.’

The Count flushed.

‘Certainly it is not madness. She has a legitimate claim. I know of no other.’

‘Sandu,’ said Elena. ‘Please stop this. This is the kind of talk that gets young men ruining their lives. Making bombs. Killing innocent people.’

Maroussia stood up.

‘I have to go now,’ she said.

‘But you’ll come back?’ said the Count. ‘Come up this evening. Dine with us. You also, Vissarion Yppolitovich. I will invite some people. You will feel differently if you meet them. Hear what they have to say. When you know their quality—’

Lom gripped Palffy’s arm. Hard.

‘You can’t tell anyone she’s here,’ he said urgently. ‘You see that, don’t you?’

‘These are men I would trust with my life. Men of purpose and experience—’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Lom. ‘You can’t tell anyone she’s here. No one at all.’

Captain of Police Vorush Iliodor, assistant to Commander Chazia, was busy in his office. Outside his night-dark uncurtained window, snow was falling, and bombs. More bombs. From time to time a close impact shook his desk. He forced himself to ignore it. He had much work to complete and he was a man who stuck at his duty. He was preparing detailed orders to put into effect the evacuation from Mirgorod of the Government of the Vlast. He had almost finished.

Iliodor prided himself on unquestioning efficiency. His job was to take the broad instructions of his superiors and translate them into the detailed, precise and unambiguous practical orders that made for effective implementation. It required a certain kind of pragmatic imagination, at which he excelled. It required him to understand not just what was required, but why. He liked to call this, in his own mind, his strategic comprehension. But it emphatically did not require him to have personal opinions: these he rarely formulated, even in his own mind, and never expressed. It was precisely this quality of non-judgemental receptiveness which, as he well knew, had caused Chazia to appoint him to his post and made her comfortable in his presence, and even occasionally talkative.

The instruction to evacuate, which she had given even as the first bombs fell, came as no surprise. He knew, as Chazia had known, that in the last weeks of his life the Novozhd had accepted that if the tentative peace talks failed and the Archipelago pressed home their advance, Mirgorod was indefensible. He knew, as Chazia had known but Dukhonin, Khazar and Fohn did not, that the Novozhd had secretly approved the withdrawal of the Third, Seventh and Eighth armies from the provinces to the east and south of the city, leaving only a skeleton force to slow but not stop the enemy’s advance. He also knew that Chazia saw the loss of Mirgorod as an advantage not a disaster.

‘We will build a new Vlast, Iliodor!’ she had said more than once. ‘A renewed Vlast, young and strong and pure, safe in the east behind thousands of miles of empty steppe and plain. We will strip the factories and carry the plant eastward on trains. We will empty the Lodka and move the government out. Take what files we need and burn the rest. Mine and booby-trap the Lodka itself.

‘Let the Archipelago bring Mirgorod down around their ears. We will have new cities, with marvellous modern buildings, taller and finer and fitter for the modern world. New towns, new factories, connected by the best roads and railways. With airfields in the centre! Around the towns we will build handsome, spacious farms for citizen peasants to work on, and delightful, hygienic villages. We will clear out all the rubbish, and grow a new, pure, wholesome and modern Vlast. Let the Archipelago wear themselves out in the west and overstretch themselves, and when we’re ready we’ll roll them back into the Cetic Ocean and rebuild Mirgorod as a vacation resort.’

So Iliodor had anticipated that one day the evacuation orders would be required. He had made his preparations. Outline plans and diagrams, kept in a sealed folder in the safe. When the moment came, he simply had to fetch out his folder and begin the process of filling out the necessary memoranda of instruction and orders of movement. The work was already nearly done. Chazia had suggested he should co-opt some assistance, but he had not done so. There was no need. Quicker to do it himself than to explain, and more certain to be done accurately and correctly.

Nevertheless it was arduous, absorbing work. The air raid on the city was an annoying distraction and the effort of ignoring it was wearing. Still, he had done well. And he had not forgotten his other, smaller duties. The file on the woman Shaumian was waiting, out of the way on the corner of his desk, ready for the creature Bez Nichevoi to collect that night. Including the note on where to find her, based on information recently received. No loose ends there.

Iliodor did not at first look up when he heard someone quietly enter the room. A figure pausing before the desk, waiting for attention. Iliodor held up his hand for silence and continued to copy a list of departmental branches from his notes onto a printed Consolidate-and-Remove proforma in a neat, precise script. Only when he had finished did he glance up to see who had come, and found himself staring into his own face. His own face watching him from under an astrakhan hat.