“I was made the liaison officer for the Investigation Department’s dealings with the Okhrana,” Komarov continued, “which meant doing the investigative legwork on political cases whenever the Okhrana was overstretched. Which was most of the time after 1905. And I met quite a few of our current leaders over the years, sitting across a table from them in some Moscow station-house basement. It was usually an illuminating experience. Not always—the bourgeoisie has never completely cornered the market in morons—but usually. Most of them were better educated than my law professors, let alone me. I started reading socialist theory so that I could counter their arguments.” Komarov laughed. “I still don’t understand half of it, but I don’t suppose it matters. Arbatov understands everything perfectly—he could quote you the footnotes in all three volumes of Capital—and look what good it’s done him! That was always the trouble with the Mensheviks: they actually believed in a blueprint, a revolution in orderly stages. When reality proved resistant and Lenin had to tear up their precious plan, they all felt personally insulted. They still do.
“Anyway, one night I was working late at the office, and this Okhrana agent walked in through my door. I’d met the man several times and thought him a reactionary bore, so my first thought was that they’d searched my apartment and found some of the forbidden literature that I always had lying around. But no. He said he and his friends had been watching me for some time and asked if I’d consider working for the Bolsheviks. He, it turned out, had been one for years.
“I was astonished, but I didn’t think twice, which was extremely stupid of me. He could have been an agent provocateur, and I should have checked him out first. But I was lucky—he was genuine.
“That was in September 1908, just before the Bosnian Crisis erupted. I went home to my wife, bursting to tell her, but she’d already gone to bed. I sat there looking at her sleeping face, and suddenly realized that I couldn’t ever let her know. She was one of those people who never learn how to dissemble—her face always gave her away. When she discovered, after October, that we were on the winning side, she could hardly believe it.” Komarov sighed. “But she died the next year,” he said eventually. “What about you, Nikolai Matveyevich? Are you married?”
“Separated,” McColl said, as he rushed to rebuild his mental defenses. Komarov’s reminiscences were usually engaging enough to make you forget all other concerns, and McColl sometimes wondered if that was the aim.
“That is sad.” The Russian emptied the second bottle they’d gone through that night into their glasses, and for a moment McColl thought he was about to receive his first dose of Russian sentimentality from a political policeman. He should have known better; Komarov was as practical drunk as he was sober. “Marriage may be a bourgeois institution,” he said, only slightly slurring his consonants, “but I liked it. Remember what Vladimir Ilych said: you have to learn bourgeois manners before you can move on to proletarian graces. I don’t think we’re ready for free love, no matter what Kollontai thinks.”
“I don’t think Comrade Piatakova would disagree with you,” McColl said, rather intemperately.
Komarov smiled ruefully. “No,” he said, “but she is one of our best.” He rose a trifle unsteadily. “I shall wish you good night.”
McColl sat by himself for a few minutes, sipping the last of his vodka. He had, despite himself, come to like and respect Yuri Komarov, but letting that color his judgment would be extremely unwise. He suspected that Moscow’s prisons were full of people who had found the man a good listener.
Walking back to his compartment, he stopped on the coach veranda to savor the cool night air, then impulsively clambered up the iron ladder and onto the swaying roof. The moon was higher and brighter now, suffusing the desert with a pale silver glow. In all directions the featureless landscape stretched out to the flat horizon, and McColl had the fleeting impression that the train was stock-still on moving tracks, throwing fiery sparks into the night but actually going nowhere.
Caitlin was up early next morning and found herself sharing the saloon with a talkative Arbatov. The Menshevik’s suitcase was beside his chair.
“I’ll be leaving the train soon,” he explained. “Aruis is the railhead for Chimkent and Verny, and I’m told we should be there soon after eight. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the road journey, but at least it’ll be a change.”
“Do you know anyone in Verny?” she asked him.
“Not a soul. But making new friends is always good, and I expect some old ones will be joining me soon.”
“You really think it’s all over, don’t you?” she asked, surprised at the resentment she heard in her own voice.
He didn’t take offense. “In the sense you mean—probably yes.” He sat back in his seat, looking very much the professor. “Think what Lenin promised us in 1917.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “A free press, a multiparty democracy within the framework of the soviets, a state run by the workers and policed by a workers’ militia, an end to the death penalty. And what do we actually have? A gagged press, a one-party state run by that party’s leaders and policed by its own militia, executions by the thousand. There have been some achievements—of course there have—but most of them are fragile. Take your Zhenotdel and what it’s tried to do for Russia’s women. Changes like those make sense to you and me, but the timing’s all wrong. It’s simple really. We’re too late for capitalism and too early for socialism, and our Russia has fallen into the chasm between them. One that I fear will grow deeper and darker.”
She wanted to argue with him, but the fears he was expressing were ones she felt herself. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said, for want of anything better.
“Oh, so do I, but I’m usually right about things like that. And I do believe this is my stop,” he added as the train began to slow and another cluster of pale brown dwellings slid into view.
Caitlin wished him a good journey and watched through the window as he and Komarov exchanged jovial good-byes. As a less convivial-looking Chekist led Arbatov off toward a waiting line of horse-drawn carts, the train jerked back into motion.
Tashkent, as Maslov informed her a few minutes later, was only four hours away.
For Tonight’s Sake
The booking hall at Tashkent station was wide, airy, and far from crowded. Komarov sat on his upturned suitcase, feeling impatient. He had sent Maslov off in search of transport, but the rest of the party were standing in a group awaiting salvation, metaphorically clinging to one another like any bunch of strangers in a strange land. Even the cotton experts were reluctant to leave and were busy blaming each other for the fact that there was no one there to meet them.
Maslov returned with the air of someone whose mission had been accomplished. “Our car is here,” he announced, “and there are native troikas on their way from the hotel to collect the others.”
“You go with them,” Komarov said. “Yakov Peters is an old colleague,” he added in explanation. Which was something of an understatement—for several months in 1918, the two of them had virtually run the Moscow Cheka in tandem.
Maslov hid any disappointment well. “It’s the Tzakho Hotel,” he said.
“Right.” Komarov nodded farewell to the party and walked out to the forecourt. The sky was a bleached blue; the pastel-colored buildings on the far side of the park shimmered in the heat. A short, dark-haired Russian was standing by a dust-begrimed Fiat, holding the rear door open.