A Splendid Little War (16 page)

“I don't find it boring,” he said. “I've just sold five thousand steel helmets, for cash. The thrill of the marketplace, the pulse of profit.”

“British Army issue? That's government property. You can't sell them.”

“Well, nobody wanted them. Russian troops won't wear them, they prefer to get their heads blown off in fur hats. Perhaps astrakhan, for the more stylish.”

“Still not yours to sell.”

“My dear captain, they were going nowhere on the docks at Novorossisk, while Russian housewives everywhere are crying out for
good, sturdy cooking pots. An unusually honest Russian dealer bought the lot from our man in Ekat.”

“Give me his name. I'll have the blighter court-martialled.”

“Henry. You can't touch him, he's an American civilian. You should be grateful to him. He sold forty thousand British Army horseshoes last week. Best Sheffield steel. Or do I mean iron?”

“He stole them.”

“No. If anyone did it was our man in Novo. Lieutenant Waxman, delightful chap, you'd like him.”

“Waxman. Good. I'll have
him
court-martialled.”

“That might be difficult. Once the cargo is unloaded, it's no longer British, it's Russian. Denikin's property. He won't court-martial a British officer. He needs our guns and things. But not our horseshoes. Guess why?”

Brazier tore the blotting paper into halves and then quarters. “Astonish me.” He threw the pieces over his shoulder.

“Russian horses are smaller than British Army horses. They have far smaller feet. Evidently London didn't know that.”

“
But
.” Brazier raised a finger. “Russian women pull the plough. And they
do
have big feet.”

Lacey looked around in surprise. “A jest. How droll. I feared that life amongst the crude, licentious infantry might have coarsened you. No, our buyer is in armaments. He melts down the steel to make rifles.”

Brazier stood up and put on his cap. Lacey knew what that meant: now the adjutant was on parade, and King's Regulations applied to everything. “Look here, Lacey. You're not in France any more, swapping disinfectant for Canadian bacon. We're guests of the Russian people. Stealing's got to stop.”

“The Russians steal from each other all the time. And it wasn't disinfectant in France, it was linoleum. I seem to remember you enjoyed the bacon.”

“There's a difference. What you're doing now is black-market trading. That's fraud. Penal servitude.”

“And without it, the squadron would have no petrol. I buy our petrol with the profits of my trading.”

“Rubbish. Denikin's people supply our petrol. Our military mission in Ekat said so.”

Somewhere, a gramophone began playing dance music. Lacey put
his hands in his pockets and began a slow fox-trot across the compartment. “Denikin's man cheats,” he said. “He sells half of our petrol to his friends. The railway people sell a lot of the rest
en route
. We're lucky to get the dregs.” He reached the door and swivelled on his toes and started back.

Brazier snorted. “Everyone's a crook, are they? I don't believe it.”

“Henry isn't a crook. He buys our petrol back from the men who stole it. Result – everyone's happy. And Merlin Squadron flies again.”

Brazier went out and slammed the door.

“A poor critic,” Lacey said, “but a steady performer.”

Griffin told Wragge and Hackett to find a good spot to bury Bellamy. They asked the adjutant's advice. In France or England there had always been a handy church with a graveyard, but here … Brazier told them to look for low ground, no rocks, easy digging, away from running water. “Typhus,” he said. “Nasty stuff. Go down six feet minimum.”

They found a sharp stick and set off.

“Tough luck on old Bellamy,” Wragge said.

Hackett grunted.

“Best Mess president we ever had,” Wragge said. “Those dinners at Butler's Farm were stunning.”

“Too much fish. The British are in love with haddock. Ever seen a whole haddock? Very ugly. No haddock in Australia. We passed a law, it's banned. And anchovies. Bellamy was always giving us anchovies, for God's sake. Why?”

“I don't think anchovies are actually fish.” Wragge tried to remember what an anchovy looked like. “Anyway, you never had any problems with the roast beef. You tucked in like billy-ho to the roast beef. Second helpings.”

“Because the first was feeble.” Hackett stopped. “Where are we going?”

“Beats me.” They looked around: steppe everywhere: a flat nothing-much stretching to the horizon beneath an overcast sky, totally empty. “Fancy coming all this way, just to cop it,” Wragge said. “Not even a Bolo bullet. Just some filthy plague.”

“Here is as good as anywhere.” Hackett pointed, and spat. “There. Put him there.”

They screwed the sharp stick into the ground, and turned back. “I bet Griffin makes us take the burial service,” Wragge said.

“I can do it. I've seen plenty. A bit of God-stuff, plant the body, more God-stuff, throw in some earth, fire the rifles, God-stuff, march off, sherry in the Mess, hello replacement, what's for dinner?”

“I knew a boy at Harrow got killed by a cricket ball,” Wragge said. “Fast delivery smacked him on the heart, stone dead. Big funeral … Hullo, they're back.” A pair of Camels was descending. Before they landed, a mechanic had reached Hackett and Wragge with a message. The squadron was bombing up for another raid.

“Bellamy will have to wait,” Hackett said. “He'll get used to it. He's got all eternity.”

Jessop and Maynard reported still no sign of Pedlow and Duncan or their presumably crashed Nine, but they had found a large black scorch-mark on the steppe, and it wasn't made by the missing White Russian bombers, because their wrecks were miles away.

“Scorch-mark,” Griffin said. “No bits lying around? No engine? Should be a damn great Puma lying somewhere. You can't burn an engine.”

“We flew very low,” Maynard said. “If there was an engine, we'd have seen it. We'd have seen a cylinder. Nothing.”

“Well, we haven't got time for that. Get fuelled up. The squadron's been given a nice juicy target.”

They walked away. “My bottom feels as if it's been beaten with a hockey stick,” Maynard said.

Jessop was too hungry to sympathize. “What school did you go to?”

“Sherborne.”

“Lucky you. If you'd gone to Tonbridge, your delicate bottom would be used to that sort of treatment.”

The target was a group of Red gunboats, said to be coming down the Volga towards Tsaritsyn. Nobody was sure how many or how big or how well armed, but Griffin had promised Wrangel to send them packing. The squadron – five Camels, five Nines – got airborne about 4.00 p.m. Just before take-off, Jessop's ground crew gave him a bar of chocolate; Maynard got half. They ate chunks as they flew. Their taste buds salivated with gratitude. Colours brightened, sounds sharpened, suddenly the afternoon improved enormously.

The squadron cruised up the Volga at a thousand feet for ten, twenty miles, until Oliphant started wondering if the gunboats existed. Maybe this was a trap. The river was vast, magnificent, it made the Thames look like a stream, but the banks were broken and scarred, you wouldn't want to make a forced landing down there. Then he saw smoke ahead, and soon the funnels of four, no, five gunboats, pumping it out. They looked to be too small to be dangerous, but that was because the river was so wide.

The Camels curled away to the left. Oliphant led the Nines away to the right. The gunboats began firing.

Griffin's tactics were simple. The Camels came in, weaving and jinking, twenty or thirty feet above the Volga, and threatened the largest gunboat, firing a short burst and then sheering off and threatening it from another angle, anything to distract its gunners while the Nines made their bombing run from the other flank. He didn't expect it to work. This was war; nothing works quite as planned. But the bombers found gaps in the shell bursts and by determination and a fat slice of luck somebody's bomb went down the gunboat's funnel. Or so the pilot claimed. The truth didn't matter, because the bomb exploded somewhere crucial, maybe in the magazine, and the gunboat got blown up by its own shells.

The detonation was spectacular. The boat erupted, flung apart by the intensity of flame and fury.
Volcanic
was the word that Maynard thought of. Wragge said later that a white-hot lump of metal flew past him, as big as a barn door, he heard it go
whizz
. When the Flights got over their surprise and found some sort of formation, the gunboat had gone. And the other gunboats had turned and were making all speed upstream. The squadron harassed them and a few near-misses blew spray over them, but none was sunk. Still, the squadron had sent them packing, just as Griffin promised. Typical Bolo behaviour. Wave your arms and they all run away.

It was late afternoon when a man ducked his head and came into the brick hut. He was head and shoulders taller than the rest of the village, red-bearded and better dressed. He gave a passing nod to the icons and began to speak. His voice was rich and deep and his gestures were confident. He had quite a lot to say.

“He's the headman,” Pedlow said. “They always pick the tallest chap.”

“Ask him if he can do something about the bedbugs,” Duncan said.

“I only know one Russian word, and that's the one Lacey taught us.” Pedlow clicked his fingers. “Damn. I've forgotten it.”

“It's
nichevo
,” Duncan said. “Try
nichevo
bedbugs.”

The word abruptly silenced the headman. He stood with his mouth half-open and his arms frozen in mid-gesture. “
Nichevo
,” he whispered.

“That's it.
Nichevo
,” Pedlow said firmly. The headman dropped his arms, bowed, turned and left. They followed him. “I've forgotten what it means,” Pedlow said.

“According to Lacey it means don't worry,
san fairy ann
as the French say. Sort of vaguely encouraging.”

“Didn't work, did it? We seem to have scared him off.” The headman was half-running away. Soon he vanished between huts. They stood, blinking in the mild sunlight. “I suppose we could walk to Beketofka.”

“In the dark? It's forty miles at least. Meanwhile … my bladder's about to burst. Can you see anything that looks like a lavatory?”

“This whole village smells like a lavatory, old chap,” Pedlow said.

“Perhaps there's a bog at the back. Traditional place.”

They went and looked. No bog.

“Since the locals seem to believe I've descended from heaven, and as this is Tuesday,” Pedlow said, “I shall make water, and I command you to do likewise.” They unbuttoned and were making water, lots of water, when they saw two small boys watching. “Hullo!” Pedlow called. “This will be the Garden of Eden one day. You'll thank me for it then.” They bolted.

Nothing much happened for the next hour; the villagers seemed to be avoiding them. They went indoors. It was dusk when the headman returned, escorted by the villagers. He wore a white stovepipe hat with no brim, a dark red robe that reached his ankles, and rope sandals. His escort wore long green robes. He said a few words and his gestures clearly invited them to go with him. “Might as well,” Duncan said. “Could be supper.”

They heard singing, and it was impressive, as skilled as any cathedral choir, but much larger, hundreds of men and women passing the melody back and forth like questions and answers. Then they saw the assembly. The whole village had gathered in a wide circle. The strength of the voices was not just their power but also their conviction. Joe Duncan had read ghost stories that told of men whose hair stood on end and he hadn't believed them. Now he felt a bristling at the back of his neck.

The headman led them through a gap in the circle and instantly the singing ceased. That was the first surprise. The second was the remains of their Nine. They were carefully stacked in the middle of the circle.

They walked over to it. Most of the machine had gone up in flames, but somebody had searched hard. Around the engine were bits of wing and tail unit, a wheel, the Lewis gun, an empty ammunition drum, chunks of broken propeller. “Don't touch anything,” Pedlow muttered.

“Why not?”

“I don't know. Just don't.”

There were two chairs, so they sat in them, and the evening began.

The headman was clearly a priest or prophet. He held what looked like a Bible and he read from it. His followers liked that: every reading brought a thunderous response. Then they sang. By now it was night; a fire was lit. The priest walked around the broken bomber, delivered what sounded like a sermon, made much of the airmen's presence. They sat and watched and didn't understand a damn word. “I could do with a beer,” Duncan said. The villagers sang again, but now it had a faster tempo, a thumping melody, and some of them were dancing. Furiously.