The Scarlet Generation Read online

  The Scarlet Generation

  Christopher Nicole

  © Christopher Nicole 1996

  Christopher Nicole has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1996 by Severn House

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Part One - Those Who Would Die

  Chapter 1 – The Calm

  Chapter 2 – The Storm

  Chapter 3 – The Swamp

  Chapter 4 – The Partisans

  Part Two - Those Who Would Fight

  Chapter 5 – The Waiting

  Chapter 6 – The Task

  Chapter 7 – The Masters

  Chapter 8 – The Attack

  Chapter 9 – The Destruction

  Part Three - Those Who Would Conquer

  Chapter 10 – The Survivors

  Chapter 11 – Treachery

  Chapter 12 – The Animals

  Chapter 13 – The Prisoner

  Chapter 14 – The Victors

  Part One - Those Who Would Die

  Better one suffer, than a nation grieve. John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel

  Chapter 1 – The Calm

  “Ra, ra, ra!” the crowd shouted. “Ra, ra, ra! FDR for ever! Ra, ra, ra!”

  Alex Bolugayevski and his friends looked down at the people from the windows of the Boston General hospital. “It’s not really legal, of course,” said Oliver Wenck. “Three terms! It’s not constitutional.”

  “It makes them happy,” Alex suggested. Although the young men were all in their middle or late twenties, all wore the white coats of housemen, and were all friends, having been through medical school together, Alex Bolugayevski stood out, not only because he was the tallest at some inches over 6ft, and the biggest, or because he had bold, handsome features and crisp yellow hair, but because he was tangibly different from his fellows. Several of them had ancestors from Eastern Europe, some even from Russia. But none of them had as a mother a princess of the old Tsarist regime, or a stepfather who had spent several years in a Stalinist prison. Or was entitled to call himself prince, if he chose. Nor did any of them have the prospect of inheriting a sizeable chunk of the Cromb Shipping Line Inc. Some of them often wondered why Alex chose to spend his time following the backbreaking routine of an internee at Boston General instead of sitting behind a large walnut desk, telephone in each hand.

  “But you didn’t vote for him,” commented Elaine Mitchell, tapping the button pinned to his coat. Elaine was the only woman in the group. Herself tall and willowy, attractive rather than pretty, with curling, dark hair, she aspired to be a surgeon, providing she didn’t give up medicine to marry Alex Bolugayevski, which she fully intended to do if he would ever get around to asking her.

  “My family are Republicans,” Alex pointed out.

  “And you always vote the family way,” Elaine suggested.

  “Of course! Don’t you?”

  “Never!” She found the idea of so tightly knit a family fascinating, but also terrifying; her own was so relaxed. Her sister lived in California, and they only met a couple of times a year, but when they did, conversation, relationship, continued as if they shared a room. The concept of still living at home after the age of 21 amazed her. It gave her goose pimples to think that she might one day belong to a family with such a background, and who seemed to find it necessary to be within touching distance of each other on a year-round basis — and which was ruled by a princess! She had only seen the Dowager Princess Priscilla from a distance or in photographs in the glossies, as Alex had not yet got around even to taking her home, but he had promised to do so after the election — to celebrate Wendell Wilkie’s victory. Now she wasn’t sure he would still wish to do that.

  What did one say to a princess? She had heard that the Princess Bolugayevska, as she had been in her heyday, had been considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. Well, obviously that had to have been some time in the past — the Princess was well into her forties now. But she was still a princess.

  “Is that by inclination, or habit?” Alex asked, as he fetched their coats.

  “It’s an American custom,” she explained. Well, he ought to know that, having lived here for 15 years. He did not even have a trace of a Russian accent. But Elaine knew all about how he and his mother and his now dead half-sister had escaped from Russia during the great Civil War. Even if Alex could remember very little about that, it was still an incredibly romantic background from the point of view of a young woman who had been born, brought up, and educated in Concord and Boston.

  But he was taking her home, she realised, as having said goodnight to Staff — they would be back on duty at dawn the next morning — and to the other internees, he escorted her out into the chill and boisterous November air. People surrounded them, shouting the praises of Franklin Roosevelt, jumping up and down, setting off firecrackers, laughing and shouting, utterly friendly because Alex had wisely removed his Wilkie button and Elaine still wore her Roosevelt. “Do you think it’s unconstitutional?” she shouted, as they fought their way through the throng. “A third term, I mean.”

  “It’s democracy,” he assured her.

  Elaine clung to his arm as they climbed the hill swaying against each other. “I’m scared stiff,” she confessed.

  “They’re human.”

  “Well...there are humans and humans, aren’t there. Do they know about me?”

  “No.”

  “Shit!” she muttered. But she had created this scenario. She had pushed as hard as she dared, short of actually inviting this gorgeous hunk to bed, and well brought-up young ladies did not do that sort of thing, even when they have shared the intimacies of examining male and female reproductive organs together — their subjects had either been very dead or very sick, which is not conducive to romance. Now was the moment of fruition.

  She was out of breath when he pushed through the gate. The house was big, four-storeyed and square, and glowed with light. There were two expensive cars parked in the drive to the right. Even in the November darkness it was easy to see that in the spring the garden would be a blaze of designed colour. She was in the domain of a Russian princess!

  The door was actually opened by a butler. Elaine wasn’t sure whether or not she should curtsey. “Rollo, this is Dr Mitchell.”

  “It is a pleasure, Dr Mitchell.” Rollo revealed no surprise at the unusual title, in a woman. “May I take your coat?”

  Elaine allowed herself to be divested of her tweed herringbone. “He’s English,” she whispered to Alex.

  “All butlers are English,” he told her.

  Rollo was walking in front of them to open double doors. “Mr Alexei and Dr Mitchell,” he announced, rather, Elaine thought, as if they were at a grand ball. She had never heard Alex called Alexei before.

  Alex had taken her arm again, much to her relief, and urged her into the brightly lit room. It was large, and there was a roaring fire in the hearth at the far end. There were only three people present, but one of them was a surprise, it appeared, even to Alex. “Alexei, darling!” Priscilla Cromb came forward. “Isn’t the result disappointing!”

  “Absolutely! Mother, I’d like you to meet Dr Elaine Mitchell.”

  Again Elaine was not sure whether she should curtsey. It was early evening, and perhaps the Princess dressed for dinner every evening. The dark-green taffeta gown with the plunging décolletage, in which a gold chain with a sapphire pendant nestled with devastating effect, was sufficiently breathtaking, but even that magnificence was meaningless when she got her eyes up to the Princess’s face. The contours were basically so
ft, flawlessly carved into the most superb beauty, but rendered even the more compelling by the traces of hardness at the edges of her lips, the cool ice-blue of her eyes. Elaine could not discern any lines other than a few crows’ feet at the corners of the eyes, while the décolletage indicated that even at 46 the Princess Dowager still possessed the sort of figure any woman half her age might dream of. “Dr Mitchell?” Her voice was soft, but her eyes flickered towards her son.

  “We work at the hospital together,” Alex explained.

  “How nice,” Priscilla said. Elaine realised that she had not actually been welcomed.

  “But I must warn you, Mom,” Alex went on, “that she voted for Roosevelt.” Elaine cast him a hasty glance, both to ascertain that he was joking and in amazement that anyone would dare address this supreme creation as “Mom”! But he was smiling.

  And now Priscilla Bolugayevska-Cromb was smiling as well, and doubling her beauty. “We accept all sorts, Dr Mitchell.”

  “Elaine, please, Your...” she bit her lip.

  “Call me Priscilla.” Priscilla took her hand and led her into the room.

  “My husband, Joseph.”

  Joseph Cromb was also dressed for dinner, in a dinner-jacket. Elaine began to feel like a tramp. He was a tall, somewhat thin man. His face was handsome, the aquiline features revealing his Jewish ancestry. It was a strong face, more obviously so than that of his wife, although both indicated powerful personalities. Elaine knew that this man had been imprisoned by the Russian Communists for several years. She had no real idea what that meant, but it sounded pretty grim. Yet there was no obvious sign of ill-treatment, in his face, at least. “My pleasure, Dr Mitchell,” he said and, to her utter consternation, kissed her hand. No one had ever done that to her before.

  “And now I would like you to meet Sonia Bolugayevska,” Priscilla said.

  She was really addressing her son, who had been staring at the other woman in the room. Well, Elaine thought, she was certainly worth staring at. Sonia Bolugayevska was well past 60 but there remained traces of her once great beauty in the firm lines of her chiselled features, in her carriage — she was a tall woman and must once have had an eye-catching figure — and even in the traces of glowing black in her curling gray hair. “Aunt Sonia?” Alex stepped forward, and she embraced him.

  “Sonia and I shared the same husband, once,” Priscilla told Elaine, and smiled as the young woman was obviously out of her depth. “Not at the same time, of course. But we were both Princesses of Bolugayen.” Living history, Elaine thought.

  “Dr Mitchell!” Again Elaine felt like curtseying.

  “But, Aunt Sonia, to see you here...” Alex was clearly overwhelmed.

  “I invited Sonia to visit us for a while,” Priscilla said. “I didn’t tell you, just in case she decided not to come.”

  “Oh, how I wanted to come!” Sonia said.

  Priscilla rang a silver bell and Rollo appeared instantly, carrying a tray of glasses of champagne. Priscilla raised hers. “So, I drink to old times.”

  “Old times!” the others said.

  How I hope they are going to talk of them, Elaine thought.

  “Time was when we smashed our glasses after each drink,” Alex whispered. Elaine goggled at him. Rollo topped them up.

  “Now let us all sit down,” Priscilla said.

  “I was most terribly sorry to hear about Mr Trotsky, Aunt Sonia,” Alex said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Trotsky?” Elaine asked. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. But wasn’t he the Communist leader who was assassinated a couple of months ago?”

  “Yes,” Sonia said.

  “Did you know him?”

  “I was standing beside him when he was killed,” Sonia said.

  Elaine opened her mouth and then closed it again. Being a doctor meant that one had to be acquainted with death, but always at second hand, as it were. “Gosh!” she said. “But weren’t you in danger?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sonia said. “There were a lot of people around. The assassin was on a suicide mission. Well, he didn’t die. Not then. But he was arrested immediately.”

  “Gosh,” Elaine said again. “But...why? I never did understand that. Who would want Trotsky dead?”

  “A man called Josef Stalin. Have you heard of him?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s the President of Russia, isn’t he?”

  “No. He is the Chairman of the Communist Party in Russia, and thus Prime Minister. He tells the President what to do.”

  “But why should Mr Stalin wish Mr Trotsky dead? I thought he was a friend of Stalin?”

  “He was Stalin’s bitterest enemy,” Sonia said.

  Priscilla decided this conversation had gone on long enough. “Will you stay to dinner, Elaine?” she asked. “Oh, well, I’d love to...but I’m not dressed.”

  Priscilla looked her up and down. “We shall be informal, tonight,” she decided. “But I am sure you would like to freshen up.”

  Rollo was waiting to close the doors behind Elaine and leave the family in privacy. “She seems a very nice girl,” Priscilla remarked. “Is she a very special friend?”

  “She could be,” Alex said.

  Priscilla looked at Joseph. Over their very long association, which had begun a good many years before they had been able to marry, Alex had insensibly come to regard Joseph almost as a true father; he could not remember his real father, the previous Prince Alexei Bolugayevski, who had died fighting against the Communists in 1919, and although he had respected his first stepfather, the American financier Carlisle Mann, he had always felt that was a temporary arrangement, because his mother’s true lover had gone missing and was presumed dead. But since Joseph’s return from prison in Russia he had entirely accepted him as head of the family. All of which Joseph knew very well. Just as he was aware that this was a crisis long in the making, in that this was the first young woman Alex had ever brought home. Now he smiled, easily, seeking to defuse the tension. “So tell us, Alex,” he said, “are your intentions honourable, or strictly sexual?”

  “Honourable, I would hope. If she’ll have me. I haven’t asked her yet.”

  “Well, I think you need to get to know her a little better before you do ask her,” Priscilla said. “All of us need to do that.”

  Alex knew what his mother meant, even if he did not agree with her. However well she appeared to have re-adjusted herself to being a Boston matron, he knew that in her heart and mind she remained the Princess Dowager of Bolugayen, and would always remain so. Equally, as Princess Dowager of Bolugayen, she was certain that however complete seemed the domination of Stalin and the Communist Party over Soviet Russia, so historically unacceptable a situation must one day come to an end; she believed it would be sooner rather than later. And however impossible it might for anyone else to envisage such a collapse of the Communist regime being followed by a reversion to the society of Tsarist Russia that she had known and loved so briefly, just before the start of the Great War, that was what she intended to aim at. It followed, therefore, that in her agenda the woman her son married would one day herself be Princess of Bolugayen. This was not a business to be undertaken lightly. As for whether Elaine might consider such an agenda as totally unacceptable, Alex knew that would never cross his mother’s mind. “I do intend to get to know her better,” he promised, without specifying what he had in mind. “Now, let’s talk about you, Aunt Sonia.” He sat beside her. “What are your plans?”

  Sonia looked at Priscilla. In the strangest manner, the two women were the oldest of friends. Alex’s father, as Prince of Bolugayen, had divorced Sonia Cohen, ostensibly because he suspected her of adultery, which had never been proved, but really because, as Alex knew, it had been pointed out to him that the high command he sought in the Tsarist Army could not be obtained while he remained in the social wilderness through his marriage to a Jewess. The parting had naturally been bitter, and the bitterness had been increased when Alexei had promptly married
a 17-year-old girl who not only happened to be roughly a third of his own age but was also his niece. If ever two women had cause to dislike and distrust the other it had to have been Sonia Cohen and Priscilla Cromb. But the exigencies of war had thrown them together.

  When Bolugayen had been overrun and destroyed by the marauding Reds they had been taken prisoner together, suffered rape and mistreatment together, and however much their paths had diverged since — Sonia seeking her future in the maelstrom that had been Russia in 1919, and appearing to emerge triumphant, and Priscilla being forced to flee and become a political refugee — they had remained friends.

  Now, while Priscilla had at last found stability and happiness with the man she had always loved, Sonia’s world had come crashing down with the murder of the man she had never loved but had faithfully served for 20 years. Yet when she looked at the man who was, in effect, her stepson, there was no defeat in her eyes, only anger. “My plans,” she said, “are to seek vengeance for Leon’s death.”

  The dinner conversation was, predictably, about events in Europe. Elaine had not been following very closely what was happening in Europe, although she was of course aware that a war was raging over there, even if raging seemed hardly the right word. Nazi Germany appeared to have overrun the entire Continent with the greatest ease, except the Iberian Peninsula, and of course Soviet Russia, with which they had an alliance. They had attempted to bomb Great Britain into surrender, but had failed to do so, and now the conflict seemed to have sunk into a kind of stalemate although there was apparently some fighting going on in North Africa, between the British and Germany’s allies, the Italians. Elaine had voted for Roosevelt not only because he had done so much to bring the country out of the dark years of the Depression, hut because part of his platform was a commitment to keep the United States out of the War.

  Now she was surprised to learn that although the Crombs were second generation Americans, and, she had supposed, third generation Russians, they were actually British by descent, and revered their ancestors, especially the man they regarded as the founder of their branch of the house, the Scot Colin MacLain, who had been wounded and taken prisoner during the Charge of the Light Brigade, not a hundred years ago, and whose marriage while in captivity to the Russian Countess Dagmar Bolugayevska, had created this branch of the family. They were thus wholeheartedly in support of Britain against the Nazis, and equally condemnatory of the Soviets for agreeing virtually to give Hitler a free hand.