David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘I was wondering,’ Paul said reaching Pater’s cabin, ‘if Darling took his bags when he got off? I mean, if he did , he would have meant to get off, do you see?’

‘Oh, he never had much,’ Pater said, opening the door. ‘Only a portmanteau. He told me he preferred to travel light.’

‘And he took it?’

Pater turned on the light, vaguely shaking his head as if he could hardly be expected to account for another man’s luggage.

‘That’s his case,’ he said, gesturing to a portmanteau lying on the upper bunk. ‘However, there is no wallet or other papers belonging to Mr Darling, so perhaps he did not leave without funds. Naturally I have not looked inside the portmanteau.’

‘Naturally,’ Paul said. He saw Pinker’s H.G.Wells novel lying on the pillow. ‘I lent him that. Do you mind if I have it back?’

Pater looked at the book with distaste.

‘By all means,’ he said. ‘It’s absence will be a relief. Mister Wells holds views I do not share. To be honest, the absence of Mr Darling will be a relief, as well. Not that he was ever here. I have never known a man sleep less. Unless, of course, he slept elsewhere…’

Paul went back to his own cabin. The lock on his door had been repaired and he made sure it was secure before going to bed. No other passengers had boarded the steamer at Copenhagen so he assumed that the Cheka had not sneaked a replacement for Tamara Oblenskaya onto the ship. He put his revolver beneath his pillow nevertheless, and resolved to make a thorough search of the ship in the morning. And then…

God only knew what then.

He couldn’t be sure if the stench in his nostrils was coming off the peasant beside him or off the rags they had made him wear.

‘Half a verst,’ the old man grunted, pulling hard on the pony’s bridle. The cart stopped. The peasant waved a callused paw along the track.

Paul looked where the narrow cart track rounded a bend. In the birch forest, as far as he could see, the bend looked identical to a dozen others they had already rounded.

The man climbed down from the cart. He pulled at his smock then began to urinate. He turned and gave Paul a toothless grin.

Paul had been on the cart with the grizzled peasant for the best part of an hour and at the rate they were moving he could have walked it faster. Dressed in a reeking smock and rough serge trousers, the man’s clothes smelled as if they hadn’t been washed for a year. As did the clothes Paul had been given. They were little more than rags, coarse cloth so tattered it was difficult to see how they held together. Worse was the noxious fur jacket they had made him wear. Marginally less mangy than the pony pulling the cart, it possessed a stench he was sure he was never going to get out of his nostrils. He suspected its last owner had died in it. But he was posing as a carter’s assistant — at least until they reached the river — and they had insisted he look the part. There was no question at all about the fact he smelled it.

The carter was an Ingrian Finn who could speak a bit of Russian — ‘kopec Russian’, as it was known in that region — although it seemed to be a bit that Paul didn’t know. He supposed it to be a dialect he was unfamiliar with. Some of the Rostov family servants, he remembered, had spoken a coarse tongue, although it had been nothing like the language the carter used. Trying to talk in Finnish was a dead end, of course. He might have been in the country for three weeks but the language was still a mystery to him.

Once it became obvious that they had trouble communicating, the old man had begun speaking slowly as if Paul were an idiot. Then he had raised his voice as if sheer volume would make him intelligible. For most of the last half-hour they had ridden in silence.

It had still been dark when they had anchored off Helsingfors. Unable to sleep, Paul had stood at the rail until dawn had begun to streak the inky sea to a gunmetal blue. As light grew the dark bulk of Sveaborg had loomed over the stern, a group of islands on which the Russian navy had had a fortress. The Russians were gone now, he supposed, but it looked no less forbidding for that. To port, islands sat like humped elephants on the water. Ahead, the Finnish mainland began to rise out of the shadowed sea.

The deck shuddered as the engines began grinding into life. The morning air was shattered by the grating clank of the anchor chain.

From the rail he watched as they steamed into the Södrahamnen, the more southerly of Helsingfors’ two harbours. As the dock approached the small smudged shadows on the granite quays resolved into figures with guns and helmets and German uniforms. Paul stepped back and made his way down to his cabin.

To his surprise he found Turner, the dining room steward waiting for him. A look of relief passed over the man’s pitted face like a fleeting shadow. He began loosening the cord of a seaman’s kitbag at his feet.

‘Get into these, would you sir?’ he said, pulling clothing out of the bag. ‘They’ll be coming aboard shortly.’

He waited for a second as Paul stared at him then shook the clothes like a bullfighter trying to provoke a charge.

‘Quickly sir, if you please. You won’t get past the German authorities dressed as you are.’

‘They come aboard?’

Turner pushed the clothes at him. ‘It’s a routine check, Captain Ross, that’s all. Mostly they go down to the galley and steal food.’

Paul held the bundle of clothing in his arms like an unwanted baby.

‘You know who I am?’

‘Yes sir. Now let’s be smart about it, if you would.’

Paul huffed with exasperation. He had spent the past forty-odd hours since Copenhagen worrying how he was going to get off the ship, and now here was the steward giving him the hurry-up.

‘Why the devil didn’t you say earlier?’

Turner touched a finger to the side of his nose.

‘Need to know, sir, as C would say.’

Paul muttered under his breath. He had needed to know. Then another thought struck him and he eyed Turner suspiciously.

‘How do you know they steal food? I thought this was the first boat to Finland since the start of the war?’

Turner passed him a sailors’ reefer jacket.

‘I’ve been on the Copenhagen to Helsingfors run for several months. Now, please, we don’t have much time. London asked me to keep and eye on you if Mr Hart was… detained.’

‘Hart.’

‘I suppose they sowed money into the greatcoat again?’ Turner’s tone matched Paul’s in exasperation. ‘It’s always the same. They don’t seem to understand. Would you mind?’

He lifted the coat off the peg where it hung behind the cabin door, pulled a knife from his pocket and began slitting the seam. A moment later he pulled a linen belt containing the gold imperials out.

‘Wrap them up in a shirt and put them in the bottom of the kitbag, sir. Change of clothes on top and anything else you think you’ll need.’

Turner hung the coat back on its peg, looking deflated now with drooping military shoulders and a dangling hem.

‘They’d spot it as army straight away. I’ve told Mr Hart to tell London but…’ he shook his head as if it was wasted breath.

‘You know Mr Valentine then?’

‘Valentine? You mean, Mr Hart, sir. Oh yes, me and Mr Hart have worked together before.’

‘Why did he miss the boat at Copenhagen? Was he arrested?’

Turner seemed to find the thought amusing.

‘They’d have to get up early to catch Mr Hart, that’s a fact. He thought it best to make sure of the old girl. Couldn’t risk her telegraphing ahead.’