The Red Gods Read online

  “Absolutely, Comrade Commissar.”

  “Then I salute you, Comrade General. Onward to victory!” Sonia sat on the bunk and waited. Minutes later Trotsky pulled the door open. “You were listening,” he accused.

  “Did you expect me not to?”

  He grinned. “No. What do you think of my strategy?”

  “You are a genius. Did you have this in mind even in Kiev?”

  “Certainly, from the moment I learned Wrangel was advancing beyond Voronezh.”

  “May I come outside, now?”

  “All I am going to do for the rest of the morning is shoot people. You stay here and wait for me to come back. Shooting people always makes me randy.”

  *

  The train rumbled to a halt and Joseph Cromb sat up so suddenly he bumped his head on the wooden bunk above him. General Denikin might have been pleased to commission him, and as a captain, on the recommendation of the Princess Bolugayevska and his record in the Great War, but he had not extended any more favours, so Joseph had shared the third-class compartment with two other junior officers all the way from Sevastopol. They had slept on bare wooden boards and they had grabbed what food they could afford whenever the train had stopped. Already regarded with some respect because he had fought in France against the Germans and been decorated, Joseph had rapidly become very popular because he had the most money. Nothing had been said at any time of when they would be paid. But the three young men were happy enough; they were going to fight the Reds. Joseph had no doubt that his Uncle Alexei would take care of him, whenever they reached Voronezh. But when he looked out of the window there was no sign of any town ahead of them. “Why have we stopped?” he shouted at a sergeant was hurrying by.

  “The line is torn up, Your Honour,” the man replied.

  The officers hastily dressed and climbed down, to find the train commander, a major, in a state of high excitement. “With respect, Your Honour,” Joseph asked. “You did not know the line had been destroyed?”

  “There was a message. That is why I stopped before running off the tracks. But there was supposed to be transport waiting here for us? Where is it, eh?”

  Horses were being unloaded from the wagons. “Permission to carry out a reconnaissance, Your Honour,” Joseph said.

  The major glared at him, then his expression softened into a frown. “Yes,” he said. “What did you say your name was, Captain?”

  “Cromb, Your Honour. Joseph Cromb. I am a nephew of Prince Bolugayevski.” Sometimes it was necessary to pull rank.

  “Ha ha!” the major shouted. “And you are anxious to rejoin your uncle! Take horses, Captain, and find my wagons, then you may join the Army.”

  Joseph saluted, and a moment later he and his two companions were mounted. “Hurrah!” shouted Alexander von Holzbach. Holzbach had had a German father, and a Russian mother, and bore Joseph no grudge for having been on the other side in the Great War. “Hoorah! Where is Voronezh?”

  “That way, Your Honour.” The sergeant pointed along the broken track. They set off at a canter.

  In some ways, they reminded Joseph of tales he had heard of British subalterns in the Boer War or the first months of the Great War, before they had become embittered by the horror and futility of it all, the grim catastrophe of the trenches. Here there were no trenches, just rolling countryside. Yet the horrors of war were always evident, as they rode over unburied bodies, some already skeletons, or, far worse, passed groups of people, mainly women and children, cowering in makeshift encampments, running forward to beg for food as they saw the horsemen. “Probably Reds,” someone shouted, and the officers rode by.

  Joseph felt sick. By the time he had got to France, in the spring of 1917, nearly all civilians had been cleared from the combat areas, whether from death or evacuation. It had been a conflict between two huge armies, but all involved had been combatants.

  They reached Voronezh mid-morning, having seen not a single wagon. They reported to the Army Headquarters, above which flew the Romanov eagle, and were taken to see a colonel. “Wagons?” he demanded. “Where am I to find wagons?”

  “Major Markov said he had arranged for them to be at the broken line, Your Honour,” he explained.

  “I did receive some such request. But what I had were required for the Army.”

  “Does not the Army require the supplies on the train?” Joseph asked. This was another situation he had never encountered on the Western Front.

  “We will have to get some back,” the colonel decided. “You are on your way to join General Krasnov?”

  “That is our intention, Your Honour.”

  “Then I will give you a message for his adjutant general, General Prince Bolugayevski.”

  “I will deliver it personally, Your Honour.”

  “Is Prince Bolugayevski really your uncle?” Alexander von Holzbach asked as they resumed their journey.

  “You are in for a cushy time,” opined Peter Ivanovich.

  “I don’t think any of us are in for a cushy time,” Joseph remarked, looking back at the burning city. Quite apart from what lay behind them, the road they were taking was one that was used by the Army a few days previously. Now they passed wounded and dying soldiers, abandoned by their advancing comrades, and wounded and dying horses as well. It was a pitiful sight. Again Joseph could not help but compare with France and Belgium. There the destruction had been so complete that it would have been incongruous not to be surrounded by dead and dying men. Here the countryside was largely undamaged, save that the fields had clearly neither been sown nor harvested this year. It was almost peaceful, with the trees shedding their leaves as winter rushed at them, the skies lead grey and threatening, again typically October.

  They had obtained food in Voronezh, and they pulled off the road to eat, out of sight of the wounded. “Are we such brutes?” Peter Ivanovich asked.

  “War is a matter of survival,” Alexander von Holzbach explained. “Ask Joseph Duncanovich.”

  Joseph had not told them of his real father. “I’m afraid you are right,” he agreed. But a huge lump of lead was beginning to gather in his stomach. They were following the trail of a victorious army. But there was no sign of victory.

  That afternoon they came across cars and trucks, half off the road. Their drivers were gathered in groups and surrounded the officers. “Where is our fuel, Your Honours?” they demanded. “We were promised fuel.”

  “It is being organised,” Joseph said. “It will soon be here. Where is the Army?”

  The drivers waved to the north. “Out there.”

  “And where is the enemy?”

  That at least raised a laugh. “Is there an enemy, Your Honour?”

  They rode on and encountered more and more soldiers. All shouted the same questions. “Where are our supplies? Where is our ammunition?” Again they answered that it was on its way.

  Now they were in the encampment, a huge area of tents and huts, and men and parked guns, on the banks of the Don. The fact that huts had been erected indicated that the Army had been here for some days. By now too it was drizzling rain, and they were relieved to be shown into one of the larger huts. Alexander von Holzbach and Peter Ivanovich remained in the ante-chamber while Joseph, as the senior member of the group, was taken into the adjutant’s office. “Captain Joseph Cromb reporting for duty with General Prince Bolugayevski,” Joseph said.

  “Joseph?” Heads turned; the adjutant had not had the time to reply. Joseph gazed at his uncle. Alexei Bolugayevski was now fifty-four years old, a big, heavily-built man, whose yellow hair was streaked with grey, but whose strong, handsome features seemed almost untouched by the passage of time. “My God, boy, what are you doing here? And wearing our uniform?”

  “I am serving in your Army, Your Highness.”

  “Well done! We could do with a lot more like you. Did you not serve on the Western Front?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Oh, indeed, well done. Come inside. Colin, your cousin Jos
eph.”

  The young man extended his hand. Count Colin Bolugayevski was a year younger than Joseph, and like his father had not seen their American cousin since 1912. Then Colin had been a boy, and he was less easy to remember than his father, although Joseph did recall trying to teach him baseball. He did not look like a Bolugayevski, as he took after his mother the Jewess Sonia Cohen, and although he was tall and well built he had small, attractive features and dark hair. Joseph Fine and Sonia Cohen had been exiled to Irkutsk together, and Joseph and Sonia had been friends before that catastrophe had overtaken them. But perhaps because they were friends, and certainly because they had both been brought up in the strictly moral Jewish faith, they had never been more than friends, as they could not marry. Thus Joseph Fine had fallen in love with the totally amoral Patricia Bolugayevska, who had also shared their exile. Sonia had finally wound up in the arms of Patricia’s brother. It was a small world, growing increasingly crazy. “It is good to see you again, Cousin,” Colin said.

  “You have come up from Sevastopol? Did you see the Princess?” Alexei’s tone was eager.

  “I did, Your Highness. She very kindly entertained me. And she gave me this letter for you.” He took the letter from his inside pocket and as he did so his fingers touched the scarf, which had been there ever since leaving Sevastopol.

  Alexei took the letter but did not immediately open it. “You must be hungry and thirsty. Colin, arrange for food to be brought in; and champagne.”

  “With respect, Your Highness,” Joseph said. “But I have two companions outside.”

  “Attend to them also, Colin,” Alexei commanded. “Sit down, Joseph. Now tell me, your father is well?”

  “Yes, Your Highness. As well as can be expected.”

  “It was a miserable business. But your mother has been avenged, I promise you that. And your sister is also well?”

  “Yes, Your Highness. Your Highness...”

  “Now tell me, how did you find my wife?”

  “She seems very well, Your Highness, although missing you, of course.”

  “And the children?”

  “All well, Your Highness. Your Highness...”

  “Ah, champagne!” Alexei took a glass from the orderly and indicated that Joseph should do the same.

  “A meal is on its way, Your Highness,” the orderly said.

  Alexei nodded, and raised his glass. “I give you the Bolugayevskis.”

  “The Bolugayevskis!” Joseph drank, but he was on the verge of an explosion. That they should be sitting here, drinking champagne, while out there... “Your Highness,” he said again, urgently. “My companions and I came up by train, as far as we could.”

  “But the Reds tore up the track as they retired,” Alexei nodded. “It is a nuisance.”

  “Sir, on that train are your replenishments of ammunition and fuel.”

  “Don’t we know it!” Alexei agreed. “That is all we are waiting for. The Reds out there are a shambles. Once we are replenished we will drive them right into Moscow.”

  “Yes, Your Highness. But the replenishment is still on the train.”

  Alexei frowned. “I gave orders that it was to be loaded on to wagons and brought up the remaining distance.”

  “There are no wagons, Your Highness. Those that have not broken down are here with you.”

  “Damnation! I will order them sent back to the railhead immediately.” He went to the door. “That is good thinking, Joseph. I congratulate you.”

  He did not seem concerned, and Joseph was hungry enough to wait for his meal. Before he was finished, both Alexei and Colin had rejoined him. “Your friends are being looked after,” Colin assured him.

  “Thank you. May I ask, Your Highness, just what is the situation?”

  “As I told you, whenever we attack them, the Reds run away. Well, that was to be expected. But they really do run very fast, and this has involved us in some problems. We drove them out of Voronezh over a week ago. Then we had Wrangel’s Army on our left. They probed forward and found that there was nothing in front of them either. So they kept on going. Now they have taken Orel. But they too have run out of steam and must wait for replenishment. It is a pity. We had intended to be in Moscow for Christmas. Well, we can still do this if we get those supplies up in time. But it does give the Reds time to regroup.”

  “Do you not think they will counter-attack, sir, now you have come to a halt?”

  Alexei snorted. “That mob?”

  Joseph strolled out to the northern perimeter of the camp, and gazed into the rain mist. Behind him was all the bustle of an army settling down for the night; sentries marched to and fro and exchanged the password. But in front of him there was nothing save darkness. Not a light, not a sound. He did not know Russia very well; his visit in 1911 had been his only one. But as he regarded it as his home he knew of its immensity. An army could disappear without trace into such an immensity. Some had. “Are you afraid?” Colin stood at his elbow; Joseph had not heard him approach. And when he did not immediately reply, Colin went on speaking. “It is hard not to be afraid. You know, we attack, they retreat or just disintegrate, we advance. Then we stop, to wait for our supplies. But we do not know what is happening out there.”

  “Does not General Krasnov send out scouts?”

  “Certainly he does, but they find little of value. Are the peasants they question real muzhiks, or Reds who have merely hidden their uniforms and weapons while we are in their vicinity?”

  “You speak as if all the muzhiks are potential Reds.”

  “Do you not suppose they are?”

  “Then how can you possibly hope to win this war?”

  “We are fighting to restore the Tsar,” Colin said, a trifle stiffly.

  “Who were you thinking of, exactly?”

  “Well...in the first instance, it is the Grand Duke Nicholas.”

  “Who, should you win, will become tsar whether or not the people wish it?”

  “What have the people got to do with it?”

  Joseph decided against making the obvious reply; he had come here to fight for these people, even if he was now realising that they had no idea how to win. The only way they were going to win. Failing which, they were going to lose. “I am sorry about your mother,” he said.

  “Mother was a strange woman,” Colin said. “But also a very brave one. We honour her memory. She too has to be avenged.”

  Joseph slept uneasily, awoke to bugle calls. He had been assigned no duties; so hurried to the adjutant’s hut to report. At least on the way he passed a column of horse-drawn wagons setting off for Voronezh. But as it had taken him and his two companions more than twelve hours to reach here from the end of the usable track, it was going to take these slow moving vehicles twice that long to get back, then probably twenty-four hours to load, then twenty-four hours back. Alexei smiled at his calculation. “What do you expect will be happening during those three days? I imagine the Reds are still pulling back. Our only problem is the first snow.”

  Judging by the steadily dropping temperature this was a very real hazard. “Permission to lead a reconnaissance in force, Your Highness.”

  Alexei smiled even as he shook his head. “Do you know, Joseph, I made that same request just before the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914. And I found the Germans too. Too late, of course, we lost an entire army. But I cannot permit you to do so now. First because you would find nothing. That is not an army out there; it is a disorganised rabble. And secondly because you know neither the country nor your men. You would get yourself lost, or murdered.”

  “By my own men, sir?”

  Alexei humped his shoulders. “A lot of our people have been conscripted, over the past year or so, from deserters or disbanded units, or simply from the peasantry. We do not know how much they can be trusted. Certainly how much they can be trusted in small groups.”

  “Yet you are prepared to lead them into battle.”

  “As long as we lead them, Joseph Duncanovich, there i
s no problem. I appoint you my aide-de-camp. That way you will learn what warfare is like in Russia, as opposed to the Western Front.”

  Joseph had a frustrating day. His uncle spent his time dealing with various administrative duties, which left his aide-de-camp very little to do, while Joseph remained consumed with the idea that they should be doing something. There was a radio unit with the army and he spent some time over there, but their only links were with Orel and Voronezh; the one complained about the lack of supplies, the other about the lack of progress in the return of the wagons. “They are all impatient,” Alexei said, as he sat down with his son and nephew for their evening aperitif, which inevitably consisted of champagne; Joseph reflected that there was probably more champagne available in this army than bullets. “But it is all happening. And you will note that neither reports any enemy activity.”

  But an hour later, while they were having dinner, an orderly hurried over from the radio hut. Alexei glanced at the sheet of paper. “Colonel Zhivkov reports contact with enemy units in map sector T Four. That is south-east of Voronezh.”

  “May I ask when the message is timed, Your Highness?” Joseph asked.

  “Eighteen-thirty.”

  “And it is now half-past eight.”

  “Yes. Our staff is not very efficient, I’m afraid.”

  “But, sir, was this Colonel Zhivkov reporting from Voronezh?”

  “Well, no. His report says that he was south-east of the town when contact was made.”

  “In Sector T Four. How far is that from Voronezh?”

  Alexei began to look irritated. He was unused to being quizzed by a junior officer, even if Joseph was a nephew. “I have no idea. Colin, fetch a map.”