An aide had stepped up. He held the Kaiser’s long cloak. It was to shelter him on the drive up to the observation post where he would be able to see the artillery. The Kaiser put on his pickelhaube, adjusted the strap beneath his chin, turned to allow the aide to settle the cloak about his shoulders.
‘There’s no room for weakness,’ the Kaiser said to von Hintze. ‘If you’re still having qualms, Herr Minister, get over them. Anything else can wait,’ he said sharply and moved towards the door. A command was shouted, the staff officers briefly fell silent, came to attention, and once the Supreme War Lord had left they went back to their maps and telephones, managing the attack that was designed to bring victory to Germany.
Everything is ready. Everything is more than ready. He has paid out monies, arranged for transportation. Not wanting to go any further than that. The city is an uproar. A panic. A good time for anyone to be leaving.
The date has been decided. He has sent his confirmation, but the wireless receives nothing. Accordingly he has made the walk up the long hill to the station, dressed as well as he can, waited in the queue for what seems like hours, grown frustrated and then realized that it would be far better to pay for a boy.
And this is what he does, finding one of the wretches that wait just outside the station so that they will not be run off by the one of the Red Guards assigned to patrol the entrance.
‘I need a courier. Who’s the best?’ Making it like a challenge, the kind of thing boys of a certain age prefer over all others. Putting on a smile to dazzle them. One tough on top of a luggage cart doesn’t flinch. ‘It might be difficult,’ he says to them, still smiling, ‘but I’m in a hurry and don’t have a lot of time.’
‘Two kopeks,’ they are all shouting. The little ones cluster around his knees.
‘I am having dinner with a special person. She needs consoling.’
‘If you want the receipt, it’s extra,’ says the tough.
‘No, I don’t know where I’m going to be. You keep the receipt and I’ll come back for it.’
‘It’s still extra,’ says the boy, and the little ones look around, willing to do whatever he tells them for less.
He looks at the boy’s eyes. Not unattractive. Good enough. Big enough to know what getting hurt means. Now all the little ones have shut up.
‘Fine, then,’ he says. ‘You.’
They move into the corridor and he finds a counter and the forms. He writes the message, changes his mind in midsentence and tears up the form and starts again.
The boy reaches into his pocket and takes out a tin box, something once used for pills. He has a cigarette stub in there, and begins to dig for a match.
‘Here,’ he says, and gives the boy his cigarette case. Turns back to the writing.
‘Sometimes the best-laid plans go all wrong, you understand?’ he says to the boy.
‘All the time,’ the boy says, carefully closing the case, turning it over in his hands, feeling the warmth of the silver. Expensive, the boy will be thinking. Nice, but something that’s been around, a dent here, a place where the silver has rubbed off at one corner, as if it had been dragged along the ground. He holds out his hand and the boy gives the case back. The touch of a smile.
They are equals now.
‘The important thing is not to panic. Not to lose your head, eh?’ Looks over at the boy and smiles. He straightens up from the counter top and gazes down through the doors out to the open square.
Tonight, he thinks. Certainly, it will be tonight, he is thinking. The Bolsheviks are packing up and leaving town, the better to make their stand on the Volga. Everyone is trying to get out of the city on the last train. Those who’ve kept back a little are even trying to bribe their way out of town.
If you are going to run away, he is thinking, you should resemble as much as possible someone who is running away. Someone with something to save, something to protect. It’s victims who run away.
He tears up the form again. Starts over.
SPECIAL SALES #R4-0B3
READY TO PURCHASE SEVEN. ADVISE REGARDS DELVERY
SOONEST.
TODMANN
He signs, and folds the form in half. ‘I’m going to give you a rouble extra, eh?’
The boy frowns, looking at him, surprised that this supposed sophisticate has revealed himself to be a far bigger fool than he has suspected.
‘But it’s not for you, it’s for one of the operators in there, eh? Go in through the door and give him the note. For that much it goes to the top of the queue, yes?’
‘Yes, of course.’ The boy actually smiles.
‘Thank you, and here, soldier. Take another.’ He opens the silver case and gives the boy another cigarette, wondering if he’s the kind to rush through things or make them last. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he says.
‘Fine,’ says the boy after a moment. A good boy. Good eyes. Strong and hungry.
‘I’ll be back for the receipt. I need it for business, so make sure you keep it. Keep it safe in your little box, eh? If they reply, I might hire you a second time, eh? So, go on, then,’ he says, and watches him walk down the corridor, jump the line, take his cap off as he pushes into the telegraphers’ cage and, good boy that he is, do exactly as he’s been told.
Everything changed in Perm. Ryzhkov watched the soldiers as they suddenly emptied out, and there was the first delay; a full half-hour while they watered and fitted an extra tender. The wires were down and no one knew if they could re-coal at Yekaterinburg yard.
He walked around the city, stood there watching the Kama running low between its embankments, used his Cheka credentials whenever he needed, and poked his nose into everything. Dropped in on the commissar and let him know that he might have important communications from time to time, looked the man straight in the eye. Watched the wheels go around even as he agreed. Special handling, then. Absolutely.
They got going again at dusk. He managed to requisition a loaf of bread at Cheka mess, which was a long room in the basement of a therapeutic school with kitchens at the end and steaming soup pots. Then in the night the train had slowed, and stopped intermittently – the entire journey elongating from a normal eight hours to two days and counting.
The weather had changed, becoming wetter. It began to rain in the night, and it was in some grey late July hour when they finally arrived, passing through a hurried line of barricades the Bolsheviks were throwing up at the village of Kungur, where the road to Moscow intersected with the railroad – an important little place, for if the Czechs overran it they’d be one step closer to controlling the railroad all the way to Viatka, and that much closer to joining with British and American forces advancing south from the port of Archangel.
And if that happened the people’s revolution would be surrounded.
They were losing, Ryzhkov saw. The train was completely empty in the last stretches, not a good sign. It appeared that there were no reinforcements rushing to help the Ural Soviet and the people of Yekaterinburg. And, even with the fresh troops he had been travelling with, it was obvious that there would be no strong Red defence of Perm. It was just the mathematics – there weren’t enough trained Red fighters to stop the Czechs. No horses to speak of, no artillery.