The Steel Tsar (12 page)

It is certain that the war would have been as good as over if it had not been for Russia’s domestic problems. These tended, amongst Odessa’s population, to be a more important topic than the war itself. Perhaps because of the war, there was a threat of revolution in several parts of the UISR. Indeed, whole parts of the Ukraine were currently in the hands of large armies calling themselves Free Cossacks—many of them deserters from various cavalry regiments. I gathered that they were intense Slavophils, opposed to Kerensky’s “Europeanization” of their lands, who were “nationalists” in that they argued for the independence of all territories currently making up the Russian Empire—Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria and so on. Their policies and demands seemed vague, though socialistic in terminology, even when I heard them discussed from all aspects, but if it was possible to argue forever about the interpretation of their ideology, all agreed to a degree of fascination with the leading personality amongst the revolutionists, the mysterious man known popularly as the Steel Tsar. He was believed to have come originally from Georgia and his real name was thought to be Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, an ex-priest with a record of messianism. He was known as the Steel Tsar because he tended to wear an ancient metal helmet covering most of his face. There were many explanations of this; some thought him disfigured in battle, others thought that his features had been hideously deformed since birth. He was supposed to have a withered arm, be a hunchback, have artificial legs, and not be a human being at all, but some sort of automaton.

Because of the atmosphere surrounding Djugashvili, I myself became quite as curious about him as the natives. I followed the news of the Free Cossacks as eagerly as I followed news of the British airship battles in the skies of the Pacific.

In Odessa I met one of the chaps with whom I had been imprisoned. He was about to join a British merchantman. He told me that Wilson, too, was working for the Russians, but he wasn’t sure where. “Some sort of engineering job, I gather.” Olmeijer was in Yalta, managing a State-owned hotel. The worst news, however, concerned Dempsey. “I heard he jumped it before we ever got to Japan. Seemed so scared of what they’d do to him that, wounded as he was, he preferred to dive out. God knows why they hated him so. Do you have any idea, Bastable?”

I shook my head. But again I experienced that peculiar frisson, a sort of recognition.

My experience of Odessa was as intense as it was brief and I missed it, when I left for the airpark on the train, as if I had lived there for years.

The
Vassarion Belinsky
was a joy. She used liquid ballast which could, like her gas, be heated or cooled to alter her weight and her ascent acceleration was, if we needed it, rocket-like in its speed. She had a top-speed of 200 mph but could be pushed quite a bit faster than that with a good wind behind her. She could turn and dive like a porpoise and there was almost nothing you couldn’t do with her. All the crew, except me, were Russian. Captain Korzeniowski was a thoroughly experienced airshipman of the old school with an excellent grasp of English. Of course the name meant a great deal to me but I barely recognized him since he was clean-shaven. He did not appear to know me at all and I was forced to remind myself that few of us come to my understanding of the nature of our existence. He knew nothing of “alternate worlds”. My own Russian was, naturally, limited, but I have a facility for languages. I soon knew enough to carry on normal conversations, while much of our day-to-day jargon was English, since England had for many years maintained herself as successfully in the air as she had on the sea.

As we left Lermontov Airpark on a cool, sunny dawn, gaining height through a slow, gentle curve which revealed more and more of the steppe through our observation ports, Captain Korzeniowski broke open his orders on the control deck and, standing with his back to our helmsman, informed his officers of the
Vassarion Belinsky’s
mission.

I was not the only one both surprised and disappointed. It seemed we were victims of a typical piece of Muscovite bureaucratic muddle, and there I was (since I had signed up for a minimum of a year) with absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Korzeniowski’s heavy Polish face was sober and his voice sonorous as he began to read the orders. With typical courtesy, he spoke English for my benefit.

“We are to proceed at all fastest speed to Yekaterinaslav, which is currently sustaining heavy attack from rebel forces. We are to join other ships under the command of Air Admiral Krassnov.” He pinched his eyebrows together. It was obvious that he had no taste for the commission, which would involve him in giving orders which would inevitably lead to the death of other Slavs.

Everyone was agitated by the news. They had been expecting to defend their country against the Japanese. Instead, they were assigned to domestic policing duties of a kind which all the officers found distasteful and demeaning. I did not really mind missing a scrap with the Japanese, but I was bitterly sorry that I was unlikely to see any real aerial action. I had joined the Service out of a mixture of desperation and boredom. I appeared to be doomed to a continuation of those circumstances. Moreover, I should sooner or later have blood on my hands, and it would be the blood of people I had absolutely nothing against. I had no idea of the issues. Socialists are always quarreling amongst themselves, because of the strong element of messianism in their creeds, and I could see little difference between Kerensky’s brand or Djugashvili’s. My only consolation was that at least I might have the opportunity of observing the Steel Tsar (or at any rate his works) at first hand.

Pilniak, a second lieutenant of about my own age, with huge brown eyes and a rather girlish face (though he was in no way effeminate) grasped my uniformed shoulder (like him I wore the pale blue of the Russian Volunteer Airforce) and laughed.

“Well, Mr. Bastable, you’re going to see some Cossacks, eh? A bit of the reality most Europeans miss.” He dropped his voice and became sympathetic. “Does that bother you? The Steel Tsar rather than the Mikado?”

“Not a bit,” I said. After all, I thought wickedly, I had originally been trained to fight Russians. But I have never been able to find consolation in cynicism for long and this lasted a few seconds. “Perhaps we’ll find out if he’s human or not.”

Pilniak became serious. “He’s human. And he’s cruel. This whole thing is essentially medieval in its overtones, for all they claim to be socialists and nationalists. They want to put the clock back to the days of Ivan the Terrible. They could destroy Russia and everything the Revolution achieved. There have even been instances of pogroms in one or two of the towns they’ve taken, and God alone knows what’s going on in the rural districts. They should be stopped as quickly as possible. But they’re gaining popular support all the time. War brings out these basic feelings. They are not always controllable. Our newspapers beat the drum of Slavophilia, of nationalism, in an effort to stir up patriotic feeling against the Japanese—and this happens.”

“You seem to speak as if this uprising was inevitable.”

“I think it was. Kerensky promised us Heaven on Earth many years ago. And now we find that not only have we not made Heaven, but we are threatened with Hell, in the form of invasion. This war will leave many scars, Mr. Bastable. Our country will not be the same when it is over.”

“The Steel Tsar is a genuine threat?”

“What he represents, Mr. Bastable, is a genuine threat.”

Y
ekaterinaslav was soon below us and it was obvious that the city was undergoing attack. We could see smoke and flames everywhere, little groups of figures running hither and yonder in the suburbs, the occasional boom of cannon fire or the tiny snapping noises of rifle-shots.

Yekaterinaslav was an old Russian-style city, with many of its buildings made of wood. Tall houses with elaborately carved decoration; the familiar onion-domes of churches; spires, steeples, several brick-built apartment blocks and shops near the centre.

On the nearby Dnieper river most of the boats were burning or had been sunk. Occasionally a ship, its paddles foaming the water, would go by the city and sometimes it would loose off a shell or two. Evidently these were naval ships commandeered by the revolutionists.

Pilniak knew Yekaterinaslav pretty well. He stood beside me, naming streets and squares. Some distance from the city, amongst demolished farmhouses and ruined fields, we saw the main Cossack camp: a mixture of all kinds of tents and temporary shacks, including more than one railway carriage, for the main railway line ran to Yekaterinaslav and much of its stock had been captured.

“That’s it,” said Pilniak in some excitement. “The Free Cossack Host. Impressive, you must admit.” He raised binoculars to his eyes. “Most of their heavy artillery is further down the line, along with their armoured vehicles. They’re saving up the cavalry for the final charge. There must be ten thousand horses down there.”

“Not much good against airships,” I said. “They look a pretty unruly mob to me.”

“Wait until you see them fight. Then you’ll know what cavalry tactics are all about.”

As a matter of fact it did my heart good to hear someone using those terms. The last time I had heard people discussing cavalry tactics had been in the mess in my own world of 1902.

“You talk as if you’re on their side,” I said.

He paused, lowering his glasses, then he said seriously: “Everything free in the Russian heart is represented by our Cossacks. Every yearning we have is symbolized by their way of life. They are cruel, they are often illiterate and they are certainly unsophisticated by Petersburg standards, but they are—they are the Cossacks. The Central Government should never have imposed conscription. They would have volunteered in time, but they wanted to show that they were making their own decisions, not Petersburg’s.”

“This rebellion came about as the result of conscription?” I had not heard this mentioned in Odessa.

“It is one reason. There are many. Traditionally, the Cossacks have enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy. When the Tsars tried to take it away they always found themselves in trouble. They have large communities—we call them Hosts—which elect their own officers, their own leader—the
ataman
—and are very touchy, Mr. Bastable, about these things.”

“Apparently,” I said. “So in destroying this rebellion, you feel you are in some way destroying your own sense of freedom, of romance.”

“I think so,” said Pilniak. He shrugged. “But we have our orders, huh?”

I sighed. I did not envy him his dilemma.

The ship had been sighted by the Cossacks. There was some sporadic artillery fire from the ground, a few rifle-shots, but luckily they had little or no anti-aircraft weaponry. The poor devils would be sitting ducks for our bombs.

The ship was turning slowly, heading for the airpark on the southern side of the city. Here we were to rendezvous with the other ships of the Volunteer Fleet.

Pilniak continued to peer through his binoculars. “Looks as if they’re massing,” he said. “They know they haven’t much time now.”

“They’re going to try to take the city entirely with cavalry?”

“It’s not the first time they’ve done it. But they have covering fire to some extent, and some armoured battlecars.”

“Who’s defending Yekaterinaslav?” I asked.

“I think we dropped some infantry a couple of days ago, and there’s some artillery, too, as you can see. They were only sent to hold out until we arrived, if I’m not mistaken.”

Now we could see the airpark. There were already half-a-dozen good-sized ships tethered at mast. “Those are troop-carriers,” he said, pointing to the largest. “By the way they’re sitting in the air I’d say they still had most of their chaps on board.”

Even as he spoke the captain came on deck behind us and saluted us. “Gentlemen, we have our wireless orders.”

We approached him. He was mopping his brow with a large, brown handkerchief. He seemed to be barely in control of his own agitation. “We are to proceed in squadron with three other ships, led by the
Afanasi Turchaninov,
and there we shall release our bombs on the rebel camp before they can move their horses out.” He was plainly sickened by the statement. Whatever the Cossacks had done, however cruel they were, however insane in their ambitions, they did not deserve to die in such a manner.

His announcement was greeted with silence throughout the control deck.

The captain cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, we are at War. Those soldiers down there are just as much enemies of Russia as the Japanese. They could be said to be a worse enemy, for they are traitors, turning against their country in her hour of greatest need.”

He spoke with no real authority. It would not have mattered a great deal if the horsemen were Japanese, it still seemed appallingly unsporting to do what we were about to do. I felt that Fate had once again trapped me in a moral situation over which I had no control.

Some of my fellow officers were beginning to murmur and scowl. Pilniak saluted Captain Korzeniowski. “Sir, are we to place bombs directly on the Cossacks?”

“Those are our orders.”

“Could we not simply bomb around them, sir?” said another young officer. “Give them a fright.”

“Those are not our orders, Kostomarov.”

“But sir, we are airshipmen. We...”

“We are servants of the State,” insisted the captain, “and the State demands we bomb the Cossacks.” He turned his back on us. “Drop to two hundred feet, height coxswain.”

“Two hundred feet, sir.”

The grumbling continued until the captain whirled round, his face red with anger. “To your posts, gentlemen. Bombardiers: look to your levers.”

Grimly we did as we were instructed. From the masts, which were now behind us, there floated up three other ships. Two positioned themselves on our port and starboard, while the leader went ahead of us. There was a funereal atmosphere about the whole operation. As he gave his orders, the captain’s voice was low and bleak.