‘They kept their arms when they were withdrawn from the Russian Front, of course,’ Browning explained. ‘Raring to get back in the fight, by all accounts. Trotsky’s bitten off more than he can chew.’
They both looked at Paul expectantly.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘good show,’ assuming this was the sort of response they wanted.
He still hadn’t quite grasped the significance of any of it, though, and when neither of the men added anything he felt compelled to say:
‘Look here, I’m sorry to seem dense but I don’t actually know what this Nazdar Company is. Or why one should be in the Ural Mountains.’
Browning sighed but Cumming’s face assumed a more tolerant expression.
‘The Czech unit at Arras?’
Paul frowned.
‘Arras. May, nineteen-fifteen?’
Browning was growing irritated. ‘Where you were serving when you were wounded, for God’s sake.’
Paul stared at them blankly. He was on Salisbury Plain in May 1915.
‘Passchendaele,’ he said. ‘I was wounded at Passchendaele, nineteen-seventeen.’
‘Liaison officer with Pétain’s Thirty-Third Corps,’ Cumming persisted. ‘Wounded at Arras in May. The Nazdar Company was dissolved in June following heavy losses and you went back to the East Surreys.’ He tapped his fingers on the file. ‘That’s what it says here. Passed fit for duty and returned to your regiment.’ His nostrils flared as if he had suddenly detected a bad smell. ‘Until that bit of unpleasantness, that is.’
As far as Paul remembered it had all been pretty unpleasant. He tried leaning toward the file but it was upside-down and he couldn’t make out the smudged type.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied.
Browning walked around the desk and peered at the file.
‘Been in hospital, haven’t you?’ he asked.
‘Five months. Not that I remember much about the first two.’
‘There you are then,’ Browning said to Cumming.
‘I rather think I’d have remembered being at Arras in nineteen-fifteen, though,’ Paul said. ‘After all, I remember Passchendaele.’
‘Doesn’t mention Passchendaele,’ Browning said.
‘Been passed fit for service?’ Cumming asked, ignoring the confusion.
‘I’ve got my board next week,’ Paul told him, adding, in an attempt to convey the impression that he was as raring to get back into the fight as this Czech Legion was, that he supposed he would be going back to his unit.
Somehow, though, he didn’t manage to get much in the way of raring emphasis into the statement. It came out as little more than a wistful coda.
‘Can’t wait for a medical board,’ Cumming announced, glancing at the file again. ‘Leg wound. At Arras.’
‘Head at Passchendaele,’ Paul amended. ‘And other injuries,’ just in case Cumming didn’t think a head wound was sufficient.
‘Says leg here.’ Cumming squinted through his monocle. ‘Caught one in the head did you? Compos mentis?’
‘Certainly sir,’ Paul replied, a little offended at the imputation. Then the phrase a fool and his money tripped through his head and it occurred to him, given the content of the note he had received from Burkett, that Cumming must be aware of just how easily he had been parted from his own. It gave him cause to wonder if, after all, some residual effect of his injuries had not been kept from him.
‘Odd you don’t remember Arras and liaising with the Nazdar Company then, isn’t it?’ Cumming persisted.
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Paul said.
‘You do remember…’
‘No. What I mean is, I wouldn’t have forgotten. If I’d been there… at Arras, with this Nazdar Company, I mean…’
‘Good Lord,’ Browning muttered.
‘Just what do you mean, Pavel Sergeyevich?’
Paul wished he’d stop using his Russian name. Calling him by what he now thought of as almost another man’s name was making him uncomfortable. He looked from Cumming’s expectant face to Browning’s and opened his mouth to explain it again when, belatedly, it occurred to him — just as it had when Burkett had first given him the note and he had suspected that it had not been meant for him — that Cumming and Browning were making the same mistake.
‘The regiment in your file. For Captain Paul Ross,’ he said. ‘The East Surreys, correct?’
Cumming raised an eyebrow, the Chow Chow face becoming almost human for a moment. ‘East Surrey Regiment, correct,’ he agreed.
‘Battalion?’
Cumming referred to the file again. ‘The First.’
‘The regulars,’ Paul said. ‘They were in France in nineteen-fifteen.’
‘There you are,’ Browning said.
‘But I’m in the Eighth Battalion. East Surreys, yes, but a service battalion. You’ve got the wrong Paul Ross.’
‘Kitchener’s Army?’ Browning said. ‘You’re saying you’re not a regular?’
‘I volunteered,’ Paul replied indignantly, as if not being a regular meant he was somehow deficient. ‘But that’s hardly the point. You see people keep confusing me with this other fellow, this other Paul Ross. We’re in the same regiment and even got our promotion at the same time.’ Adding, and not quite able to keep a trace of smugness out of his voice, ‘And if you take the trouble to check, I think you’ll find that it was the other Paul Ross who was your liaison officer with these Czechs.’
Cumming glared at Browning. ‘I thought you might have picked that up, Browning. This is supposed to be an intelligence organisation.’
‘Kell’s the one who should have picked it up,’ Browning complained. ‘I wouldn’t trust that blighter not to have done it on purpose. To make us look bad.’
‘You’re not Rostov, then?’ Cumming said to Paul, some of the wind having gone out of his bag.
For an instant Paul considered denying he was. Then Cumming turned a page in the file and Paul saw a photograph of himself pinned to the top of the sheet.
‘Looks like you,’ Cumming said.
‘It is me,’ Paul admitted, smugness deserting him. ‘I am Pavel Rostov.’
‘Well, there you are.’ Cumming declared, looking at Browning as if wondering what the problem was.
‘But I was never with Pétain. Never near Arras.’
‘It has to be Kell putting one over on us,’ Browning persisted.
‘Says here you were,’ said Cumming.
‘The other Paul Ross.’
Cumming frowned. ‘Not Pavel Sergeyevich…’
‘Not me,’ Paul finished for him.
‘Then who the devil is this other fellow?’
Paul shrugged. ‘I never met him. But we’re the same age, apparently, belong to the same regiment and the same club. Our correspondence is always getting mixed up.’
Cumming turned to Browning. ‘Do we need this other one then, do you think?’
‘He’s dead,’ Paul said.
‘Well,’ Browning said, ‘it seems he’s the one who liaised with the Nazdar company but this chappie’s got the Russian connection. I suppose either one will do. Bird in the hand? What do you think?’
‘The other one’s dead,’ Paul repeated.
Cumming’s Chou snout was flexing as if trying to sniff out the best course. ‘So you’ve got the Rostov connection but this other chap liaised with the Nazdar company. He’d be the one who spoke Czech, I suppose. You don’t speak Czech by any chance, do you?’