Ричард Вудмен: Baltic Mission

The staff-officer finished the flask of vodka and tucked it into the breast of his coat. He nodded companionably to a subaltern who rode up from the Cossack flank.

'Well, young Repin, this is a bloody business, but a sweet revenge for Austerlitz, eh?'

'Indeed, sir, it is.'

'Count Kalitkin should rejoin us soon... ah, here he comes, if I'm not mistaken ...' Kalitkin rode up and reined in, his eyes gleaming with triumph, his horse steaming.

'Well, my friend, I have done it again! I have found your Ney for you. Voila!' Kalitkin pointed behind him where some of Lasalle's hussars were moving out to form a screen behind which the head of a marching column could just be made out through the snow. 'And also I have found our valiant ally, or, at least, what remains of him...'

'General Lestocq's Prussians?' asked the staff-officer sharply.

'Exactly, my dear wiseacre. Lestocq and his Prussians, and we must move to the right and cover their march across our rear.' Kalitkin suddenly drew his sabre with a rasp and pointed it across the shallow valley. 'There! See, those French pigs are ahead of us! They will try and harry the Prussian flank ...'

I told you they were the best light cavalry in the Grand Army.'

'You go and tell Bennigsen that the squadrons of Piotr Kalitkin have saved Mother Russia again ... and if he gives me a division I will win the whole damned war ...' He stood in his stirrups and bawled an order. This time the whole mass of the Cossacks moved forward and the staff-officer wheeled his horse aside to let them pass. For a moment he remained alone on the ridge to watch. The trot changed to a canter and then to a gallop; the lance points were lowered, the pennons flickering like fire as the dark wave of horsemen swept over the frozen marshes bordering the river, and crashed into the ranks of the French hussars. The enemy swung to meet them, their breath steaming below their fierce moustaches and their hair braided into dreadlocks beneath their rakish shakos. The staff-officer pulled his horse round and spurred it towards the headquarters of the Russian army at Anklappen.

Night fell early, the short winter afternoon expiring under heavy clouds and the smoke of battle. The French attack failed, largely due to the timely arrival of General Lestocq's Prussians and the late appearance of Ney: Napoleon had received the worst drubbing of his career, but Lasalle's hussars had had their revenge, and Kalitkin's Cossacks had been pushed back beyond the village of Schloditten, to bivouac and lick their wounds. It was past midnight when Kalitkin had posted his vedettes, rolled himself in his cloak and lain down in the snow. A few moments later he was roused as one of his men brought in a strange officer, wearing an unfamiliar uniform and raging furiously in a barbarous French at the Cossack trooper whose sabre point gleamed just below the prisoner's chin.

Kalitkin sprang to his feet. 'Mother of God! What have you there, Khudoznik? A Frenchman?' Kalitkin addressed the prisoner in French: 'Are you a French officer?'

'God damn it, no, sir!' the man exclaimed. 'Tell this ruffian to let me go! I am Colonel Wilson, a British Commissioner attached to General Bennigsen's headquarters. I was reconnoitering when this stinking louse picked me up. Who the devil are you?'

Kalitkin ordered the Cossack Khudoznik to return to his post and introduced himself. 'I am Count Piotr Kalitkin commanding two squadrons of the Hetman's Don Cossacks. So, you are a spy of the British are you?' Kalitkin grinned and made room round the fire.

'You Russians are a damnably suspicious lot,' said the mollified Wilson, rubbing his hands and extending them to the warmth of the fire.

'But you have come to see we don't waste your precious English gold, eh?'

'To liaise with the headquarters of the army, Count, not to spy.'

'It is the same thing. Where are your English soldiers, Colonel, eh? Your gold is useful but it would have been better if some English soldiers could have helped us today, would it not? There would be fewer widows in Russia tomorrow.'

'My dear Count,' replied Wilson with a note of tired exasperation creeping into his voice. 'I am plagued night and day with pleas for which I can offer no satisfaction until the ice in the Baltic thaws and His Majesty's ships can enter that sea. Until then we shall have to rely upon Russian valour.'

'So, Colonel,' said Kalitkin, still grinning in the firelight, 'you are a courtier and a spy. I congratulate you!'

'I hope,' said Wilson with a heavy sarcasm, 'that I am merely a diplomat.'

A stir on the outskirts of the fire lit circle among the half-sleeping, half-freezing men caused both Kalitkin and the Englishman to turn.

'And,' exclaimed Kalitkin triumphantly, 'here is another spy. Welcome back, my friend. I expected you to spend the night in a whore's bed at headquarters. Are there no women with General Bennigsen?'

'Only pretty boys dressed as aides,' said the staff-officer emerging from the night, 'in accordance with the German fashion. Besides, I came back to bring you... this!' The staff-officer produced a bottle from the breast of his cloak with a magician's flourish.

'Ah! Vodka! Next to a woman, the best consolation.' 'One can share it with more facility, certainly ... I see you have company.'

As Kalitkin laughed, snatching the bottle and wrenching the cork from its neck, the staff-officer's expression of cynical levity vanished at the sight of the British uniform.

'Yes, my friend,' explained Kalitkin after wiping his mouth, 'a spy like you. He is an English officer; a commissioner no less.'

In the firelight the staff-officer's mouth set rigid, his eyes suddenly watchful. 'I am Colonel Wilson,' said the Englishman again, waving aside the vodka that Kalitkin companionably offered him after liberally helping himself, 'His Britannic Majesty's representative at the headquarters of His Imperial Majesty's army.'

'Colonel Wilson...' the staff-officer muttered under his breath, his eyes probing the face of the English officer.

'Count Kalitkin has introduced himself,' said Wilson, referring obliquely to Kalitkin's failure to introduce the staff-officer. 'Whom have I the honour of addressing?'

The staff-officer hesitated, looked down and with a muddy boot kicked back a piece of wood that had been ejected from the heart of the fire by a small explosion of resin deep in its core.

'Tell him, my friend,' said Kalitkin, swigging again at the vodka. 'Tell him who you are.'

The staff-officer's obvious reticence combined with the scrutiny to which he had been subject to awaken suspicions in Wilson's mind. Kalitkin's flippant allusions to espionage had been initially attributed to the subconscious reaction to excessive centralisation that Wilson had encountered in his dealings with the Russians. Watching the staff-officer's face he was aware of a quickening interest in this man.

'Come, sir,' he prompted, 'you have the advantage of me.'

'I am Captain Ostroff, Colonel Wilson, aide-de-camp to Prince Vorontzoff and presently attached to Count Kalitkin's squadrons of the Hetman's Don Cossacks.'

But Wilson paid little attention to the details of the staff-officer's status. What interested him far more was the way in which this Ostroff had pronounced Wilson's own name. For the first time since his secondment to the Russian army Wilson had heard his surname without the heavy, misplaced accent upon its second syllable. In a flash of intuition he realised he was talking to a fellow Englishman.

'Your servant, Captain Ostroff,' he said, bowing a little from the waist and holding the other's eyes in a steady gaze. But Ostroff's expression did not alter, not even when a sharp crack at their feet ejected another sliver of wood from the bivouac fire.