The Dangerous Years (12 page)

‘Keep the shutters closed, Rumbelo,’ he advised. ‘And keep everybody out of sight. If anybody tries to get in, deal with ’em.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’ Rumbelo smiled. ‘There’s a couple of funny-looking blokes down the road been watching this place for a bit already.’

The same funeral hearse they’d seen the previous day was moving down the street again, its chipped white paint curiously diminished by the icy silver of the snow. This time there was a rough coffin inside, covered by branches of laurel, alongside it two women. Behind walked a procession of shabby people.

‘Don’t they ever stop it?’ Kelly asked.

‘There’s not much loot in a coffin, Monsier,’ Driand said with a wry smile. ‘And there are so many funerals these days. I believe it even has a laissez-passer.’

As Kelly left, a few threadbare White troops were retreating through the city towards the sea, passing in long lines, dark against the snow. They were joined occasionally by a few terrified bourgeoisie who had taken refuge from the mob among the ancient hovels behind their homes, most of them clad in patched, greasy clothes which they’d begged, borrowed or stolen to hide their identities. Most of the soldiers were either wounded or stumbling with hunger, and among them were the remnants of the cadets from the city’s military schools and colleges, who’d been called out in a last desperate attempt to stem the Red advance, callow boys, deathly pale and staggering with wounds, their faces taut with exhaustion. Bolshevik sympathisers, knowing the Red army would soon be in the city, were growing bolder now and were taking pot shots at them as they passed.

Boyle was still in the room at the back of the eating house. With the skill of all sailors, he and his party had made it surprisingly comfortable and had even made a fire which, though it filled the place with smoke, at least gave it a vestige of warmth.

He greeted Kelly with relief. ‘I thought we’d lost you,’ he said.

Kelly grinned. ‘Not me, Seamus. Any sign of
Mordant
?’

‘Nothing.’ Boyle’s face grew bleak. ‘We’ve heard that Nikolaev’s worse than was thought.
Mordant
might be there for some time.’

‘I hope not, because this place’s going to fall apart any day now. We’ve got to find somewhere to shelter until the ships come.’

‘There’s an empty place along the street.’ Boyle gestured with his hand. Hotel Alexander I. It’s boarded up but I got inside and there are beds. I suspect they’re full of bedbugs but it’s bigger than this and we could make it our headquarters.’

Kelly nodded. ‘Move in there,’ he said briskly. ‘If you can get in through a back window and keep the front closed, so much the better. I’ve collected around forty-odd people. Seen any sign of that cab we used?’

Boyle frowned. ‘I gather he’s gone out of business rather abruptly,’ he pointed out. ‘His horse was stolen by the army.’

Kelly frowned. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘I was hoping to use him. We’ve got a chestful of cash, a case of papers, an old dear who can’t walk and a bloody Russian general who’s not only a prince but looks like one.’

Before he set off back towards the Balustridnyi Ryad, Boyle was already pushing one of his seamen through a rear window of the hotel, a shabby building that belied its resounding name. The paint was peeling from the portico and more than one of the window panes was broken, while the inside was bleak, threadbare and comfortless. But at least it was shelter from the icy blast that came from the north and Kelly was thinking of the large-eyed children in the Balustridnyi Ryad.

As he headed back into the suburbs, he noticed that the sound of gunfire to the north had grown nearer and the city seemed to have changed, and he realised that the outer suburbs had been given up and there were no longer any of the weary columns trudging south. It was growing dark when he reached the Balustridnyi Ryad and he could see the glow of fires in several places. The streets were full of excited men and boys eager to start trouble and a few houses were being looted nearby, so that he could see open doorways with men and women running in and out with silver, vases, linen and clothing. The same dingy hearse was just returning in the dusk with its shabby procession of mourners and he reflected they must have had a long day.

Rumbelo was looking anxious as he let him in through the back door. ‘Them two buggers we saw have been sniffing around again, sir,’ he said. ‘But I’m keeping ’em all quiet. It’s a bit of a job with the kids, but we made it into a sort of game. The first one to make a noise has to pay a forfeit.’

As the day drew to a close in a bleak grey-black evening, with the snow sharply white against the lowering sky, Vera Brasov caught Kelly on the back stairs and pulled him into the dark deserted kitchen among the strings of drying undergarments.

‘Kelly Georgeivitch–’ she whispered as she clung to him in the shadows, her mouth searching for his ‘–where have you been?’

It seemed no time for hole-in-the-corner love affairs and he pushed her away roughly. ‘Somebody’ll come,’ he warned.

‘I don’t care. I love you, Kelly Georgeivitch.’

‘You know damn well you don’t!’ Kelly snapped.

She stared at him with bright, calculating eyes. She was nervous and concerned for her future, but she was warm and beautiful and he was terribly aware of her sexuality.

‘I gave myself to you, Kelly Georgeivitch,’ she pointed out.’

‘You threw yourself at me, Vera Nikolaevna.’

She laughed. ‘What’s the difference? Now you must get me away from Odessa. I do not intend to disappear like the rest of my family. I am a survivor and Russian girls who’ve survived this far will never take “no” for an answer. Klaudia Pepelyaev even married a Red commissar to survive. Nina Dimitrievna Crosov did better. She allied herself to a French general and went to Paris. Perhaps Svetliana Dukhonin did the best of all. She married a British colonel who is a nobleman and now has a passport and a coat of arms.’

Kelly grinned.
‘She
ought to be all right.’

‘But there were others.’ Her voice was hard and her eyes were glowing with anger. ‘Irene Vietrovna Borisov worked in a cabaret in Ekaterinodar and had to allow herself to be pawed by the customers. Olga Biorko gave herself to a Greek ship’s captain. She’s in Athens now but she’s only a Greek ship’s captain’s wife. Her sister sold herself to raise money for a fare to Constantinople and when she discovered she needed still more to provide food because food was not provided aboard, she hanged herself.’ She shrugged. ‘The Biorkos were all fools,’ she ended coldly. ‘Every one of them.’

She put her arms round his neck again, and was just trying to manoeuvre him into a corner when he stiffened. A shoe had scraped outside the door and he could hear voices muttering.

‘Belay that bloody nonsense, Vera,’ he whispered. ‘There’s somebody trying to break in.’

He was just looking round for a weapon when there was a single tremendous crash on the lock of the door and it burst open. Outside, outlined against the snow, he saw two men wearing long leather coats, shaggy fur caps and mufflers. One of them held a club and the other was just lowering the sledge hammer with which he’d forced the lock. Vera gave a gasp of terror from the shadows, high-pitched, agonised and feminine, and the man with the sledge grinned and pushed inside.

‘Chto takoe?’ he said. ‘Women? Tsarist women? Officers’ women?’

As Kelly’s fist closed over the handle of an iron cooking pot which stood on the sink, the man with the sledge saw him. As he turned, Kelly swung at him with the heavy pot and the Russian dropped the hammer with a yell and staggered against the wall. Immediately, the other man, a giant with a red beard, pushed through the door after him, swinging his club. It struck Kelly a glancing blow on the shoulder, but it was enough to paralyse his arm and he clung to the Russian one-handed, catching a whiff of stinking breath and the smell of grease from his clothes. In the struggle, the Russian dropped his club, the lines of washing snapped and they rolled on the floor, tangled in cord and damp linen. With the Russian’s hands on his throat, Kelly’s fingers fell on the club the Russian had dropped and he thrust it upwards with all his strength into the Russian’s open mouth. He felt teeth break and, as the Russian fell back, gagging on his scream, Kelly scrambled to his knees, hammering at the giant’s head with every ounce of strength he possessed.

As the Russian became silent, he dragged himself to his feet still entangled in cord and underclothing, then he realised that the man with the sledge hammer seemed to have vanished. Looking round, wondering why the heavy hammer hadn’t cracked his skull, he saw Vera Brasov standing transfixed, her back to the wall, one hand over her mouth to choke back a scream. The Russian was lying on his face at her feet, his arms spreadeagled. Then he saw that in her other hand she was clutching a carving knife and that the blood on it was staining the front of her dress.

As he looked at her, she seemed to realise for the first time what she’d done and dropped the knife as if it had been red-hot. As it clattered to the floor, Kelly kicked the door to.

‘I hope to God they haven’t got any pals waiting for them outside,’ he said. ‘Go upstairs and send Rumbelo down.’

When Rumbelo appeared, they dragged the bodies outside and left them under the bushes down the garden, returning to the house with two ragged fur caps and an armful of mufflers, jackets and leather coats which they’d decided might make useful disguises. They were just mopping up the blood from the kitchen floor when Vera Brasov reappeared. She had changed her dress and, although she was pale, she seemed calm and well in control of herself.

She gave a harsh laugh at Kelly’s expression. ‘Cheer up, Kelly Georgeivitch,’ she said. ‘In Russia today, murder is no more than a daily hazard and, on reflection, I think it was the most satisfying thing I’ve done since the Revolution.’

The problem of how to get their charges to the Fleet Landing Place grew rather than diminished and, with the deaths of the two intruders, became much more urgent. The city was full of people who would gladly have used the incident to butcher them, British or not. But Baptiste had no intention of leaving the Consulate money behind and Princess Busukov could hardly be carried, while her husband was demanding that he be allowed to leave in full uniform wearing his decorations.

‘I have been an Imperial officer all my life,’ he pointed out. ‘If I am to die, then I will die like one.’

Kelly felt like hitting him with something.

As he watched the shabby hearse trundle down the street next morning with its daily load of sorrow, he wondered how in God’s name he was going to get his awkward squad of women and children to the shore. The crowd at the end of the street opened to allow the hearse to pass and he wistfully watched it turn the corner and vanish towards the cemetery, his mind full of his problems. The two bodies outside worried him most. Sooner or later, some prowler would stumble on them because they were still unburied.

Unburied! His head lifted and his eyes brightened. Unburied, by God!

‘Rumbelo!’ he yelled.

When the hearse came back at dusk, Kelly and his seamen were waiting just inside the gate. The crowd at the end of the street had disappeared and, as it came abreast the house, they were out and surrounded it at once. Rumbelo was on the box and the shabby conveyance had been swung into the drive and round the back of the house before anybody had noticed. Before the driver knew where he was, he had been bundled into the kitchen and pushed into a chair, still croaking his protests.

‘Tell him he’s hired for tomorrow morning,’ Kelly told Driand.

The Frenchman spoke in Russian to the driver who shook his head and gabbled back at him.

‘He says he has to pick up two bodies in the morning,’ Driand said. ‘There are two families waiting and they have paid him in advance to make sure he turns up.’

‘Not this time,’ Kelly said. ‘Tell him we want his instead.’

Driand produced several gold pieces from Baptiste’s funds as he talked. The driver stared at them, his eyes bulging.

‘Da, Gospodin,’ he said excitedly. ‘Da, da!’

He seemed to accept the decision philosophically, and Madame Driand began to cut bread and cheese and lay it on the table in front of him. Leaving one of the sailors with a revolver to watch him, Kelly and Rumbelo went outside to unharness the horses and tie them securely inside the stables.

‘Now we want a coffin, Rumbelo,’ Kelly said. ‘Big enough for two corpses.’

Before dawn the next morning, they mustered Baptiste and his charges in the salon. They all wore their oldest clothes and as much black as they could raise between them. Behind the house, the horses had been put back in the shafts of the ancient hearse, and a large double wardrobe with holes punched in the door had been manhandled on its back inside.

Baptiste and Prince Busukov – wearing his uniform and all his decorations – were pushed inside the wardrobe and the door shut, and the withered laurel branches piled over it. Sitting alongside in the hearse were Princess Busukov and the smallest children, with strict instructions to keep silent. Rumbelo seemed to have a gift for handling them, and though he couldn’t speak a word of their language, he had persuaded them it was a game, and they sat silent and large-eyed hoping to win the prize he’d promised them.

‘I hope we can find one, sir,’ he said.

‘Life itself wouldn’t be a bad one,’ Kelly pointed out grimly.

They shared the stinking articles of clothing from the corpses in the garden, and rugs and small carpets were cut into smock-like garments with holes for necks and donned by the girls to hide their figures.

‘Tell ’em handkerchiefs – dirty ones – to faces,’ Kelly instructed Driand. ‘They’ve got to look as though they’ve been bereaved.’

Baptiste’s hoard of funds and his papers had been stuffed in the wardrobe with him and Prince Busukov, and other small items of luggage were hidden under the laurel leaves, the coats of the children and the skirts of Madame Baptiste. The rest carried nothing but what could be concealed about their clothing and they had been up half the night sewing jewels into their corsets and silverware under their skirts. There had been a lot of giggling and a lot of heartsearching, but Vera Brasov, calm and apparently unmoved by the murders in the kitchen, carried only a muff concealing a heavy candelabra which she claimed could also be used as a bludgeon if necessary. Every scrap of jewellery she’d been able to carry away from the Brasov estates was hidden about her person.