The open window looked out across the river, and as the room grew hotter, McColl took up station beside it, enjoying the breeze that blew down from the mountains. He watched with interest as two antique muzzle-loading cannons were trundled past him and out of sight to the left. Around noon six soldiers assembled on the wooden landing stage and sat down on its edge, their feet dangling over the water.
Not long after that, his door swung open, and Komarov walked in. The Russian looked, if possible, even more exhausted than he had in the hour before they’d reached Kerki. He sat down on the bed and stifled a yawn.
“Will those guns actually fire?” McColl asked.
“I hope so.” The Russian massaged his chin with his left hand. “I have another question for you. Nothing important, just to satisfy my own curiosity.” He looked McColl straight in the eye. “After you lost your tail in Samarkand, why didn’t you make a run for it then? It wouldn’t have been difficult.”
“I’m sure you know the answer to that, Yuri Vladimirovich.”
“She means that much to you? You could not have stayed here, my friend, and she would not have left. Her work is here.”
“Women are no better treated anywhere else,” McColl said.
“Perhaps not, but she is part of this.”
McColl sighed. “She was. She may be still—I don’t know. I haven’t asked her.”
Komarov gave him a searching look and seemed satisfied with what he found. “I have a proposition for you. I have only twelve men out there, and most of them are boys.”
“I will gladly join you,” McColl said simply.
Komarov shook his head. “No, that would be misunderstood. I have something else in mind.”
After a short but surprising talk with Komarov, Caitlin spent the rest of the morning at the Soviet offices up in the fortress, talking, or rather listening, to the woman who had greeted their party at the landing stage. Her name was Shadiva Kuliyeva, and at any other time, Caitlin would have found the woman’s story as fascinating as it was inspiring. Only a year earlier Kuliyeva had been the veiled slave-wife of a local rice merchant, and now she seemed to be running the local Soviet—and the town of Kerki—in all but title.
She could certainly talk the average Russian under the table. Or perhaps it was simply the excitement of having a “comrade woman” to talk to. The flow of anecdotes and stories dried up only when Caitlin’s yawns became too frequent to ignore. “You must get some sleep,” Kuliyeva said, not at all offended.
“No.” Caitlin slowly got to her feet, still stiff from the two nights on horseback, and took a look out of the window. The river below was empty, but the view downstream was cut off by a protruding tower, so for all she knew the riverboat might be approaching. A swift descent to the quay was tempting, but Komarov had made her promise to stay out of harm’s way, for all of their sakes. “What time is it?” she asked Kuliyeva.
“Half-past twelve.”
“Then they should be here soon,” Caitlin said, mostly to herself.
“Is it true that your husband is one of the…?” the Uzbek woman asked.
“Yes, he is,” Caitlin acknowledged. And her lover was locked in the barracks. And her comrade—and that, she realized, really was how she saw him—was down by the river getting a dozen boys ready to fight three dangerous men.
Kuliyeva waited patiently.
“It’s a long story,” Caitlin said wearily. Down below two boats were inching out into the current. “Is there somewhere we can go with a better view?” she asked.
“Of course. The roof. Here.” Kuliyeva picked up a pair of binoculars from the desk and handed them to Caitlin. “Come.”
As they climbed the steps, Caitlin found herself going through all of the feasible outcomes, and realizing that every last one was freighted with sadness and grief.
Komarov could hear the distant churning of the paddle, but the ship itself was still hidden from sight by the bend in the river a mile or so downstream. There both banks rose into cliffs, and the paddle steamer, when it did appear, seemed dwarfed by nature, smaller than he had imagined. It was a dazzling white in the afternoon sun, pumping dark grey smoke into the clear blue sky.
The timing was almost perfect. By the time the boat reached Komarov’s position, the sun would be ideally placed to cover his intended angle of approach. Making use of this blind spot might not provide much of an edge, but it was all he had. If the riverboat slowed to its usual speed on this treacherous stretch of the river, and if the four of them rowed fast enough to catch it, then they might get aboard unseen. All the evidence pointed to there being only three renegades, and one at least would be on the bridge. The others, he hoped, would be suitably distracted by the cannons on the opposite bank and the boats up ahead in midchannel.
Komarov scrambled down the bank and into the skiff, which was screened from view by the drooping branches of a large and ancient willow. When Maslov and the two soldiers all looked up expectantly, he found himself feeling almost irritated by their touching faith in his leadership.
Three-quarters of a mile farther upstream the other two boats were inching out into the center of the river, each with its crew of three soldiers. These men had shown rather less confidence—they were quite likely lambs to the slaughter, and some of them seemed to know it. If the cannons could silence the mounted machine gun, they had a good chance of survival. If not…
The paddle steamer was less than half a mile away, and appeared to be moving slower than Komarov had expected. Which, if true, was excellent news.
There was no sign of passengers or crew, no movement on the outside deck—if not for the churning wheel and the steam pulsing out of the funnels, it could have been a ghost ship.
But then a steam whistle pierced the air, once, twice, like a bugler announcing a charge, and Komarov could make out a blond-haired figure on the foredeck, crouched behind the mounted machine gun. The latter’s position gave it a wide field of fire, but as Komarov had hoped, the riverboat’s superstructure, rising behind it, precluded it from covering his intended approach. His plan might work.
The seconds ticked by, the distance shortening—surely it had to be in range by now. “Fire, for God’s sake,” he heard himself mutter.
Somebody heard him. First there was a puff of yellow smoke, then a dull boom that rolled across the water. The outflung ball splashed into the river behind the churning wheel.
The Red Turkestan drew level with Komarov’s position. “Go,” he told the others, leaning into the oars.
“How many guns?” Piatakov shouted.
Brady was standing on the steps up to the bridge, examining the southern bank through the captain’s telescope. “Two!” he yelled back. “And they look about a hundred years old. If only we had a Jolly Roger!”
The second cannon fired, its ball falling fifty yards short. Piatakov could see the guns now and knew they were still beyond his machine gun’s range. So were the two small boats up ahead, but he aimed a short burst at them anyway, hoping they’d realize the cost of staying where they were.
There was another puff of smoke on the bank, and this time the ball crashed into the ship’s superstructure with a deafening clang. Piatakov instinctively flinched, then saw that the culprit was trundling off down the deck like a bowling ball.
He and Brady grinned at each other. The enemy might as well have been throwing cabbages.
Komarov swore under his breath. The cannons were next to useless—only a direct hit on the machine gun or the paddle would cause the renegades a significant problem. And God only knew what the machine gun would do to the men in the boats up ahead.