David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘Keep the noise down, old man,’ Valentine hissed,

opening the door just wide enough for Paul to squeeze through. ‘We don’t want to wake the neighbours. I hope you weren’t followed.’

Paul edged inside. Valentine closed the door behind him. They were standing in a dimly lit corridor. The neatly trimmed moustache and goatee beard he had shaved off after leaving Petersburg had now been replaced by the kind of full set favoured by some naval officers. He had dyed his hair black although the colour failed to disguise its blond origins and remained thin and wispy. The contrast was so marked that it crossed Paul’s mind that the beard might be false.

‘It’s good to see you, old chap,’ Valentine said, grasping his hand. ‘I’ve been making enquiries among the Czechs but none of those I spoke to knew you. Frankly, I was beginning to fear the worst.’

‘I’ve had the devil of a job finding you ,’ Paul complained. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Did you ask after me at the British Military Mission?’

‘No. Where’s that?’

‘In one of the railway carriages in Nikólskaya Square.’

‘The square’s packed full of railway carriages!’

‘It’s probably just as well you didn’t ask. Knox left Nielson and Steveni here to keep an eye on things and they don’t care for me treading on their toes.’

‘Steveni?’ Paul said, recalling the name. ‘Wasn’t he the fellow who escorted the ambassador to the Finish border last year? I rather got the impression he was C’s man. And weren’t you supposed to be with them then?’

‘So I was, old man,’ Valentine laughed. ‘So I was. Posing as a Russian servant. Until we reached Finland, at any rate.’ He grinned. ‘Never let the left hand, as they say… As for Steveni, he’s Knox’s man. At the minute, anyway.’

Paul followed Valentine up a flight of stairs to a small first floor apartment at the rear of the building.

‘Randrup cleared out some while ago,’ Valentine said speaking of the vice-consul. He put a blackened kettle on a small stove. ‘But he left a comfortable little set-up here. One can’t get rooms in Omsk for love nor money. How are you fixed?’

Paul outlined what had happened to him since Kazan and explained how he had come to join Ward and his Middlesex detachment.

‘I’ve a billet back at Ward’s cantonment if needed,’ he said, ‘but it’s a bit wearing having to bunk in with a band. Are there rooms here?’

‘You’re probably best with the Middlesex,’ Valentine said, making no offers. ‘What with the political situation.’

‘I’m told things aren’t too good.’

‘I suppose you’ve seen Sofya and her brother?’

‘That’s where I’ve just come from.’

‘Not followed, I hope,’ he said again.

Paul scowled at him. ‘That’s what you always ask.’

‘Can’t be too careful, that’s C’s motto.’

‘Have you had any news?’

‘From London? Afraid not. All communication comes through Vladivostok and Knox. The good general isn’t the sort of man who likes other chaps playing a free hand.’

Valentine made tea and broke two pieces of bread off an ageing rye loaf. He smeared dripping onto one from a greasy deposit in the bottom of a bowl then pushed it towards Paul.

‘Had lunch?’ he asked. ‘Food is starting to get as hard to come by here as it was in Petersburg.’

Paul took the bread, thinking of the breakfast Sofya and Mikhail’s had shared.

‘Some aren’t doing so badly,’ he said.

‘Your Colonel Ward, you mean?’

‘I was thinking of Mikhail.’

‘Oh him. I know he’s family and everything,’ Valentine said, adopting a conciliatory expression, ‘but to tell the truth I don’t entirely trust him.’

‘Entirely?’ Paul replied. ‘I wouldn’t trust him with a Sunday church collection! I only saw him for a moment. He went rushing off as soon as I arrived when he heard Kolchak was back in Omsk.’

‘I hear he’s in pretty deep with some Stavka officers. They’re looking to Kolchak for leadership.’

‘Well, he’s minister for war, isn’t he? What more do they want? They’ve got the Russian treasury, too, so I would have thought they’d be pretty pleased with the way things have turned out.’

‘He never took his eyes off that gold, you know,’ said Valentine.

‘Who didn’t?’

‘Your cousin. All the way to Samara and then to Chelyabinsk. That was some smart work, there. If it hadn’t have been for Sofya they would have got away from me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘While the treasury officials were busy looking for somewhere safe to hold the gold, the West Siberians got it out of the station. Mikhail had a hand in that.’

‘What had Sofya got to do with it?’

‘I knew nothing about it,’ Valentine said. ‘Not until she came to say goodbye. She said they were leaving unexpectedly for Omsk and wanted me to let you know if I saw you. Of course, I tumbled to what her brother was up to straight away and sort of attached myself to the party. In an unofficial capacity, of course.’

‘What party?’

‘The treasury officials. They’ve been with the gold reserves ever since they left Petersburg. Regardless who had it — Bolsheviks, Czechs or your cousin’s cronies. They’ve been traipsing all over Russia trailing their families after them. How is she, anyway?’ Valentine suddenly asked. ‘She’s a capital girl, don’t you think?’

Paul stared across the table at him, marvelling at how much Valentine had changed his tune. On the train from Petersburg, he’d have just as soon pitched Sofya out onto the track.

‘I’m told things haven’t been too good here,’ Paul said, changing the subject.

‘There is a certain uncertainty ,’ Valentine agreed. ‘Factions at each other’s throat, that sort of thing. There’s been a good deal of trouble at night, you know, tit-for-tat murders… transfers to the Republic of the Irtúish, as they say…’

‘Transfers to what ?’

Valentine smiled grimly. ‘Oh, that’s what they call it when they make a hole in the river ice and stuff the bodies through…’

Paul shivered.

‘Mostly, of course, they just leave them on the streets.’

‘What do you think will happen?’

‘Whoever’s strongest will take control,’ Valentine said matter-of-factly. ‘While Boldyrev’s here the Directory of Five will probably stay in control since he’s one of the Five. Not that they have much power. The Council of Ministers runs Omsk. Inasmuch as anyone could be said is running it.’

‘But Boldyrev’s not here,’ Paul said. ‘We stopped in Petropávlovsk so Kolchak could meet with him. He was on his way to the Ufa front.’

‘In that case,’ Valentine said, mouth full and pouring the tea, ‘the reactionary element might take the opportunity to liquidate the SRs. The French and the Japanese say that’s what Knox is trying to engineer, given that he’s apparently made some rather intemperate remarks about the situation here. I can’t see it myself, but I doubt he’ll step in to stop it if it happens. Of course, the Japanese have their own agenda.’

‘What have the Japanese got to do with it?’

‘They’re more or less running the show in east Siberia — Vladivostok, Harbin and such places… It’s pretty common knowledge that they’ve got designs on carving out an empire for themselves. They’re using an awful fellow by the name of Semenov to do the dirty work for them. He’s some Cossack ataman or other, running riot between Baikal and the coast. They say it’s only the Legion and the Allies in Vladivostok who stand in his way.’

‘What about the Bolsheviks?’