As he watched the backs of the fleeing men, Green felt for the first time that there was very little sky-blue left in him. His dominant colour was steel-grey now.
At twilight the district police officer arrived with a platoon of mounted police and was surprised to see that all was quiet in the little town. He spoke with the Jews first and then took the pharmacist's son away to jail.
Grigory Grinberg became Green at the age of twenty, after one of his repeated escapes. He had walked one and a half thousand versts and then, just outside Tobolsk, been caught in a stupid police raid on tramps. He had had to give some kind of name, and that was what he called himself - not in memory of his old surname, but in honour of Ignatii Grinevitsky, who had killed the Tsar.
At the one thousand eight hundredth heartbeat he felt that his strength was fully restored and got lightly to his feet, without touching the floor with his hands. He had a lot of time. It was evening now; there was the whole night ahead.
He did not know how long he would have to spend in Moscow.
Probably about two weeks at least. Until they took the plainclothes police agents off the turnpikes and the railway stations. Green was not concerned for himself; he had plenty of patience. Eight months of solitary confinement was good training for that. But the lads in the group were young and hot-headed; it would be hard for them.
He walked out of the bedroom into the drawing room, where the other three were sitting.
'Why aren't you sleeping?' asked Bullfinch, the very youngest of all, flustered. 'It's my fault, isn't it? I was talking too loud.'
All the members of the group were on familiar terms, regardless of their age or services to the revolution. What point was there in formality if tomorrow, or next week, or next month you might all go to your death together? Of all the people in the world Green only spoke like that to these three: Bullfinch, Emelya and Rahmet. There had been others before, but they were all dead.
Bullfinch was looking fresh, which was natural enough - they hadn't taken the boy on the operation, although he had begged them to, even weeping in his rage. The other two looked cheerful but tired, which was also only natural.
The operation had gone off more easily than expected. The blizzard had helped, but the greatest help of all had been the snowdrift on this side of Klin, a genuine gift of fate. Rahmet and Emelya had been waiting with a sleigh three versts from the station. According to the plan Green had been supposed to throw himself out of a window while the train was moving, and he could have been hurt. Then they would have picked him up. Or the guards could have spotted him as he jumped and opened fire. The sleigh would have come in handy in that case too.
Things had turned out better than that. Green had simply run along the track, entirely unharmed. He hadn't even got cold -running the three versts had warmed him up.
They had driven round the water meadows of the Sestra river, where workmen were clearing the line. At the next station they had stolen an old abandoned handcar and ridden it all the way to Sortirovochnaya Station in Moscow. Of course, pumping the rusty lever for fifty-something versts in the wind and driving snow had not been easy. It was hardly surprising that the lads had exhausted themselves: they weren't made of steel. First Rahmet had weakened, and then the doughty Emelya. Green had had to work the handle on his own for the entire second half of the journey.
'You're like the dragon Gorynich, you're Greenich!' Emelya said, shaking his flaxen-haired head in admiration. 'You crawled into your cave for half an hour, cast off your old scales, grew back the heads that had been cut off and now you're as good as new. Look at me, a big strapping hulk, but I haven't got my breath back yet, my tongue's still hanging out.'
Emelya was a good soldier. Strong, without any prissy intelligentsia pretensions. A wonderful, calming dark-brown colour. He had chosen his own alias, in honour of Emelya Pugachev; before that he had been known as Nikifor Tyunin. He was an armoury artisan, a genuine proletarian. Broad-shouldered and pie-faced, with a childish little nose and genial round eyes. It wasn't often that the oppressed class threw up steadfast, class-conscious warriors, but when one of these strapping heroes did appear, you could put your life in his hands with complete confidence. Green had personally selected Emelya from five candidates sent by the party. That was after Sable had failed when he flung his bomb at Khrapov, and a vacancy had appeared in the Combat Group. Green had tested the novice's strength of nerve and quickness of wit and been satisfied.
Emelya had really shown what he was worth during the operation in Ekaterinburg. When the Governor's droshky had driven up to the undistinguished townhouse on Mikhelson Street at the time indicated in the letter (and even, as promised, with no escort), Green had walked up to the fat man who was laboriously climbing out of the carriage and shot him twice at point-blank range. But when he ran through a passage to the next street, where Emelya was waiting disguised as a cab driver, they'd had a stroke of bad luck: at that very moment a police officer and two constables just happened to be walking past the false cabby. The policemen had heard the shots in the distance, and now here was a man running out of the yard - straight into their arms. Green had already thrown his revolver away. He felled one of them with a blow to the chin, but the other two clung to his arms and the one on the ground started blowing his whisde. Things were looking really bad, but the novice Emelya hadn't lost his head. He climbed down from his coachbox without hurrying and hit one constable on the back of the head with his massive fist so hard that he instantly went limp, and Green dealt with the other one himself. They had driven off like the wind, to the trilling of the police whistle.
It warmed his heart to look at Emelya. The people won't carry on just lounging their lives away for ever, he thought. The ones with keen wits and active consciences have already started waking up. And that means the sacrifices are not in vain and the blood - ours and theirs - is not spilt for nothing.
'So that's what sleeping on the floor and absorbing the juices of the earth does for you,' Rahmet said with a smile, tossing a picturesque lock of hair back off his forehead.
'I'd just started composing a poem about you, Green.'
And he declaimed:
'There's another version too.' Rahmet raised his hand to stop Bullfinch laughing and continued:
His comrades laughed in unison and Green thought to himself: That's a verse from Pushkin he rewrote; I suppose it's funny. He knew that he didn't understand when something was funny, but that didn't matter, it wasn't important. And he mentally corrected the verse: I'm not iron, I'm steel.
He couldn't help himself - this thrill-seeking adventurer Rahmet simply wasn't to his liking, although he had to admit that he did a lot of good for the cause. Green had chosen him the previous autumn, when he needed a partner for a foreign operation - he couldn't take Emelya to Paris.
He had arranged for Rahmet to escape from the prison carriage as he was being driven away from the courthouse after sentencing. At the time all the newspapers were full of the story: the Uhlan cornet Seleznyov had interceded with his commanding officer for one of his men and in response to the colonel's crude insults had challenged him to a duel. And when his affronter had refused to accept the challenge, he had shot him dead in front of the entire regiment.