‘Hulyai-Polye. Before that Alexandriya. Before that Kiev.’
‘Do you know what Antonov’s up to?’
‘The different factions are at loggerheads, unable to agree amongst themselves. Their movements, I regret, are now a mystery to me.’
‘Well, their morale’s no better than ours. I’m glad.’ He turned away from me. I saluted the Second-Lieutenant and brought my heels together, unable to match the precision of the true Russian soldier. ‘I believe we are acquainted. Are you not Alexei Leonovitch Petroff, cousin to my old friend Prince Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff? We met at the Mikhishevskis some years ago. In Peter. You knew me then as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He blinked and removed the monocle from his eye. He had become more expert with it now. ‘We talked about Rasputin.’ He uttered a rather unpleasant laugh.
‘Kolya and I were very close. I was studying science.’
He looked at me with a familiar insolence. I had not really experienced anything like it since Petersburg. I remembered how irritating he had been. But we were now, after all, equals. Indeed, I outranked him. ‘Do you know how Kolya is? Where he is? I know he went into politics.’
‘Kolya?’ The laugh was challenging, as if he laughed at a conqueror. He was puzzling. He said: ‘Who knows? Cheka?’
‘He’s in prison?’
Petroff laughed again. ‘Unlikely. They don’t keep too many prisoners for long, do they? Particularly Kerenskyite princes.’
I knew a terrible sadness. He spoke almost accusingly. I wondered if he associated me with Kolya’s political comrades.
‘You have English, I hear?’
‘Yes.’ I was mourning Kolya. He had been the best friend I had known. ‘I’m in Intelligence. I was acting as interpreter with the Australians.’
‘I could do with an interpreter. It always takes half-an-hour to translate a report. We’ll lose Odessa at this rate. Why don’t you come up with me, as my observer?’ The engineer’s uniform had deceived me. I remembered his conversation, then, in that Petersburg drawing-room. He was, of course, a pilot-officer. His was one of the planes on the lake. It could be my first trip in a machine not of my own making. I was curious to experience the differences.
‘In the Oertz?’ I said.
‘It’s the only two-seater. Done any observing before?’
‘Not really.’
‘It’s fun.’ He laughed again, still sardonically, still as if I had somehow cheated him at a sport. ‘What do you say, Kryscheff?’
‘If your seniors agree ...’
‘I have none. I’m a flyer. Like the tank people, I’m my own man. They need us too much to make us go through all that palaver. I’m going soon. There’s something I have to do in Odessa. You know the Church of the Vanquisher?’
‘It’s a strange name for a church.’ I tried to join in whatever his joke was. But Kolya’s memory was too strong.
‘Isn’t it? There’s a map in the plane. You can make notes of positions.’ There was a despairing quality about him. All his ideals had gone. He wanted to be revenged on something but could find nothing to blame. I should have been more nervous of him, but I wanted to forget about Kolya and I desperately wanted to take the aeroplane trip.
Petroff saluted Major Perezharoff. ‘Sir, this officer will be of considerable use to me as an observer. He can also relay reports directly to the English liaison people. I should like to take him up with me.’
Perezharoff shrugged. ‘He’ll be out of our way.’
Having said farewell to Captain Wallace I left the mansion. I wandered with a suddenly silent Petroff down to the lake. A small wooden jetty had been repaired and led out to where the seaplanes were moored. ‘Do you know the Oertz?’ he asked.
‘I know the Germans rejected them for war work.’
‘Not at the end. That’s how we got it. They’re devils to handle, but they’ve their own beauty. The little Hansa is a gem. You’d hardly know you were taking off or touching down. Like a dragonfly. But she’s a one-seater.’
‘You use both?’
‘I’m the only airman left. You’ve had some plane experience, didn’t Kolya say?’
‘Mine were experimental.’
‘Yes.’ He was thoughtful. ‘Kiev, of course.’
‘I owe Kolya much.’
‘You were a special friend? He was a true Bohemian. But he knew his duty.’
‘Politics?’ I shrugged. I was missing a clue to the nature of this exchange. We reached the end of the jetty.
‘Hot as hell, eh?’ Petroff removed his cap. it’s cooler up there.’ He seemed to yearn for the sky. The sun caught his monocle. It blazed like a dragon’s eye. ‘You survived, however. You’re a bit of a fraud, aren’t you? So you went into Intelligence.’
I ignored the insult, ‘It was my only possible contribution.’
‘Spying.’
‘Sabotage, too. As an engineer, I had to make the best use of my talents. In the struggle.’
‘You were always against the Reds?’
I wondered why he was interrogating me so intensely. ‘Profoundly opposed.’
‘You disagreed with Kolya?’
‘On that alone.’
‘I supported him. I was with Kerenski, you know. We’re all guilty.’
‘Kerenski’s revolution cost me my academic career.’
He looked down at rainbow oil on the water. ‘We’re all guilty. But you and I have survived Kolya.’
