McColl looked up at the rapidly darkening sky. He was more than ready to betray his King and Country, the one a pampered figurehead, the other a convenient fiction that had recently all but murdered a million of its citizens. “He’s the head of the British Secret Service. Which I used to work for.”
“I know of it. So why did this man send you into Russia? Why not one of his current agents?”
“Because he knew he could trust me. There is a second British intelligence agency, which is known as MI5—Five for short. Five deals with Britain and the British Empire, the Service with the rest of the world, which of course includes Russia. My boss discovered that some people in Five were mounting an operation that involved both Russia and India. He had no idea what the operation was; he didn’t know whether these people had the support of their own bosses or whether they were receiving help from Service people here in Russia. He sent me to find out.”
“Ah,” Komarov said. “And what is your boss’s name?”
“I won’t tell you that.”
“Who helped you get into Russia?”
“I won’t tell you that either.”
The Russian smiled. “Good. I was beginning to think you were too obliging to be true.”
McColl stole a glance at Caitlin, but the sun was sinking behind her, and he could hardly see her face. “Yuri Vladimirovich, I will not endanger those who helped me, but I’ll tell you anything else you want to know.”
“Miliutin was shot,” Komarov informed him.
McColl sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that. He was planning to retire,” he added inconsequentially.
“Someone telephoned his whereabouts to the Petrograd Cheka. One of your people, I think. Your Five, if what you say is true. And one thing you don’t know: a man with a knife broke into your room in Tashkent. A Russian named Polyansky who’d been hired by an Indian in Samarkand. Luckily for you, you weren’t in your room at the time.”
“I see,” McColl said, noting Maslov’s accusatory look at Caitlin and the stony stare she offered in return. It looked like he might have brought her down, too—if so, he doubted she’d ever forgive him, not that he’d live long enough to find out.
Komarov had other questions. “Who killed Muhammad Rafiq in Moscow?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Brady, probably.” He would talk to Komarov in private, McColl thought. Try to convince the Cheka boss that Caitlin’s only crime had been her failure to give him away. And that she’d only agreed to keep quiet once he’d convinced her that he meant no harm to their revolution.
“And the Russian at the hotel? Was it you who killed him and stuffed him under the bed?”
“Yes, it was. His name was Suvorov, and he did his best to kill me. I thought at the time I’d surprised him in Rafiq’s room, but he might have been waiting for me.”
“Because you threatened the operation?”
“I can’t think of any other reason. Suvorov certainly worked for Five, and it seems to be their operation.”
“I understand the Indian involvement, but why Brady and the other Russians? How did they get involved?”
“Five caught Brady in Ireland and gave him a choice between hanging and working for them. I can see why he chose not to hang, but I don’t understand his reasons for doing their bidding now that he’s beyond their reach.”
“So what exactly is this operation?” Komarov asked.
“They’re going to assassinate Mohandas Gandhi. The Indian nationalist leader,” McColl added, mostly for Maslov’s benefit. The sun was almost down, the desert a rapidly deepening shade of gold.
“Why?” Komarov wanted to know. “If the British want him dead, why not just arrest him and have him hanged for treason?”
McColl smiled. “That would turn him into a martyr. You don’t understand the beauty of this scheme. Brady’s team will be helped into India, given as many shots at Gandhi as they need, and then arrested. The hard-liners in London will have the proof they want that Russia has broken its promise to leave the empire alone. Those Indians who want to replicate your revolution will find themselves pariahs once Bolsheviks are accused of murdering the people’s hero. And Gandhi will be gone. Three birds with one stone.”
Komarov said nothing for several moments, and McColl could almost hear the Russian’s mind clicking its way through the facts. “I can see what the English in London and Delhi have to gain,” he said eventually, “and that Aidan Brady might hope to earn his freedom with such a deal, but why would men like Piatakov and Shahumian want any part of it? If Gandhi is truly a threat to your empire, why would they want to kill him?”
“That’s easy. None of the Indian comrades I met in Moscow had a good word to say about Gandhi. They called him a Menshevik, a false revolutionary, someone who’d put Indians in charge of the same rotten system, not change the system itself. And the Russians that Brady has recruited sound like men who think the same way, men who fought a revolution to change more than faces and who now believe that they’ve been betrayed by their leaders. They can’t do much about that, but they can stop it happening again in India.”
“So, a simple convergence of interests as far as Brady is concerned?” Komarov asked.
“I don’t believe he’s really working for Five.”
“Well, if they succeed in killing Gandhi, his true allegiance won’t stay hidden for long. Because that’s when the British will seize their scapegoats, and either he’ll be one of them, or he’ll mysteriously disappear.”
“True.”
“I don’t believe it,” Caitlin interjected. It was the first time she’d spoken since McColl’s arrest. “Aidan Brady may be a heartless bastard, but he would never willingly work for the British government—it would destroy his sense of who he is. And Sergei’s not stupid; neither was Aram for that matter. If we can guess what the British have in mind, so can they. And Brady won’t shirk from taking them on—he’s always had more confidence than any man’s entitled to. He’ll have something up his sleeve.”
“I agree,” McColl said. “But what?”
“Once we’ve caught them, we can ask,” Komarov said, rising. “It’s time to get moving.”
McColl liked the “we,” but doubted its use was deliberate. If he was going to be shot—an outcome that seemed inevitable in a strangely abstract sort of way—it would probably be in Kerki, though there also seemed a chance that he’d be taken back to Tashkent or Moscow for a suitably public trial.
As he looked to the west, the last slice of sun slipped below the horizon, pulling the night down across the desert. It wasn’t a place you escaped from.
The column of ponies moved across the stony desert at walking pace, the starlight turning everything to silver grey. When they’d set off on their night trek, and no apparent restrictions had been placed on Jack, Caitlin had expected an early conversation, but as the miles went by, it became clear he had other ideas. He was, she realized, trying to protect her.
A nice thought, but a little late in the day. Komarov hadn’t said anything, but he knew. So why keep silent? She found it hard to believe he was playing with her, so perhaps he didn’t know himself. Or did he still think she might prove useful when they caught up with Sergei?
He had turned a blind eye three years earlier when she’d admitted not reporting Jack’s presence in Moscow—in those days comrades still forgave one another the occasional transgression. But he had also warned her that he wouldn’t do so again, and these were harsher times.
Should she talk to him, try to explain? She might end up admitting things he didn’t know and make it worse for herself. Or Jack.
If she was arrested, too, there wouldn’t be much she could do. Asking Kollontai for help might do more harm than good—there were plenty of men who’d jump at the chance of punishing her friend by proxy. She would just have to hope for the best—deportation rather than internal exile, internal exile rather than prison or worse.