The drumbeat faded; the American rowed on, his weariness apparently gone.
Piatakov raised the telescope again. There were several barges lined up at the quay, some piled high with cotton, others awaiting their share of the towering mounds on the quayside. And there, a couple of hundred yards downstream, was their passport to Afghanistan. The riverboat was more than a hundred feet long, with a deck barely five feet clear of the water, and what looked like a long two-story house squarely plonked amidships. The line of portholes on the upper floor suggested passenger cabins; the lack of windows below suggested space for freight. At the bow end, a small square bridge was set atop and forward of the main structure; in the stern, a large cylindrical casing covered a giant paddle wheel. Red lights glinted at either end, but there was no sign of life between them.
Ten minutes later Brady maneuvered their boat alongside the riverboat, only a few feet away from where someone had neatly stenciled “Red Turkestan.” Chatterji grabbed hold of the deck edge and squeezed himself up through the railings. He stood there and listened for a second, then disappeared into the darkness, gun in hand.
Brady and Piatakov followed, leaving their skiff to drift away downstream. Like a balloon released into the sky, Piatakov thought—a sad sort of freedom. One of Aram Shahumian’s favorite epigrams came to mind: a revolution was like a wild horse; it wasn’t a matter of whether you’d be thrown from its back, simply of when.
Scorpions
“Act naturally,” Brady said as they reached the door that led out onto the deck. The three of them had spent the night in a storeroom, and the Red Turkestan had been underway for over an hour, having departed Charjui soon after daybreak.
The American opened the door and stepped through. Behind him, Piatakov shielded his eyes against the sudden glare. The world outside looked like a child’s painting: a shiny white boat on a bloodred river under a bright blue sky. At the river’s edge, green reeds gave way to yellow-brown desert, making the most of nature’s palette.
Ten yards away two men were leaning over the port rail, shouting to make themselves heard over the din of the paddle wheel. One glanced at them as they emerged, but without apparent interest. Brady led the way aft, hesitating only fractionally at the sight of three uniformed soldiers sitting around the foredeck-mounted machine gun. “A lovely morning,” he shouted in Russian, and one soldier raised an arm in reply. The American turned up the stairs to the upper deck, a smile on his face.
A man and a woman were standing side by side at the bow rail, smoking cigarettes, gazing straight ahead. Leaving Chatterji to stand guard, Brady and Piatakov ascended the short flight of steps that led to the bridge. As the American stepped through the open doorway, he pulled the gun from his waistband.
There were two men inside: one, burly and fair-haired under his peaked cap, was sitting with his back to them, booted feet resting on the ledge beneath the open window; the other, short, wiry, and dark, was standing at the wheel, resting his weight on one leg.
“Crew only,” the man with the cap said without bothering to turn his head.
“Have I the honor of addressing the captain?” Brady asked.
“You…” The intended sentence died as the eyes took in the revolver. “What the hell…? What do you want?” The man seemed more surprised than frightened.
A veteran of some war or other, Piatakov thought. Who wasn’t?
Brady leaned himself against a convenient wall. “We want to go to Kelif.”
“Well, that’s just where the ship is headed, so you can put the gun away.”
Brady smiled. “You might find this hard to believe, Captain, but there are people who don’t want us to get there.”
The captain smiled back. “And why would that be? You don’t look like fleeing nobility.”
Brady’s grin broadened. “See?” he said to Piatakov, who was standing with his back to the doorjamb. “I told you our disguises were perfect.”
“If only we could persuade Anastasia to take off the tiara,” Piatakov said, surprising himself. How long had it been since a joke had come out of his mouth?
Brady and the captain both laughed. “What’s your name, Captain?” the American asked.
“Nikolayev,” the captain said.
“Well, Captain Nikolayev, where do you normally stop between here and Kelif?”
“Burdalik, Kerki, and wherever we’re flagged down.”
“Do you need to stop? For food, fuel, anything?”
“We might need to take on more fuel.”
“Which I assume means you might not. So we’ll deal with that when we have to. In the meantime, we travel nonstop.”
“That’s what you think. This boat stops every time it finds a sandbank. I suppose you could try shooting them,” he suggested with a grin.
Brady ignored him; he never seemed to register other people’s sarcasm. “How many people are there on board?” he asked.
“Four crew, eleven passengers. Paying passengers, that is,” he added pointedly.
“How many soldiers?”
“I’ve no idea. Lev?”
“Four. Three men and one officer,” the helmsman said stiffly, not taking his eyes off the river.
Brady pulled himself upright. “Right. Captain, we’re going to bring all the passengers and crew—all but Lev here—to the lounge. And once we’ve relieved them of any weapons they’re carrying, Sergei here will search the cabins and storerooms. Durga will stay up here on the bridge and keep Lev company.”
“So who are you really?” the captain asked, in a tone that suggested he didn’t expect a serious answer.
Piatakov also waited for the joke, but for once Brady was otherwise concerned.
“Soldiers of the revolution,” he said absent-mindedly. “With nothing left to lose,” he added, looking the captain straight in the eye. “I used to pilot a boat like this. On the Missouri River in America. You understand? No one here is indispensable.”
Caitlin and Haruka sat on one side of the desk, Komarov and Jack on the other. They were in Chechevichkin’s office, which at this hour of the morning was blissfully cool and filled with dappled light. Caitlin had noticed that the coffin was gone from the adjoining room; the Armenian must have been buried the day before.
Komarov had asked the questions, Jack translating them into Uzbek. The girl had told the story of her husband’s murder—the “beast,” she called him—and was now describing her journey on horseback and expressing her surprise that the Russian had let her go on the outskirts of town.
Caitlin tried to picture this man as her husband. He seemed both closer and more distant, like a part of herself she was losing contact with.
But Sergei had cut himself loose from more than her. His bitterness had been understandable, but the man who’d joined Brady on this murderous odyssey had clearly taken leave of his senses. What did he think he was doing taking terrified children for moonlit rides?
She switched her attention to McColl, watching his lips as he interpreted, remembering their lovemaking only three nights before. He would soon be gone, she supposed, in prison or over the border. And how would she feel then?
Komarov was standing, thanking Haruka for her cooperation, asking Caitlin if arrangements had been made.
“She’s going back to her family,” Caitlin told him. “On one condition—that they don’t sell her into another marriage against her will. A condition the local Cheka will need to enforce,” she added pointedly. “It’s the best I could do at short notice.”
Still, the girl was smiling as Maslov escorted her out to the waiting father. McColl asked Komarov if he’d be needed in the next couple of hours.