The Red Gods Page 8

  Marina hissed. “I cannot,” Joseph protested.

  “You mean it would be too painful? Or that you cannot get it up for her? That is something you will have to work out for yourself. You did not seem too concerned about the pain upstairs with Comrade Bolugayevska. And you certainly had it up for her. So, I do not care how you do it, but you will do it, or I will give you to my men. They will know how to amuse themselves with a pretty boy like you.” Joseph could not doubt that Trotsky meant what he said. And did he not want to revenge himself on this woman? Especially if she was going to die, anyway. “There, you see,” Trotsky remarked. “The idea is growing on you, literally. Roll her on her back, Comrade,” he told the guard.

  The guard held Marina’s shoulders and placed her on her back, so that she could not even move from side to side. Uncomfortable before, her face now twisted with pain as the entire weight of her body was taken by her arms and bent calves and feet drawn up behind her. “Now all you have to do is part her knees,” Trotsky explained. “Oh, you will have to lift her, I would say, to get the right angle. Why not play with her a little first? Has she not nice breasts? They are not so beautiful as Sonia’s, to be sure, but then no woman has breasts as beautiful as Sonia’s.”

  Joseph realised he was panting just as hard as Marina. In the most ghastly fashion they had become utter intimates. And were required to grow even closer. “We have not got all night,” Trotsky pointed out.

  She was going to die, anyway. And he had every reason to live. That she would probably die cursing his name was not relevant. Joseph held her breasts, then slid his hands down her ribs and beneath her to caress her buttocks. But he had achieved his objective and could part her knees to kneel between them. Marina’s pants began to subside, while his increased. She was attempting to contract her muscles and refuse him entry. But with her knees held apart she could not gather sufficient strength and so had to admit him, cursing and screaming at the top of her voice, and joined now by Galina, until Trotsky kicked the dark woman in the stomach, whereupon she subsided into agonised moans.

  Dimly Joseph was aware that there was someone else in the room, but he was now past the point of no return. It was agonising as the burned skin scored against Marina’s flesh, and the ejaculation was even more painful, but then he was done and he was left gasping, still holding her buttocks. These he now released as he slowly pushed himself backwards. “I am sorry,” he said. Marina spat at him. Joseph turned his face away from the flying spittle, and looked at Sonia.

  She had dressed herself, and her face was expressionless. But her voice was hard. “You have had your amusement,” she told Trotsky. “Now I wish him released.”

  Trotsky raised his eyebrows. “What makes you think I will do that?”

  “Come upstairs and I will tell you.” Sonia glanced at the guard, who was still holding Marina’s shoulders.

  Joseph slowly got to his feet. “I wish you had not seen that,” he said.

  “Do you suppose I can be shocked?” she asked. “By anything? You come upstairs too and dress yourself.”

  She went to the door and Joseph glanced at Trotsky, but the man made no objection and followed him to the door. “Comrade Commissar?” the guard asked.

  “Yes, you may have her. You may have both. Call your friends in to have them as well. And when you are finished, shoot them. They are Tsarist counter-revolutionaries.” He stepped outside, followed by the curses of the two women.

  “Is life that cheap in your estimation?” Joseph asked.

  “For those who oppose me, yes, Comrade. You had better stay close to Sonia.”

  Joseph hurried upstairs and dragged on his clothes. Trotsky arrived in the doorway. “Now you are all frustrated,” he said to her.

  “Yes,” Sonia said. “I am all frustrated. Now I would like you to write Joseph a safe-conduct, to take him through our lines and back to the Whites.”

  “Are you mad, woman?”

  Joseph looked from one to the other, aware that his life or death was being decided. “Why in the name of God should I do that?” Trotsky asked.

  “I will give you several answers,” Sonia said. “First, as you do not believe in God, that is a rhetorical question. Secondly, I have asked you to do so, as a favour. I have not asked many favours of you. Thirdly, he is Patricia’s son. I am sure Lenin would not wish to have Patricia’s son shot. Equally I am sure he would be upset were he to discover this had been done. Fourthly, what harm can it do? And fifthly, it would be an act of charity. This is not something that you have experienced very often. If you tried it once, you might find it growing on you and become a better human being as a consequence.”

  Trotsky glared at her, but as throughout their relationship he could not compete with her eloquence, her speed of thought. He fastened on the one thing she had said which made some sense to his military instincts. “You ask what harm it could do? He knows all of our plans.”

  “Does he? He knows it’s your intention to cut the White communications and then roll them up. Well, I would imagine even Krasnov has worked that out by now. At least, he will realise that is happening. I should think that if Joseph should reappear and tell him that it is no accident, but a deeply laid trap into which he has fallen, his morale and that of his people will collapse even further.”

  Trotsky turned to Joseph. “Get out.”

  “You have not given him his safe-conduct,” Sonia pointed out. Trotsky went to the table, sat down, took his notebook from his pocket and began to write.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Aunt Sonia,” Joseph said.

  “Thank me by staying alive. And seeing that Colin does too.”

  “And Uncle Alexei?”

  Sonia shrugged. “If that is possible.” She walked across the room and stood against him. “I should like to think we will meet again, some day,” she said softly. “And finish our business together. But I have always been a dreamer.”

  “Who has made a lot of dreams come true.”

  She smiled and kissed him. “Listen,” Trotsky said, and handed Joseph a sheet of paper to which he had attached his seal. “Get out, before I change my mind.”

  Joseph hesitated. “He is not going to harm you, is he, Aunt Sonia?”

  Sonia’s smile was twisted. “No, no,” she said. “He is going to have sex with me. So, as he said, get out.”

  Chapter 4 - The End of a Dynasty

  Joseph was given a horse, and his uniform was restored to him. He was also given an escort of two Red soldiers to take him through the various checkpoints.

  Had he just survived a nightmare? Undoubtedly. But his nightmare was but a microcosm of what was happening throughout this sad country, where there were so many old hatreds to be indulged, so many past crimes to be avenged. He wondered if it would ever emerge into a civilised community. But his personal nightmare was relieved by the memory of Aunt Sonia waving him goodbye, having saved his life. And before that, of holding her naked body in his arms. Had he fallen in love with a woman who was twice his age and was also his aunt by marriage? But then, what of that other marvellously lovely aunt by marriage? Who was only four years older than himself?

  Was he was ever going to get back to Sevastopol at all? He had left Yelets at dawn, following the same road back to the original White encampment. This road was now filled with Red soldiers, trucks and even some tanks, all moving south as fast as they could. When he came to the place where the hussars had been ambushed he saw their bodies lying there, unburied, and the more horrible because they had been stripped of their clothing as well as their weapons, and their white flesh gleamed pitifully in the morning sunlight. That afternoon he was back at the encampment, a huge litter of burned-out camp fires and destroyed huts through which the Reds were still scavenging, accompanied by growling, snapping dogs and quarrelling civilian women. It was south of the camp that the catastrophe that had overtaken the White army became evident. Here there was a long trail of discarded equipment, ranging from sidearms to guns, again bein
g salvaged where possible by the jubilant Red soldiers. And here too there had been prisoners, either shot on the spot or herded away for mistreatment.

  It was a great temptation to turn aside to look at the unhappy men, whether dead or alive, and make sure neither Colin nor Alexei was among them, but his escort was in a hurry to press on. Joseph had anticipated that Krasnov might make a stand at Voronezh, but the town was occupied by the Reds, and was burning even more fiercely than when he had passed through on his way north. “They are running for their lives,” remarked one of his escort.

  By dusk they had caught up with the advanced Red forces encamped across the railroad, which was being repaired. “How far are the Whites?” Joseph asked the captain.

  “Who knows?”

  “Are they using the railroad?”

  “No. General Tuchachevsky’s force has cut the line farther south. The Whites are retreating across country.”

  “Then here is where I must bid you goodbye,” Joseph told his escort and he rode into the gathering gloom. In an hour it was dark but he thought he saw an occasional light in front of him. He had deliberately diverged from the railway track so as not to encounter any of Tuchachevsky’s people, and was instead following the road but even so he ran into a Red patrol, and had to present his safe-conduct, which was examined with great suspicion by the commanding captain in the light of a flickering candle.

  “Are you an emissary?” the captain asked.

  “You could say that,” Joseph agreed.

  Joseph rode into the night. He was exhausted and overwhelmed by the evidence that Krasnov’s army had been routed, and not in battle merely by having been outmanoeuvred. He was also horrified at the difference between Trotsky, all bubbling, decisive energy even when indulging in personal obscenity, and the arrogant, indolent over-confidence of Krasnov, or, for that matter, of his own uncle. He had come to Russia to fight in an entirely lost cause, and the prospect was terrifying, not just for those people he knew and loved, but for the whole country.

  “Who goes?” came a call out of the darkness. An hour later he was facing his uncle.

  Prince Alexei Bolugayevski was commanding the rearguard, hardly more than a thousand picked men, who even as Joseph was escorted into their camp, were packing up again to move on, keeping their appointed place as a buffer between the retreating Whites and the advancing Reds. As these were all ex-Tsarist soldiers, and as they had repulsed more than one Red probe, morale was quite high, but they were short of arms and ammunition and had only a couple of field guns. They knew that a continued retreat was inevitable. But Alexei was as immaculately dressed and shaved as ever, as was his son and aide-de-camp; he had even found a table behind which to sit in his tent, and maps and papers to spread across the surface. “You were taken by the Reds? And escaped?” Alexei looked his nephew up and down, as if suggesting that while an escape might just have been possible, he had surely left some parts of him behind.

  “I believe I would have been executed, sir,” Joseph conceded. “My life was saved by an intervention.”

  “Whose intervention?”

  Joseph glanced at Colin, standing to attention behind his father. “By my Aunt Sonia.”

  Both men stared at him. “Mother?” Colin asked.

  “Are you mad?” Alexei demanded. “Sonia is dead.”

  “No, Your Highness. She is with the Reds.”

  “In what capacity?”

  Again Joseph glanced at Colin. “She is General Trotsky’s mistress.”

  “Trotsky,” Alexei said, the word sounding like a drop of ice. “She went to him a year ago but when we heard nothing...”

  “You are lying,” Colin snapped. “He is lying Father.”

  “Leave us,” Alexei said. Colin hesitated, then left the room. “Sit down,” Alexei commanded. Joseph sat before the table. “I know you are not lying,” Alexei said. “Tell me, is she well?”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “And...happy?”

  “That is difficult to answer,” Joseph said.

  “Does he ill-treat her?”

  “I do not believe so. As you can see from my presence, she has considerable influence with him.”

  Alexei gazed at him for several seconds, then his shoulders seemed to droop. “My wife,” he muttered. “The mistress of a guttersnipe thug!”

  “With respect, sir...”

  Alexei raised his head. “Oh, yes, she is no longer my wife. Do you know how foolish I was to divorce her?” Joseph said nothing; he had been told that often enough by his mother. But, then, what of Priscilla? So young, so beautiful — and so loyal? It was not a question he dared ask. “I acted because it was the way a Russian prince was supposed to act,” Alexei said, “when his wife even appears to be compromised. And I have regretted it ever since.”

  “Aunt Sonia asked after you. And Colin, sir,” Joseph said.

  “Did she?” Alexei looked absolutely delighted for a moment, before his face fell again. “Colin is upset. He does not wish to accept the fact that his mother is nothing more than a whore.”

  “Aunt Sonia is not a whore, sir,” Joseph said. “She is a most beautiful and gracious lady who has been forced to make her own way in the world, and has been very successful at it. And who has also saved my life.”

  “You are a gentleman,” Alexei said. “Sadly, there are more important aspects to life than even a woman like Sonia. I am afraid we are in a desperate situation. Bad luck, mainly, I suppose, that such a counter-thrust at our communications came just at the time when the track had been destroyed and we were short of munitions.”

  “There was no luck involved, sir,” Joseph said. “Everything that has happened was planned.”

  “Who by?” Alexei demanded.

  “Trotsky.”

  “That thug?”

  “He is a student of military history and strategy, sir. He also has complete control of his men.”

  “And Krasnov does not,” Alexei muttered. He rose, took a turn to and fro, then sat down again. “I think you are a true Bolugayevski, even if your name is Cromb. We have some very difficult days ahead of us, and none of us can presume our survival is certain. If I survive, I can take care of my own. If I do not I would like you to act in my stead.”

  “Me, sir?” Joseph was completely taken aback. “But Colin...”

  “Oh, should I die Colin will be the Prince Bolugayevski. Not that he has anything to be prince of at the moment. But perhaps he will need taking care of, as well.”

  “I do not understand, sir.”

  “What I have to say is confidential. But I will support it in writing, so long as you will promise to keep that confidential until after my death.”

  “Of course I will respect your wishes, Uncle. But...”

  “Listen to me,” Alexei said. “For three hundred years the Bolugayevskis have been born to wealth and power. That my father was an Englishman and my mother an Englishwoman is not relevant. The first Colin MacLean achieved his eminence by marriage to Dagmar Bolugayevska, and the rest of us have merely fitted in to that scenario. Colin Junior, Anna Junior, Alexei Junior, and Priscilla, have all, like me, accepted our positions in life, grasped them, made the most of them...and most important, known nothing else. The Revolution has made no difference to that, because we have always supposed our ejection from our lands and our rights was nothing more than temporary, which would be put right by force of arms. Even Priscilla...you know she was raped when Bolugayen fell to the Reds?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “By my own valet,” Alexei said. “Well, he is dead. But can a rape ever be avenged? Yet Priscilla took it in her stride. She is a Bolugayevska, and Bolugayevskas do not curl up and die because of a little bit of mistreatment. They square their shoulders and resume living. In Priscilla’s case, her dream is to regain Bolugayen, rebuild the house, re-establish our wealth, and give to her son and to her stepchildren the upbringing and social status that history entitles them to. Now I, at least, know that is not going to h
appen.”

  “Surely, Uncle, if we can extricate ourselves from this mess we can regroup and again advance? I have the highest regard for Trotsky as a strategist, but he is leading a very unstable body of men. Whereas we...”

  “Do you not suppose we are unstable? And Trotsky is in command. Is it not true that he merely shoots anyone who opposes him? He does not argue with them, or even, perhaps, occasionally accept that they may be right.” Joseph had to agree with that assessment of the Red general.

  “And now you tell me that he is an able strategist as well,” Alexei went on. “While we exist by courtesy of the British and French governments. Oh, and the Americans but that courtesy is fast disappearing. They had a great interest in maintaining the Tsar, or at least Kerensky, while they were still fighting the Germans, because they wanted to keep Russia in the Great War. Now the war has been won they no longer need us. That they have continued to support us is I suppose because having initiated a policy they find it difficult to change it. But we know there are many people in the West sympathetic to the Bolshevik ideal, and even more who are asking ‘Do we really care any more what happens in Russia, and why should we be spending thousands of pounds to maintain a civil war between people who are alien to us?’ I say we are doomed.” He pulled a pad of paper across the table and began to write. “I am giving you two documents to carry back to Sevastopol for me. One is a despatch to General Denikin, which is the official reason for your return, and which you will deliver personally. It is my assessment of the situation. The other is a commission which you will use only in the event of my death, in which I charge you with the responsibility of removing my wife and my two younger children to England and give you carte blanche to use whatever methods, including force, you may deem necessary to achieve that objective. Priscilla has some jewellery and also a considerable amount of money, which I am giving you permission to use. However, I would ask that when you get them to England, your stepfather takes care of them, at least in so far as returning Priscilla and the children to the care of her own father in Boston. Will you accept this charge?”