‘That’s the officer I spoke with,’ Valentine said, pulling out his Party Card. ‘He’s in charge of the unit.’
When they reached him Valentine waved his card at the officer and said they’d be staying on the train.
‘Military only,’ the officer said.
‘But Party workers…?’ Valentine protested.
‘You’ll have to talk to the political commissar, comrade. All I know is military personnel only. Anyone political is up to him.’
Valentine looked out of sorts. ‘What now?’ Paul asked. ‘Talk to the commissar?’
‘Not him,’ Valentine said vehemently. ‘He’d ask too many awkward questions. We don’t want to arouse suspicion. We’ll get off at the station at Sviyázhsk and see how the land lies.’
There was only a handful of passengers left to get off at Sviyázhsk and as soon as a detachment who had been waiting on the platform boarded, the train left the station again, running north briefly before crossing the Volga over the new Romanov Bridge.
Outside the station they found half-a-dozen droshkys waiting for passengers who wanted to go into the town, some distance east on the banks of the Sviyaga River, one of the Volga’s tributaries.
The nags in the shafts and the men driving them all looked to Paul like the rejects left after the Red Army had conscripted anything of possible use. Valentine walked along the line looking at the drivers and chose a particularly grizzled one. Valentine asked him how far it was to Sviyázhsk.
‘Eight versts. Where are you staying?’
‘We’ve not made arrangements yet.’
‘Pity,’ said the driver as they climbed up behind him.
‘Are there rooms to be had?’
‘Not unless you’re army.’ He snapped the reins and the horse reluctantly began to move.
‘Nothing?’ said Valentine. ‘Anything will do.’
‘Not unless you’re army,’ the driver repeated.
‘Weren’t there steamers on the river?’ Valentine said as if it had just occurred to him. ‘We could stay on one of them.’
‘All requisitioned by the army for their flotilla.’
‘All of them? There must be something, surely. If there are no rooms… Weren’t there any boats the army didn’t take?’
‘Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t,’ the driver said. ‘Nothing a lady would want to stay on.’
‘We don’t mind roughing it for a night or two, do we?’ Valentine said turning to Paul and Sofya.
‘No,’ said Paul automatically.
‘Where is the flotilla?’
The driver turned in his seat and sized them up while the horse plodded on. His eyes lingered on Sofya.
‘On the Sulitsa beyond the Sviyaga. The front line is just across river from there. You’re not army, then?’
‘Us?’ said Valentine as if the idea was ridiculous. ‘No, we’re in the grain business.’
‘Well, if you’re here to buy wheat then the army’s got all that, too.’ He spat to one side of the carriage.
‘The army’s in the town, you say?’
‘All over it,’ the driver replied, gazing steadily at Valentine. ‘It makes food difficult to find. Prices are high.’
‘That’s the way of it with the army,’ Valentine sympathised. ‘We’re happy to pay you for your trouble, if you can find us accommodation.’
‘It won’t be cheap.’
‘That’s no problem,’ Valentine assured him. ‘You see,’ he said slowly after a pause, ‘we were hoping to get to Kazan… But I suppose the army is on the left bank of the Volga, too?’
‘From Vasilyevo to north of Gruzinskoye. They say they’re going to retake Kazan.’
‘When?’
‘Any day.’
The droshky driver pulled the carriage to a halt. High on a bluff, Sviyázhsk’s towers and domes rose above its other buildings pointing heavenward. Beyond the town, two tributaries of the Volga flowed darkly to join it from the south. On the far bank of the furthest river Paul could make out the tents of the army camp and a line of steamers moored to the bank.
‘That’s the Sviyaga. The Sulitsa’s beyond it where the army’s camped with the flotilla.’ He stared at Valentine pointedly. ‘Did you still want to go into town?’
‘You mentioned there may be something if we didn’t mind roughing it? As I said, we’re happy to pay you for your trouble.’
‘Only a fool refuses money,’ the driver said.
‘Accounting tokens, Kerenski or roubles?’
‘No tokens or Kerenski.’
‘Roubles it is.’
‘Times were hard then,’ the driver ruminated, ‘but a man knew where he stood.’
Valentine turned to Paul. Paul sighed, remembering the Finns. He had little left except the gold imperials Sofya was still wearing. He handed over his remaining notes.
‘Here,’ said Valentine to the driver, counting out the money. Will this help?’
‘I know a man who has a boat. You said you wouldn’t mind a boat?’
‘Just what we’re looking for,’ said Valentine.
The driver spat again. He cracked the reins and turned the droshky off the main road onto a side track.
‘That’s what I thought.’
35
‘Kazan? They say they will be there in a few days. Why not wait, go in after they’ve retaken the city?’
They were in the cramped saloon of a small steamer. The room was nothing more than a rough wooden structure built onto the deck of the boat, but big enough to hold a table and a few chairs. Sofya had dropped into one, looking hungry and exhausted. Paul and Valentine were standing at one end, at the foot of a few steps that led up into the captain’s wheelhouse. His name was Vasily Malinovsky. The droshky driver had told them that Malinovsky used to run up and down the Volga, carrying sightseers and a little cargo but had lost his business when the Bolsheviks came.
The steamer was called the Lyena, a diminutive of Ilyena, the name of Malinovsky’s wife. It wasn’t a very large boat and Paul wasn’t sure if either it or its captain was river-worthy; Malinovsky was an unkempt and bleary-eyed shambles of a man. If the empty vodka bottles lying around the floor of the small saloon could be taken as evidence, the captain was awash with enough alcohol to float his Lyena. It was floating but that seemed about as much as the steamer was capable of, since on boarding they had had to step over what Paul took to be a miscellany of engine parts.
Malinovsky had greeted them suspiciously, running a grimy hand over the stubble of his chin, and Valentine had approached the subject of what it was they wanted obliquely. Paul knew Valentine was being cautious, sounding out the man, not wanting to tip his hand… but then, if they weren’t all in the same boat, so to speak, trying to avoid the Bolsheviks, what were they doing hidden under the trees up a side channel of a tributary of the river?
Tired of the prevarication he suddenly interrupted.
‘By then it will be too late.’ Valentine’s glared at him but Paul pressed on regardless. ‘We need to get into Kazan ahead of the Red Army.’
Malinovsky’s eyes darted around his wheelhouse as if he suspected a trap. ‘Ahead of the army? Why would you want to do that?’
‘To contact the Czechs,’ Paul said.
‘You’re not Czechs.’
Having got in the same boat, Paul decided to take the metaphor a step further and burn it. ‘We’re British,’ he said.
Valentine groaned.
Malinovsky’s bleary eyes opened wider. ‘You’re with Kappel?’