‘Boss, I am a Don Cossack, a free man, a fighting man.’
A vein started to beat at Jaba’s temple. ‘Anyone else?’
‘I am going too,’ said Fats Strizkaz. ‘Otherwise it’s death, inch by inch.’
Then Smiley raised his hand: ‘Me too. There’s spoils in wars. You can get rich.’
‘And I heard there’s more girls than a man can handle,’ squealed Little Mametka.
Jaba started to snigger at that. ‘Oh, Bette Davis! What do you know of girls?’
They were all laughing but when they went quiet, Deathless was flicking the dagger back and forth. No one had ever defied Jaba like this.
‘Die for the Bastard if you wish, boys’ Jaba said finally. ‘But, Golden, you have a problem. You’re a Political.’
‘I know the rules but things that were impossible a week ago are possible today. Winter will come at any minute and this is my last chance to get the boat to the mainland. Only you can do this, Boss. You’ve saved my life. Please let me live it.’
Jaba caressed his grey plumage of hair. ‘You must bless the Atamansha. Remember the information I won from her about the Commandant? I knew I’d need it one day and now is that moment. Smiley, go to the Commandant’s assistant and make an appointment for me to see General Shpigelglas today. Tell them it is to discuss the production delay at Madyak-8. Go now!’
Jaba looked at Benya. ‘You see, Golden’ – he shrugged in his debonair way – ‘isn’t life just a bowl of lobio beans?’
In the clump of poplar trees amidst the Don plains, the uproar of the planes flying low over the steppe awoke Benya abruptly. The sun was not quite up yet; it was still dark but there was the spread of turquoise on the horizon. He had slept better than he could remember; and he turned to look at Fabiana, who was stretching. Sometime during the night they had pulled on their britches but she was shirtless and he was overcome with her beauty, her honey-coloured eyes, and his luck at being brought back to life like this. But Socks was stamping the ground, her ears back and eyes rolling white, and he understood instantly something was not right. Fabiana’s palomino too was standing rigid, skittering nervously.
‘Darling,’ Fabiana said very coolly.
‘Move quickly,’ he whispered. ‘Someone’s close.’ They worked together as if they had always been a team, saddling the horses, their hands shaking as they tightened the girths, checked the stirrups, attached the saddlebags and, pulling on their shirts, mounted the horses, who needed no encouragement. As they loped out, Socks reared, almost throwing Benya, and they saw the two fresh, scrawny ponies pulling at the ropes that tied them to a tree.
‘Kalmyks,’ Fabiana said. ‘Malamore’s scouts.’
Leaning down, she cut the ponies free; a burst of gunfire rang out at almost point-blank range, spanged into the earth close to them and Benya, sensing the two shadows lying in the grass, glimpsed the black snouts of their weapons. The two ponies bucked and then bolted with Socks and Violante breaking into a terrified gallop. Pouring sweat, silver hammers beating in his temples, Benya held on to Socks’s mane and found himself riding with Fabiana and the two bolting ponies down into the long steppe grass just as the sun came up. When they slowed down, he realized how lucky they had been. The Kalmyk scouts had staked them out, sleeping almost beside them, but no Kalmyk would risk shooting their own ponies and the animals had bolted, leaving them, temporarily, mountless. Nonetheless, Malamore and his horsemen must be close.
II
At 7 a.m., Svetlana Stalina, wearing school uniform and her red Pioneers’ scarf, climbed into a Packard limousine outside the triangular yellow palace in the Kremlin where she lived. Klimov sat in the front with the driver as they headed out of the Troitsky Gate across town towards the Josef Stalin Commune School 801.
At the school gates, the director – as the headmistress was known – Comrade Kapitolina Medvedeva greeted her, virtually bowing.
‘Well?’ whispered Martha as they went into their tedious Communist Morality class. Martha understood what it was like to be in love, to be a member of Moscow’s ‘golden youth’, but even she couldn’t conceive how it felt to be Stalin’s daughter. There was her father’s portrait in this very class – the man she saw every evening. At assembly every morning, they sang ‘May Comrade Stalin Live Many, Many Years’; at every dinner or lunch, everyone drank a toast ‘To Comrade Stalin’. But as her father had recently explained to her, ‘You’re not “Stalin” and I’m not “Stalin”. Stalin is something bigger. Stalin is Soviet power!’
Martha poked her in the side: ‘Have you seen him?’
‘Just twice,’ whispered Svetlana as the lesson began.
‘Letters?’
‘Several!’
‘Like the one you showed me?’
Sveta nodded. ‘“I want to kiss you, I want to smell you, I want to taste you”,’ she said, quoting what Lev had written to her.
‘He actually wrote that? Oh my God! What does that mean, Sveta?’
‘I don’t know, Marthochka. But I love everything he says, every word.’
‘How was the kissing?’
‘Amazing. Heaven!’ Svetlana suppressed her giggles. ‘I’m blushing! Yesterday he sent me a book as a present. In English.’
‘What? Something naughty?’
‘Yes. The new Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls.’
‘Oh my God. Have you started it? I can’t wait to read it.’
‘I’ve been reading it all night. My father came in and I had it hidden in his Short Course and he didn’t notice. It’s so romantic, brilliant. The American Communist, named Jordan, fights in Spain and falls in love with this Spanish girl who’s much younger than him, and damaged by her tragic and difficult life. She’s called Maria.’
‘Sounds familiar!’
‘Yes of course, Lev is Jordan and I’m Maria. Oh, Lev’s so clever, so interested in everything…’
‘Is there anything in the newspaper?’
Sveta had Red Star in her satchel; she slipped it out and scanned the front page and there was Lev’s article, telling of a terrible battle on the Don Bend to stop the German advance, and then she felt herself almost gasping for air. She read:
Is the sun shining in Moscow, on the roses in the Alexandrovsky Gardens? Standing here as the cannons fire, as your heroic Red Army struggles against the Nazi hydra, I think of our capital and I believe the flowers there are blossoming. You can see the Kremlin’s crenellated battlements from your window…
The flush swept up Svetlana’s body like a scarlet tide and she fanned herself so energetically with the Short Course that several of the other pupils looked around. She passed the paper under the desk to Martha who read it avidly.
‘Mother of God, Sveta! He’s crazy! What would your father say? He might read it!’
But Svetlana was exhilarated. ‘He LOVES me! Anyway, it could be anyone looking at the flowers in the gardens. Only we know it’s addressed to someone inside the Kremlin.’
‘True. But your father wouldn’t believe that, would he?’
‘No, but I don’t care! I can’t wait to kiss my Lion again.’
The entire class was now looking at the two girls, who always sat at the back. The teacher, the loathsome and pedantic time-server, Dr Innokenty Rimm, hesitated. He was afraid of Svetlana and she enjoyed that. He couldn’t tell Stalina to be quiet. He wouldn’t dare. Instead he picked on Martha.
‘Peshkova! Are you with us today?’