EF06 - The State Counsellor (26 page)

A porter loaded the sacks on to a trolley and was all set to trundle them off to the train when suddenly the severe, skinny lady started giving her pretty maid a roasting over some hatbox that had been left at home and got so carried away that she completely forgot where she was until the second bell, and then she turned on the porter - why was he dawdling like that and not taking the sacks to the luggage van? Against all Green's expectations, Needle managed the role magnificently.

Emelya and Bullfinch were supposed to make their move exactly when the second bell rang. There had been plenty of time for them to go to Nobel's place and collect a fully primed bomb.

They did it - just as the trolley with the sacks approached the exit to the platform and four men in civilian dress started towards the porter, whom the cantankerous little lady was prodding in the back with her handbag, there was the dull rumble of an explosion from the direction of the platforms, followed by screams and the tinkling of broken glass.

The police agents immediately forgot about the trolley and went rushing towards the thunderous roar, but the lady nudged the dawdling porter to make him turn back immediately.
Never mind what's happened at the station - the train won't wait!

Green didn't see what happened after that, although he had no reason to doubt that Needle and Julie would reach the carriage safely and the sacks would be deposited in the luggage section. The gendarmes and police agents wouldn't be interested in checking luggage now.

But the minutes passed, and there was still no final bell. At twenty past two Green decided to go and reconnoitre.

Judging from the chaotic flurry of blue greatcoats he could see through the windows of the station, there was no need to worry about being recognised. He had a word with a bewildered attendant and discovered that some officer had blown up a senior police official and fled. That was good. But he also discovered that the line would be closed for the rest of the night. And that meant the most important part of the operation had failed.

He had to wait for almost an hour before Needle and Julie came back with the sacks. Then he left the women and took the money to the secret meet at the Vindava goods sheds.

Emelya told him all the details.

'Before they let me out of the station to the trains, they gave me a thorough frisking. But I was clean, no luggage and a third-class ticket to Peter. They couldn't touch me. I went through to the platform and stood on one side, waiting. Then I saw Bullfinch strolling up. Clutching a huge bunch of flowers, with his fizzog bright red. They didn't even give him a glance. Who'd ever think a cherub like that had a bomb in his bouquet? We went into a huddle in a dark corner. I took the bomb out gently and slipped it in my pocket. The place was crowded, even though it was night. The passenger train from Peter was late and there were people waiting to meet it. And passengers arriving for our two o'clock train.
Just right,
I think.
No one's going to be staring at me.
I keep sneaking a look at the duty office. It has a window overlooking the platform, Greenich. The curtains are wide open, and I can see everything inside. Our guest of honour was sitting at the table, and there was a young officer by the door, yawning. Every now and then someone went in and came out. They weren't sleeping in there, they were working. I stroll past for a closer look and, Holy Mother - I spot the small window at the top is wide open. It must have been really hot in there. And that gave me a real warm feeling too.
Eh, Emelya,
I think to myself,
it's not your turn to die yet. With a stroke of luck like that, you might get away in one piece after all.
Bullfinch is standing facing the window like we agreed - about twenty paces away I'm huddled down on one side in the shadow. The bell sounds once. Ten minutes left before the train goes, nine, eight. I'm standing there praying to good Saint Nikolai and sinful Old Nick himself that they won't close that window. Jingle-jangle - that's the second bell. It's time. I walk past the window, taking it slow, and just flick the bomb in through the top, like a cat with its paw. It went in real neat, didn't even catch on the frame. After I took another five steps there was an almighty boom! And then all hell broke loose. Men running about blowing whistles and yelling. I heard Bullfinch shout out: "He went that way, towards the tracks! In an officer's coat!" The whole crowd went tramping off in that direction, and we just slipped out quietly through the side door on to the square. Then made a run for it.'

Green listened to what Emelya said, but he was watching Bullfinch. The boy was unusually quiet and downcast. He was sitting on a sack of money with his head propped in his hands, a miserable expression on his face and tears in his eyes.

'Never mind,' Green said to him. 'You did everything right.

It's not your fault it didn't work out. Tomorrow we'll think of something else.'

'I wanted to shout, but I was too late,' Bullfinch sobbed, still looking down at the ground. 'No, that's a lie. I lost my head. I was afraid if I shouted I'd give Emelya away. And the second bell had already rung. But Emelya couldn't see from the side

'What couldn't I see?' Emelya asked, surprised. 'He couldn't have gone out. When I walked past the window, I squinted sideways - his blue coat was still there.'

'He was there all right, but when you moved on, some people went into the office. A lady - she had a boy with her, a schoolboy. He looked about fifth class.'

'So that's it,' Emelya said with a frown. 'I'm sorry for the boy. But you did right not to shout. I'd have thrown the bomb all the same; it would just have been harder to get away.'

Bullfinch looked up with confusion in his tearful eyes. All the same? They had nothing to do with anything.'

'But our two ladies did,' Emelya replied harshly. 'If you and me had dallied, the bloodhounds would have picked them up with the money, and that would have been everything down the drain. And then Arsenii would have died for nothing, and we'd have lost Julie and Needle too, and no one would bother to save our lads in Odessa from the hangman's rope.'

Green walked up to the boy, put one hand on his shoulder awkwardly and tried to explain as clearly as possible something that he had thought about many times.

'You have to understand. We're soldiers. We're at war. There are all sorts of people on the other side. Some of them are kind and good and honest. But they wear a different uniform and that makes them our enemies. It's just like the battle of Borodino -
Tell me, uncle.
.. You remember that bit? When they were shooting at somebody, they didn't think about whether he was good or bad. If he's French, then blaze away.
Moscow's right behind us, isn't it?
But these enemies are worse than the French. We can't pity them. That is, we can and we must, but not now. Later. First we defeat them, then we pity them.' In his mind the words sounded very convincing, but out loud they weren't so persuasive.

Bullfinch flared up. 'I understand about the war. And about our enemies. They hanged my father, they killed my mother. But what have that schoolboy and that lady got to do with it? When soldiers fight, they don't kill civilians, do they?'

'Not deliberately. But once a cannon's fired, who knows where the shell will land? It could be in someone's house. It's bad, it's a shame, but it's war.' Green clenched his ringers into a fist so that his phrases wouldn't come out tight and lumpy - Bullfinch wouldn't understand if they did. 'They don't have pity on our civilians, do they? At least we do it by mistake, not deliberately. You talk about your mother. Why did they lock her up to die in a punishment cell? Because she loved your father. And what do they do to the people every day, year after year, century after century? Rob them, starve them, humiliate them, make them live in filth, like pigs.'

Bullfinch didn't say anything to that, but Green could see the conversation wasn't over. Never mind, there'd be more time for that.

'Sleep,' he said. 'It's been a hard day. And we have to send the money off tomorrow. Otherwise it all really was for nothing.'

'Oho-ho,' Emelya sighed, arranging a sack with a hundred thousand roubles in it under his head. 'The effort we went to getting these damned bits of paper, and now we don't know how to get shut of them. It's just like they say: if you haven't got a care, get yourself a pig.'

He thought for most of the night. He thought in the morning. He just couldn't make it work.

Six sacks was a pretty large load. You couldn't take it out without being noticed, especially after yesterday's events.

What was it Needle had suggested - dividing up the sacks between six couriers? They could do that. But most likely Julie and Needle would slip through all right, and the other four wouldn't. The police agents were most suspicious of young men. They'd lose two-thirds of the money and hand over four comrades as well - that was too high a price to pay for two hundred thousand.

Perhaps they could just send the women with a hundred thousand each, and hold on to the rest of the money for the time being They could, but that was risky too. There had been too many slip-ups in the last few days. Rahmet had been the worst. He was certain to have given the Okhranka a full description of all the members of the group, and of Needle as well.

Rahmet hadn't known how to find Needle, but he must surely have betrayed the private lecturer with the apartment on Ostozhenka Street. Aronson was another untidy loose end. The Okhranka could find Needle through him.

And then there was Arsenii Zimin. The body in Somovsky Cul-de-Sac would have been identified by now, of course. They were tracing the dead man's contacts and acquaintances, sooner or later they would pick up something.

No, the group had to travel light, with no excess baggage. They had to get rid of the money as soon as possible.

This difficult task was complicated even further by his need to lie down and rest to restore his strength. Green listened closely to his body and concluded that he wasn't fit for full-scale action today. After the brawl with Ace, his body was telling him it needed time to recover, and Green was used to trusting what his body said. He knew it wouldn't make excessive demands, and if it wanted to take a breather, it meant it really needed one. If he took no notice, things would only get worse. But if he accepted his body's demands, it would restore itself quickly. There wouldn't be any need for medicines, just complete rest and self-discipline. Lie without moving a day, or two would be better, and his broken rib would start to knit, the stitched wounds would heal over, the battered muscles would recover their resilience.

Six years earlier, in Vladimir, Green had escaped from a prison convoy by breaking out the bars of the railway-carriage window. Unfortunately, when he jumped down on to the rails, he landed right in front of a sentry and took a lunge from a bayonet under his shoulder blade. As he fled from his pursuers, dodging and swerving across the rails and between the trains, his back was soaked in blood. Eventually he hid in a warehouse, among massive bundles of sheepskins. He couldn't go out - they were searching everywhere for the escaped prisoner. But he couldn't stay there either - they'd started loading the bundles into a train, and there were fewer and fewer of them. He slit one open and clambered inside, in between the smelly, damp skins - they'd obviously been soaked to make them weigh more. So the extra weight of his body wasn't noticed. The loaders grabbed the massive bundle with hooks and dragged it over the boards. The wagon was sealed from the outside and the train set off gently westwards, past the cordon, past the patrols. Why would anyone think of checking a sealed wagon? The train took a long time to reach Moscow: six days. Green assuaged his thirst by sucking on the damp wool, which only dried out very slowly, and he didn't eat at all, because there was nothing to eat. But he didn't grow weak - on the contrary, he grew stronger, since he directed his willpower to patching up his body for twenty-four hours of the day. It turned out that he didn't need food for that. When they unsealed the wagon at the shunting yard in Moscow, Green jumped down on to the ground and walked calmly past the hung-over, indifferent loaders to the exit. No one tried to stop him. When he managed to reach the party's doctor and showed him the wound on his back, the doctor was astonished: the hole had already sealed itself with scar tissue.

This old memory gave him the answer to his problem. Everything would turn out very simple, if only Lobastov agreed.

He had to agree. He already knew that the CG had managed things without his help. He knew about Sverchinsky too. He'd be too wary of the consequences to refuse.

There was another possible consideration, still unverified. Could Timofei Grigorievich Lobastov perhaps be the mysterious letter writer TG? It seemed very probable. He was cunning, cautious and insatiably curious about other people's secrets. He was a far from straightforward man, he was playing his own game, and only he knew what it was.

But if he was TG, he'd be all the more willing to help.

Green woke Emelya quietly, so as not to disturb Bullfinch. Speaking quietly, he explained the assignment to him - briefly, because although Emelya looked like a dumb oaf, he was quick on the uptake.

Emelya got dressed without saying anything, ran his massive fingers through his hair to straighten it and pulled on his peaked cap. No one would give him a second look. An ordinary factory hand - Lobastov had thousands like that at his plant.