Piatakov put the book back where he’d found it, tucked half under Brady’s mattress. The text was in English, which Piatakov couldn’t understand, but there were plenty of drawings to look at, almost all of them depicting famous gunfights of the American West. When they’d served together in Ukraine, Brady had been fond of telling western stories over the evening campfire, and was always saying that his one regret was being born thirty years too late.
Two hours had passed since the depot robbery. Piatakov didn’t know how they’d all made it back to Brady’s room without running into the Cheka again, but somehow they had. Not all of them, he corrected himself. Ivan Grazhin would never pick another title from the pile of dog-eared Dostoyevsky novels by his bed, and Habib Ahmed Nasim would never see India again.
Chatterji didn’t seem that upset at the loss of his comrade, offering only a few stiff words extolling his glorious sacrifice. His other Indian companion had even less to say: the barely conscious Rafiq was laid out on Grazhin’s bed, white-faced and quietly wheezing. He seemed likely to die with or without any medical help, and Brady had decided that seeking some out posed too great a risk to the rest of them.
He had gone back out once everyone was there. The prearranged meeting with Suvorov was now more urgent: they had planned to take southbound trains the next morning, traveling in pairs they’d drawn by lot, but that was no longer feasible—the stations would be swarming with Chekists. Suvorov might be able to help, though Brady had expressed his doubts. Even if the other man had the contacts, he wouldn’t have time to make use of them.
Now they heard the returning American’s heavy tread on the stairs.
“The Chekas are fucking everywhere,” was the first thing Brady said, but his eyes went straight to Rafiq. “How is he?”
“No better,” Shahumian told him.
“Good,” Brady said. He looked around at the shocked faces. “Suvorov just informed me that Rafiq’s a British agent.”
Piatakov was confused. “But so is Suvorov!” he exclaimed.
“They work for different organizations, and Rafiq’s people knew nothing about our plans,” Brady said. “Still don’t, according to Suvorov’s bosses in London because Rafiq hasn’t filed a report since he joined us. But Rafiq’s people in London have sent someone out to contact him. Whether or not the man’s arrived, Suvorov doesn’t know.”
They were all looking at the stricken Indian.
“So what do we do with him?” Shahumian asked.
“Let him die,” Brady said simply.
“And if he doesn’t before we leave?” Shahumian asked.
“He will.”
There was a short silence. “Did Suvorov have anything useful to offer?” Shahumian asked.
“No, we’re on our own as far as getting out of Moscow’s concerned.”
“Then what should we do? Wait for morning or get going now?” Piatakov asked.
Brady didn’t hesitate. “Now,” he said. “We’re only five minutes away from the Paveletsky yards—that’s why we took this room in the first place—and a freight train’s our safest way out of the city. Two would be better, with some time in between. The militia must have noticed that Nasim’s an Indian, so Durga should be on the first. He and Aram should leave right away.”
Shahumian nodded. “And where do we meet?”
“Samarkand,” Brady decided after only a moment’s thought. “You can get there by train from the Caucasus or Samara, and the Cheka garrison there will be much smaller than the one in Tashkent. There’s a square with madrasahs on three sides called the Registan—I was reading about it the other day. Whoever’s there first, just keep turning up at noon until the others arrive. It’s in the native town, not the Russian one.”
“Which should we stay in?” Piatakov wondered out loud.
Brady shrugged. “We’ll be more noticeable in the native town but easier to find in the Russian. We’ll have to play it by ear.”
“And how long do we wait?” Chatterji asked.
“For as long as you have to. The journey could take a week, but a month’s more likely. And take all the coins you can easily carry.”
Once they had done so, Shahumian went to embrace Piatakov. “One last adventure,” he murmured with a smile. “I’ll see you in Samarkand.”
“You will,” Piatakov said, hoping it was true. From the window he and Brady watched the twosome walk away along the empty street. There didn’t seem to be any motor vehicles in the vicinity, and the distant chuff of a locomotive was reassuring.
Piatakov had wanted to travel with Aram, but the lots they’d drawn had decided otherwise, and leaving later with Brady at least offered one consolation—he could say good-bye to Caitlin.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he promised after telling the American where he was going.
“You’re crazy,” Brady said.
“Probably.”
“Is any woman worth it?” Brady asked half-jokingly.
Piatakov stopped by the door, looked back. “Yes,” he said simply.
Caitlin knew it hadn’t been one of Sergei’s shirts. But had it been his blood? Had he been hurt, or had he hurt someone else? The only good answer was neither, and that seemed unlikely.
North of the river again, she piloted the Zhenotdel Renault through Moscow’s dark and sparsely populated streets. On the door of an empty shop, someone had painted a huge bird in flight, a small biplane with German markings dangling from its claws. Farther down the same street, outside an abandoned hotel, a revolving door lay on its side like a giant’s abandoned spinning top. Here and there a working lamp illuminated a boarded shop front or a group of smoking militiamen; on one corner a huge poster demanding electrification of the countryside loomed across the stripped carcass of a horse.
As she drove past the New Theater on Bolshaya Dmitrovka the giant flower stalls constructed by the futurists seemed like strange growths swaying on the floor of a dark ocean.
She felt close to hysteria, as if all the weeks and months of her struggle with Sergei had engulfed her in one moment.
An errant child, that was what he was. She was angry with him. Frightened for him.
She had to bring him home.
After driving down Kamergersky Street, she turned onto Tverskaya and pulled up outside the Universalist Club. At the entrance she hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to remove the enamel star from her blouse front. Why? she asked herself. To hell with them.
She took a deep breath and walked into the building, down the narrow corridor, and into the main clubroom. Smoke, noise, and the smell of male bodies assailed her. The handful of women all looked like prostitutes, and the men who noticed Caitlin’s arrival were wondering whether she was one herself, if their head-to-toe appraisals were any indication. She didn’t see a soul she recognized.
She stood there, disgusted by the atmosphere. The tinkling jazz music, the smell of marijuana—it reminded her of the seedier clubs she’d visited in prewar New York. But they’d also been home to a wild kind of joy, and here the air seemed thick with the opposite, a lovingly cocooned sense of hopelessness. Was this what Moscow’s free spirits had come to?
She wanted to shout at them all, the way she’d shouted at Sergei.
A young man, obviously drunk, was leering at her. She turned to the next table, where two men were playing chess with homemade pieces, and asked them if they knew Sergei. They looked at her warily, shook their heads in unison, and bent back over their board.
“Are you looking for Piatakov?” a voice asked.
It was the drunk, teetering right behind her. She stepped back a pace. “Do you know where he is?”