A mist crept along the river. It’s sluggish fingers reached over the swirling current and drifted with the eddies. Dusk had fallen but Paul knew six hours of true darkness was all they could count on. They had spent the evening in the saloon pouring over the charts again. They were rudimentary; according to Malinovsky, the detailed knowledge of the Volga, its shoals and underwater obstructions, were in his head. No one knew it like him, he boasted, and Paul had marvelled at the change that had come over the demoralised wreck of a man they had found on the boat that afternoon. He suspected Malinovsky had been at the vodka again. They had all taken a nip earlier, even Sofya, to stave off hunger pangs more than anything. There was nothing to eat on the boat and they had brought nothing with them. Malinovsky offered to go into Sviyázhsk and buy food — it could still be had, he said, despite the ruinous prices. With Paul’s imperial roubles in his pocket the captain now seemed game for anything, but Valentine vetoed the suggestion. Given what Malinovsky now knew, he wasn’t prepared to let the captain out of his sight.
He had already taken Paul to task for saying too much to Malinovsky. Paul had replied facetiously:
‘You could always slit his throat and steal the boat.’
Valentine had hesitated, as if taking the proposal seriously. ‘Do you know how to operate it?’
Paul dropped the subject.
Malinovsky told them the Red Army on the Volga was divided into two groups — the left group with the flotilla stretched along the lower reaches of the Sulitsa, south of the village of Savino to where the Sulitsa joined the Sviyaga and flowed into the Volga; the left group, on the north bank of the Volga, was sat across the railway line and along the banks of another tributary. Rumour in Sviyázhsk had it, Malinovsky maintained, the army would move east and attack Kazan any day. They had artillery, armoured trains and cavalry to augment the infantry. The steamers that made up the flotilla, apart from the three destroyers from the Caspian, were a variety of craft. Some were bigger than Malinovsky’s Lyena and a few were even smaller, although none, to his knowledge, were large enough to mount artillery. That would have to be brought up by rail or overland along the dirt roads that connected the villages strung along the Volga. Or alternatively on the road a few versts further north that followed the railway line. Malinovsky had heard, although the captain couldn’t vouch for the truth of it, that there was another army straddling the railway line to the east of Kazan. He had heard them refereed to as the Arsk Group, under a man named Azin. These weren’t Bolsheviks but a revolutionary peasant army, Tartars and the like.
It struck Paul that all of Russia’s armies were peasant armies. It fell to that human mass to do the fighting whatever the case and whoever the commander. It was their fate to be picked up and wielded like a club; a brute force given as fodder to the artillery and machinegun and to be regarded in the final accounting as no more than casualty figures. No tsar, Bolshevik or White leader, as far as Paul was able to determine, thought of them as anything other than a resource, something to be exploited and expended as occasion demanded. It astounded him just how complaisant they always were, biting back only when pushed beyond endurance, and even then rarely. Now they had been recruited to fight each other, Bolshevik throwing them against White. He couldn’t help hoping that they would just refuse.
They were waiting for full darkness. Malinovsky said that if they could steam past the flotilla to where the Sviyaga and the Sulitsa joined the Volga, they would make good time once they caught the stronger current on the main river. The trick would be to get past the flotilla unchallenged. He still had the red flag they had made him fly when they had evacuated Kazan and, if they hoisted it, it might be enough to fool anyone watching and give them the head start they needed to Kazan. With the new engine parts he had fitted, Malinovsky bragged he could outrun anything else in the flotilla. Paul decided it was hardly the time to remind the captain that only that afternoon he had referred to the Lyena as an old lady who needed coaxing and frequent rest. There was little enough optimism around for Paul to crush any that did rear its head.
The Lyena had a shallow draught allowing Malinovsky to hug the bank as they passed under the town of Sviyázhsk. Approaching the confluence of the Sviyaga and the Sulitsa, the lights of the Red Army camp showed through the trees. The engine chugged softly, voices from the camp carrying above it on the still air. The campfires stringing the bank through the trees shimmered like glowing links of a chain.
Paul squatted in the stern on a stack of timber by the boiler. He was wishing he had a gun of some description. A rifle would have been his first choice but he’d have taken his old army Webley in a pinch. They had taken that off him in Finland although he discovered Valentine had somehow managed to hang on to the pistol he had taken off Oblenskaya on the steamer. He was presently crouched in the bow with it, under the wheelhouse. Sofya was in the small saloon, having been told to keep her head down.
Paul had looked around the boat for a weapon but had found nothing more lethal than one Malinovsky’s large spanners. He grabbed it nevertheless. It might not be a lot of use but at least he could brain anyone who attempted to board the steamer. That was assuming they weren’t blown out of the water first.
Joining the Sulitsa, Paul felt the current quicken. Malinovsky steered the boat into the centre of the stream to catch the flow. A second later a challenge reached them from the far bank, calling on them to identify themselves. The night suddenly filled with an ominous silence except for the cough of the Lyena’s engine. Paul held his breath.
‘The steamship Lyena,’ Malinovsky shouted back, leaning out of the wheelhouse. ‘Joining the flotilla.’
The silence deepened. Then the voice called back, ‘Advance, Lyena.’
Malinovsky opened the throttle and the little steamer gathered speed with the current. To his right Paul saw the boats of the flotilla moored against the eastern bank, lights strung like pearls on their rails and smoke stacks. Past them loomed the larger outline of one of the destroyers. On the bank beyond, the camp was alive with movement. Shadowy figures flitted in and out of the trees. The Lyena’s engine was rattling noisily now, drowning all sound from the shore. Paul fed more timber into the boiler’s firebox as Malinovsky had told him to do and was half-choked by the smoke streaming aft from her stack.
Clearing the most easterly of the moored steamers, it must have become apparent that the Lyena had no intention of slowing and joining the rest of the boats. Paul waited for another challenge but could hear nothing above the beat of the Lyena’s engine and, just as he thought they had got away with it, a spotlight illuminated the river behind them and he heard a crack as sharp as a bullwhip.
The bulwark beside him splintered. An moment later something whined past his ear instantly followed by a second crack. Memories of the trenches came flooding back as he realised he was under fire. He brandished the spanner pointlessly then threw himself to the deck as the light ranged across the river. From the bank ahead of them the sound of a machinegun cackled like a maniac above the pounding engine. The wheelhouse glass shattered and the steamer seemed to judder as rounds hammered into her hull. The Lyena bucked and veered to starboard as she joined the main channel of the Volga, wallowing like a hippopotamus as the two currents converged. Malinovsky swung her towards the northern bank and the machinegun fire receded behind them. Paul raised his head above the bulwark, peering back along the river and listening for the sound of a chasing destroyer. The spotlight was uselessly ranging the southern bank and one of the campfires, set higher from the river, seemed to flare brighter as he watched. The boom of artillery followed, echoing over the water. He ducked again as the shell screamed overhead and splashed into the river beyond the bow. Another followed but without the spotlight the gunners could not get their range. The shell whined over their heads to port and exploded in the trees on the northern bank.