“I do,” he said calmly.
They walked several yards in silence.
“So why did Komarov bring you along?” McColl asked.
“Because they have no photographs, and he knows I can identify Sergei, Brady and Aram Shahumian. Because I might be able to persuade Sergei to give himself up. Or just because he can.” Looking up, she saw that the man in question was walking toward them.
“I’m glad that you two have met,” Komarov said in greeting, an almost genial smile on his face.
After his talk with Caitlin, McColl went back to his compartment and tried to lose himself in a Turgenev novel he had borrowed from the saloon. But he found it impossible to concentrate—his unconscious mind was much more interested in endlessly replaying the conversation he’d just had out on the platform.
There was a lot she hadn’t told him. She’d implied that her presence on the train was far from voluntary, and the questions she’d asked him suggested a lack of knowledge when it came to her husband’s intentions. Indeed, when McColl had told her that Gandhi was the likely target, she had seemed surprised. Not to mention disapproving. She hadn’t actually criticized her husband, but then why would she? It occurred to him that she and Sergei might have agreed to let each other follow their own paths and consciences for a while, just as McColl and she had done in 1916.
And then there was Brady. She must have introduced the American to her husband, which presumably meant that she was still in touch with the bastard after his killing of Fedya. Then again, she might not know that Brady had shot him.
Too many questions, he thought. Not to mention too many memories.
The train continued on its stop-start way. He got off whenever he could, to give his body exercise and his mind something different to ponder. Most of the soldiers he talked to were young and seemed strangely sullen considering they’d just won a war—there was none of the enthusiasm that he’d witnessed among Bolshevik supporters three years earlier. The cotton experts he met in one samovar queue were a very different matter. These two stocky Russians heading south on government business oozed good cheer and optimism—after fifteen minutes in their company, McColl felt positively exhausted.
There was no further sign of Caitlin, though, either on the sun-baked platforms or later in the dining car, where Komarov again brought out his chess set.
As before, McColl found it easier to accept than refuse the invitation to play, but merely being in Komarov’s company demanded as much concentration as playing the game. The Russian was easy to talk to, too easy, and McColl felt the need to measure each thought before allowing it into the open.
They had just finished the first game when another man appeared, the one with the neat beard that McColl had seen by the train in Kazan Station. The newcomer shook hands with Komarov and took a seat at the adjoining table. “One of your praetorians?” he asked, indicating McColl.
Komarov smiled and introduced them. Ivan Arbatov, as McColl knew from his London briefing, was one of the last Menshevik leaders still at liberty in Lenin’s Russia. Or had been. McColl remembered the Chekist escort at Kazan Station.
“Where are we sending you, Ivan Ivanovich?” Komarov asked as he reset the pieces, confirming McColl’s suspicion.
“Verny. Or whatever it’s called this month—your party’s penchant for name changing is becoming almost obsessive.”
“It’s called Alma-Ata now,” Komarov told him.
“Whatever. Nothing but apples to eat, they tell me. I loathe apples.” Arbatov stirred his tea morosely, then smiled. “But don’t let me interrupt your game. We can talk at some other time. At this rate,” he added, staring out into the darkness, “we shall be spending several years in each other’s company.”
Komarov had finished resetting the pieces.
“It’s a great relief, you know,” Arbatov went on conversationally, “being ejected from the political arena. Suddenly I can say exactly what I think again, without worrying about whether that will be the phrase or the sentence that finally gets me into trouble. A relief,” he repeated. “I hold no grudge against you, Yuri Vladimirovich. I want you to know that. Now I really will leave you to your game.” He gave them each a farewell nod and left the carriage.
“Old fool,” muttered Maslov, who’d been standing in the vestibule doorway for the last few minutes.
“Perhaps,” Komarov said, “but that old fool was a comrade of Lenin’s when you were still a mother’s dream.”
“Why is he being exiled?” McColl asked. He had found the Russians’ conversation both bizarre and touching in its old-world civility.
“The usual,” Komarov said, holding out his hands for McColl to choose a color.
Two hours later he had lost three games in a row and was about to plead exhaustion when the train clattered over a succession of points and began to slow down alongside another line of lighted carriages.
“Samara?” Maslov asked hopefully, looking up from his book.
Komarov was trying to see out, his hands cupped around his eyes. “No. The old fool was right—we’ll be on this train for years.”
It squealed to a halt, and the three of them climbed down to find themselves in a multitrack yard. Looking under their train and the one alongside it, McColl could see at least half a dozen others. He remembered Ruzhkov’s remark about trains disappearing into thin air.
Komarov and Maslov were already walking past their train’s locomotives, and McColl strode after them. A couple of hundred yards beyond the lines of stabled trains, the lights of a small station were burning; to left and right, on the slopes of the shallow cutting, hundreds of shadowy figures moved among myriad campfires, the sum of their murmuring voices sounding almost sepulchral. The whole scene, in fact, felt strangely biblical.
They walked on to the station, Ruzayevka Junction, as a large nameboard proudly proclaimed. An old woman was sitting on the platform, deftly spitting chewed sunflower seeds out onto the tracks.
Behind the station more fires illuminated a palisaded area no larger than a tennis court, into which were crammed several hundred prisoners. They appeared to be mostly peasants and mostly men, though there were a few young boys to be seen. Red Army soldiers surrounded the staked fencing, talking among themselves, the ends of their cigarettes occasionally flaring in the gloom.
At the door of the station building, a soldier barred their way, then examined Komarov’s credentials with a thoroughness which exasperated Maslov. Eventually they were allowed inside, where the Cheka officer in charge provided suitable recompense with a display of unmitigated awe. His news was less inspiring. A bridge up ahead was down—maybe blown up, maybe simply collapsed—and for the moment no trains could continue on to Samara. There was no other route worth considering. But the engineers were working on repairing it. It would take them twelve hours, perhaps twenty-four.
Komarov asked who the prisoners were.
“Antonovists.”
Komarov nodded. “Keep me informed,” he said, and turned to leave. As they walked back alongside the tracks to their train, McColl found himself imagining that medieval armies occupied the slopes on either side and that dawn would see them launch their attacks across the shining rails.
The first time Caitlin heard the sound it eluded recognition, but the second time, half-awake, she could not be deceived. It was gunfire.
She dressed quickly, exited the carriage, and walked briskly down the corridor between two trains in the direction the sound had come from. It was still early morning, the sun not yet visible over the hills ahead, and for a moment, as she stepped out into open space and saw the slopes covered with bodies, she thought she’d walked into a massacre. But then she saw heads raised among the smoldering fires, and realized that they, too, had been woken by the noise.