Lenin's Roller Coaster by David Downing

Author:David Downing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2017-02-12T22:04:54+00:00

10

The Price of Cabbage

The three-hundred-mile journey upriver took four days. The paddle steamer Kutuzov stopped at all the scheduled calling points and quite a few places besides; according to its captain, the aging engines needed frequent respites just to override the current.

McColl enjoyed it. The food was better than expected, and there was room to sleep on deck. The weather was beautiful, days clear and sunny, the nights just cool enough. If the views weren’t that interesting, neither were they hard on the eye: yellow-green grasslands and rickety jetties, occasional white churches with polished domes of blue and gold.

His fellow passengers were the usual hotchpotch. Rumor had it there were a couple of princes locked away in one of the cabins, and there was certainly no shortage of paupers lining the decks. According to Kerzhentsev, most of the crew were Bolsheviks, but they, unlike their brothers in Sevastopol, bore no great grudge against their officers and captain. McColl’s Russian companion spent much of the trip proselytizing among the other passengers, with, as he cheerfully admitted, precious little success.

When they reached Kiev early on the morning of May 13, Kerzhentsev suggested a place—a café in the Old Town—where both could leave messages under false names, should either need help in their anti-German ventures. McColl readily agreed. He had no idea what reputation the Russian might have among Cumming’s people in the city, but he’d seen for himself how effective the man could be. And truth be told, McColl rather liked him.

There were German soldiers hovering close by the gangplank, but no general inspection of papers, which suited McColl. The ones he’d been given in Ashkhabad were almost in shreds, and if Georgiy Kuskov was still on his way home to Moscow, he’d chosen a roundabout route.

The center of town was a couple of miles to the south, so he and Kerzhentsev clambered aboard one of the droshkies that were waiting outside the dock gates and sat back in the sunshine as the horse trotted briskly down the riverside road. McColl had never been to Kiev, and his first impressions were favorable—the city was built amid a clutch of wooded hills rising up from the river’s west bank. The distant slopes seemed thick with churches, and away to the south what looked like a statue was crowned by a huge white cross, ablaze in the morning sunlight.

At Tsarskaya Square they paid off the driver. So far they’d seen very few Germans, but here in the center several groups of officers were taking their morning stroll. There were also Ukrainian troops, the lower ranks standing sentry outside some of the bigger buildings, the officers parading in their many-colored comic-opera uniforms, complete with gaudy epaulets and ludicrous cockades.

“Independence!” Kerzhentsev muttered scornfully. “They have a hetman now, the first since 16-something. A man named Skoropadsky. A German puppet, but a willing one.” He broke into a laugh. “What times, eh? Well, I guess this is good-bye. For now at least. I wish you luck in your endeavors.

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