“No, but we do need your help,” Brady said. “Travel money.”
Rogdayev laughed, but Piatakov heard no humor in the sound. “And you think I have rubles to spare? We fought together, and as I remember it, we never received a single day’s pay for the privilege.”
“We don’t want your money, Vladimir Sergeievich. Moscow must fund your work here, and a few hundred rubles won’t be missed. What better propaganda could Lenin ask for than another revolution in Asia?”
Rogdayev paused before answering, and in that space of silence, all three men heard the approaching car. The gun that appeared in his hand must have been hidden under his cushion. “I am sorry,” he said without much conviction.
“But your loyalty is now to the party,” Piatakov sneered.
“There was a time when you didn’t find that reprehensible,” Rogdayev retorted.
“We must never forget Vedenskoye,” Brady said quietly.
“What are you talking about?” Rogdayev asked.
Piatakov’s mind went blank for a moment, but then he remembered. The maneuver Brady had taught him three years before, which he claimed had been invented out west by two notorious outlaw brothers. And which had actually saved them only a few weeks later, in that tiny village not far from the Volga. Vedenskoye.
Back then, in the summer of 1918, a White officer had been holding the gun, an arrogant little bastard who couldn’t have been much more than twenty.
Piatakov leaned forward to put his glass on the table, then suddenly threw himself backward, upturning the chair and falling behind it.
A shot crashed out. Piatakov scrambled to his feet to find Rogdayev slumped back, a large bloody hole under his left eye. Brady was pushing the Colt back into the waistband of his shirt, a businesslike look on his face.
“This way,” the American said, walking out onto the balcony. “It’s not a long drop.”
“No,” Piatakov said. He could hear feet on the street outside, orders being shouted.
“What then?”
“They’d be right behind us. We have to take their car.”
Brady grinned. “Good idea.”
There were feet on the stairs. Brady and Piatakov positioned themselves on either side of the door and listened as the men outside decided to knock it down. They came in with a rush, almost tumbling over one another.
“The Keystone Chekas,” Brady said mockingly. “Drop the guns, comrades. That’s good. Now, how many more are there with the car?”
The three men pursed their lips with unanimous obstinacy.
Brady stepped forward and put a bullet through the center of one man’s foot. After looking more surprised than hurt, the victim slumped to the floor with a whimper.
Brady pointed the gun at another man’s knee. “How many?”
“One.”
“I’ll get him,” Piatakov said, grabbing the cap from the fallen Chekist’s head and placing it on his own. He ran down the stairs and walked calmly across to the car, aware of people down the street ducking back into their houses. They were presumably thanking God that the Cheka hadn’t come for them.
“Trouble?” a bored voice asked from the car.
“Only for you,” Piatakov said, pointing Rogdayev’s pistol at the man’s head. “We’re going upstairs.”
In Rogdayev’s room Brady was holding a gun on the prisoners with one hand and trying to unravel the carpet with the other. “It’s all there is,” he said. “You watch them.”
It took the American ten minutes to prize out enough twine to tie all four men up. “Tomorrow they’ll be thanking us for not shooting them,” he said cheerfully, before ripping the telephone off the wall. “Let’s go.”
Piatakov took one last look at the dead Rogdayev and followed Brady down the stairs. “I’ll drive,” Piatakov insisted. The only previous occasion on which he’d seen the American behind a wheel, Piatakov had been astonished by the man’s timidity, which was so at odds with his usual behavior. “Which way?”
“Our lodgings,” Brady said.
“Is there anything there we need?”
“Probably not, but there’s something I want to leave behind. A little misdirection.”
It was only a five-minute drive through virtually empty streets. While Brady went up to their room, Piatakov checked the petrol tank before climbing back in behind the wheel. He remembered how shocked he’d been to discover that Caitlin could drive, and how angry that surprise had made her. The phrase “swallowing gender-based assumptions” stuck in his mind.
Brady came out looking pleased with himself, carrying both their bags. After dropping them in the back, he took his seat in the front and pulled out their dog-eared map.
“So we’re heading south,” Piatakov said, just to be sure.
“Yeah. Look for a sign to Khodjend.”
“How far is that?”
“About a hundred miles.”
Piatakov started the car. The streets were even emptier now, just one lone walker in the city center, swaying to a rhythm that only he could hear. There were no signs to speak off, but the moon was up, and the dark line of mountains occasionally visible off to the left meant he was heading in the right direction.
They had no trouble at the guard post on the city’s southern boundary; the guards saluted them through, knowing a Cheka vehicle when they saw one. After that there was only the moonlit highway, rough but surprisingly wide, the odd copse of trees a dark blotch on the star-filled sky.
Brady lit one of his foul-smelling cigarettes. “I feel like Butch Cassidy,” he said.
“Who?” Piatakov asked, glad that the windows were open.
“He was the leader of an outlaw gang. Back in the States. A successful one, for a while. And when it looked like he was going to get caught, he and his partner went off to South America. Started all over again.”
“Just like us,” Piatakov thought aloud. “What happened to them?”
The American laughed. “Don’t ask.”
Arbatov’s Chasm
Through that day and the next, the train made steady progress across a land growing slowly whiter, barer, less hospitable. On the third morning, they all woke to find the grass was gone; to the south the Aral Sea was reflecting the sun like a vast silver plate left out in the sand.
McColl had considered leaving the train at Orenburg, slipping into the town in the early hours and losing himself in the general confusion. He hadn’t thought Komarov would delay the train to search for a lost interpreter and was as confident as he could be of eventually finding his way out of Russia. He knew where Brady and Co. were going, and was almost certain of what they intended to do when they got there—all that remained was getting the word back to Cumming.
So why had he stayed on the train? He had convinced himself that the nearer they got to Persia, the better his chances of reaching friendly soil. And he had started to wonder whether Cumming had the wherewithal to find and stop a group of renegades that was probably under the protection of both Five and Delhi’s DCI. Or indeed, whether he’d want to as much as McColl did. Gandhi and his fellow stretcher-bearer hadn’t carried Cumming down from Spion Kop, and it hadn’t been Cumming’s foster child that Brady had murdered in Kalanchevskaya Square.
And then of course there was her. The woman he thought he’d seen the last of.
She might still love her husband, as she certainly did her work. But there was no point in kidding himself—he loved her as much as ever.
In the days that followed their departure from Orenburg, Caitlin couldn’t shake the feeling that someone out there was testing her resolve. Sergei’s departure, the carrion pile at Ruzayevka Junction, the roar of hunger at Sorochinsk… each accompanied by a cold voice intoning: “See, this is another price to pay. Are you willing to pay this one? If so, we’ll move right on to the next.”