David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘If I’d known you were Hart I wouldn’t have got on board. Where’s my money?’

‘Perfectly understandable for you to feel a bit miffed under the circumstances, but we haven’t got time for that now.’

‘Oh, why not? Why did you think it necessary to trick me into this business? Did you think I wouldn’t do it without being blackmailed?’

‘Not blackmail, old man, never that. Coercion, perhaps. After Burkett gave us your name—’

‘Burkett? Burkett from my club?’

‘He’s one of our scouts. Didn’t you know? Tips the wink on chaps who might be up for our game, that sort of thing.’

If he had known, Paul would have thought twice about tipping the man anything never mind the wink.

‘After he suggested your name I had a word with one or two of the officers in your battalion and they told me about the sharping. C thought—’

‘That wasn’t me!’ Paul said, tired of having to keep repeating the fact. ‘You had the wrong battalion. That was the other—’

‘Yes, I know that now,’ Valentine said quickly. ‘C explained the mix-up. But given the character we thought you had, we came up with the pitchblende business. Personally, I didn’t think someone capable of sharping would be gullible enough to fall for that line, so you could have knocked me down with a feather when you swallowed it.’

Valentine seemed barely able to suppress a grin, as if he found the whole thing a lark.

‘So it was Cumming’s idea,’ Paul said.

‘C, old man. We don’t use his name.’

‘ C ,’ Paul repeated wearily.

‘Then when Kell got the low-down on your Russian background we thought we’d scored a bull’s eye.’

‘Kell again. You don’t seem to mind using his name.’

‘Oh, he’s the other lot. We don’t worry about them. Browning thinks—’

‘And what do you mean by the “low-down”?’ Paul interrupted, past caring what Browning thought. ‘Is it quite necessary to talk like an Edgar Wallace character?’

‘Edgar who?’

‘Never mind.’

‘As you like, old man. Actually, I told C we’d be better off coming clean from the start, above board don’t you know. But he does love intrigue. After all, you’re an officer with a decent record — well, apart from the sharping — doughty fellow and all that… I told them you’d be only too happy to stand up for King and Country once we’d told you what was needed. All right, it’s risky, but that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it? That why we do it…’

Paul concluded Valentine was as mad as the others. His eyes were gleaming through the gloom of the afternoon, lit by some inner light. There was a flush of enthusiasm on his cheeks that Paul had seen before, both at school and in the army. It was a glow of eagerness that came over some individuals whenever something above and beyond was called for. One could always guarantee there would be a fool like Valentine there, ever ready to stick his thick head above the parapet…

Looking at him now at close quarters, crammed between the lifeboats, Paul began to wonder which of them was truly the gullible one. But he couldn’t deny that Cumming had been right. If they’d spelled it out to him beforehand he would have run a mile, scuttled back to the trenches without a murmur. A man knew where he was there, what he had to do… who the enemy was — which fellow was on his side and which wasn’t. The only way Cumming would have got him to agree to this fool’s errand was to do what he did — trap him in a corner from which the only way out was to take the offered bait. He didn’t know if the other Ross had been a head above the parapet type, or if his was screwed on the correct way. He suspected he wouldn’t have fallen so readily for the ingredients in Valentine’s chemical process, but then again a man prepared to cheat at cards might have been too greedy to refuse the sugared confection Valentine offered. But it was no use speculating that the other Ross would have seen it coming — after all, he hadn’t seen the shell that killed him coming — and it was all a bit late now for speculation anyway; no point Paul wishing himself into another man’s shoes, particularly a dead man’s. And as it turned out, Valentine’s ruse hadn’t been the only half-baked pudding; as far as he could see the whole scheme was up for grabs now the bait Paul was supposed to offer Mikhail was dead.

‘Of course, you’re right,’ he lied to Valentine. ‘There wasn’t any need for deception. I would have been only too happy to volunteer.’

‘There, I knew it, old man.’ He slapped Paul on the shoulder.

‘The only thing,’ Paul said, ‘is that now the tsar’s dead there’ll be no reason for my cousin to help me. The Legion is already fighting the Bolsheviks according to the newspapers and we’re going to land troops up near Archangel. I can’t see there’s much I can do. I mean, this is your line of work. I wouldn’t want to get in the way and mess things up. Not that I’m not keen to box a Bolshevik ear or two…’

‘Never fear on that score, old man,’ Valentine assured him. ‘Two heads are better than one.’

Not if you were going to stick them both under the guillotine, Paul thought. One would tend to get in the way of the other.

‘I was right behind you at Yarmouth,’ Valentine went on, ‘but I had to check in with C before we sailed. I telephoned the office and Miss Henslowe told me they’d got a report from Lockhart in Moscow that the tsar had been shot and I was to get the first train back.’

‘And what about me?’

‘If the game was to be dished we’d have pulled you off in Hull. Don’t worry yourself on that score, old man.’

‘So I assume it hasn’t been dished,’ Paul said.

‘No,’ Valentine said. ‘Now the troops are landing in Archangel C says it’s imperative we gather as much intelligence as possible. So we’re in luck. We go ahead and see how things are on the ground.’

‘What about my cousin?’

‘It’s more important than ever we make contact and co-ordinate the opposition to the Bolsheviks. We’ve also heard from the French liaison officers with the Legion that after that business at Chelyabinsk they took the towns of Novonikolaevsk and Penza. Omsk, too.’

‘Omsk in Siberia?’

‘Apparently two weeks ago the Czech leader in the west, a Lieutenant Čeček, was ordered by the executive-committee of the Penza group of armies to change objective and stand fast.’ Valentine beamed at him, eyes alight. ‘They’ve turned west.’

‘Sorry, who are the Penza group of armies and why is a lieutenant in charge?’

‘Anti-Bolsheviks, old man. Before the Bolshevik coup the regional Soviets were made up of all sorts of socialist parties. They weren’t all Bolsheviks — pretty few of them were, actually.’

‘What about Čeček? Who’s he?’

‘Haven’t the foggiest. But they elect their own officers and I suppose it’s a case of the cream rising to the top.’

‘But if the Legion’s already turned west and the tsar’s dead, what can I do? Or are Mikhail’s friends looking to put the tsarevitch on the throne?’

Valentine’s eyes dulled.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you don’t know.’

‘Know what?’

‘They shot the whole family.’

‘What, all of them? The girls, too?’

‘Sorry, old man, having to break it to you like this.’ He gripped Paul’s shoulder. ‘It shows you what sort of people we’re up against. To kill those pretty young princesses, and their brother…’

Paul shrugged Valentine’s hand off. What made him think the tsar and his family meant anything to him? Paul was English not Russian. Even so, the news was shocking. Nicholas might have deserved it even if, as Pinker had said, the man should have had a trial. But those girls and that invalid brother of theirs…? What had they done to deserve being shot? Simply because of an accident of birth they had inherited privilege and wealth they hadn’t lived long enough to repudiate? It was monstrous. Inhuman.