“The modern child is over-educated, in my opinion,” Sir Franklyn said. “I heard my granddaughter singing ‘Lloyd George is my father, father is Lloyd George’. The child is only nine. I asked her what it meant and she said she didn’t know.”
“I bet she did,” Weatherby said. “They know everything.”
“Perhaps we should ask them to advise us,” Fitzroy said. He was a bachelor; other people’s children bored him. “A little omniscience about Russia might be helpful.”
“Not any more,” the general said. “The Reds are routed. Denikin’s on a charge. In war, momentum is everything. We proved that in France. Once we broke the enemy line, the Huns couldn’t stop running. Reds are the same.”
“But not in Siberia,” Sir Franklyn said. “They seem to have the better of Admiral Kolchak.”
“A sideshow. Denikin’s campaign is the key. Poltava has fallen. Kharkov has fallen. Kiev has fallen. Odessa won’t hold out much longer. Denikin will take Kursk. Then it’s a straight run to Moscow.”
“Napoleon said that too,” Delahaye said. “Mind you, it probably had more panache in French.”
“His mistake was getting the weather wrong,” Weatherby said. “Beaucoup de neige. Dreadfully froid. Hadn’t done his homework.”
“And no railways. So no return tickets.”
“Denikin has got everything spot-on right,” Stattaford said. “Summertime, and the railways lead to Moscow. All he needed was a spell of training, courtesy the British Army, to stiffen his ranks. I never doubted it.”
“Excellent. Now, how do we translate this for the P.M.’s benefit?” Fitzroy asked. “Triumph of right over wrong? Death-blow to Communist world domination? Last battle of the Great War, and Britain helped to win it? What’s the message?”
“Well now,” Sir Franklyn said. “Russia is a very big country. Let us not cheer too soon.”
“The Treasury will cheer if Denikin takes Moscow,” Charles Delahaye said. “Then we can stop throwing money at Russia with both hands.”
“Penny-pinchers,” the general said. “We didn’t beat the Kaiser by double-entry bookkeeping. Whatever that is.”
“There’s a difference. Russia is not about to invade Britain.”
“Undeniable,” Fitzroy said. “Still, I wonder if there’s something in Denikin’s success for the P.M. D’you remember that excellent phrase of Sir Franklyn’s? ‘Answering the call of freedom and justice’. Well, we’ve done it, and surely it’s earned us the right to… um… to reward ourselves. Or words to that effect.”
“What effect?” Stattaford said.
“Reward means only one thing,” Weatherby said. “Higher wages. And if you want to avoid bloody Bolshevik revolution in Britain, that’s what you should do, and do it now.”
“Money.” The general sniffed. “That’s all some people think of.”
“Because prices have gone up much faster than wages.”
“Good point,” Fitzroy said. “I never thought the police would go on strike last year, but they did. Mind you, that was about recognising their union.”
“Everyone talks of the sanctity of labour,” Delahaye said, “but what they really want is hard cash.”
Sir Franklyn had begun building a house of cards. “Look here,” he said. “This is what we’ve been doing at these meetings. Trying to create something without foundation. Why are we in Russia? Not to help our gallant allies who fought the Germans. That’s ancient history. Not to guarantee a fair fight. We can’t. Not to do the decent thing. War isn’t about decency, it’s about power. Not to answer the call of freedom and justice. In Russia, that’s a fantasy. So why are we there?” He looked up. “What are we trying to achieve?”
“Beat the Bolsheviks,” Fitzroy said. He sounded weary.
Sir Franklyn looked at his creation. “Who wants to be the one to blow the house down?”
Weatherby filled his lungs and blew the cards across the table.
Fitzroy took a slim gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. “I have a meeting with the P.M. in five minutes. Unless we have any extenuating thoughts… ? No. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”
They watched him cross the garden.
“Perhaps we’ve overlooked the obvious,” Weatherby said. “Haven’t we got a duty to protect the Empire? The damned Russians have always wanted to get their greedy hands on India.”
“The Empire is a heritage,” Sir Franklyn said. “Future generations won’t thank us if we lose it.”
“Future generations don’t pay to keep it,” Delahaye said.
“Explain.”
“Riots and rebellions. We’re always rushing off to defend bits of Empire. Not cheap.”
“The White Man’s burden, I suppose.”
“Not a burden,” Stattaford said. “Debt of honour. It’s why God created the British Army. And, to a lesser extent, the Royal Navy.”
“I sometimes wonder,” Delahaye said. “I wonder whether we own the British Empire or it owns us.”
“If you don’t like it, go and live in Denmark.”
“It has its attractions.”
Time to leave. They walked across the garden. “This whole Russian affair,” Weatherby said. “Intervention and so on. It would be interesting to know just what future generations will make of it.”
“Nothing,” Sir Franklyn said. “We’ll file it and forget it. Nobody will ever know it happened.”
Kursk was burning.
A strong wind from the west blew the smoke away but it also kept the fires alive and made more smoke. Kursk was an old city. The onion domes were brick but the houses were wood and they burned easily.
The trains stopped in a siding a couple of miles from town, and Borodin talked to the drivers. “The line runs through the centre of Kursk,” he told the C.O. “Need I say more?”
Wragge looked at the field alongside the track. “Pretty flat,” he said. “If we get rid of those dead horses, and fill in that shell crater, and pull down that fence… What d’you think?”
“The horses can go in the crater.”
“Good thinking. Uncle can organize that. And you and I will take a stroll, and try to find someone on Denikin’s staff who speaks English.”
They walked along the track. “No roads to speak of,” Wragge said. “Everything is railways in your country, isn’t it? Even the rivers dry up in summer. Before the railways came, how did Russians get from here to there?”
“They walked. Rather like most of the English, until quite recently.”
“Slight difference, old chap. Russia’s vast. Belgorod to Kursk is, what, a hundred miles? With not much in between. We passed the odd village. Can’t image the odd peasant tramping fifty miles to have his appendix removed.”
Borodin was amused. “A Russian peasant would sooner die than pay a doctor. He dies anyway. Most men are old at thirty-five and lucky to see forty.”
“Good God.” Wragge thought about that. “How can you possibly know? You’re not a peasant.”
“The Britannica. 1911 edition. But you’re right about our railways. If Denikin were to march his army from Taganrog to Moscow, it would take six months, his men would be exhausted, the supply columns would be raided by Nestor Makhno and a dozen like him, and we’d be up to the hips in snow. So we fight our battles on the railway. It’s easier to advance by train.”
“Unless the enemy rips up the track and blows the bridges,” Wragge said.
“Oh well. Nobody said that war was fair. And unless I’m mistaken we’ve found Denikin’s Staff H.Q.”
The train had once belonged to the Tsar, and the carriages bore the Imperial emblem of the double-headed eagle. Planted alongside the track was the red, green and white flag of Denikin’s One Russia, Great and Undivided.