Simon Montefiore - Red Sky at Noon

Consul Malamore was furious: Fabiana was gone, and the village was in utter chaos. Accompanied by his adjutant and some of his scouts, he had ridden into Radzillovo at dawn, looking forward to calling on her in the Red Cross tent.

He felt he was making progress. She was shocked by the death of the milksop husband – a terrible soldier and not much better as a man – but war always sorted the strong from the weak; and so it had been with Ippolito Bacigalupe, removed so easily in his first skirmish. That was war and Fabiana would soon recover. She was tough and self-reliant, the sort of beautiful Italian woman he wanted to retire with; he would sire her children and those children would rule a new Aryan empire in the sun. He had been at war for a long time and he was weary; this would be his last fight. He was not short of girls. He had an apple-cheeked Russian girl back in Kharkov. But Fabiana of course was different. Hitler’s victory was now so close, just weeks away. If we secure the Don and Stalingrad, he told himself, the Russians will collapse and retreat behind the Urals, and then I can hang up my boots.

As he rode into the village, he was dreaming of buying a vast farm in the rich black earth of southern Russia, like a soldier-settler of the Roman Empire. The Russian peasants would work like slaves on the soil; and he would ride across the golden acres of corn on his black stallion with Fabiana on her palomino, and sometimes he would rest his hand on the amber-coloured skin of her arm…

Instead, as he and his men came to a halt, horsemen were galloping in with reports from east and west and God knew where, and Italian soldiers were running back and forth, some were even weeping, shots were being fired out into the steppe, horses were being saddled, Kalmyks were unpacking ammo boxes from their camels – and when they saw Malamore, they all froze. And here was Major di Montefalcone with his flabby oval face sobbing like a girl – yes, like a girl, for Christ’s sake!

‘She’s gone, consul, she’s gone. The prisoner took her!’ Montefalcone patted his eyes with his handkerchief.

‘I see that,’ said Malamore, dismounting. ‘But who is he ?’

‘A Russian. We thought he was Schuma but he wasn’t. He must have been one of the partisans.’

A flash of murderous fury electrified Malamore but he ground it between his teeth. ‘Get on the phone to the Schuma and find out. Then we hunt them and we catch them. And when we do, she belongs to me.’

‘ Si, si, signore. ’

Malamore scowled at him. These aristocrats lacked Fascist passion; the day would come when he and his fellow Fascists would have to line them up against a wall – but there was more to it than that. He did not like the way Montefalcone was looking at him and he knew why the major was doing it. If the person who’d been kidnapped had not been a girl, if it had not been Fabiana, would they be going to all this trouble, taking this risk?

‘Just obey your orders, Montefalcone. Are you riding out with us?’

‘Me? If you wish it,’ said Montefalcone.

‘The prisoner’s escape was on your watch, major. It’s your responsibility.’

‘Understood, consul.’ He turned to his batman. ‘Jacopo, bring out Caruso.’

Malamore swung up on to his stallion, Borgia, motioning to his squadron of Cossacks and Kalmyk scouts to follow. He took out a thin cigar and one of the Kalmyks lit it for him.

‘He forced her?’ he asked Montefalcone, running the scenario through in his mind.

‘Surely he forced her.’

‘Surely? Madonna santa , Montefalcone, give me firm answers.’

‘Yes. At gunpoint. What Italian girl would ride off with an Ivan? Yes, at gunpoint.’

‘But the horse? How did he get that?’

‘He must have threatened her with a knife?’

‘Who gave him a knife?’

‘Maybe it was one of the surgical instruments.’

‘Guns?’

‘He just grabbed what he could.’

‘How?’

‘I’m not sure, sir.’

‘Isn’t your arsenal guarded according to regulations?’

‘Well, yes. But not every minute…’

‘You bungler,’ growled Malamore. Christ, these aristocrats were no good for anything.

Now that he was sure that Fabiana was his woman, he had to know if she was a traitor. If she’d crossed the line, he’d have to deal with it… There’d been a girl in Abyssinia, a long-limbed, dark-skinned gazelle, who’d betrayed the Italians and he hadn’t hesitated – he’d dealt with her himself. But then she was a native, an African, while Fabiana was Italian. But still… He raised his bushy eyebrows and ran his hands over his face.

‘Jacopo saw them, he saw the prisoner hit her.’ Montefalcone was still babbling.

‘ Grazie a Dio ,’ said Malamore, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God.’ She was still his girl, a good Italian, his future wife.

‘When the men spotted them and opened fire, the Ivan grabbed her reins and pointed his gun at her. She had no choice.’

‘Then all is clear,’ said Malamore. When he rescued her, she would belong to him, Fabiana would know that, and there’d be no more stupid mistakes. He turned Borgia. ‘Let’s go,’ he shouted to his posse of men.

‘ Si, signore! What vehicles do you require?’ asked Montefalcone.

‘This is horse country. We ride out now. Catch us up, Montefalcone,’ and he spurred Borgia towards the east and clattered out of the village, with his Italian men in their black shirts, the Kalmyks on their bony ponies, followed by the Cossacks in their German uniforms, the steel of their spurs catching the morning rays.

Montefalcone mounted Caruso and followed Malamore’s men through the dust, his eyes burning. He too was thinking about Fabiana. She was forced, of course she was. He wiped his forehead, his head pounding. And yet he did wonder why she had her horse with her, why she had changed out of her white nurse’s uniform, and why so many weapons had gone missing.

He sighed. There was nothing as unpredictable as women – whatever Malamore said.

Martha Peshkova wore her favourite lilac scent and the dress copied from American Vogue magazine by Cleopatra Fishman for her first date with the handsomest young man in Moscow. He was Sergo Beria, who could not have been more different in looks from his father. If anything, Martha thought, he resembled the swashbuckling film star Errol Flynn with his slim figure, his thick black hair, his elegant pencil-thin moustache and his well-cut uniform. He was eighteen; she was sixteen, and too young to go out to the Aragvi Restaurant so he had invited her to a lunchtime feast at his house.

Beria was the only Soviet leader to live in a mansion right in the middle of Moscow; most of the leaders, such as Molotov and Satinov, lived in the grand apartment block on Granovsky. But Beria was special. Sergo’s father worked so hard that he barely returned to eat or sleep, so it was his mother, Nino, a pretty blonde woman, and also a Georgian, who served Martha and Sergo a Georgian supra in the kitchen of the heavily guarded house.

Martha watched Sergo carefully. She knew that his father was in charge of the dark realm of power, the Organs and the Camps. She was acquainted with this world because an earlier secret police chief, Yagoda, had been in love with her mother Timosha and had openly pursued his passion under the nose of her father, in front of her father-in-law Gorky, right there in his famous mansion. But Yagoda had been tried and shot before the war; and his successor Yezhov had also been sacked and had vanished, almost certainly shot too. Then Beria had been appointed, and it was clear that he was a much more impressive leader, intimately trusted by Stalin himself. Still, Martha had grown up in this carnivorous milieu and even though she was so young, she knew its dangers. Her friend Svetlana was kind but she was still a princess who liked to get her own way in all things, while Vasily Stalin was a vicious goblin, a budding Caligula, a future Nero. Martha’s mother, Timosha, had told her again and again: ‘Marthochka, don’t marry into the Berias. That man Beria is… Don’t ask but I know things. Just don’t!’ But Martha had argued with her: ‘Mama, Sergo isn’t like his father. Really he’s a sweet and decent person.’