“Um… not necessarily,” Fitzroy said.
“What’s your problem? The Navy’s put the kibosh on Kronstadt. The capital’s wide open. Consolidate success. Rule one.”
Fitzroy swirled the remains of his champagne. “Well… it’s not as simple as that.”
“Judd made it sound simple,” Weatherby said. “No more Rules of Engagement. We can do what we like. Can’t we?”
Fitzroy made sure the door was firmly shut. “This is a very delicate matter,” he said. “You must understand that what I’m going to tell you is absolutely secret.”
“Yes, yes,” Sir Franklyn said. “Do get on.”
“It’s true that the Rules of Engagement, for the Navy in the Baltic, are highly flexible. There were losses on both sides at Kronstadt. Weapons were fired in hot blood. It would be hard to deny that a warlike state existed.”
“Not hard. Impossible,” Stattaford said.
“In fact, before our assault was launched, the War Cabinet discussed the matter,” Fitzroy said, “and the Prime Minister said that we were at war with the Bolsheviks.”
“Hurrah,” Sir Franklyn said. “Hurrah for honesty.”
“Who’s going to pay for it?” Charles Delahaye asked. He was talking to the air.
“But,” Fitzroy said, “and here I must remind you of your pledge of secrecy, the P.M. added that we had decided not to make war in Russia.”
“Now what in God’s name does that mean?” Weatherby demanded.
“No armies,” Sir Franklyn said. “That’s right, isn’t it? A spot of skirmishing at sea is acceptable, but we shan’t put an army ashore.” Fitzroy nodded. “Just words, then,” Sir Franklyn said.
“Good,” Delahaye said. “Words are cheap.”
“One other thing,” Fitzroy said. “Well, two things. First, we keep very quiet about Kronstadt. It’s not Trafalgar. Nobody gets excited. And second, we say nothing, nothing at all, about the P.M.’s words on war.”
“That’s absurd,” Stattaford said. “What the devil is Lloyd George playing at?”
“You should regard this as background briefing,” Fitzroy said. “Keeping you au fait with the mise en scène, so to speak.”
“Prime Ministers love secrecy,” Delahaye said. “It makes them feel in control.”
Weatherby finished his champagne. It was flat, like the general atmosphere. “Britain’s at war, but we can’t talk about it,” he said. “What can we talk about?”
A servant tapped on the door and wheeled in the soup.
“Denikin’s broken out of South Russia,” General Stattaford said. “That should be fairly safe. It was in The Times this morning.”
They buried Hackett on the steppe.
Sergeant Stevens had been the first to find the body, and after one glance he had covered it and told the adjutant that nobody should come near it. The ground crew made a coffin. Stevens and a mechanic lifted the body and placed it inside and he watched as the lid was nailed down. Then he went in search of Susan Perry.
She was treating Marines for cuts and bruises and a possible dislocated shoulder. “Instantaneous,” he told her. That was all. He could think of nothing to add; nothing that would help, anyway. She nodded and got on with her job. Her face was as blank as a sheet of paper, and as white.
Brazier was waiting for him. “Ideally, he should be buried in Taganrog,” he said. “H.Q. will have a padre. He’ll organize the cemetery.”
“Not unless you’re ready to ask the doctor to do another embalming.” Brazier rolled his eyes. “Thought not,” Stevens said. “Taganrog’s two days away, maybe more. The guts are…” He decided not to discuss the guts. “This heat’s getting worse. Inside a boxcar it will be twice as hot.”
“So we do it now.”
The squadron knew the routine. They formed a hollow square around a grave dug by the plennys. Susan Perry and Count Borodin stood together. Four officers carried the coffin. Lacey followed. He spoke the familiar words, paused, and uttered his eulogy:
The pallbearers did their bit, while Lacey said his final piece. The firing party blazed away. Susan Perry and Borodin walked to the grave and looked down at the box made of packing-case planks. She dropped a handful of earth onto it; so did he. They walked away. “He was so happy to be engaged,” she said. “He was like a boy on his first bicycle.”
Colonel’s Kenny’s coffin was intact; it was taken to “B” Flight’s train. But the Marines’ train was ruined. Its windows were shattered, its roofs were split, a fire had burnt out the kitchen. Brazier ordered the carriages to be uncoupled and, one by one, they were capsized. So were the remains of the engine. It took every available man, hauling on ropes, but it cleared the line. The Marines found new quarters amongst the ground crews. Merlin Squadron got on the move again. Cautiously.
Borodin took a bottle of brandy and two glasses to Susan Perry’s Pullman car.
“I’m told this is traditional after the… um… ceremony,” he said.
“Funeral,” she said. “Burial. We buried him, because he was dead. No euphemisms, please. Nobody passed away. He didn’t go to his rest. He died. But the bottle is a kind thought and yes, I’d like a glass of brandy.”
“Good. So would I.” He opened the bottle and poured. “Sometimes the English are too much for me. Russians let their emotions show at funerals. Men cry when they lose a friend. This English restraint, this silence, is hard to take. I found it… heartbreaking.”
“You were not alone.” She took a healthy sip of brandy. “Daddy Maynard’s stiff upper lip began to wobble when Lacey played his ace.” Borodin cocked his head. “Right at the end,” she said. “‘We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone’. English understatement. There’s no defence against it.”
“Yes.” This was not what Borodin had expected. He had been ready to comfort a grieving fiancée but he wasn’t prepared for a candid review of the funeral service. “What will you do when we get to Taganrog?” he asked. “Stay in Russia? Go home?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think. I can’t just forget James, can I? But what’s the point of remembering him? He’s the second man I lost almost as soon as I found him. I don’t think I was meant to be happy. Being happy is the kiss of death.”
Borodin studied her. If a highly attractive, intelligent woman like this despaired of happiness, something was wrong with the world. Without thinking, he said: “Marry me. I promise you a long life of gloom and misery.”
She laughed, briefly. Well, that was better. “You wouldn’t survive the honeymoon,” she said. “You’d be doomed.”
He’d taken one chance. He took another. “If it happened at the end of the honeymoon, I wouldn’t mind. There are worse ways to go.”
She finished her brandy and looked at him, a long look that could have meant anything. “What became of the gloom and misery you promised?”
“Understatement,” he said. “I’ve caught the disease.” She held out her glass and he poured more brandy.