India Black (25 page)

“How long ago were they here?” I asked, but the concept of time clearly eluded the youngster. He scratched his head again, lost his cap again, and I sat through the pantomime for the second time.

“Never mind,” I said. “Give us the best horses in the stable, quick as you can.”

I followed French into the inn and found him in close conversation with the landlord. I sidled up to listen.

“Yup. They come through here not twenty minutes ago. Hired four horses, and paid in gold, they did. Most custom I’ve had in a week.”

“Did they seem to be in a hurry?” asked French.

The landlord nestled an unshaven chin in one hand and searched the ceiling for an answer. After a lengthy pause (they weren’t a sharpish lot at the Golden Lion), he said, “Why, no, they didn’t seem to be. They didn’t hang around, but they didn’t seem pressed for time or such like.”

French shot me a triumphant look. As long as our prey remained unaware they were being pursued, they would likely be moving at a slower speed, conserving their horses’ energy rather than pushing the creatures in these brutal conditions.

“I need two horses,” said French.

“The boy is harnessing them now,” I said. “But Ivanov and Oksana took the four best; we’ll have to make do with what we can get.”

The landlord bristled. “Here, now. There’s no call to run down my animals. Every horse I’ve got is top-drawer.”

“I’m sure they are,” said French soothingly. “How much?”

I left the two of them arguing over a price, while I availed myself of the facilities (primitive) and had a quick brandy (ghastly). Thus fortified, I joined French in the yard, where the stable boy was settling the breast collars around the animals’ chests while French looked on in dismay.

The landlord’s “top-drawer” horses were a bony, spavined pair, with coats coated in mud and matted tails. They looked like they’d just done a grueling run for the Royal Mail and now needed a good rest and a bucket of feed. Then they’d be ready for the glue factory.

“Ye gods,” said French, and passed a weary hand over his eyes. “How are we supposed to catch Ivanov with these beasts?”

“Take heart,” I said. “Do you really think Ivanov’s horses are much better than this? And they’ve got to drag a coach with at least three people on board—Ivanov, Oksana, and the Cossack guard. I like our chances.”

As if Mother Nature had decided to take sides in this chess match, the wind chose that moment to subside to a mournful whine, the skies lightened, and for the first time in eighteen hours, the snow slackened, until only a few flakes drifted past our faces. The horses huffed and whinnied and stamped their feet as if, despite appearances to the contrary, they were eager to join in the chase. The omens looked good, as they so often do just before disaster strikes, but of course we were unaware of what lay before us.

We climbed into the sleigh, adjusted our rugs, and French spoke encouragingly to the horses. God knows the poor nags needed heartening, for French had that mad look in his eye, as if the scent of Ivanov had reached his nostrils.

As we turned out of the stable yard and gathered speed, the sleigh bucked and slewed wildly. French grasped the reins and uttered a series of oaths.

“Must you hit every rock between London and Dover?” I asked, after I’d recovered my hat and fastened it firmly on my head.

“It’s not as though I can see them under the snow,” he said. “It’s hard enough just staying on the road.”

The horses did their damnedest to keep a lively pace, but they were exhausted and wobbly in the traces, their breath coming in laboured gasps. French was chomping at the bit, hunching forward on the edge of his seat and scanning the road ahead of us with the intensity of a ferret going down a rabbit hole, but he knew the horses were giving all they had, and we’d have to be satisfied with that.

We pottered along for a while, with French grousing continually about the lack of speed and me looking at the scenery, as there was little else to do. The countryside lay in frozen silence, broken only by the wheezing of the horses, the metallic jingling of their harnesses and the susurration of the sleigh’s runners on the snow. The road wound through snowy fields and tangled thickets, crossed frozen streams, rambled through acres of apple orchards, skirted the steep sides of the valleys. The road was a single, sunken track through this area, often bounded by thick hedges that made French swear at the loss of visibility and grumble until we reached an opening where we could see across the fields to the thin black line of the road before us.

I was thinking it was rather pretty, in a country sort of way, but I’m a London girl through and through and found the lack of dirt and smoke, spectacle and noise, a bit unnerving. The open vistas and the intense silence made me edgy. It was then I felt French spring from his seat like a startled hare.

“Is it them? Can you see them?” I was infected with his excitement.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Take the reins.”

He thrust them into my hands as he said this, then in one agile movement bounded onto the seat beside me and, using my shoulder to balance, stared hard into the distance.

“What do you see?”

“It’s a coach of some sort. It’s gone into a copse, but there’s a straight bit of road ahead and the coach should be coming out any minute.”

His hand on my shoulder was quivering with energy.

“Well?” I said.

“Wait a minute. I think I see it. It’s, it’s ...” His hand tightened on my shoulder so sharply that I gasped.

“It’s a coach and four.” He laughed aloud. “And there’s a bloody great Cossack holding the reins. I can see his light blue hat from here. We’re not a half mile behind them, India. Give us more speed.”

I whipped the horses obligingly, but after a few steps at a half gallop, they settled back into a slow, painful jog. I’d gladly have used the whip on Oksana (I remember distinctly it was her who plumped for leaving Rowena and me in the embassy attic), but I couldn’t bring myself to wallop these poor nags.

French dropped into the seat. “Bloody hell. They haven’t got it in them, have they?”

“Slow and steady wins the race,” I said, but I knew the horses didn’t have the heart. “Look here, we’ve almost caught up with them with these two horses. As long as the Cossack doesn’t catch on to the fact that we’re following them, I believe we can stay within striking distance. And even if he does turn around and see us here, who’s to say that we’re not just a couple of innocent travelers, enjoying a sleigh ride now that the weather has cleared?”

We played a game of cat and mouse for the best part of an hour, with the Russians riding blithely along in front of us, carefully preserving their horses’ strength, seemingly oblivious to the red sleigh that followed in their wake. French and I let the horses jog along slowly, but we made ground anyway, our horses not having to cut a new track in the drifted snow with each step but traveling in the ruts left by the Russians’ horses. And we had the advantage in that the sleigh was light as a feather, compared to the coach, with three people on board and no doubt all the luggage needed in Paris or St. Petersburg or whatever city they’d chosen for their final destination.

Each time the coach wound out of sight behind some curve of the road, we found ourselves a little closer when it emerged again into view.

“If only we had fresh horses,” French sighed. He glanced at me from under his brows. “Or less weight in the sleigh.”

“Don’t get any ideas, French. Without me, you’re only one man without a plan. By the way, how’s the plan coming?”

But I was not destined to hear French’s plan (though I doubted seriously that one existed, even at that stage in the chase), for just then the coach approached a long hairpin curve in the road, which turned nearly back upon itself, leaving the occupants of the coach and the occupants of the sleigh staring at each other across five hundred feet of frozen hop vines.

The Cossack on the driver’s seat glanced casually at us and raised his whip to his fleece hat in greeting. Ivanov was seated at the window facing us, and as his head turned nonchalantly in our direction, both French and I looked away to avoid being seen. But it was too late. There was a shout from the coach, and the Cossack guard had swiveled in his seat, probably thinking his passenger was having a heart attack or had finally gone stark raving mad at being confined in that coach for so many hours. But Ivanov had his head and arm out the window, gesticulating at us and shouting up at the guard in Russian, his voice carrying across the field to us. The Cossack, responding no doubt to the shouted commands, laid the whip to his nags, and they surged forward against the drifted snow, struggling mightily.

French seized the reins from my hands and snapped the whip over our own horses’ backs. I’ll say this for them, they were game, but they were in no condition to play at Roman chariot races with the coach. They surged forward at French’s urging and struggled to maintain a steady trot, but they were both winded and blowing hard, sides heaving, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they had to stop or drop dead in the traces.

“Listen, French,” I said, clutching my hat with one hand and hanging on to the side of the sleigh with the other. “We can’t maintain this pace and neither can they.”

French’s face was a mask of determination. “We’re not slowing down, India. If the horses collapse, we’ll walk. But now that I’ve got Ivanov in my sights, I’m not stopping unless I’m forced to do so.”

It’s not as though I am a member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but I hated to watch these gallant brutes be pushed beyond their limits, all because a civil servant had demonstrated the questionable judgment of bringing secret documents to a whorehouse.

The coach vanished around a bend in the road, and French let out a roar of frustration. I thought it would be an impolitic time to mention equine welfare again and so I concentrated on not losing my hat and what French and I would say to one another when the horses died. And then there was the small matter of what would happen next with the Russkis. Surely we were drawing close to another inn, and they would have to stop there for fresh horses. We’d be pulling into the stable yard before they’d have the chance to harness the horses and bolt, and then what would we do? Well, the subject of plans would probably be as welcome as that of not whipping the nags, but since I might be called on to face Ivanov with a set of barkers in his hand, I had a vested interest in what might transpire.

“French,” I said, as we came to the bend around which the coach had disappeared, “I really think—”

I was flung forward out of my seat and narrowly missed landing on the horses’ backsides as they juddered to a halt in the road, heads tossing wildly, nostrils flaring, and snow spraying out from their skidding hooves. Beside me French lurched forward, his boots scrabbling for purchase on the sleigh floor, and the next thing I saw was French flying out of the sleigh, caroming off one of the horses, and landing in a drift of snow along the roadside. Poor bastard. I had assumed his role of government agent required certain demonstrations of agility and dexterity, but apparently not. Since I’d known him, French had spent an inordinate amount of time taking pratfalls in the snow. The thought that he’d been helped along on two occasions by yours truly did not trouble my conscience.

The horses were still stamping and plunging, and French came up spitting snow and profanities, so it took a moment before I understood the reason for our precipitate halt. The Russian coach stood directly in the roadway before us, and our horses, coming quickly around the bend in the road, had stopped only inches from the back of the coach.

My heart sank as Ivanov came striding through the snow, stroking his mustache and smirking broadly at French. He looked right at home, as though he was on his own estate in Russia, ready to sort out a particularly recalcitrant serf and enjoy it while he was at it. The Cossack driver was a step behind, and he looked to be a right rotter, with a pitted face and an evil scar tracing a red slash across his face. He was smirking, too. As expected, Ivanov held a pistol, leveled at French, and the Cossack had drawn his
shashka
and was eyeing me as though I was a particularly succulent roast beef ready for carving.

“Mr. French.” Ivanov’s voice was thick with satisfaction. Well, he could afford to be arrogant, as his rival was still thrashing about in the snow, trying to find his feet and cursing like a sailor. But at Ivanov’s words, French lay still and glared up at him. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of that scowl, but it fazed Ivanov not a bit.

“’Lo, Ivanov,” said French, cool as you please. “Remind me to acquaint you with some of the rudiments of sound driving when you have the time.”

Ivanov grinned mirthlessly. “So you play the prankster at a moment like this? What is that expression? Whistling past the graveyard? Perhaps this is some of the famous British sangfroid in the face of defeat? Eh? Is that it? Putting on a brave face for Miss Black, when you know very well you’ve lost the game?”

“The game isn’t over, Ivanov.”

“Really? Let’s see now. I’m holding you at gunpoint, and at a word, the guard here will leave Miss Black with a scar to match his own. I don’t think you have any countermoves left.”

I shivered and did my best to look miserable (easily done in the frigid air) and frightened (no playacting required there), and gripped my purse as though I were some society ninny whose worst nightmare was to be separated from her rouge and a clean kerchief. My purse held those things, too, along with the Bulldog I was so fond of.

Ivanov cocked his head to one side and smiled triumphantly. “I’ve read the memorandum to the prime minister, prepared by your War Office. Believe me, if those idiots were staffing our military offices, I’d consider resigning my commission. But we would have dealt with the problem of bureaucratic incompetence by sending the imbeciles responsible for such inaccuracies off to a penal labour camp to contemplate their ineptitude.”