He picked up his coat and left the apartment.
Lyúbinski Prospékt rose gently to the Bazaar Square and Paul walked up the rise, past the museum of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society where, behind it, the gates of an old fortress stood guarding nothing but rubble and ruined walls. He sat and smoked a cigarette, exhaling clouds of breath and tobacco smoke into the frozen air.
The words he and Sofya had exchanged still burned in his head and he tried not to think of them. He thought about Valentine instead. Sofya had told him she didn’t know where he was living and, having reacted the way she had to what he had said about her brother, Paul thought the chances were she wouldn’t have told him where Valentine was if she had known. So where might he be? Paul crushed the stub of the cigarette out beneath his boot. To keep warm, he started moving again, giving the problem some thought.
Valentine would have rooms if he had been able to find any, but the problem was where? Not an hotel — too public for Valentine who always preferred his comings and goings to be clandestine. In Petersburg, Paul had found him buried in an old slum to the south-east of the city, but there he had been posing as a worker in the Putilov factory and the lodgings had not been out of character. What would he be posing as in Omsk? The answer to that was anything. Applying logic and consistency to Valentine was like trying to predict the weather. He assumed Valentine would try to keep in touch with London if at all possible and recalled, in Petersburg, Valentine had told him he had been at the British embassy shortly before the naval attaché Cromie had been shot. If Valentine was still trying to keep in touch with London then perhaps the British Consulate in Omsk might know where to find him. There would be one, Paul was sure; or at least a vice-consulate in a town the size of Omsk.
He retraced his steps to Nikólskaya Square. It was busy now Ward’s Middlesex had brought up their carriages and were marking out a cantonment. Russian officers were coming and going around the Stavka building and groups of well-dressed civilians were entering adjacent offices, studiously avoiding the appeals of the refugees milling around the square like distracted sheep.
Preferring not to involve Ward and the Middlesex detachment, Paul began making enquiries as to the whereabouts of the British Consulate, only to be met for the most part by blank and uncomprehending stares. Changing tack, he asked a passing officer where he might find the Post Office and, being told it was on Potchóvaya Street, made his way there. Despite some procrastination on the part of an officious clerk who insisted the Consulate was closed and that Paul would be wasting his time, Paul was finally given an address.
It was early afternoon before he found the rather unremarkable house. For such it was, Paul thought, in that it displayed no grand edifice glorying in the sun that was the British Empire. It was an ordinary Omsk townhouse — stone, admittedly — but one that certainly looked closed. A brass nameplate by the door bore the inscription, S.R.Randrup, British vice-consul; but the door itself was locked and the windows, beside it, shuttered. He rang the bell a few times and, when no-one answered, pounded on the door with his fist. Getting no reply at all, he was looking for some sort of access to the rear of the building when he thought he saw a curtain twitch at one of the first floor windows. Resuming alternate pounding and bell-ringing, he was rewarded a minute or two later by the sound of a bolt being shot and a key turning in the lock.
‘Keep the noise down, old man,’ Valentine hissed,
opening the door just wide enough for Paul to squeeze through. ‘We don’t want to wake the neighbours. I hope you weren’t followed.’
Paul edged inside. Valentine closed the door behind him. They were standing in a dimly lit corridor. The neatly trimmed moustache and goatee beard he had shaved off after leaving Petersburg had now been replaced by the kind of full set favoured by some naval officers. He had dyed his hair black although the colour failed to disguise its blond origins and remained thin and wispy. The contrast was so marked that it crossed Paul’s mind that the beard might be false.
‘It’s good to see you, old chap,’ Valentine said, grasping his hand. ‘I’ve been making enquiries among the Czechs but none of those I spoke to knew you. Frankly, I was beginning to fear the worst.’
‘I’ve had the devil of a job finding you,’ Paul complained. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Did you ask after me at the British Military Mission?’
‘No. Where’s that?’
‘In one of the railway carriages in Nikólskaya Square.’
‘The square’s packed full of railway carriages!’
‘It’s probably just as well you didn’t ask. Knox left Nielson and Steveni here to keep an eye on things and they don’t care for me treading on their toes.’
‘Steveni?’ Paul said, recalling the name. ‘Wasn’t he the fellow who escorted the ambassador to the Finish border last year? I rather got the impression he was C’s man. And weren’t you supposed to be with them then?’
‘So I was, old man,’ Valentine laughed. ‘So I was. Posing as a Russian servant. Until we reached Finland, at any rate.’ He grinned. ‘Never let the left hand, as they say… As for Steveni, he’s Knox’s man. At the minute, anyway.’
Paul followed Valentine up a flight of stairs to a small first floor apartment at the rear of the building.
‘Randrup cleared out some while ago,’ Valentine said speaking of the vice-consul. He put a blackened kettle on a small stove. ‘But he left a comfortable little set-up here. One can’t get rooms in Omsk for love nor money. How are you fixed?’
Paul outlined what had happened to him since Kazan and explained how he had come to join Ward and his Middlesex detachment.
‘I’ve a billet back at Ward’s cantonment if needed,’ he said, ‘but it’s a bit wearing having to bunk in with a band. Are there rooms here?’
‘You’re probably best with the Middlesex,’ Valentine said, making no offers. ‘What with the political situation.’
‘I’m told things aren’t too good.’
‘I suppose you’ve seen Sofya and her brother?’
‘That’s where I’ve just come from.’
‘Not followed, I hope,’ he said again.
Paul scowled at him. ‘That’s what you always ask.’
‘Can’t be too careful, that’s C’s motto.’
‘Have you had any news?’
‘From London? Afraid not. All communication comes through Vladivostok and Knox. The good general isn’t the sort of man who likes other chaps playing a free hand.’
Valentine made tea and broke two pieces of bread off an ageing rye loaf. He smeared dripping onto one from a greasy deposit in the bottom of a bowl then pushed it towards Paul.
‘Had lunch?’ he asked. ‘Food is starting to get as hard to come by here as it was in Petersburg.’
Paul took the bread, thinking of the breakfast Sofya and Mikhail’s had shared.
‘Some aren’t doing so badly,’ he said.
‘Your Colonel Ward, you mean?’
‘I was thinking of Mikhail.’
‘Oh him. I know he’s family and everything,’ Valentine said, adopting a conciliatory expression, ‘but to tell the truth I don’t entirely trust him.’
‘Entirely?’ Paul replied. ‘I wouldn’t trust him with a Sunday church collection! I only saw him for a moment. He went rushing off as soon as I arrived when he heard Kolchak was back in Omsk.’
‘I hear he’s in pretty deep with some Stavka officers. They’re looking to Kolchak for leadership.’