A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ of hooves clattering on the road blended with the cheers of the bystanders – a buoyant, jittery torrent of sound. The crowd was screaming, their faces upturned; smiling red-faced shopkeepers off for the day, families dressed in their finest marshalling their children into some sort of order, newly arrived peasants transfixed with amazement, girls laughing with their hands covering their mouths, boys running ahead to keep the pace.

      Everything was too quick, everything was irrevocable. Evdaev held his breath, waiting for the dead Tsar’s revenge, waiting for a Romanov curse to strike him from the saddle.

      But it did not come.

      They rounded the church and gradually the apparitions vaporized behind him. Nothing ahead of him but cheering citizenry. No curse, no ghost, no revenge.

      ‘God give his blessings to you, sir!’ his young adjutant shouted to him, and Evdaev turned and saluted. ‘And to you, Lieutenant. But we are late, we’d better hurry along!’ He smiled, raised his sabre, and spurred Khalif into a canter as they reached the bridge. A scream of trumpets heralded their arrival and an immense cheer went up from all sides of the field.

      Evdaev sighted the blaze of lime spread across the ground ahead, all but eradicated by the caissons of the artillery and the herds of infantrymen who had shuffled across the field. By the time the trick riders of the Caucasian Regiment had done with their acrobatics – diving beneath their saddles to retrieve handkerchiefs tossed by the young grand duchesses – there was nothing but a chewed-up field of stubbly grass. Then, because of the extraordinary heat, his guardsmen had been delayed yet again by a comical team of sprinkling carts unloading themselves in a futile attempt to keep down the dust.

      Finally the whistles blew. Now his guardsmen waited – two thousand gleaming statues as the priests finished their blessings. There was no way that a regiment of cavalry could charge across the field and bring their mounts to an abrupt stop without some accident taking place. It could happen to anyone, a horse would certainly go down, bringing others with it. There would be blood, broken bones, fractured spines, death. Certainly it would occur here in just a few moments. Somewhere inside he was praying.

      Afterwards, after he had celebrated with his officers, he would go to meet Sergei.

      Somewhere secret, somewhere utterly safe. They would feast, and drink toasts to the success of their camarilla. Things were progressing well, he’d been informed. There was not much longer to wait. Surely before the year was out.

      Across the holy ground, soil that was consecrated with the blood of generations of Russia’s soldiers and their animals, sheltered within a gingerbread-trimmed pavilion, sat the man he was destined to supplant. Nicky. The Tsar. The Tsar of all the Russias. One sixth of the world’s surface. They had been children together, cadets. Courted and bedded the same ballerinas. A lifetime of memories.

      And soon…surely before the year was out. He would have to die. And the boy.

      Evdaev could see the royal family, Nicholas shuffling into his seat. The pretentious lieutenant’s dress uniform that he wore. Flaunting his power by dressing as a junior officer. Absurd. The dull eyes, the invisible smile beneath the moustaches that covered up his rotten teeth. Smiling and blinking. He’d grown into a silly, even weaker version of his childhood self.

      Soon.

      Besides, the money continued to arrive. Money and even more money, for longer than a year now, ever since he’d agreed to the Plan. Under Sergei’s astute direction he had invested most of it, and the returns had been spectacular. They were building a war chest – funds to purchase arms, to purchase men, to purchase allegiance.

      Khalif twitched between his legs, pawing the dust. The horses always knew, they remembered from one year to the next. They could smell the excitement, the smoke, and the blood. It had been bred into them for generations. Drums began to pound and the artillery fired a rippling salute. Now he was screaming a command and his men drew their sabres…the sudden gleam of sharpened steel against the white sky.

      He had hardly to touch the spur to Khalif, and they were off.

       THREE

      Sergei Andrianov sat in his box in the dignitaries’ grandstand that spanned the long eastern dimension of the Field of Mars. The enclosure was a wooden creation with finely turned filigree along the eaves of the roof, wide awnings freshly painted in the Imperial colours. Pennants flew from every flagstaff, from every post – a rush of red, white, and blue. The men surrounding him were in summer suits, some with straw hats and coloured feathers pinned to their lapels. The women were fanning themselves against the heat, chattering and cheering. Almost everyone had opera glasses.

      There had not been time for him to take his private car and he was exhausted because he had been forced on to the express, then had spent a sleepless night mulling over the chaos that had taken place at the bindery. In the hours before dawn he arrived in Petersburg, and took a carriage straight to his house; a mansion inherited from his father and refitted with all the modern conveniences, built upon the rise of the Kamenoovstrovsky Prospekt, giving on to a fine view.

      Andrianov, except for the quality of his clothing, was the kind of man that was overlooked, until he moved. He knew that it was his energy people first noticed. Business, pleasure, whatever he did, it was like that. Not stopping was attractive to some women, not attractive to others. He couldn’t help that. The rules of life were made for ordinary men, not someone like him. A cultivated man, a man with money. A fine nose, even features. Perhaps more Teutonic than Slavic in his appearance, with blond hair and eyebrows that emphasized his brow and the shape of his skull. Looking out over the field below him, as the gleaming cavalry regiments organized themselves into multi-coloured patterns, he was glad he had elected to come alone, mainly because he could make an easy exit when the festivities were finished.

      Unfortunately he had to share the box with Dr Lemmers and they’d found themselves beside the repulsive Brogdanovitch who was wedged into his seat, red-faced and sweating. The moment Brogdanovitch had laid eyes on him, he’d abandoned his wretched family and leaned across to hector Andrianov about the new electric engines he was experimenting with in his mills.

      Andrianov listened and nodded, pretended to be more interested than he was. But inevitably it was too much; he let Brogdanovitch’s theories on oil transport fade away, turned his attention to the field and watched Prince Evdaev as he wheeled his horse and took his place at the head of his cavalrymen. Behind him the regiment cantered smartly to their stations.

      Andrianov looked along towards the military enclosures, the ornate uniforms, the splashes of gold braid and feathers creating a perfectly ironic display of romantic traditionalism. A lesser man would be laughing at the absurdity. All around him in the capital he could see the chaos mounting. How many others on the Field of Mars had the blessing of such sight? A dozen?

      Less than a dozen, he decided.

      He had only reached out to a select few of these visionaries. He could bring the others into the Plan later, when the time was right.

      He shook his head at the plumes, the polished brass, gold, and silver – the huge lie that was being paraded before him. Evdaev’s beloved military had grown soft under the command of an inherited elite, unable to project Russia’s will even within her borders. It amounted to a supreme obscenity to which this horde of perfumed aristocrats was utterly blind. The best rifles in the world were British, the best light howitzers French, the best heavy ones German, the best General Staff, German again. СКАЧАТЬ