Lacey found what he was looking for: an open-air market. Not big but better than nothing. He left the others and went to see what he could buy.
Borodin stood and sniffed the air. “Follow me,” he said, and quickly tracked down a house with no sign but an open front door. “This is either the Café Royale of Orel,” he said, “or someone has thrown his breakfast on the fire.”
It was a large room, very dark, with half a dozen tables and a bar. Tiny shells crunched under their feet. “Sunflower seeds,” Borodin said. “Everyone chews them.” The aroma of fried onions fought with the stale smell of tobacco smoke.
“It’s not the Café Royale,” Jessop said. “You get white tablecloths at the Café Royale.” A woman appeared. “This must be the chanteuse,” he said. “Past her prime, I’m afraid.”
Borodin had a brief conversation.
“It’s a bar,” he told them. “There are no restaurants in Orel. People eat at home. Mainly she sells vodka. As a favour to us, she can make omelettes.”
“Omelettes are good,” the doctor said. “Ask her if we may eat outside, where the stench is tolerable.”
They carried out a table and two benches. The woman brought chipped glass tumblers and a jug of red wine.
“She speaks highly of the wine,” Borodin said. “She trod the grapes with her own bare feet.”
The doctor took a sip. “That was last week,” she said. “The bacteria are dead by now.” She poured, and they drank to each other’s health.
“I was hoping to find a gentleman’s outfitters,” Jessop said. “My underwear is in absolute tatters.”
“I don’t think they have that sort of shop here,” Borodin said.
“Then where do they buy their underwear?”
“I rather think they don’t. Some member of the family knits it. In winter they sew themselves into a complete set, head to foot, and coat it with bear fat. They wear it until spring. The Russian winter can be brutal.”
“I can’t imagine you coated in bear fat,” Susan Perry said.
“Heavens, no. I speak of peasants. My English nanny took care of my underwear. Silk, usually… Hullo, what can we do for you?”
A man had stopped at their table. Everything about him was ruined. His hair was tangled, his face was bruised and blackened by dried blood, his clothes were torn and stained. His army tunic lacked sleeves and his breeches had split at the seams. He had no shoes. He was trembling. His left arm hung at his side. In his right hand he held a pistol. He made a hoarse and angry statement.
“He wants our money, or he will shoot us,” Borodin said. “He was wounded fighting the Reds and now nobody cares, he hasn’t eaten in a week, he says give him money or he fires.” He said a few words in Russian and got a grunt for an answer.
Jessop was suddenly furious. “Listen, you squalid little peasant. I’ve had enough of you ungrateful Russians.” Jessop’s forefinger had been pounding the table. Now he thrust it at the robber. “We came ten thousand miles to risk our lives day in day out so you can live a decent civilized life and Russian rotters like you think you can wave a gun and get what you want. This table isn’t Russia, my friend. This is part of Britain. Put your stupid gun away and clear off.”
The flood of words made the robber gape. Borodin translated, very briefly.
“I said a damn sight more than that,” Jessop said.
“I told him you thought he was an utter cad.”
The robber mumbled something, and waved his pistol.
“You have insulted him,” Borodin said, “and he will shoot you first.”
“I don’t like the way his hand is twitching,” Susan Perry said. At that point the cook appeared with three plates of hot omelettes. The robber salivated so much that he dribbled down his chin. “Tell him to sit down and eat,” she said. Borodin did. The man sat and ate and drank from her glass. His left arm hung uselessly and he ate with his right hand, which meant he had to put down the pistol. Jessop’s hand sneaked across the table and stole it. His caution was wasted. The man had no time for anything but food. The cook watched with interest. Even in vodka dens like hers, customers rarely waved pistols. “More omelettes,” Borodin told her. “More wine.” She went. As the man finished one omelette, Jessop slid another in front of him.
“He has a very bad abscess on his left arm,” the doctor said. “Unless it’s treated the whole arm could become infected, possibly gangrenous. He must come with us so I can treat it.”
Borodin translated, and the man cried, although he did not stop eating and drinking. “I think that means he agrees,” Borodin said.
Ten minutes later, Lacey arrived. “They didn’t have what I wanted, but I drew pictures and they’re getting it for me, later today. What’s wrong with him?” The man was asleep with his head on an empty plate.
“He held us up.” Jessop waved the pistol. “But I read the riot act to him and he realized the folly of his ways.”
“He was starving,” Susan Perry said. “We filled him up with omelettes and he conked out. He’s a wounded veteran.”
“Probably a deserter,” Borodin said. “Who can blame him? Badly armed, badly led, badly fed. But deep down he’s got a heart of gold.”
“He’ll need a jolly good scrub before you can find it,” Lacey said.
They drove the man back to the trains. Chef made a platter of sandwiches and he wolfed them while she washed his arm and examined the abscess, swollen red and hard, blue in the centre, where the skin was so thin that she could see the yellow pus beneath, clearly ready to rupture; so she opened it and let the pus escape. This was painful but he didn’t flinch. The sandwiches took his full attention. She finished the treatment, covered the injury with lint soaked in boric-acid solution, bandaged the arm, and told him, through Borodin, to keep the bandages on for a week.
Borodin gave him back the pistol — Jessop said it was broken anyway and wouldn’t fire — and he drove the patient and Lacey back to Orel. “It was a lot of needless fuss,” he told Lacey. “He waved his gun, and I said we’d give him fifty roubles if he’d stop being a nuisance, and he was happy with that. But Jessop had a fit of indignation and nearly picked a fight.”
“Pilots,” Lacey said. “Excitable folk. Not you, Count.”
“No, of course. I have your famous British stiff upper lip. I keep it in an old cigar box.”
The week passed quickly. The air crews played their own version of polo, riding the ponies and swinging the croquet mallets at croquet balls. There were no rules, and nobody kept score. Perhaps there was no score.
Wragge and Borodin watched. “We are a sporting nation,” Wragge said. “Reminds me.” He felt in his pockets for a piece of paper. “Meant to ask you. Goolie Chits. Worth doing?”
Borodin read H.Q.’s signal. “This assumes the finder can read,” he said. “Odds are ten to one against. If he reads, will he understand? Fifty to one. If he understands, will he trust us? A thousand to one.” He folded the paper and gave it back. “This is Russia, Tiger.”
“Oh, well. We haven’t any gold sovereigns, anyway.”
The poker school reopened. It had closed when Dextry cleaned everyone else out and said he was keeping the money to show people the folly of gambling and besides, he needed it for his pension. After his crash, Uncle refused to release the money, even for I.O.U.s. Now there was pay to gamble with.
Lacey bought many sacks of potatoes in Orel market; also eggs, milk, radishes and loaves of black bread as hard as wood. The value of the rouble was tumbling daily and he spent lavishly.
He stayed in contact with the outside world. Signals from the British Military Mission H.Q. informed him that Captain Butcher had been transferred and that Captain Stokes, Grenadier Guards, would assume his duties.