The Steel Tsar (16 page)

The voice within the helm grew louder and louder as Makhno’s became quieter.

“I’ll have you shot, Makhno. Your anarchist notions are a mere fantasy. People are cruel, greedy, ruthless. They must be educated to holiness. And they must be punished if they fail!” He was breathing heavily. “It is what all Russians understand! It is what Cossacks understand.”

“You have no claim as a Cossack,” said Makhno with a faint sneer. “I withdraw my help. I shall inform the people I represent and ask them if they wish to withdraw also.” He began to turn away.

The Steel Tsar became placatory. “Nonsense, Makhno. We share the same cause. Send the prisoners to Kharkov if you wish. What do you think, Mrs. Persson?”

Una Persson said: “I think it would show the Central Government that the Cossacks have mercy, that they are not bandits, that their grievances are justified. It would be a good thing to do.”

She seemed to have considerable influence over him, for he nodded and agreed with her.

Makhno did not seem completely satisfied, but he was evidently thinking of the safety of Pilniak and the rest. He drew a deep breath and inclined his head. “I shall assume charge of the prisoners,” he said.

As he left with Makhno, Pilniak called back over his shoulder: “I wish you luck with your new masters, Bastable.”

I only knew that my loyalty was to Mrs. Persson and that I had faith in her judgment.

When Makhno had disappeared, Djugashvili began to laugh. “What a silly, childish business. Was it worth an argument over the lives of a few goat-beards?”

Mrs. Persson and I exchanged glances. In the meanwhile, Peewee Wilson echoed the Steel Tsar’s laughter. Neither seemed possessed of what I should have called a natural sense of humour.

“Is it true the Japanese are almost beaten?” I asked Mrs. Persson.

“Certainly,” she said. “A matter of days. They have already begun to talk armistice terms.”

“Then these people are doomed,” I said. “There is no way that the Cossacks can resist the whole might of the Russian Aerial Navy.”

Peewee had heard me. “That’s where you’re wrong old man,” he said. “That’s where you’re very wrong indeed!”

I thought I heard Mrs. Persson sigh.

L
ater, when the Cossack chieftains had returned to their men, the Steel Tsar stretched and suggested that we all dine in the rooms upstairs. I had not had a chance to speak privately to Mrs. Persson and, indeed, had been cornered by Wilson who had told me how he had been picked up during the raid on Rishiri and “dumped” (as he put it) in Kharkov because he had “made the mistake” of telling people he was an engineer and they had needed engineers in the railway works. He had left the city soon afterwards and had been on a train captured by rebels. The rebels had brought him to Djugashvili and the revolutionist had taken a liking to him.

“He’s got real imagination, old man. Unlike the imbeciles in London and Shanghai, who wouldn’t give me a chance. All I needed was a bit of faith and some financial support. You wouldn’t believe the inventions I’ve got in my brain, old man. Big ideas! Important ideas! Ideas, old man, which will shake the world!”

I found myself nodding, almost asleep.

“The Steel Tsar, old man, is giving me an enormous opportunity to build stuff for him which will help him win the revolution. And then we’ll have real socialism. Everything properly managed, like a well-oiled machine. Everyone will be a happy dog. You’ll see. And all it will take is Peewee. I’m the key factor, old man. I’m going to be remembered in History. The Chief says so.”

“The Chief?”

He indicated Djugashvili.

We followed the Steel Tsar upstairs. He had Mrs. Persson on his arm and was walking rather heavily, as if drunk. He turned back to me. “I had not realized you were friends. You will be able to help Wilson in his work, I hope.”

“Certainly he will,” said Mrs. Persson. “Won’t you, Mr. Bastable?”

“Of course.” I tried to sound as enthusiastic as possible, but the prospect of even another five minutes in Wilson’s company was more, at that moment, than I could contemplate.

The room above was fairly bare, but a long table had been laid with wholesome Ukrainian food, including a bowl of red borscht on every place. Djugashvili seated himself at the top of the table, with Mrs. Persson on his right and Wilson on his left. I sat next to Mrs. Persson. A few moments later Nestor Makhno stepped into the room. It was obvious that he was a reluctant guest. He had another man with him whom I recognized. I began to wonder if Mrs. Persson had not arranged all of this.

The other man was Dempsey, whom I had thought killed on his way to a Japanese prison. He was pale and thin and seemed ill. Possibly the drugs had begun to poison his system. When he saw me he gave a crooked smile and came forward, lurching a trifle, though he was not obviously drunk. “Hello, Bastable. Very good to see you. Come along for the final battle, eh?”

“What?”

“Armageddon, Bastable. Haven’t they told you?”

The Steel Tsar began to laugh that strange laugh of his. “Nonsense. You exaggerate, Captain Dempsey. Professor Marek assures us that everything is much safer now. After all, you took part in an experiment.”

Dempsey sat down and began to stare at his borscht. He made no attempt at all to eat it. Nestor Makhno seated himself across from me. He seemed puzzled by me, perhaps surprised by the alacrity with which I had joined “the other side”.

“It’s a prisoners’ reunion, eh?” he said. “Did you know, Comrade Djugashvili, that four of the people at this table have been prisoners of the Japanese?”

“So I gather.” The Steel Tsar was opening a small plate in his helmet, to expose a mouth pitted with pockmarks.

Now I was prepared to believe the rumour that it was vanity which caused him to wear the ferocious mask. He began to feed himself with small, careful movements.

He turned to Makhno. “Did you deliver the prisoners to Kharkov?”

“Not personally. They are on their way.”

“In padded railway carriages lined with silk, no doubt.”

“They were sent in a cattle-train we requisitioned.” Makhno knew the Steel Tsar was baiting him. He stroked his neat moustache and kept his eyes on his plate.

“For so cunning a tactician, you are lily-livered as a warrior,” continued Djugashvili. “It would seem to me, comrade, that there is even a chance you are weakening our endeavours.”

“We are fighting against the Central Government,” said Makhno obstinately. “We are not fighting ‘for’ you, comrade. I made that plain when we brought in our ships.”

“You brought your ships because you know you are not strong enough to fight alone. Your ridiculous notions of honour are inappropriate at this time.”

“Our notions are never inappropriate,” said Makhno. “We simply refuse to rationalize murder. If we have to kill, we kill, in self-defense. And we continue to name it for what it is. We don’t dress it up with fancy pseudo-scientific words.”

“The people like those words. It makes them feel secure,” said Mrs. Persson sardonically, as if to an intimate friend.

I wondered if she knew Makhno. It was even possible that he was a colleague. There was something out of the ordinary about the anarchist. Although the logic of his politics was beyond me, I was impressed by his recognition of fundamental principles which so many idealists seem to forget as soon as their ideals are rationalized in the language of political creeds. He carried within him a sort of self-control which did not deny passion and which, I thought, was almost wholly conscious, in contrast to Djugashvili, who relied on doctrine and masks for his authority.

Djugashvili continued to dig at Makhno.

“Your kind of individualism is an arrogant crime against society,” he said. “But worse than that—it never succeeds. What good is Revolution when it fails?”

Makhno rose from the table. “It is proving impossible to enjoy my food,” he said. He bowed to the rest of us and apologized. “I’ll return to my ship.”

There was a light of triumph in the Steel Tsar’s eyes, as if he had deliberately engineered Makhno’s departure, goading him until he had no choice but to leave.

Makhno looked enquiringly at Dempsey, who shook his head slightly and reached for his vodka.

The anarchist left the room. Djugashvili seemed to be smiling behind his mask.

Dempsey was frowning to himself as Makhno went out. Wilson began to babble about “rational socialism” or some such thing and for once he broke a sense of tension which nonetheless remained in the air.

A few moments later there came the sound of several pistol shots from outside. There were footfalls on the stairs, then Makhno reappeared. His left arm was wounded. In his right hand was his revolver. He waved it at Djugashvili, but he was not threatening.

“Assassination, eh? You’ll find at least two of your men shot. I know your methods, Djugashvili.” He paused, reholstering his empty pistol. “The black ships leave their moorings tonight.”

Then he was gone.

Djugashvili had half risen from his place, the light from the oil lamps making it seem that his metal mask constantly changed expression. The cold eyes were full of unpleasant passion. “We don’t need him. He was attacking our cause from within. We have science on our side now. Tomorrow I intend to display Wilson’s first invention to our men.”

Wilson seemed taken by surprise. “Well, Chief, I think you might find it’s not quite—”

“It will be ready in the morning,” said the “Chief”.

Dempsey had taken an interest in this aspect of the conversation, though he had hardly moved when Makhno had reappeared and made his declaration. Una Persson merely looked thoughtfully from face to face.

Djugashvili walked towards the door and called down the stairs, “Bring the professor up.”

Mrs. Persson and Dempsey both appeared to know what was going on, but I was completely at sea.

Djugashvili waited by the door until a small man with greying hair and round spectacles arrived. He seemed almost as unhealthy as Dempsey. There seemed to be something wrong with his skin and his eyes were watering terribly, so that he dabbed at them constantly with a red handkerchief.

“Professor Marek. You already know Captain Dempsey. You have met Mr. Wilson. Una Persson? Captain Bastable?”

The professor blinked in our general direction and waved his handkerchief by way of greeting.

“Your bombs are ready, eh? And Wilson’s invention is prepared.” Djugashvili was swaggering back to his place. “Sit down, professor. Have some vodka. It’s very good. Polish.”

Professor Marek rubbed at his cheek with the handkerchief. It appeared to me that some of his skin flaked away.

“What sort of bombs are these?” I asked the professor, more from politeness than anything.

“The same as I dropped on Hiroshima,” said Dempsey with sudden vehemence. “Aren’t they, Professor Marek?”

“The bombs which are supposed to have started the war?” I said in surprise.

“One bomb.” Dempsey lifted a finger. Mrs. Persson put a gentle hand on his arm. “One bomb. Wasn’t it, Mrs. Persson?”

“You shouldn’t—”

“That was experimental,” said Professor Marek. “We could not have predicted—”

Suddenly I was filled with that same frisson, that same terrifying resonance I had already experienced, to a slighter degree, in Dempsey’s company. I felt that I stared into a distorting mirror which reflected my own guilt.

In a small voice I asked the professor: “What sort of bomb was it that you caused to be dropped on Hiroshima?”

Marek sniffed and dabbed at his eyes. He spoke almost casually. “A nuclear fission bomb, of course,” he said.

S
tunned by Marek’s revelation, I could do little more than sit silently with my brain in the most profound and horrible confusion, as I tried to make some sort of sense, no matter how bizarre, of what I had just learned.

I tried to remember when I had first begun to feel some relief from the weight of guilt I had borne for so long. Had I experienced a kind of miracle? Had Cornelius Dempsey taken on my sin as his own? Had history been revised merely so that I should no longer have to think and dream of those millions I had helped destroy? Was all of this a singularly vivid hallucination, taking place in the space of hours or days as I lay dying of thirst in the ruins of Teku Benga?

No possibility seemed too strange. I stared across at the man who, in some terrible way, was my twin soul. Had the young anarchist who had introduced me to Korzeniowski at the Croydon Aerodrome subtly transformed the situation so that he, rather than I, steered the
Shan-tien
on her last mission to bomb the airship yards of Hiroshima? And were my adventures up to now merely a result of his success? Here was a future in which I was not responsible for that unforgivable crime.

So difficult was this idea to grasp in practical terms that I eventually gave up, forcing myself to listen while Djugashvili continued his egocentric monologues, his boastings and his diatribes. He made us drink with him. As a result, my anxieties were lulled but my confusion increased. He poured glass after glass of vodka into that little aperture which revealed his discoloured lips and he spoke of conquest.

He planned to conquer Russia first. Then the whole Slav world, both East and West, would eventually succumb to what he called “the justice of World Revolution”. The Moslems and the Jews must also be controlled, he said, but this was more difficult. “They listen to different echoes.” Often they did not respond to the same means of control as their Christian counterparts. He seemed to be telling us that while as an ex-priest, he had a fair idea how to manipulate the Slavs, he was baffled by other races.

“Finally,” he barked through his food, by way of a joke, “there is always a solution to these questions.”

Like so many fanatics, he possessed an appalling streak of timidity and terror which feared all that was not absolutely familiar. As his power increased, he would doubtless attempt to destroy anything that made him anxious. “In the lost childhood of Judas,” said one of the poets of the Irish Empire, “Christ was betrayed.” And what if Judas, not Jesus, had the power to shape history? What bestial monster would he make of human society? Was every demagogue, by definition, a Judas seeking to wrest the power of Christ from the world? Should we not always point the finger at such seekers after earthly power, no matter what their credentials or affirmations, and say to them: “By virtue of your calling you are our betrayer?” Bishop, politician, son of the people...