‘Understood, consul.’ He turned to his batman. ‘Jacopo, bring out Caruso.’
Malamore swung up on to his stallion, Borgia, motioning to his squadron of Cossacks and Kalmyk scouts to follow. He took out a thin cigar and one of the Kalmyks lit it for him.
‘He forced her?’ he asked Montefalcone, running the scenario through in his mind.
‘Surely he forced her.’
‘Surely? Madonna santa, Montefalcone, give me firm answers.’
‘Yes. At gunpoint. What Italian girl would ride off with an Ivan? Yes, at gunpoint.’
‘But the horse? How did he get that?’
‘He must have threatened her with a knife?’
‘Who gave him a knife?’
‘Maybe it was one of the surgical instruments.’
‘Guns?’
‘He just grabbed what he could.’
‘How?’
‘I’m not sure, sir.’
‘Isn’t your arsenal guarded according to regulations?’
‘Well, yes. But not every minute…’
‘You bungler,’ growled Malamore. Christ, these aristocrats were no good for anything.
Now that he was sure that Fabiana was his woman, he had to know if she was a traitor. If she’d crossed the line, he’d have to deal with it… There’d been a girl in Abyssinia, a long-limbed, dark-skinned gazelle, who’d betrayed the Italians and he hadn’t hesitated – he’d dealt with her himself. But then she was a native, an African, while Fabiana was Italian. But still… He raised his bushy eyebrows and ran his hands over his face.
‘Jacopo saw them, he saw the prisoner hit her.’ Montefalcone was still babbling.
‘Grazie a Dio,’ said Malamore, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God.’ She was still his girl, a good Italian, his future wife.
‘When the men spotted them and opened fire, the Ivan grabbed her reins and pointed his gun at her. She had no choice.’
‘Then all is clear,’ said Malamore. When he rescued her, she would belong to him, Fabiana would know that, and there’d be no more stupid mistakes. He turned Borgia. ‘Let’s go,’ he shouted to his posse of men.
‘Si, signore! What vehicles do you require?’ asked Montefalcone.
‘This is horse country. We ride out now. Catch us up, Montefalcone,’ and he spurred Borgia towards the east and clattered out of the village, with his Italian men in their black shirts, the Kalmyks on their bony ponies, followed by the Cossacks in their German uniforms, the steel of their spurs catching the morning rays.
Montefalcone mounted Caruso and followed Malamore’s men through the dust, his eyes burning. He too was thinking about Fabiana. She was forced, of course she was. He wiped his forehead, his head pounding. And yet he did wonder why she had her horse with her, why she had changed out of her white nurse’s uniform, and why so many weapons had gone missing.
He sighed. There was nothing as unpredictable as women – whatever Malamore said.
IV
Martha Peshkova wore her favourite lilac scent and the dress copied from American Vogue magazine by Cleopatra Fishman for her first date with the handsomest young man in Moscow. He was Sergo Beria, who could not have been more different in looks from his father. If anything, Martha thought, he resembled the swashbuckling film star Errol Flynn with his slim figure, his thick black hair, his elegant pencil-thin moustache and his well-cut uniform. He was eighteen; she was sixteen, and too young to go out to the Aragvi Restaurant so he had invited her to a lunchtime feast at his house.
Beria was the only Soviet leader to live in a mansion right in the middle of Moscow; most of the leaders, such as Molotov and Satinov, lived in the grand apartment block on Granovsky. But Beria was special. Sergo’s father worked so hard that he barely returned to eat or sleep, so it was his mother, Nino, a pretty blonde woman, and also a Georgian, who served Martha and Sergo a Georgian supra in the kitchen of the heavily guarded house.
Martha watched Sergo carefully. She knew that his father was in charge of the dark realm of power, the Organs and the Camps. She was acquainted with this world because an earlier secret police chief, Yagoda, had been in love with her mother Timosha and had openly pursued his passion under the nose of her father, in front of her father-in-law Gorky, right there in his famous mansion. But Yagoda had been tried and shot before the war; and his successor Yezhov had also been sacked and had vanished, almost certainly shot too. Then Beria had been appointed, and it was clear that he was a much more impressive leader, intimately trusted by Stalin himself. Still, Martha had grown up in this carnivorous milieu and even though she was so young, she knew its dangers. Her friend Svetlana was kind but she was still a princess who liked to get her own way in all things, while Vasily Stalin was a vicious goblin, a budding Caligula, a future Nero. Martha’s mother, Timosha, had told her again and again: ‘Marthochka, don’t marry into the Berias. That man Beria is… Don’t ask but I know things. Just don’t!’ But Martha had argued with her: ‘Mama, Sergo isn’t like his father. Really he’s a sweet and decent person.’
But there was already one fly in the ointment. Someone else was also in love with Sergo Beria: her friend Svetlana Stalina. Martha knew that, when she was a little girl visiting the seaside in Georgia, where they had been guarded by Beria, Svetlana had fallen for Sergo. But now Sveta was infatuated with her screenwriter Lev Shapiro and she had quite forgotten about Sergo. So, surely, the coast was clear…
After the Georgian feast, cooked by Nino herself, of khachapuri, a sort of pizza, lobio bean soup, mtsvadi and spicy pkhali, Sergo said, ‘Mama, I’m going to take Martha for a walk. Marthochka, shall we stroll?’
‘I’d love that…’ said Martha.
It was a hot afternoon in Moscow as they walked through the battered streets. They came from similar worlds, attended the same schools, knew the same people – the Stalins, the Mikoyans, the Satinovs. They had to be careful but they could speak with some honesty to each other. So naturally as they strolled around Moscow, through the Alexandrovsky Gardens beside the Kremlin, around the Patriarchy Pond, up Tverskaya (now renamed Gorky Street, for Martha’s grandfather), they chatted in a way that was possible only for the tiniest coterie of young people. Sergo knew everything – how the Germans were about to burst across the Don and push for Stalingrad, how it was even possible that they might reach Stalin’s city and how the Red Army would fight to the death there, street by street, factory by factory – so when he asked after Svetlana, Martha hesitated and then told him all about her passion for Lev Shapiro.
‘I’m so glad for her,’ said Sergo, lighting up a Herzegovina Flor for himself and for Martha. ‘She must be so lonely in the Kremlin. So lonely. How lovely that she has someone. We all need someone.’
‘We do,’ agreed Martha. ‘But promise me, don’t tell a soul about Sveta. She told me in strictest confidence, no one else must know…’
V
Benya and Fabiana had ridden their horses through a stream and were now headed back the way they had come. Benya was no tracker but, like so many Russians, he had read The Last of the Mohicans and wondered if there had ever been a mounted Jewish scout before! He remembered that Prince Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s lover, had created a regiment of Jewish cavalry, the Israelovsky, but the Prince de Ligne had written that Jews couldn’t ride – they looked like ‘monkeys on horseback’. Well, it’s true Jews aren’t born horsemen; we are scholars not soldiers, and now I am trying to be both – just to live another day, he thought.