Later his report would begin with the usual crispness of military Russian. "At approximately 2100 hours, 15 December 1899, Sergeant Zykov and I met by pre-arrangement at a cafe in the Korgay Prospect, Vsevolod District, across the street from the cigarmaker Medetar Zhandos's...." His prejudice against playing spy-and-counterspy, the subtly inimical atmosphere of the crowded street, the apprehension that gave him a hollow feeling in the midriff, would not be of interest to his superiors. They craved results and demanded only a calm statement of the facts. It was unimportant to them that Captain Dimitri Karamazov, 5th Chigrakov Dragoon Regiment, detached for duty at Regiment HQ Vezek, and 1st Sergeant Adam Zykov, same status, were doing a job of police work they strongly disliked, weren't trained for, and weren't likely to perform with brilliance. Dmitri could only hope they would soon be relieved of the duty.
They were seated at a window of the cafe with two glassed of Turanian-brewed coffee, one for each man, on the table. Dmitri loved the sweet Turanian coffee, and Sergeant Zykov would swallow anything from opium to 40-foot-rod, but they were too intent on the scene outside the window and their own guarded conversation to pay their respects to it.
Dimitri had just hurried over from his staff billet at the Makhan-e-Maroun Palace. He rated such senior-officer accommodations on the strength of his post as Military Information officer on the staff of General Azarov, the regimental commander. Sergeant Zykov, who had served in his troop at Fort Torchinovich before the Chigrakov Dragoons joined the expeditionary force to Turania, was his sole assistant. "What would you say we are, sir," Zykov had asked when they were detached for the assignment, "some kind of spy-catchers?" Dimitri had tried to explain that in the Czar's army such work was called Intelligence and was regarded as vital and honorable employment. "Ah, these foreigners," was Sergeant Zykov's comment, "will stoop to anything."
While Dimitri was required to spend most of his time among the archways and onion domes of Makhan, Sergeant Zykov manned a kind of listening post in the old walled city, where friendly Turanians could secretly bring them information on the insurrectionist movement, whose forces now ringed the Turanian capital and were fomenting trouble in the city. Sasanfanif---the word itself had a vengeful hiss---was the underground organization of the rebels. They promised that one night it would rise up against the occupation forces. Yet there was the chance that Sasanfanif was a paper tiger, something to confuse and distract the Russians. Fact or rumor, it was the particular concern of Captain Karamazov and Sergeant Zykov.
It had brought them to the coffee house this sultry evening.
"Just what did Medetar want?" Dimitri asked the sergeant in a frozen-mouthed penitentiary mumble, maybe a shade too melodramatic, meanwhile keeping an eye on the ship across the street. It was a two-room brick-and-mortar building. Medetar displayed his pig-tailed cigars in the outer room and used the rear and larger room for storing his bales of local tobacco and rolling his cigars at a long bench with two apprentice cigarmakers.
"He says to be on the lookout from 9:00 onwards," Sergeant Zkyov replied in the same convict-style speech. "Just barely had time to send word over to the palace. Wasn't more than an hour ago he came to see me in the walled city, looking scared as hell."
"He says the Sasanfanif is putting the choke-hold on him?"
"They want him to cough up a hundred dinars a week. Allah's tax, they call it. Medetar was notified the collector would be coming around tonight and he'd better have the money ready or they'd make mincemeat out of him."
"Do you believe this, or is he trying to wrangle favors?"
"You could smell the fear, sir, and I don't blame him a bit. These men do a fancy job of knifework. That balarat they use has a real nasty cutting edge. They just chop away until there's nothing left to chop."
"If and when this collector shows up, I want him taken as quietly as possible. No unnecessary scuffling and brawling. Curb your enthusiasm just this once, Sergeant."
"He'll come along quietly or I'll break his arm."
"And have him howl down a mob on us? No, we'll be as gentle as possible, Sergeant."
It was hard to keep a close watch on the cigarmaker's establishment because the flickering street lights were few and far between in this quarter, and their view was blocked by the wheeled traffic in the narrow street and the constant stream of people aimlessly strolling among the coffee houses, grocers, fruit vendors, tailors, and trinket shops of the district. So far nobody seemed to have entered Medetar's shop, although one man had aroused Dimitri's interest by pausing in front of it, peering inside for a moment, and then drifting away with a shoal of pedestrians. It was a noisy, talkative throng, people laughing and quarreling, 2-wheeled carts and rickety carriages clattering over the stones, with the quickening rhythm of desert nightlife.
"You think maybe we should wait in the rear room of Medetar's place?" Sergeant Zykov suggested. "It's going to be hard to lay hands on our man in these crowds. He could vanish as quick as a wink. Besides, how can we tell whether some fellow just wanted to buy a handful of Medetar's cigars or whether he's the one that's trying to gouge money out of Medetar? We might grab the wrong man."
"We can't risk waiting in the shop," Dimitri said, glancing at the sergeant. There was no one he would rather have with him in a potentially tight spot than Adam Zykov. The sergeant was one of those towheads with light blue eyes, mild and ruminative, who seem to be the most peaceable men alive---a very deceptive impression. There was no more ferocious brawler in the regiment, as Dimitri could attest from frequent missions of mercy to civilian jails as well as the Fort Torchinovich guardhouse. Zykov, like his superior, wore the new gray-green issue, his bearlike torso threatening to split the seams of the tunic each time he moved a muscle.
"The man from the Sasanfanif, or whatever he is, would probably look around to make sure he's not being overheard. Medetar'll probably give us the high sign when the man leaves his shop. We've just got to keep a sharp eye on which way he goes before he gets lost in the crowd. Have you got a revolver on you, Sergeant?"
Zykov patted the bulge over his right hip. "This isn't a cud of chewing tobacco, sir."
"Keep it there, then," Dimitri said. "Don't shoot unless that man pulls a knife or other weapon on you. If so, try to disable him but not kill him. We need him alive and in good condition to answer questions right away."
"God, I never thought I'd wind up playing policeman," Zykov grumbled.
"Then stay away from our hard stuff or you will have even worse luck next time." Dimitri referred, with scant sympathy, to the incident which had happened shortly after the Chigrakov Regiment had arrived in Korosun. The sergeant had swilled vodka, which was known to curdle the brain and jar even the most hardened drinkers out of their senses. Zykov had run amok in one of the ghettos, smashed up a native shop, and tried to make off with a jar of opium when the provost guard subdued him after a pitched battle. Colonel Polishchuk had been inclined to throw the sergeant into one of the Sultan's dungeons since all field officers had been impressed with the need of maintaining the best possible relations with the Czar's new Turanian subjects. Dimitri intervened, as always, but insisted in return that Zykov submitted to staying with him in Korosun and was not swayed by the fact that tears came into the sergeant's eyes at the thought of Troop B going into the line south of the Ilbarz without him.
Dimitri took a long pull at the coffee in front of him, mostly for appearances' sake. He and the sergeant were attracting enough attention from the people at the other tables, just for being Russian soldiers, and sober ones at that.
Just as he put down the glass he glanced out the window and noticed that the nearest street lamp had suddenly been extinguished. There was an excited murmur from the people passing by, then came shouts, screams, and the sounds of a struggle in the semidarkness.
"What the hell's going on out there?" said Dimitri, rising to his feet.
"Some kind of brawl," the sergeant said, remaining in his seat. "There's always someone scrapping in the streets. Too many knives and tempers around."
"Come, Sergeant!"
They plunged into the swarm of angry people milling around outside. Six angry turbaned men were swinging away at each other while women on the fringe of the fight screamed their disapproval and tried to get their children out of the way. A radizmal, its carriage ponies rearing and trying to get into the fight with their murderously sharp little hooves, almost thumped over and threatened to spill its terrified passengers into the midst of the fighters.
Then, above the hubbub, came the piercing echo of a scream.
Dimitri and Sergeant Zykov had just flailed their way through the crowd to the other side of the street when the bloodstained figure of Medetar came lurching out.
With one stroke of the balarat, somebody had tried to behead him, missed by an inch or two, and nearly severed his shoulder.
The cigarmaker slid down at their feet, blood gushing from the long gash in his shoulder that had slashed through muscle, nerve, bone, and artery. He was bleeding to death, and no tourniquet could possibly be rigged to stanch the flow from a wound so severe.
Medetar, eyes rolling, mouth working, struggling to communicate with men who could not have understood him even if he had been able to speak, was hauled as gently as possible back into his shop. The dying man motioned with his head towards the rear room of his establishment, then slipped into unconsciousness. The sergeant plunged into the workroom at the rear, searched among the benches and bales, then scrambled through the half-open door into the courtyard at the rear of the cigarmaker's shop. Medetar's assistant apparently had escaped through the courtyard and passageways leading into the Korgay's maze of dwellings, shops, and coffee houses.
By the time Sergeant Zykov returned from his unsuccessful mission, Medetar had taken one more convulsive breath and died. It seemed incredible that one little body could deliver itself of so much blood. The floor and the furnishings, Dimitri and the sergeant's uniforms were covered with it.
Outside the tumult had died down and people were crowding into the doorway.
In the morning Dimitri thought that he heard the word "Sasanfanif" respectfully uttered.
The street light had been put out and the fight staged as part of a well-planned and executed distraction to permit the assassin to do his job and get away with plenty of leeway in time. A Korgayan informer had warned them that the hotel room in the walled city was being watched, but Dimitri had thought it an excuse for the informer's congenital faintheartedness. The listening post would have to be abandoned or its location changed, and the people who had given them information would have to be defended. Dimitri knew now that he had underestimated the spread of sympathy in Korosun with the rebels ringing the city, the strength, and the ubiquity of their organization. He had purchased this knowledge with Medetar's life.
A patrol of the provost guard arrived on the scene and, at Dimitir's order, dispersed the crowd around the cigarmaker's shop. This was not a good thing for the people to see. He told Sergeant Zykov to wait there until a provost officer was dispatched to the scene. Then, conscious of the stares at his blood-soaked uniform, he hailed a radizmal and headed back to the Makhan-e-Maroun Palace.
It was way past midnight when Dimitri changed into a fresh uniform in his quarters at Makhan-e-Maroun to present himself to the commanding general. He shared a room with 4 other officers; it had once been a small salon and the new occupants' army cots, sidearms, and equipment looked strange and out of place against its somber paneling and wine-red plushness. Buttoning up his tunic, Dimitri looked out over the palace's formal gardens and the profusion of saxaul, khark, jasmine, fruit, nut, and tulip trees, whose night fragrance overwhelmed the odor of the turgid Ilbarz flowing past the Makhan-e-Maroun's stately flank. He could be grateful at least for his present surroundings, the glimpse of graceful terraces and formal garden paths, the thick walls and ceilings of the palace which were immune to the blazing sun of Korosun.
A quick check of his appearance in the pier-glass, and he was ready to venture downstairs and he was ready to venture downstairs and present himself for the catechism he knew was coming.
With the long booted stride of the unhorsed cossack, he proceeded along the marbled corridor, dimly lit by the occasional chandelier. Only a few months ago His Revered Majesty, the Karashah Sultan, his favored ministers, and their wives had peopled these halls. Never again, except possibly, in some remote time, as guests of His Imperial Majesty the Czar.
Dimitri Karamazov had little in common with the mincing noblemen who had preceded him in these magnificent precincts. He was dark enough for a Persian---or an Indian--but rawboned, loose-jointed, and super-manly as only a Russian can be. He had a strong-boned face and a touch of the brooder in his deep brown eyes. There was a craggy determination about his features, especially the firm line of his mouth, a mouth built for giving orders and seeing that they were obeyed, and the strong thrust of his jaw. He was young for a captain of the dog-days army, a year or so over thirty.
Dimitri reported himself to the adjutant on duty outside the office of Major General Viktor A. Azarov, commanding general of the IX Army Corps and of the Ministry of Asia.
A moment later he was admitted to the general's brightly lit office. General Azarov, an insomniac who used the sleepless night hours to badger the lives of lesser commanders with a distaste for exact detail in their reports, eyed him over steel-rimmed spectacles. Many of his associates considered him a professional fussbudget who had attained high command through sheer busyness, a quality seldom found in an aggressive field general. Azarov was in his early sixties and wore rather elaborate sideburns, a reminder of his service in the war of 1877 against the Turks. He had the owlish eyes of a schoolmaster and a soft, nearly indistinct voice that belied his waspish disposition.
His temporary chief of staff, Brigadier General Kortney Alyokhin, was seated beside him. Alyokhin was a few years younger, white-haired, with intense Nordic blue eyes; a handsome old gent with a long and much-honored career in the calvary. His easy manner, simplicity, and directness formed an admirable counterweight to General Azarov's generally hardheaded disposition.
Dimitri saw that General Azarov was shuffling through a report he'd submitted yesterday. Attached to it, in the Turanian language, was a leaflet that had been distributed by the Sasanfanif. No doubt its contents were displeasing to the general, who preferred to believe the Sasanfanif was a myth conjured up by his Military Information officer to justify his existence. The leaflet called upon loyal Turanians to rise against Russian troops within the city when the rebels attacked from outside. To attack the Imperial Army barracks and kill any Russian soldiers they could find with balarats, daggers, lances, or whatever weapons they could lay hands upon. It was also recommended to the loyal Turanians that they post themselves on the rooftops and shower any troops passing below with "stones, timbers, red-hot iron, heavy furniture, as well as boiling water, oil and molasses, and rags soaked in coal oil ready to be lighted...."
General Azarov cleared his throat magisterially. "General Alyokhin and I have just been discussing your report on the activities of the rebel sympathizers within our lines. Do you truly believe we should take this outfit called the Sasanfanif seriously, Captain?"
"They take themselves seriously, sir," Dimitri said. "I saw a man killed tonight because he dared to complain about them to us."
The general demanded all the details of Medetar's assassination, pursing his lips as he listened to Dimitri's report and progressively betraying symptoms of being quite unhappy with his subordinate's handling of the situation.
"Murdered in plain sight of two of my troops!" the general thundered when Dimitri finished as if the murder had been a personal affront to him. "You shouldn't have tried to capture that man---extortionist, whatever he was---without assistance from the provost guard. This is not the place for any officer to seek glory on his own."
Dimitri wanted to protest but he knew better than that.
The general continued: "We're faced with a serious task out here. Our difficulties with Rakllama and his sympathizers must not be permitted to flare up into outright insurrection. Negotiation, not stupid little adventures with firearms, must be our constant aim. Our European brethren, as you know, accuse us of committing horrendous atrocities against these people. England, in particular, is admonishing the Czar, God bless him, to 'mind his own business and leave other peoples alone.' A failure to quell a rebellion against Russian authority here would only support their point. We must persuade the Turanians that our presence here is needed for their own good, to keep order, and to teach them our faith, our ways, and the benefits of being the Czar's subjects."
Dimitri was warming up for a lecture that would drag on through the dead of night. "Look at the map, Captain," his superior said, waving an arm at the rear wall; "that will tell you exactly how fragile our position is. One lucky shot inside the city or on the lines outside of it could spark a revolution. We may have no choice in the matter---chances are that we haven't---but we must do all we can to prevent an outbreak."
The big and detailed ordnance map behind the general's desk showed how the Russian forces were hemmed in against Korosun and the Fort Sopov army base, their backs to the desert, by Rakllama's irregulars; no shots had been exchanged across those lines but the gauntlet was down. On the arc south of the Ilbarz, which bisected Korosun, was General Tipalov's division, with Imperial Guard troops from Moscow, Nizhny-Novgorod, Rostov, Kirov, and Perm, plus the 24th Imperial Infantry and the 7th Imperial Artillery. North of the Ilbarz was General Obolensky's division with troops from Komi, Krasnoyarsk, Penza, and Oryol, plus the 4th Imperial Artillery and the Omsk Light Artillery. The rebels had entrenched themselves well within the suburbs of Buharzi, Kez-e-Thutto, and Bir-or-Seraf, and also had the Korosun reservoir and pumping station in their clutches, which was something to think about.
General Azarov continued in his querulous tone, "It's your duty to keep me informed of the Sasanfanif's activities and intentions---if there is such an organization---not to go dashing around and trying to break it up yourself."
Dimitri was about to enter a defense of his actions that night, but General Alyokhin spoke up for him.
"I've worked quite closely with Captain Karamazov in the past few weeks, General, and I can assure you he is not one to glorify himself," the chief of staff said in his quiet way. "I trust his sense of direction. He wanted to take one of the Sasanfanif's agents and pump him for information, but it had to be done quietly. If he'd called in provost-guard troops, there might have been a riot in the Korgay. The assassin might have been captured with more of our people in the vicinity, but the result would have been a violation of your orders to avoid stirring up trouble in the city."
General Azarov shot a look of unconcealed annoyance at his chief of staff. "I want a report of the whole affair. I'll make up my own mind as to the captain's 'sense of discretion.'"
In the succeeding weeks, it became apparent that there was no hope of negotiating a settlement with the rebels. Sooner or later, with forty-thousand rifles in the hands of his battalions, Rakllama's would attack the Russian positions around Korosun and try to drive the Russians into the desert. The guns of the Imperial Artillery were moved closer to cover the army, small riverine gunboats were moved up the Ilbarz to lend support to the infantry. The regiments on the perimeter stepped up their patrols of the ghettos between the lines, and the telegraph wires from the outposts to headquarters were hot with rumors and false alarms. Few Russians had the slightest idea why they were there, why they were standing ready to fight Turanians half a continent away from home, but they all understood one thing by this time---the man who shoots at you is your enemy.
One evening Dimitri was reading a letter from his father, Old Army to the last ramrod inch of his backbone, in his quarters at Makhan-e-Maroun. Every officer with whom he shared that sumptuous chamber was presently on duty elsewhere in the palace or seeking pleasure across the river. His father had written: "I see no reason you shouldn't have your own regiment in a few years, providing Mother Russia continues to control Turania. This is the time to realize your ambitions. It has troubled me in the past that you seem to lack a proper amount of push. There's nothing shameful about having your fair share of ambition. I hope you will make your family proud of its first colonel---no war, in the past, has ever seemed to last long enough for a Karamazov to get his eagles.
"On the score of ambition, I have no worries for Alexei. He is champing at the bit, waiting in St. Petersburg with his company for orders to march to Korosun....
"We expect a visit from Raisa Milekhina this winter....."
Dimitri tossed the letter aside. He suddenly felt half suffocated. It was the stifling and ruthless heat, of course......and something more. The mere mention of his brother Alexei's name and that of Raisa Milekhina, coupled in the succeeding paragraph of his father's letter, still had the power to hurt him and to hurt him badly. He had tried mightily for more than one year now to forget Raisa, or at least keep her out of the front of his mind; Raisa and her decision to marry his brother instead of him. He almost wished the annexation hadn't delayed their marriage. The smallest uncertainty about that event had the sickening tendency to keep an ignoble hope alive in Dimitri. Yet he knew and likely had always known, that she was not meant for him, that she needed someone to match her own quickness, grace, and high spirits. Alexei was the only sort she could respect. A touch of selfishness, Dimitri had noted, often made a man more attractive to women, just as they were often disenchanted, by a touch of nobility, however genuine. Somehow, he reflected, the two of them together, Raisa and Alexei, made him undeservedly feel one generation older. They had the mutual gift of irresponsibility.
Sometimes he was able to convince himself that he was fortunate to have discovered all this before any more damage was done.
He prowled restlessly around the room, went over to a tall window with a view of the river and the low roofs of the city beyond. All quiet to the east. He was about to turn away when a low rasping kind of noise caught his attention. That was the direction from which trouble could come. He listened intently. Almost due east the Ilbarz bisected the Russian line, a likely place for the rebels to attack if they had any kind of military mind directing them. The Russian position, closely embraced by those of the Turanians, was only a few miles away; the sounds of a determined attack should have been clearly audible, except for the deadening effect of the heavy humid air.
Now a crackling sound from the east, like fat popping and splitting in a hot skillet. Suddenly rockets were vivid against the eastern horizon.
He strained his ears to calculate the rate and extent of the firing. At least a battalion must be blazing away.
Pulling on his tunic, Dimitri could imagine the network of communications bringing the news from the outposts to the regimental command posts to division headquarters and finally into the Signal Corp's telegraph room downstairs. He could imagine the queries flashing along the spiderweb of telegraph lines.....who started the firing? where's it coming from? who's under attack? is it a general attack?---and no one would know what was happening in the dark and the confusion except whatever took place in his own small patch of vision.
A sergeant of the headquarters-guard company stomped in and stiffly announced, "General Alyokhin presents his compliments to Captain Karamazov and requests him to report immediately, sir."
Dimitri followed the sergeant down the corridor, which was bustling now with other officers answering summonses from below, and down a wide staircase with a magnificent balustrade to the main floor of the palace. He found that other members of the IX Corps staff were assembling in the chief of staff's office. General Alyokhin's office was used for staff conferences because it had a large table and wall room for all the ordnance maps covering the Korosun district. Orderlies kept hurrying through this chamber from the Signal Corps headquarters in a room opening to the left, using the direct route to General Azarov's office rather than the outside corridor. This in itself was significant, for under ordinary circumstances General Azarov would be outraged at the use of a shortcut.
As he looked around the table, Dimitri caught the eye of Lieutenant Colonel Urvan Spravtsev. To Dimitri's questioning glance, Stravtsev replied with an impatient shrug.
Spravtsev, who'd been Dimitri's troop commander when the latter first came to the 5th Cavalry, was a big fellow in his early fifties, almost bald, with a tousled fringe of iron-gray hair and a ruddy face, weather-beaten and whiskey-beaten. His large raw-knuckled hand had wielded the saber in action against the Turks during the motherland's war against them. He gloried in a fight. He flung himself into combat with a fearsome glee, yet there wasn't a drop of malice or hatred in his system. His whole attitude was simply gladiatorial, unquestioning; the attitude of the ideal professional soldier, Dimitri thought.
In such intellectual activities as were centered on a staff headquarters, he was apt to grow irritable, contemptuous of himself and his colleagues. His present, much-resented post was the heavy burden of commanding the provost guard of Korosun.
Dmitri watched him haul out a cigar, gnaw off the end, strike a match, and with uncalled-for violence, expel a cloud of smoke and look about him with poorly hidden distaste. "Look at us," his glance said, "a pack of clerks and quibblers sitting in an office and gnawing away at each other when there's real work to be done out on the lines."
Spravtsev, in his sweeping glance, caught the look of amusement on Dimitri's face, and glowered at his junior.
The door connecting with the commanding general's office suddenly opened. General Azarov strode in, followed by General Alyokhin, as everyone else stood at attention. General Azarov, who sat down at the head of the table with his chief of staff at his right, finally remembered to say, "At ease, gentlemen," and everyone sat down to business.
General Azarov, his face as gray as the ash on Spravtsev's cigar, rose to speak, obviously shaken by the failure of his attempts to avoid hostilities with Kadar Rakllama. "It appears that Rakllama has taken the offensive against us. The first dispatches from General Gorbachev state that the enemy---I suppose we must refer to them as the enemy from this time forward----has attacked upon the extreme right of his lines where it hinges on the confluence of the Karamheb and Ilburz rivers. The fighting appears to be spreading northward along the division's front. There are no reports thus far of fighting upon General Poda's sector south of the Ilburz. I'll leave it to General Alyokhin to supply further details." General Azarov sat down abruptly.
General Alyokhin supplied something of his briskness and confidence which had been lacking in his superior's manner.
"The fighting has broken out in the 1st Rostov's sector," he said. "So far as we can determine at the moment, the rebels fired on one of our patrols in the village of Mufra. This village, by tacit agreement with the other side, was supposed to be under our control. Our people returned the fire, quite properly. Shortly after that the Rostov regiment's line was attacked in force. Then the fighting spread to other sectors. We seem to be holding our own so far."
General Alyokhin, apparently anticipating contradiction, glanced at General Azarov as he went on: "Rakllama, in my opinion, didn't intend to start his insurrection tonight. We have information that he's been upcountry with some of his leading associates and won't be back in the vicinity of Korosun for another day or so. His lesser subordinates, it seems to me, might have decided to start the fighting on their own hook.
"Now, however, we have no alternative but to fight back. Too many backwards steps and we'll find ourselves beaten all the way back to Moscow. Our plan is to counterattack in the morning.
"It may be too early to judge an enemy, but it is obvious that he has fighting qualities, as an individual, that must command our respect. His leaders have more men than rifles, and they haven't had time to organize an effective military force. For that reason, tonight's attack may be a blessing. Political considerations out here and elsewhere demand just one thing of the IX Corps---a quick, neat job of putting down the resurrection. That's all, gentlemen, except that General Azarov wants to confer with all officers concerned with forwarding ammunition and other supplies. Colonel Spravtsev, Captain Karamazov, I'd like you to remain present."
When the others had withdrawn from the room, General Alyokhin strolled around the huge table and came closer to his juniors. "We can handle those people out on the lines," he said, "but what about the possibility of trouble inside the city?"
"No trouble thus far," said Colonel Spravtsev.
"That might not bear out my belief that some of Rakllama's young fire-eaters jumped the gun tonight. Otherwise, there might have been more trouble than we could handle behind the lines."
Colonel Spravtsev's beef-slab cheeks reddened with outrage at the suggestion that his troops might be hard-pressed even if the whole city rose up against them. "With 3 battalions of a provost guard, General, I guarantee that I can handle any goddamn ragged little band of guerillas that might show itself."
"You don't seem to take this Sasanfanif outfit as seriously as Karamazov," the general commented, pretending to be unaware of the colonel's indignation."
Colonel Spravtsev merely glanced at Dimitri in disgust.
Dimitri spoke up, notwithstanding the colonel's displeasure. "I still think, sir, that the Sasanfanif is determined to make an ass of itself. A good many Turanians are determined to resist us. We may have to fight our way from one end of this land to the other."
"Now there I disagree with you, whatever the merits of your estimate of the Sasanfanif situation," the general said, kicking at a chair leg with one highly polished boot. "Lord, it'd take a century to pacify each and every one of these Asian bastards, India included----and the British might someday thank us if we can take that swillhole off their hands. We're meeting the best-armed, best-educated, and most determined of this country's population. The rest of them are mostly savages living in the desert. If we can put Rakllama out of business there'll be no general uprising. But it must be done quickly."
A few minutes later, not overly pleased with each other, Dimitri and Colonel Spravtsev left the palace to take a tour of the city. They climbed into a baggage wagon along with a squad of Spravtsev's men. Sergeant Zykov came along, fondly cradling a sawed-off musket which, he explained, was a "very good tool for work at close quarters." The sergeant would have carried that ugly truncated weapon on the parade ground if allowed to do so.
The wagon bumped and rattled over the stones of the narrow twisting streets of the Abakuhov district, which lay less than 1 mile behind the Russian positions north of Ilburz. There was a fairly steady rattling of musketry and the pitch and volume of fire indicated that it came from fixed positions rather than a swaying battle line. Neither side had the experience to expose itself to the perils of an all-out night attack.
The streets were full of excited people, some jubilant, some sullen, many apprehensive. The more prosperous, having everything to lose if the city became a battleground, looked the most worried. There was little unfriendliness displayed towards the wagonload of soldiers, although here and there a man glowered or cursed, mostly to impress the people around him.
Spravtsev, who was sitting with Dimitri and the driver up front, watched a young Thufir hill tribesman make the international slit-throat sign with his forefinger at the Russians, then duck into an alleyway.651Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqMQDkjRSn8
"What the hell do these people expect, anyway?" Spravtsev grumbled. "We throw out that silly Sultan of theirs, who was nothing but an oversexed waif anyway. We do our best to rid these putrid streets of disease. We try to give them good drinking water, even though their friends won't surrender the pumping station. We can tolerate their goddamn impudence, but the Czar will most assuredly not."651Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY1tkKx98n6
"Yes, they might soon find out what a Siberian winter really feels like," Dimitri said. "The reality is that these ignorant bastards want to keep cholera, scurvy, pellagra, filth running in open sewers---plus their sovereignty---in preference to any brotherly help and guidance we can offer. Not all of them, fortunately. Some of the educated people, particularly those who already have a touch of Mother Russia in their blood, would just as soon have us establish order. They don't know how they'd make out with Rakllama and the hot-headed young dissidents. Put yourself in a Turanian's place. With all due respect, I think you'd be out there taking a shot at the Russians."
"One thing a soldier must never do is to put himself in the enemy's place. You start agreeing with the enemy or thinking he's not such a bad chap after all, and, by God, you're asking for trouble. Next thing you know you're up for a general court on charges of desertion, and then you get your choice of death by firing squad or death by exposure on Novaya Zemlya. You think too damn much at the wrong time and about the wrong things."
The colonel sounded very angry. He was one of Dimitri's best friends, but he was still a colonel---more a colonel than a friend right now, Dimitri judged. He decided that discretion called for a shut mouth until the colonel felt in a better mood.
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