Cold Blood (40 page)

“Doig,” I'd say, arriving from behind his shoulder and offering the simplest introduction. “Your chum Glebov raped my wife, he and his gang.”

“What of it?”

“You dare say that, ‘What of it'?”

“They were justified on account of their poor allocation by history. Women must learn about the necessity of class warfare as well as men. They must be educated in reality. The days of the Smolny dancing classes are over.”

He'd look me over with contempt, not knowing that in my hand, in my pocket, in my heart's most absolute intention, was Kobi's Mongolian stabbing knife.

He'd say, “I know you. You were at Smolny on that historic night, you were the mushroom seller. Oi! You men over there! Arrest Charlie Doig, the notorious criminal and descendant of latifundists. The usual bourgeois-liberal tendencies are at work within him like termites. Let us hasten the process of disintegration. Put him in a space vehicle and let science look after him. Up there amid the ice fields and meteorites and the graves of his obsolete gods.”

“You value your ideas too highly,” I'd cry, and whipping out Kobi's knife I'd have his scalp off in one swift and gleaming motion and be tossing it, hairy and dripping, with his smartass eyes hanging down like buttons on a thread, to his dog, probably a German shepherd. All men of history have been dog lovers and most of these very same men have also been unprincipled liars and self-enrichers, if not psychopaths. Starving, the disloyal carnivore would gulp down its master's scalp in a
oner. Then it would start to howl in terror and Trotsky's eyeballs would come pinging out of its anus boiling over with all sorts of clever-dick arguments about the inalienable right of syphilitic Bolshevik soldiers to rape women.

Yes, I'd do for Trotsky as well as Glebov and then I'd go into exile. It'd be heigh-ho for the good life in Chicago, not having to wonder every minute if my woman was still alive, sinking a beer when I felt like it in one of those steep-staired cellars where talk could be had with normal people like the salts from the days of windjammers and harpooners who'd been towed for weeks in their rowboat by a Leviathan—

It was on the good ship
Lockjaw
,
Well nigh a fortnight out of port,
Our engines dead, the sea a-tremble,
And lifelong water running short,
That V., our luscious commodore,
Laid aside her snow-white snort,
And said, “So I shall be our SOS,”
And stripping off her naval dress,
Her sword, her pants and epaulettes,
She angled nude across the shrouds,
Angelic imprint on the clouds...

Boltikov shouted up that he'd heard it all before, when I was in my cups, the entire performance. Was I going crazy? Was it all too much for me? Should he pass the Vladimir?

I said it must be the strain of keeping the show on the road, meaning drunks like him. Why didn't he and Kobi sing something to keep me awake?

“From
Don Carlos
?” he shouted back. “That fantastic aria— it was Chaliapin at his best—you remember, the night that Lenin struck—”

I said No, in case the Reds heard him—which was ludicrous since we were five tons of metal bouncing over cobbles, but it was what I said. Then, “Do that new one of Lenin's, the Internationale,” I said. “It'll make a good impression if things go wrong.”

But he and Kobi couldn't bring themselves to do anything so
disgusting, even though they were wearing Bolshevik uniforms. The only tune we all knew was “God Save the Tsar” so that was what we sang as we rumbled through the ancient Admiralty Quarter.

We were in the eye of the storm. Not much of life was in evidence. A couple of looters, then nothing more until a White cadet officer jumped out at a street corner and levelled his pistol at us. A burst from Kobi's Maxim did for that show of courage, the youth spinning round and his military cap flying off like a discus. Rounding the corner, we came across his patrol running for their lives. Kobi wanted to pepper them even though they posed no threat to us. He'd no idea of right and wrong. Killing was his pleasure. If he could, he would. But here there was nothing to be gained. He'd already shot the officer and by doing so had put our credentials on a proper footing if any Reds were around.

I shouted over to him, “You'll have your fun later.”

Boltikov teased the cork from the Vladimir bottle with his teeth and started in on
Don Carlos
. I leaned down, grabbed the bottle and chucked it over my shoulder, in among the spare wheels and tyre levers.

“Forget the bloody opera, just get going, lickety-split—you see the fire-watching tower over there?”

My head had suddenly cleared—it was the incompatibility of Verdi and Karl Marx. I was no longer thinking of being dead or alive by dawn but alive only.

Alive, alive O!

And the O was the oxygen that was a light blue streak in front of us, the flare still gleaming from the top of the firewatching tower to tell everyone, in peace and war, that the building was too useful to be destroyed. Earlier in the night the Reds had captured it. The last Stiffy had heard it was still in their hands. If the Whites had regained it or the Czechs, we were cooked, turning up as we were in full Bolshevik regalia.

“Hang on,” shouted Boltikov, and with his bad arm dangling, one-handedly dropped down a gear, wrenched the wheel over and slewed our armoured car to a halt beside a brazier.

I made out the dull shapes of five men sitting round on wooden
warehousing cases. They could have belonged to any of the armies.

Pulling down the peak of my colonel's cap, I leaned on the edge of the turret and regarded them in silence. It was a good feeling to be holding them down by my eye alone. I said in a low voice, “What the fuck are you doing on your butts? Who's in charge?”

This man idled out of the gloom, smoking. A Czech would never have behaved so casually, would have shot at me on the spot. So now the odds were fifty–fifty, Red or White.

Hands on hips, insolently, he began to walk round the car. “What name have you given to this heap of yours?” he said, not removing his cigarette. Its paper was stuck to his lower lip. The cigarette's glowing end bobbled as he spoke.

“
Chort
,” I said—the Devil—breathing again, for he was clearly a Red.

“Indeed,
Chort
is it,” he said, coming round to below my turret and looking truculently at my colonel's tabs.

Swifter than a swallow at flies, I plucked the cigarette off his lip. “Open,” I commanded. And when he did so, as I knew he would on account of Bolshevik discipline, I popped the cigarette into his mouth, and catching and twisting his lips, held him fast. His mouth was vertical, like that of a child who'd suffered from the midwife's forceps.

“Listen, comrade, I am Colonel Sepp of the Estonian Mechanised Regiment. I've fought over one thousand miles to give succour to the proletariat of Kazan. That man up there, who'd shoot you as soon as spit, has come from Mongolia. We are the world, yes, the fucking great future, the unquenchable spirit of the working classes. Who are you? A nasty, mannerless oaf. Unless you're looking for a bullet, you'll one, respect an officer's uniform, and two, tell me when you had the last report from the tower.” I gave his lip another hitch to encourage him.

A second man came out of the shadows. He spoke his name fawningly, but it could have been anything as he had a thick peasant's accent and the engine was still running.

Kobi covered me as I got out of the car. I said, “Where's your officer? Is that him up the tower?”

When the fellow said it was, I clicked my fingers and held out my hand for the field telephone. There had to be one. These squaddies were just the messengers. The man at the top of the tower'd phone down some shift in the White position and off one of them would trot to Stavka.

It was answered immediately. I expect the observer had got lonely after his initial excitement up there, looking out over the docks and the shooting.

“Sepp, commanding the Estonian Mechanised Regiment. New orders from Stavka, to be delivered in person. Stay at your post. My man will bring them up.”

Kobi had pulled down the lid of his turret. I could see his flat Mongolian face peering at me through the slit. I said, “Get out. This is your job.”

“Yes, Colonel,” his voice disembodied and metallic, like Boltikov's fart.

Leaning against the hull of my armoured car—
Chort
, the Devil, good name for it—and him standing in front of me rather sloppily, I said, “Tell Boltikov what's happening. Say he can blow these men to pieces any time he feels like it.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

I called the messengers over, got them standing in front of me, smouldering, eager to pick a fight. I said to the man whose lip I'd had, “Look, comrade, rank matters. Because I've never feared death and have positive ions between my ears, I'm a colonel. Because I'm a colonel I command an armoured car with two 7.62mm Maxims—water-cooled, six thousand rounds apiece. But you just have popguns and a couple of rounds each. Think about the difference before you try anything.”

Kobi—hell, can those Asian guys be impassive. I took a paper from my inside pocket and handed it to him.

“There's the orders, take them to the top and report back to me.” I pointed him at the metal ladder.

He said, “He's the only man up there, is he, Colonel?”

His dark eyes flickered. He was trying me. OK, Kobi, but don't overdo it.

“Yes, the only one. Off you go, quickly now, man.”

He made me a deliberately cockeyed salute. I stepped forward
and gripped him by the slack of his coat. There was no need to be saucy, no advantage to be gained of any sort. I stuffed my face into his—eyes popping, hissing, spattering him: “For Christ's sake get up there and bowstring the bastard. Then look round and see what's happening.”

N
O SOONER
had Kobi disappeared up the tower than this lone cloaked figure goolied out of the night, head weaving, hands behind his back, inspecting everything. He walked like someone who knew he was important. I smelt trouble the instant I saw him. And I was certain of it when the messengers stiffened to attention, which they hadn't done for me even when I pulled rank on them.

“Sepp,” I said to him, “Colonel Sepp commanding the Estonian Mechanised Regiment.”

“Comrade,” he said, no more, voice as flat as a plate. He could have been one of the big names, one of those militant Jewish philosophers trying to get their own back on the world via Bolshevism. He took a torch from the pocket of his cloak and began to walk around the armoured car: a lean, schoolmasterly type who'd miss nothing.

He halted. I knew where his torch was pointing: Muraviev's death-head insignia—a scarlet skull with a thick black line through it. Joseph must have painted it out more than a hundred times, but it still showed.

I got a thoughtful look from him, head to one side.

“Good tyres,” he said. “Sensible of you not to have put on combat wheels.”

But I wasn't fooled, and when he'd completed his inspection and was walking over to the messengers—when Boltikov's line of fire was clear—I banged on the hull.

It was close range. It made a mess of them, picked that little Yid up and dumped him five yards back. But why take a chance?
That's what survival always comes down to. Only vain people take chances.

One of the messengers had fallen over the box with the field telephone. I dragged him off and got hold of Kobi. He was perfectly composed, took it for granted that the burst from the Maxim had routed all the dangers beneath him. In fact, you might have thought he was up the tower sightseeing.

“Looks good. The Whites have got floodlights rigged up the length of the train. I can make out everything, except in the godown. Can't see under the roof. There are no more barges waiting below so they must be unloading the last of them. Train's got steam up. Maybe we should hurry a bit?”