Lieutenant General Mishenkov usually sends prior notice of his return to camp. Two days before he arrives, he sends a messenger to obtain reports about the units’ status and training progress. In his meeting with his deputy two days later, Mishenkov and Pazhari go through the updates that have been submitted for the general’s review.
Mishenkov: “So, old man, I understand that you know all about the successful artillery manoeuvre.”
Pazhari: “Certainly, sir! It went very well.”
Mishenkov: “Did you know that only two soldiers defected this month, old man? This is excellent news.”
Pazhari: “Yes, sir! Bazarov and Gossin. We will find them.”
Mishenkov: “Well, when you do, hang them by their ankles, spare them no mercy.”
Pazhari: “Naturally, sir.”
Mishenkov: “And I understand that only twelve men have died of typhoid, I think this is quite an achievement.”
Pazhari: “Yes, sir, I mean no, I mean, relatively speaking . . .”
The second thing Mishenkov likes to do when he returns is to change some aspect of the camp’s routine. There is much that is not to his liking, but he does not want to rock the boat too much. On one occasion, the flags annoyed him: “Old man, we cannot display the symbols of the empire on these rags. Replace them immediately!” Another time, it was the horses: “Why don’t they report to roll call together with the cavalrymen? Prepare them to join the ranks!” To stave off Mishenkov’s preposterous orders, Pazhari stays their execution, approaching the general an hour later to suggest attenuating amendments: there are no new flags in storage to replace the ones they already have and new ones would have to be ordered from Minsk; it’s an excellent idea to include the horses in the roll call, but, overworked as they are, the grooms would collapse if this were added to their tasks. Wouldn’t it be just as effective to have the hussars inspect their steeds in the stables? “Certainly, old man,” Mishenkov readily agrees, glad to see his orders’ contribution to the spirit of the unit. “That is exactly what I meant. Let’s do it that way.”
Mishenkov started calling Pazhari “old man” from the day he, Mishenkov, was made a general. Pazhari is older by several years, and this nickname is Mishenkov’s way of reminding Pazhari that age, experience, and certainly pedigree are not necessary for promotion in the army. Just look at him, Lieutenant General Mishenkov, the son of a lesser nobleman than Count Alexander Pazhari, who grew up in Kazan, not St Petersburg, and nonetheless made it to lieutenant general first. What does Pazhari have to say about that?
Pazhari, of course, was offered Mishenkov’s rank four years earlier, but turned it down after telling his superiors that he preferred to spend his time with the troops rather than with a desk. And the colonel does not want to stand out from the crowd too much. If the lie that had catapulted him to such a senior position was ever exposed, he would instantly lose everything he had.
In any event, Mishenkov is now returning from his latest jaunt on horseback. He is followed by a barouche driven by his personal coachman, who is trying to keep up with the general, mercilessly rattling his passengers, uniformed men who seem to be adjutants from another unit.
“Old man!” Mishenkov exclaims, waving and reining in his horse. “I hope you have good news for me.”
“Always, sir,” Pazhari replies. “Of course.”
“So, you captured them?”
“Who?” Pazhari says, pretending not to understand.
“To my office, now,” Mishenkov orders as he dismounts. “Now.”
When, minutes earlier, Pazhari had heard a garrison officer shouting, “Attention! General Mishenkov, sir! At your command!”, he had bolted back into the office, pushed Zizek and Fanny out of the tent’s rear exit, and ordered the garrison commander to place them immediately under arrest and hide them in a remote cell with Adamsky.
“It is my duty to inform you that the troops will refuse to follow this order, sir. No-one will agree to lock up the Father.”
“This is the only way to save him,” Pazhari had urged. “You must tell them that.”
By the time Mishenkov enters his quarters, Fanny and Zizek are already in the safety of a fetid cell. As the hole they were thrown into is right next to a sewer, the stench of their prison cell prompts Fanny to vomit. For his part, Mishenkov empties his bowels more conventionally after his long ride, and then proceeds to slice himself some sausage and dip it in caviar.
Spotting a cup on his desk, the general raises it to his nostrils and exclaims, “My rum!” He turns to Pazhari, who shrugs helplessly, clears his throat and says, “I helped myself, sir.”
“Oh, no need to explain,” Mishenkov beams, “go ahead.” He shoves the expensive bottle into his deputy’s hands and looks expectantly at Pazhari, like a chef waiting for his diner’s approval. “Is my rum not the best you have ever tasted?”
Pazhari nods in embarrassment. Mishenkov grows serious. “Well, we have two urgent matters. Firstly, as I arrived, I noticed the tents of the Second Regiment. Why aren’t they closer to the First Regiment’s encampment? The regiments look as though they are facing off like enemies. Tell them to bring the encampments closer and remove the fences.”
“Yes, sir,” Pazhari replies, knowing that he will have to approach Mishenkov later to suggest they relocate just the one tent that had actually struck the general as being too far away from the others. It would take more than a month to shift an entire regimental camp.
“And on to the other matter, old man. As I was sitting with the adviser Bobkov – you know Bobkov, don’t you? He’s a good man, very close to Anton and Maria.” Pazhari smiles to himself at Mishenkov’s penchant for name-dropping. Anton and Maria Radziwill are the aristocracy’s golden couple. It is highly doubtful that Mishenkov has ever met them.
“Well, we were discussing army business and state affairs, and Bobkov told me that Anton and Maria are organising a ball in Berlin, and that they are insisting I do everything I can to attend. They are just an adorable couple, Anton and Maria. Anyway, at that moment, two secret agents stormed in without bothering to knock, frightening the ladies. ‘What’s happened?’ I demanded. ‘What do you want?’ And they told me they had a message from Novak. I calmed the others down and retired with the agents to the library. How did he find me at Bobkov’s, this Novak character? The Devil knows. But he found me alright. What is more, he instructed his agents to tell me to order all the units under my command to join the search for four fugitives. Did you hear that? Who does he think he is, telling me how my units should operate? He was a sorry major when he retired from the army. We’ll show him. We will capture these renegades alright, at all costs.”
“Certainly, sir,” Pazhari says, sickened by his own obsequiousness. No matter how far the orphaned servant boy has come since he left the Komarovs and fled to St Petersburg, he still ends up grovelling before authority.
Mishenkov retrieves his bottle of rum, pours a small drop for Pazhari and a generous measure for himself, takes a gulp and says, “The agents are saying that the suspects are more dangerous than the Narodnaya Volya revolutionaries. Three men and a woman, filthy żyds, I want us to start the search immediately!”
“Absolutely, sir!” the colonel nods.
Usually, at this point Pazhari will leave Mishenkov’s quarters and return an hour later with a more sensible proposition to mitigate the general’s order. But now, taken aback by Mishenkov’s uncharacteristic determination, he blurts out, “But what about training, sir? A manhunt is exhausting, but the soldiers badly need their training. The riflemen are unskilled, the horsemen cannot stay on their horses, and, worst of all, the gunners keep misfiring.”
“We will combine the search with a joint exercise for our entire corps. Excellent idea, Pazhari!”
If there is one thing that makes soldiers cringe, gives them a dry mouth, an itchy back and a terrible rash, it is the words “joint exercise”. Too late, Pazhari realises his mistake. Now, for the sake of finding four suspects, three of whom are being held in a cell a mere verst away from Mishenkov’s office, the general will send out the entire corps to melt in the scorching heat. What can he do? He must find a solution, and quickly.
“Give the order, Pazhari, now!”
“Yes, sir.” Pazhari slowly sips his rum.
“Right this minute!”
Even as he is making his way to his officers, which is usually the time when Pazhari comes up with an alternative to Mishenkov’s brilliant ideas, nothing springs to his mind on this occasion. One option is to speak candidly with the general, tell him that the Father is their guest and ask him to play along. But Pazhari knows all too well that there are two types of people: those who sanctify the law, and those who follow their own conscience. The former will always win any argument, and the latter will always do the right thing. Mishenkov belongs to the former group, and Pazhari can already hear in his head his superior’s reply: “As sad as it may be, old man, it is not up to us to judge right and wrong. If the authorities have decided that Zizek Breshov is a murderer, who are we to help him escape from the law? If we all did as we pleased, following ‘our conscience’ as they say, or in other words ‘our whims’, anarchy would prevail.”
Pazhari is not a scholar, nor is he an expert on conjecture, and yet he racks his brain for a way to persuade Mishenkov. Completely out of sorts by the time he enters his tent, he glances at the topographical maps on his desk, looks for inspiration from a half-eaten apple rotting on the ground, and listens to the howls of a stray dog. Still, he cannot work out a way to dissuade Mishenkov from complying with Novak’s demands.
Finally, he calls in the captain of the guardhouse, Captain Istomin, a strapping officer whom Pazhari has come to trust. He stares into the young man’s eyes. “I will understand if you refuse to follow this order. You should know that if it fails, you and your squad will be tried for treason. If it’s any consolation, I will stand trial alongside you. You must escort the three detainees to Minsk before the unit returns from the joint exercise. They need to find a man called Zvi-Meir Speismann. Help them find him. The only people who may come near the detainees are your five best men at the garrison. They must give them food, water and medical treatment. Do not touch Patrick Adamsky. Lay him down in the barouche and find him a nurse. Keep the three of them alive and let no-one else know about it. That is all. Will you do it?”
“Yes, sir!” Istomin salutes and leaves.
The next day, with great haste, Lieutenant General Mishenkov orders the joint exercise to begin, leaving immediately thereafter for a few hours in Nesvizh, “to obtain a few authorisations, visit an old friend, take care of budgets and supplies, you understand”. He leaves the manoeuvre in Colonel Pazhari’s charge, and asks that he receive constant updates on the search, until he returns to take back the reins of command.
Pazhari is on tenterhooks. He does not know how long it will take for Novak to learn of the four outlaws’ visit to the camp, so he decides that he must beat him to it, and shortly before leaving for the exercise he sends an urgent missive to the Okhrana’s bureaus in Grodno and Minsk. He must throw Novak a bone, Pazhari knows, but not one that is too juicy. He reports that three strange men had passed by the camp; he is unsure if they had a woman with them or not and could not verify their names. One presented himself to the guards as Patrick Breshov, and the other said he was Zizek Adamsky, or something along those lines. In any event, they did not stay for very long or raise the sentries’ suspicion.
As Pazhari rides along at the head of the manoeuvre, he is preoccupied by the possibility of a confrontation with Novak. How long will this exercise last? If Mishenkov were asked, he would say until the mission was completed, without bothering to clarify which mission he was referring to and which was the more pressing: capturing the suspects or training his troops. Who remains in the camp? Well, the sentries, a few detainees (three of whom are held in a hidden prison cell), a handful of administrators, sick and wounded soldiers, at least two horses, and several hundred sentinels and spies in the various guard posts, some of which are quite remote and at least one that is manned by a scrawny cantor with a prodigious appetite.
The cantor, by the way, is increasingly convinced that army life is the right life for him. This Oleg he was sent to replace must be a strange man. Why give up such a sweet job? All he is asked to do is sit in one place all day long. There is no shortage of food, although the sardines are long gone and judging by how fast he has been wolfing down the tinned meat, that will last for only a few more hours, and the crackers – how should he say this? – the crackers are clogging internal pathways that need to remain clear. But one should never complain about a full stomach.
And most of all, he should be thankful for the company they have arranged for him. The cantor is not a sap. He knows that Olga is just a blonde scarecrow. When he speaks to her, he knows that his words rebound from a sheet of tarpaulin. And yet her indifference is refreshing; Cantor needn’t mince his words or fear a slap in the face or having his teeth broken for upsetting her.
Olga hasn’t refused him even once since they met. Cantor lays at her feet rancid cabbage and leftover cucumber. Lucky that there are people in the world like Oleg, who, unhappy with their lot, go off and pursue other fancies. Cantor is happy to take Oleg’s place, although someone should come soon to replenish his food supplies, otherwise he will have to return to camp and demand what he is owed. He is not worried for himself, but it is the least he can do for a respectable lady like Olga, who always keeps an eye on him and protects him from the howling wolves at night.