With dusk approaching, the train brought them close to a large oasis. Here it stopped for several hours, partly to take on a full load of water, partly to allow its passengers and crew the luxury of a long warm bath. Save for the unhappy shift of troops left to guard the train, everyone trailed a quarter mile out across the desert, reminding McColl of a charabanc party searching for the sea at low tide. One woman’s bright pink parasol completed the picture.
Once water had been taken for drinking and the engine, everyone waded in. McColl had wondered what level of propriety the mixing of the sexes would produce, but apparently no one else had thought the issue worth considering, and as far as he could tell, the few naked women received no more attention from the men than they would have done in a doctor’s surgery. It made him feel slightly ashamed of his own interest in Caitlin’s slim frame, which was every bit as desirable as he remembered it.
He lay back in the shallow water and studied the empty sky. With the light now fading in earnest, stars were beginning to appear, and he found himself remembering nights on the deck of the ship that had taken him out to South Africa and the astronomy-loving sergeant who’d taught him the constellations. It seemed so long ago, yet here they all were, blinking back into view, insisting that nothing had changed.
Caitlin was a Leo, he thought, searching in vain for that group of stars. Komarov’s news from Tashkent—that after murdering an old comrade, Brady and her husband had managed to escape—had clearly upset her, but she now seemed increasingly resigned to their trip proving longer than expected.
McColl wasn’t about to complain. He was in no hurry to leave her again.
An hour or so later Caitlin and McColl were both in the saloon when the train clanked wearily to yet another halt. She put her face to the window, shielding her eyes against the reflected light. “Let’s go outside for a minute,” she suggested.
They climbed down and walked a few yards from the train. The desert stretched darkly away, the receding curves of the dunes like an ocean of sleeping giants. In the sky above, the Milky Way floated like a jeweled veil.
All down the train, people were getting out to stretch their legs. She considered putting her arm through his but decided it wasn’t a good idea.
“Tell me about your husband,” he said, denting her sense of well-being.
“What would like to know?” she asked, more brusquely than she intended.
“How did you meet?”
“I met him first at Kollontai’s wedding, at the beginning of 1918. But we didn’t… didn’t become lovers until the spring of 1919, a long time after you and I… And we didn’t see much of each other—I was in Moscow, and he spent most of his time away at the front.”
“Why did you get married?”
“He wanted to. I was never sure why, and I don’t think he was either.”
“I see.”
No you don’t, she thought. “It was part of the war,” she said, feeling she owed him some sort of explanation. “Most people called them ‘comrades’ marriages’; Kollontai’s phrase was ‘erotic friendships.’ People who liked each other sharing a bed, without thinking too far into the future.”
“Ah.”
“What about you? Have you married again?”
“No.” He hesitated. “I was with someone for a while. It sort of started by accident and lasted a few months.”
She was surprised that hearing this hurt and more than a little disappointed in herself. “So what else have you been doing with yourself?” she asked lightly.
“Repairing automobiles. Converting some for disabled veterans. And I’ve just spent a few months in prison.”
“What for?”
“Knocking a policeman over.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“It’s a long story. Next time we have an hour to spare…”
“How’s your mother?”
“Flourishing, despite everything.”
“I was sorry to hear about Jed,” she said. Jack’s brother had been dead for almost three years, which seemed a long time to delay her condolences. She dragged herself back to the present and asked him what he thought of Komarov’s chances of catching Brady and Sergei.
“Not bad, I’d say. I don’t know about your husband or the Armenian, but Brady and the Indians should stick out like sore thumbs in Turkestan, and there must be a lot of Cheka offices between Tashkent and the border.”
“Yes,” she agreed. She no longer knew whether Sergei’s capture would relieve or dismay her.
“I suppose you’ll be returning to Moscow the moment this is over,” McColl said.
“Of course,” she replied automatically.
McColl advanced his second pawn and took a large sip of vodka. Caitlin had retired for the night, and Arbatov had recently discovered that one of the women traveling alone was also bound for Verny. Maslov was probably polishing buttons or boots.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Komarov asked.
“No, none,” McColl replied, instantly on guard.
“I had a brother,” the Russian said. “He was older than me, three years older. He joined the navy in 1900, and we celebrated his commission and the centenary with a single party.” He smiled wryly. “Which felt ironic even then.”
“What did?”
“Oh, all that stuff about the new century: the fresh start, the new man, peace between nations. All of it. And there we were happily assuming that the military offered the brightest of futures.”
“What happened to your brother?” McColl asked two moves later.
“Vassily went down with his ship at Tsushima. I was twenty then, and my father expected me to follow my brother’s example. But I refused. Not for political reasons or none that I’d consciously worked out. As you no doubt remember, when the Japanese War ended the military’s prestige was lower than ever. I was a student at the time, a law student in Moscow, and the last thing I wanted to do was fight for the czar. People used to assume that all law students were reactionaries, but in most cases the reverse was true, and for good reason. It’s only in countries like England and America that lawyers make money, because there the law has an empire of its own, independent from the state. We had no such expectations, and most of us were constitutionalists, dreaming of parliaments and bourgeois democracy.”
He paused to bring out a knight. “Fortunately I failed my law exams. There was too much to learn, and I had too many other interests—politics, women, playing cards. Rural property law couldn’t compete. So, I became a policeman. A friend of my father’s secured me a post at the Moscow Investigation Department, and rather to my surprise, I found myself loving the work. There was something different every day, and it was always interesting.”
“Then how…?”
Komarov poured them each another couple of inches. “How did I get from there to the deputy chairmanship of the M-Cheka? Well, I’d always been politically minded—my mother once told me how enraged I’d been as a four year old when we found ourselves watching a column of men in chains on their way into exile. In my first year as an investigator, I was just a problem solver, and quite a good one, if I say so myself. But if that’s all a city policeman does, he ends up holding his nose. There are no men better placed to understand a society than those that police it and no men more wary of radical change because they know they’ll be in the front line when the bombs and bullets start flying. Which is one of the reasons policemen drink a lot,” he added, tipping back the glass of vodka.