‘Have you used the ray yet?’
I told him I had destroyed a gun.
‘One gun isn’t enough.’
‘The machine has to be aimed. It consumes a great deal of energy with every shot. I have done well so far.’
‘You raised my hopes. You betrayed them.’
Two generals stood behind him, together with a few soldiers of lesser rank. All wore different uniforms: some blue, some white, some green.
‘I told you what I could do. With another day or so.’
‘Antonov is almost in Kiev. He’s moving troops up rapidly. We’re going to have to evacuate the city. You’ll hold off their advance with your ray.’
‘Alone?’
‘You’re a major in the Republican Army, comrade. You can be shot for disobeying orders.’
Someone grinned. ‘That’s true.’
‘And you’re leaving?’ I could not believe such perfidy.
‘We’re withdrawing from this position. We still have a great deal of support. I think we can rely on Hrihorieff. There’s a strong chance the Entente will lend us troops. Deniken and Krassnoff will have to throw in with us. It’s to their advantage.’
‘How shall I leave if the Bolsheviks find me?’ It seemed a fair question.
‘You’ll be able to slip away,’ said a captain. ‘You’re wearing civilian clothes.’
I wondered if I could get back to my hotel and pick up my bags or whether they would have been stolen already. I saluted in military fashion. ‘Then I shall do my duty.’ That duty, naturally, was to my dependants and to myself. There was no chance at all of the Ultraviolet Projector standing off the entire Bolshevik army. Petlyura had miscalculated everything. I asked him where I should meet the rest of the army.
He hesitated. ‘You’ll hear.’
He expected me to be captured. He did not want to risk my revealing his position. Some of his generals looked openly sympathetic to me. Others were smiling. I seemed to have become a bone of contention amongst them.
‘What if Antonov captures the ray?’ I asked.
‘You’ll destroy it first.’
I thought he was placing a great deal of trust in my loyalty to a cause I had never supported. ‘If they capture me before I can destroy it?’
Petlyura turned. With a gesture of supremely arrogant impatience he struck with his whip at my apparatus. I was horrified. The tripod wobbled but held. ‘They’ll never guess what it is. They have no money. They can’t pay you. Take it to the French. They’ll give you what you ask.’ He was suspicious of something. He was mad.
I became confused and distracted as I attempted to right the machine before the precious vacuum tube was thrown out of alignment. But Petlyura had already done his worst. The machine would take hours to re-set. I told him nothing of that. ‘You asked me to build this.’
‘And it doesn’t work!’
‘You have not given it a fair trial.’
‘Very well. Use it now. Sweep Trukhanov.’
‘I will do my best. You have probably made it impossible...’
‘Destroy Trukhanov.’
I shrugged and pointed the projector in the general direction of the island. I began to move it as a man might move a machine gun, spraying from side to side. Nothing, naturally, happened.
Petlyura was laughing. ‘I’m in a hurry, comrade.’
I noticed from my instruments that not enough power was going through the transformer. ‘The power has been diverted. I must use the Voltaics.’ I pointed up the narrow stair to where they were arranged. ‘Someone must pull that large switch all the way down when I give the word.’
Petlyura was staring at me as if he believed himself crazy. ‘Will it work?’
‘Pull the switch!’
Some fool went clattering up to it, all spurs and frogging; a military genius who could sit a horse without instantly falling off and was thus a general in Petlyura’s idiot-army. He pulled the switch, of course, before I gave the word. The Voltaics began to arc. The soldier came stumbling back. There was noise and light everywhere. Petlyura screamed and was gone, his men behind him, while I battled with what was left of my equipment. It was impossible to do anything. I opened one of the straw-filled ammunition boxes which had brought my vacuum-tubes. The case still contained a tube. All I needed were the lenses. I began to dismantle them as quickly as possible. Someone returned. There was a pistol shot, the tube on the tripod burst and as I covered my eyes I felt pieces of glass strike my hands and forehead. Another shot was aimed at me. Petlyura evidently wished to be sure the Bolsheviks gained no advantage. It seemed at that moment to be a bizarre act of vengeance. I thought it was Petlyura himself firing. I suppose I was mistaken. I saw flashes of pistol-fire and a dark silhouette. I moved behind one of the columns, onto the outer balcony. All six shots were discharged before the figure ran away. Something was on fire. It was my straw. I tried to pull at least one of the tubes to safety but there was every danger it would overheat and burst and then I should be killed. Electricity still sputtered. The connections had been badly made. My worst danger was from the fire in the straw. I did not save a single lens, a single tube. I moved cautiously down the steps, trying to hear any sound of the assassin. But he was gone. I heard some cars going away. Monks with tapers came and looked at me. They were accusing me. I tried to ask their forgiveness with my eyes but they turned their backs to me. I was too cautious to speak. I still found it hard to believe such hatred and violence had been directed at me. I slipped from the church. A Jew in a skull-cap ran past. He was panting. He held something to him. A bundle. It was a baby, I thought. But it was probably a family heirloom he hoped to save from the new invaders. He was quite young, in his twenties, and sandy-haired. But for his obvious Jewishness, he might have been handsome. When he had gone there was only the heaped, dirty snow. Everything was dead. I moved nervously back towards Kreshchatik but I was hardly bothered at all. The inhabitants had taken to their cellars. All the Haidamaki had gone. I reached The Yevropyaskaya and walked through undefended doors. I went up to my room. There was no one about. My room had been searched. Nothing of any note had been taken. I slipped my diploma, passport and other papers, together with some gold, into a special secret pocket of my trousers. I packed my notes and realised that most of my designs for the machine, together with written descriptions of processes, had gone. I put little packets of cocaine into prepared places in my jacket and waistcoat. I wondered if Petlyura himself had decided to sell my plans to one or other of the opposing forces. There was nothing I could do. I no longer had any concrete proof I had built and tested my ‘death-ray’. I had been thoroughly and cynically betrayed. After some thought, I decided to take what I could and head for the station. It would be dangerous at night. I would wait until-dawn before venturing out. I went to sleep in all my clothes because the heating had been turned off in the hotel. I heard shots. There was yellow blood in my eyes. I writhed in mud. My mother burned. Bronze bubbled through the gorges of Kiev. Suns rose and set over a battlefield which was the whole world. Years went by as I searched for something.