Lenin's Roller Coaster Page 2

  Caitlin walked to the veranda at the end of the car and squeezed herself into the knot of watching passengers. The mood was black, one army officer muttering darkly about future revenge while his pretty young wife clung to his arm, two older men in business suits tut-tutting and shaking their heads at the madness of it all.

  “Are we safe here?” the officer’s wife asked, gazing out across the river.

  “I’ll shoot the first man who enters the water,” her husband promised.

  On the opposite bank, several motionless figures were silhouetted against the flames. A ring of watchers, a ring of arsonists. Several dogs were barking, and the shadowy shapes of horses were moving in the gloom. The unseasonal sound of sleigh bells mixed with the sharp crack of timbers.

  No one was hurrying down to the river, not that doing so would have made much difference. The house was beyond saving, ablaze from end to end. In one of the upper windows, something moved—a curtain, Caitlin hoped, though the bloodcurdling cries that accompanied the apparition suggested something more gruesome. Windows exploded one after another, like a particularly virulent string of firecrackers. Someone screamed, though whether from pain or excitement was impossible to tell.

  The young officer next to Caitlin was breathing heavily, like a dog straining at his leash. “Domontovich was a good landlord,” another man insisted. “He even set up a school for his peasants’ children.”

  Eager to get away from them, Caitlin shouldered her way into the next carriage and walked on down the train until she reached the third-class section. It was another world. A few of the older passengers were sleeping, but most were lined up by the windows, faces lit with exultation. That really was the only word for it. Tinged with guilt perhaps, though exultation nonetheless. They hadn’t set the fire, but it was theirs.

  She remembered the Bolshevik in Tambov who had seemed so unperturbed by the recent jailing of his leaders. In his opinion only fools thought the czar’s departure would be the final word.

  “What do you want?” a young soldier asked, tapping her on the shoulder. He didn’t look particularly threatening, but Caitlin was suddenly aware of other eyes turned in her direction, examining her clothes, seeing what looked like the enemy.

  “Nothing,” she said automatically.

  “She’s a comrade from America,” Ezhov said, appearing at her shoulder like a guardian angel.

  “She doesn’t look like one.”

  “Well, she is. She writes about our revolution for the American workers and soldiers. Writes about things like this,” he added, encompassing the fire outside with a sweep of the hand.

  “I do,” Caitlin said gratefully. She did.

  “They’ve had it coming for a long time,” one woman said.

  “I know,” Caitlin said diplomatically. Perhaps the parents did, but the children?

  Most of the faces seemed mollified.

  “I’ll go back to my seat,” she told Ezhov.

  He insisted on escorting her. “There are bound to be excesses,” he said sadly as they reached her carriage. “After so many years of cruelty . . .”

  “I understand,” she said. “And thank you.”

  Once he was gone, she sat watching the flames rippling like gold dust on the surface of the river. Not long after, their steward announced that the train would soon be moving. The entertainment was over, she thought, and now they could be on their way. A few minutes later, without so much as a whistle, the train clanked into motion, and all that was left in the window was her own distraught reflection.

  2

  The Ever-Expanding Empire

  It was a beautiful morning for a funeral, if such a thing were possible. The sun was bathing the distant hills in gold and drawing the deepest blue from the placid waters of the loch. It was chilly, but the lack of a breeze took off the edge; away to the north, the haze of smoke that always lay over the engine shed hung in the air like a miniature cloud.

  Between fifty and sixty people were gathered around the waiting grave. As often seemed the case, the deceased had been more popular with his colleagues than with his family. Almost all those present were men that Euan McColl had worked with, either on the railway or in the union. Most had taken the early-morning train from Glasgow in their Sunday suits; the rest had walked up the cinder path from the depot in their work clothes. McColl had last seen some of the faces in their back room on Abrach Road more than twenty-five years before.

  “It’s a shame Jed couldn’t be here,” his mother murmured.

  “Yes,” he agreed, glancing at her. His brother hadn’t liked their father any more than he had, but a week’s leave to attend the old bastard’s funeral would have been a damn sight more congenial than enduring seven more days of the endless Battle of Ypres, especially now that Mac was gone. Their friend had “drowned in the mud,” according to Jed’s last letter. As the war entered its fourth year, such brutal honesty was apparently much in favor, particularly among the younger soldiers.

  As the thought crossed McColl’s mind that his mother might go home from her husband’s funeral to find news of her younger son’s death waiting on the front doormat, he noticed a taxi draw up at the cemetery gates. Much to his surprise, he saw Caitlin step out. She was wearing a long plum-colored skirt beneath a high-collared black jacket, on her head a hat with a little veil, and she was carrying only a small black bag. She must have left her luggage at the station, he thought. As she walked across the grass toward them, tucking some stray tendrils of hair back beneath her hat, he felt his heart lift inside his rib cage.

  She worked her way through the crowd of mourners, hugged his mother and then him. The vicar paused in his reading and gave them a mildly disapproving look before resuming. “Ashes to ashes . . .”

  “How did you know?” McColl asked Caitlin in a whisper.

  “I arrived back from Russia yesterday morning and found the telegram your mother sent you at the flat.”

  “Ah.”

  The coffin was about to be lowered. His mother had spared no expense, McColl thought, comparing this polished casket to the roughly nailed boxes stacked high on Scottish railway platforms awaiting shipment to France.

  As this one went down on the ropes, McColl felt tears welling up in his eyes, and he almost angrily brushed them away. He wouldn’t have cried for his father two years earlier, but the stroke that had almost killed him in 1915 had humanized the old man. Euan McColl hadn’t suddenly become a loving father, but he had turned into someone to pity rather than hate. At moments there had even been glimpses of the man his mother must have fallen in love with, all those years ago.

  The clunk of earth on wood mingled with a plaintive whistle from the direction of the station, as if one of the engines his father had driven in his youth were trying to say good-bye.

  The railwaymen were lining up to pay their respects to the dead man’s wife. She seemed coolness personified, greeting each man with a smile and a few words of reminiscence, almost like a politician. Over the last several years, Margaret McColl, like so many others, had had her life turned upside down, but in her case the changes had been generally positive. The cowering housewife had become a political activist, her name as widely known as her husband’s had been at the height of his union career.

  McColl’s boss, Cumming—the head of the relatively new Secret Service—had mentioned seeing her name in The Times in connection with the rent strikes. He had given McColl an inquiring look, but a shrug in reply had sufficed to close the subject—Cumming was too old-school to openly pry into an agent’s family affairs. Still, McColl had felt his boss’s anxiety. Could an agent in thrall to two uppity women—Caitlin being the other—be relied on in the empire’s hour of need? Then again, could Cumming afford to dispense with someone who spoke nine languages and had, over the last three years, served him with some distinction?

  Heaven only knew, McColl thought. He had giv
en Cumming reason enough to fire him in 1916, when his career and life had gotten so dangerously entangled with the anti-British activities of the young woman who now stood beside him.

  “How are you doing?” Caitlin asked him quietly.

  “Okay.”

  “He must have been liked,” she offered, a hint of surprise in her tone. She’d only met Jack’s father after the stroke, but she’d heard enough about his earlier shortcomings as a husband and father from the rest of the family.

  “I suppose he was,” McColl conceded, wondering if half this number would attend his own funeral. He very much doubted it.

  The three of them took the hired car back into town and, after collecting Caitlin’s luggage, decided they might as well have lunch at the hotel.

  “How are Jed and Mac?” Caitlin asked once they’d taken their seats in the nearly empty restaurant.

  “Jed’s okay, as far as we know. But Mac was killed a few weeks ago.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Caitlin was shocked. She hadn’t known Mac well, but he’d been part of Jack’s life for several years, first as his mechanic at the automobile firm and then as Jed’s best friend in peace and war. And she’d liked him. “He was a nice boy,” she added, conscious of how feeble it sounded. How many dead soldiers had received that epitaph in the last three years?

  “He really was,” Margaret McColl agreed. “And I think his death has hit Jed quite hard,” she went on, looking at her other son for confirmation.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose so. It’s difficult to tell from his letters, particularly when half the words are blanked out by the censors.”

  After a few moments’ silence, Caitlin asked Margaret how things were in Glasgow, and McColl was more than happy to let the two women spend most of the lunch swapping stories of the socialist and feminist struggle they both seemed to live for, here in Scotland and in newly czarless Russia. His mother had some welcome news for Caitlin—only the day before, the Glasgow Herald had reported that her home state of New York had finally granted women the right to vote.

  Once they’d eaten, Margaret McColl announced that she’d go for a walk around the town. On her own. “Have a think about the man we just buried. Visit our old haunts. One last cry, maybe,” she said, almost defiantly. “And if you two haven’t seen each other for ten months, I expect you have a lot to catch up on,” she added with what looked like a twinkle.

  They had indeed. Afterward, as they lay naked in each other’s arms, Caitlin couldn’t help thinking of all the men and women who’d been parted for a great deal longer. “We should be grateful we see each other as often as we do,” she murmured.

  McColl laughed. “Sorry, I just remembered something Jed put in one of his letters. One soldier in his unit was saying that every night he spent apart from his wife was a fuck the government owed him, so his mate turns and tells him that the government probably thinks they’ve fucked him enough already.”

  Caitlin shook her head. “That’s too true to be funny.”

  “I suppose it is. Did you have any trouble getting back into Britain?”

  “Less than I expected. They kept me for quite a long time, but the man asking the questions knew nothing about my history. As far as I could tell, the only thing that interested him was that I’d been in Russia.”

  “And Russia really was as wonderful as you told my mother?”

  She heaved herself up onto one elbow. “You think I made it up?”

  “No, of course not. But Russia’s still in the war, and things can’t be that easy over there.”

  “They’re not,” she conceded. “But there’s a feeling of hope, of change, that I haven’t experienced anywhere else. I know things are happening in Glasgow and other places, but this is a whole country we’re talking about, and there don’t seem to be any limits to what could happen.” She lay back down. “I know I’m not supposed to ask, but have you been there since the revolution?”

  “I was there in April. Weighing up the chances of Russia fighting on,” he added in explanation.

  “And what did you report?” she asked, pushing her luck.

  “That the chances would be a lot better if we sent them some weapons to fight with.”

  “And have you?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  “Yes, but nowhere near enough. You’ve only just come back—what do you think?”

  “It’s merely a matter of time. The soldiers are deserting in droves, and I don’t think there’s anything the government can do to stop them. And it’s not only the lack of guns, not anymore. It’s the lack of a reason. The soldiers have finally realized it’s not their war.”

  “Even though their new government—the one most of them welcomed—says it is.”

  “I imagine a lot of them have realized that Kerensky’s government isn’t new enough. He and his cronies talk a good talk, but they haven’t actually changed very much. The war’s still going on, the elite still own the banks and the factories and most of the land. The czar’s gone, but most of his supporters are still around, pulling what strings they can and waiting their chance to turn the clocks back. But I think they’re dreaming. It’s much more likely someone will speed it up.”

  “Another revolution? Led by whom?”

  “The Bolsheviks, probably.”

  “But there are so few of them.”

  Caitlin shook her head. “Their numbers have probably multiplied by ten since you left in May.”

  McColl gave a low whistle.

  “Kerensky won’t last the year,” she predicted.

  An hour or so later, they discovered how right she was. Standing at the hotel bar, waiting to order drinks for Caitlin and his mother, McColl overheard the barman tell two of the railwaymen who’d attended the funeral that there’d been a revolution in Russia.

  “Aye,” one of them replied with a deadpan face. “That news reached Glasgow about six months ago.”

  The barman gave him a look. “No, you idjit. Another one.”

  When McColl relayed the exchange, Caitlin insisted on seeking out an evening paper. She returned ten minutes later, holding it aloft. “I was right,” she said triumphantly. “The Bolsheviks have seized power in Petrograd. Kerensky’s gone into hiding.”

  “Is this good news?” Margaret McColl asked.

  “It has to be,” Caitlin told her. “But the report doesn’t have any details. It doesn’t say whether the other socialist groups are involved. Or what’s happening in the other big cities.”

  “I suppose you’ll be going back?” McColl’s mother said, sounding almost envious.

  “Yes, yes, I will. I must find a telephone,” she told them both.

  As McColl watched her rush from the room, he had a premonition of how this might pull them apart. If she’d just been going back as a journalist, there’d be nothing to fear, but she’d also be returning as a campaigner, as someone whose sense of herself was thoroughly entangled with her political beliefs. This, he realized, really might change everything.

  She returned about half an hour later. “Why did I leave?” she asked herself and them as she sat back down. “I’m sorry. It’s wonderful to see you both, even in such circumstances, but I knew that something like this was going to happen. I told my editor it would, but he wouldn’t listen. He just kept saying that American readers are much more interested in what their own troops are doing in France, even though he knows that only a handful have actually arrived.” She sighed heavily and took a sip of beer. “Anyway, I got the office in London to telegraph the States. I won’t get a reply until tomorrow, but I know they’ll want me back there. And there’s a boat that leaves Aberdeen for Bergen on Sunday morning. How do I get to Aberdeen from here?”

  Less than forty-eight hours, McColl thought. That was all they’d have. “There are plenty of ways,” he told her. “And that’s because none are easy. But I’ll come
with you.”

  “No, you should stay,” Caitlin said, glancing pointedly at his mother.

  “I’ll be fine,” Margaret McColl told them both.

  They set off from Fort William soon after nine, McColl trying not to let his disappointment at the shortness of their reunion spoil the day they had. Caitlin seemed to realize as much. “I wish we had more time together,” she told him, “but there isn’t another boat for at least a fortnight, and I can’t take the risk of missing out on a story like this.”

  “I know,” he said. And he did. But still . . .

  That morning, as he waited for Caitlin to finish in the bathroom, a boy had arrived at their door with a telegram from London. Cumming wanted to see him, preferably yesterday. McColl had returned the slip to its envelope and offered it back to the boy. “I’ll be leaving in a few minutes. If I give you a pound, do you think you could say I was already gone when you tried to deliver it?”

  The boy had considered the proposition, but not for long. “Aye, I think I could manage that.”

  McColl had handed him the note and watched him skip back down the stairs.

  Since then the day, too, had gone downhill. The two of them had started wading through newspapers while waiting at the station, Caitlin eagerly searching for fresh news from Russia, McColl scanning the latest war reports for any indication, no matter how slight, of a break in the murderous stalemate in France. There was none he could see and, with the new revolution in Russia, even less chance that one would turn up. He had hoped that America’s entry into the war would finally tip the balance, but now it seemed that Caitlin’s countrymen would merely take the place of the disappearing Russians. As their train steamed south across Rannoch Moor, McColl found himself wondering how long he and she could make their relationship work in a war that never ended.

  In the seat beside him, she was having similar thoughts. When she woke that morning, part of her didn’t want to go. It was too soon. What could two people do in forty-eight hours? They could make love several times and swap news, but they couldn’t find out how the other person really was. Jack seemed tired to her, not physically but mentally, emotionally, as if the war were wearing him down. Which was hardly surprising. The constant worrying over Jed must be exhausting, and now his father had died. She had no real idea of what the latter meant to him, and neither, she suspected, did he. He’d said he didn’t want to talk about it now, but now was all they had.