‘Dukhonin dies and the very next day Chazia sets off for Novaya Zima with Maroussia Shaumian in tow.’
‘You think Chazia killed him?’ said Lom.
‘It is not unlikely, certainly. And there is something else.’
Florian hesitated again.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Lom. ‘What else?’
‘Perhaps you have heard someone speak already of the Pollandore? Perhaps Maroussia Shaumian has mentioned this to you?’
‘Yes,’ said Lom cautiously. ‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘The extraordinary cargo to which I referred a moment ago,’ said Florian. ‘The cargo on Chazia’s train? It is the Pollandore.’
Lom’s stomach lurched. He felt his skin prickle. A chill in his spine.
‘Shit,’ he breathed. ‘Shit. What the hell is Chazia up to?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Florian. ‘But you see now? You understand why I came for you? Why I think we should join forces?’
An hour later twilight was thickening into night. Florian flicked on the headlamps. They were passing through level country, undrained and undyked, a patchwork of woodland and shallow lakes and reed beds. The beams splashed off scrubby birch trees and alders, vegetable patches and makeshift fences, stands of hogweed. From time to time a weathered wooden cabin rose out of the darkness and disappeared behind them.
Lom had been turning over what Florian had told him. He didn’t doubt it, not really, but it didn’t make sense: the more he thought about it, the less it fitted together, and a big part of the puzzle was Florian himself. Who was he? What was he? What was he keeping back? He glanced at Florian’s shadowy profile.
‘You can’t drive a car all the way to Novaya Zima,’ said Lom, remembering the thousands of miles of empty green on the map. ‘It isn’t possible. You need to tell me where we’re going.’
‘Still you do not trust me, Vissarion?’ said Florian patiently. ‘We are going to Novaya Zima, but not by car. We are making for a small lake called Chudsk, but we will not reach it for some hours yet. Why don’t you get some sleep?’
‘I don’t need to sleep. You could let me drive for while.’
Florian hesitated.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Fine.’
Florian brought the car to a stop, killed the engine and dropped his hands off the wheel with a sigh. When he cut the headlamps and wound down the window, an immense silence rolled in around them, and with it the smell of damp earth and cold night air. Tiny night sounds could be heard above the ticking of the cooling engine: the wind moving across grass and snow, the nearby trickle of water, the shriek of a fox. Lom got out and walked round to get in behind the wheel. Florian slid across into the front passenger seat.
‘Thank you,’ said Florian. ‘I am tired. Just keep straight on. There’s only the one road: you just need to make sure you don’t turn off onto any farm tracks.’ He settled back in his seat and closed his eyes.
Lom started the engine and pulled away.
‘Florian?’ he said.
Florian stirred reluctantly and opened his eyes.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘You need to tell me how you know what you know. You need to tell me who you are.’
‘Who I am? In what sense, exactly? Are we discussing allegiances here? Sides? Motivations?’
‘Sure,’ said Lom. ‘Absolutely. For a start.’
‘I am…’ He paused, choosing his words carefully. ‘I am… freelance.’
‘Freelance?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Uh-huh?’ said Lom. ‘You care to expand on that? Because you need to.’
Florian settled lower in the passenger seat and closed his eyes again. Lom thought he wasn’t going to say any more, but after a while he started speaking quietly.
‘You think I am playing games with you, Vissarion? OK. Maybe. But really. You should look at yourself. You are angry, and you ask me what I am? You? You, who have that marvellous, that wonderful, that unique and beautiful opening in your head? You sit there and it’s spilling out… shedding… you don’t know what, you’re not even aware… and you ask me to say what I am?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Lom. ‘What are you trying to say?’
Florian half opened his eyes and glanced sideways.
‘I think you should stop asking yourself what things are and start asking what they can become. I think you should work at yourself. I think you should, to coin a phrase, get a fucking grip.’
57
Colonel-General Rizhin put aside the name of Josef Kantor and the life he’d lived under that name without a backward glance. He killed Kantor without compunction or regret. There is no past, there is only the future. Commissar for Mirgorod city defence.
Rizhin began to work.
He had an appetite and capacity for work that were astonishing. Relentless. Prodigious. Terrifying. The more he worked the more energy he drew from it and the more work he did. No detail was trivial, no obstacle immovable. He had a nose for men and women whose capacity for work matched his, or almost, and he gathered them about him. Put them to work. Those that flagged or showed the slightest inclination to cling to a private life of their own (the very phrase an abomination in Rizhin’s lexicon) were ruthlessly obliterated.
And Rizhin’s work was war, his purpose victory.
Within hours of the departure of Chazia, Fohn and Khazar, the pyre outside the Lodka was extinguished. The number of recruitment booths doubled. That very afternoon, he told the people of Mirgorod what to expect. He broadcast on the radio, on the tannoys and loudspeakers. The film was played in cinemas and converted Kino-trams, over and over again. Incessantly. The text appeared that evening in special editions of all the newspapers. Every paper carried the same photograph of Rizhin’s gaunt, smiling, pockmarked face. By the evening it had appeared on posters in every public building, on every tram, on every city wall. Yesterday the people of the city might have been asking, who is this Rizhin? Today they knew.
He called the city to war, a war against two enemies: outside the city were the forces of the Archipelago, and inside the city were the diversionists, the traitors, the looters, the spies. It wasn’t two wars, it was one war fought on two fronts, and there was nothing that was not part of it. No bystanders. No noncombatants. No civilians.
‘At last,’ he told the people of Mirgorod, ‘we are coming to grips with our most vicious and perfidious enemy The fiends and cannibals of the Archipelago, the slavers, are bearing down on our city. And they have accomplices among us! Whiners. Cowards. Deserters. Panic mongers. Spies. Saboteurs. Traitors!
‘The enemy’s soldiers and their secret allies must be rooted out and destroyed at every step. This is no ordinary war. Not a war of soldiers but a war of all the people. Everyone and everything is at war! Total war! Our homes are not our own, our dreams are not our own. Our lives are not our own. There is only one life, the Vlast, and only one outcome is possible. Overwhelming triumph!
‘Everything must be mobilised, all that we are. Private lives do not exist. Every man, woman and child is a soldier of the Vlast. We will fall upon our enemies as one body, an irresistible mass, roaring defiance, destruction and death with a single voice. With the angels on our side we will certainly prevail. All the strength of the people must be used to smash the enemy. Onward to victory!’
In the cinemas and in the squares the people of Mirgorod broke into spontaneous cheering. The death of the Novozhd had left them adrift, afraid and grieving, but here was a leader again, come in their desperate hour.