Dmitry felt his jaw tighten. An anger grew within him that was not entirely his own. He turned away, suspecting that Iuda had learned far more from the conversation than he had. He rubbed his chin angrily. Suspected it? He knew it for a fact.
It was early in the afternoon, only a day since Geok Tepe had fallen and since they had come into this underground chamber with its strange, solitary prisoner. Colonel Otrepyev had departed soon after his initial discussion with his captive and not returned. He left orders with Major Osokin, but Osokin knew that it was merely out of form, a sop to his status as senior officer. The men that Otrepyev had brought with him seemed well capable of carrying out their duties alone.
‘And see if you can find a way to get that roof closed’ had been the colonel’s final instruction. It was an odd preoccupation, but Osokin had noticed the colonel eyeing the clear patch of sky above them for a while. He seemed older now than when he had first arrived.
‘I’ll see what can be done, sir,’ he’d replied. ‘Should we allow the prisoner to stretch his legs?’
Otrepyev laughed heartily, but briefly. He was eager to get away. ‘No. No, I wouldn’t recommend that. I’ll be taking him away before long.’
‘I assume we should feed him?’
‘Don’t even go near him.’ And with that Otrepyev departed.
Attempts to converse with the prisoner, even to discover his name, proved unsuccessful. Osokin tried Russian and French, but with no response. He was pretty sure that Otrepyev and the prisoner had been using English when they spoke, but he knew nothing of the language.
‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ had been his last attempt, as he bent forward, peering closely at the man, trying to judge whether he was even aware of his surroundings. No reply was forthcoming. Osokin stood upright and took a step back, still in close examination of the figure in front of him. There was no point in asking the men; perhaps the lieutenant.
‘Lukin!’ he called.
‘Sir?’
‘Don’t suppose you speak English, do you?’
‘Afraid not, sir.’
And that was the end of it, but in that brief exchange Osokin had at last noticed some slight reaction from the prisoner, though to which precise words he could not tell. Perhaps he was just reacting to the word ‘English’, presuming it was similar in both languages.
‘Any idea how to get through to him?’ Osokin asked the lieutenant.
‘Best leave him be, I’d have thought. The colonel seems to know what he’s doing.’
It was sound if unimaginative advice. Osokin left the chamber. The bullet wound to his arm had been crudely bandaged by one of the men, but it still throbbed uncomfortably. It would be worth getting a field surgeon to have a look at it. And he was eager to see how the battle in the rest of the city had played out.
It had not been his nation’s finest hour. Granted, they had achieved victory, but many of the men – the commander-in-chief, General Skobyelev, for one – had desired more than that. They had been seeking revenge – revenge for the humiliation of a little over a year before when Russia had first attempted to take the city of Geok Tepe, under the command of General Lomakin. Then there had been no undermining, and the assault had come after too short a period of bombardment. The attackers had been thrown back, and then Turcoman defenders – Teke tribesmen, most of them – had poured out of the city to counterattack. Seven hundred Russians were killed; as many captured. Back home some people had compared it with Khiva in 1717. In Europe the papers called it the Lomakin Massacre.
But today, for seven hundred, revenge had been taken on seven thousand – perhaps more. Hundreds had died in the initial explosion, for which Osokin felt no guilt. It had achieved its goal and allowed the Russian cavalry and infantry to swarm in. As they had arrived, the Turcomans had fled out into the desert to the north. Some Russians had pursued. Those they caught they killed, but they didn’t catch many. Perhaps that was why they dealt so brutally with those who hadn’t escaped.
On the other hand, drunkenness was as likely a cause. Osokin had seen enough of it in Bulgaria against the Turks. It was the men, not the officers, but the officers did little to discourage it. Some thought it inspired a foot soldier to be braver, but in