Mama seemed to be too much in her own pain—and Alexei’s—to notice Olga’s and for this I was grateful. There were times when I thought that Madame Hendrikova suspected, but if she did, she chose not to speak of it.
I could hear the chopping of wood and the barking of dogs down below in the courtyard as I shut the door behind me. Olga didn’t seem to notice me coming in.
I knelt and reached under my bed.
“Here,” I said, pulling out a small box. “Can you help me with these?”
She turned around, blinking as if she’d just realized that I was there.
I opened the box and pulled out the letters sitting within to reveal a false bottom. A good tap popped it free.
Olga looked inside and her eyes went wide. Several of Mama’s brooches and earrings lay within, so tangled with each other they looked like cheap trinkets one might have thrown carelessly aside.
“Are you sure we should have these out?” she asked, glancing at the door.
“Mama wants us to sew them into our clothes. And a lot more besides these.”
Chapter Fifteen
Taganrog, Russia
The boat, while small, presented an image of order and cleanliness. It was gasoline powered, with a short stack, and lay about forty feet long by perhaps ten in beam at the waterline. A small, gray-bearded skipper stood just outside the tiny wheelhouse, arms folded and bearing a resentful and skeptical look.
“He told you I was a thief, didn’t he?” queried the old man.
“What?” asked Turgenev, standing on the dock while the others unloaded the wagon. “Who?”
“My cousin, Igor,” said the old skipper, pointing. “He told you I was a thief, right?”
“I don’t know if he used quite those words,” Turgenev answered. A quick glance at Mokrenko’s nodding head affirmed that the stable master had, indeed.
“Well, I am not a thief. But times are hard, fuel is dear and hard to come by, both, and there are risks. That’s why I charge what I do.”
“Yes, you are a thief,” said Igor, from the wagon, helping to hand bags down to waiting hands. His resolution not to get involved between the parties was apparently none too strong. “You charge too much.”
“Do I, you horse-stinking bastard? Let’s see you scrounge, beg, borrow, and steal enough gasoline to keep this boat moving, a boat, I remind you, that is about all that’s keeping trade going between us and Rostov.”
“Bah!” answered Igor. “You exaggerate, as always.”
Mokrenko shrugged eloquently, I have no idea what he’s talking about; taking his boat to Rostov is the cheapest and most reliable way to get there. Probably also the fastest.
“Relax, Comrade….”
“Also Sabanayev, just like my asshole cousin, but Ivan in my case. But save that ‘comrade’ nonsense for when there are Reds around. I loathe the Reds.”
For emphasis, Ivan Sabanayev spat over the side of his gently rocking boat. “Fucking godless communists bastards! Why, oh, why, did the Little Father abandon his people?”
“I suspect a few thousand red bayonets pointed at the throats of his children had something to do with it,” Lieutenant Babin commented.
Ivan’s sad nod agreed. “It’s still a terrible shame. Nor will any good come from this Bolshevik revolution. Well… never mind. Come; load your baggage and come aboard. You have my money, yes?”
“Yes,” Turgenev, said. “Eighty rubles in gold, yes?”
“Yes, unless you want me to send my boy to go buy—well, try to buy—some fresh food in the market. But I can’t use gold there; it’s too tempting, too rare. Do you have silver or, maybe better, paper. I’ll have to pay four times what it’s worth in paper, mind you, but at least it doesn’t attract attention.”
“Can you get us a few days’ worth of food?” Mokrenko asked. “or maybe a week’s worth.”
Ivan thought about that. “Maybe,” he answered. “The boy can try.”
Turgenev tossed his own bag in, then jumped aboard and bent to dig out eight gold coins from his store. He then pulled about forty more rubles in low denomination paper from the same bag. These he handed over. On second thought, he added another two notes and requested, “See if the boy can get a chetvert”—a bit over a quart and a half, British—“of a decent vodka. I think everyone could use a drink at this point.”
Got to love a thoughtful officer, mused Mokrenko.
“There are some newspapers, fairly recent, you can read while we wait,” said Ivan.
Mouth of the Don
“I don’t suppose you people are armed,” queried Ivan.
“We might be,” answered Turgenev. “Why?”
“Well… there are river pirates,” said the old man. “Ordinarily, they’re a lot like the Bolsheviks, just thieves, in other words. They stop my boat, take a small percentage as ‘a toll,’ as they phrase it. But ordinarily I don’t carry passengers. Passengers mean money. And you have a girl and they’re practically a medium of exchange, too.”
“Sergeant Mokrenko!”
“Sir. All right you shitheads, break out the rifles and load up.”
“Make a great show of the rifles,” Ivan said. “Odds are good that will be enough to scare them off.”
Mokrenko began posting the men of the strategic recon team around the boat, in such as businesslike way as to make it clear that trying to stop the boat would be a most bloody exercise. It must have worked, because at the points where Ivan tensed up, as if expecting trouble, no trouble materialized.
“You know,” said Ivan, after passing the second place where he’d been expecting the river pirates to sortie out to take their “toll,” “for another fifty gold rubles I’ll take you almost all the way to Tsaritsyn.”
“Define ‘almost’ and tell me how long it would take,” said Lieutenant Turgenev.
“About forty versta away,” Ivan replied, “and maybe three or four days. Nearest point is the town of Kalach, almost exactly west of Tsaritsyn.”
“Probably more secure than taking the train, sir,” Mokrenko said.
Turgenev nodded, but then said, “We don’t have the time to spare anymore, though. We’re five days behind where we should be, with no guarantees that we won’t fall further behind. No, thanks old man, but no. We need to hop a train.”
“It’s none of my business,” said Ivan, “but, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your hurry?”
“We do mind, though,” said Mokrenko.
Rostov-on-Don, Russia
The town was still occupied by German and Austrian soldiery, courtesy of Trotsky’s silly notions about “neither war nor peace.” The two armies, under the direction of Max Hoffmann, had demonstrated that the Bolsheviks didn’t have the initiative Trotsky presumably thought. Still, they’d be going home, eventually.
The party had split up into four pairs and a trio, intending to stay away from each other until such time as they were past the chance of inviting close interest from the German and Austrian soldiery that seemed to be everywhere in the town, and nowhere so much as at the riverfront and the train station. The problem was security, not so much physical but in terms of safeguarding information about their mission.
People just talk too damned much, thought Turgenev. Best to stay away from any of them.
He did, of course, have a passport letter from Hoffmann, himself, but that was for ultimate extremities, which this was not. And using it was bound to cause some ripples, unfortunate ones, somewhere down the line.