jack of diamonds

i

Chernetsov wiped the tears from his eyes and sat back, looking out at the dirt and soot of the city and its distant harbour. He could see the tops of the several ships’ masts looking like thin spindles, with both sprit and spars, and rolled canvas sails, rising and falling with the steady rhythm of the current. They were soon lost in the morning light coming in through the window, along with steady black clouds of soot rising up from the funnelled cargo ships that would soon be plying the Atlantic. He was willing to look anywhere else, he realized, except at the bloody stump that had once been Anatoly’s foot. It was too much for him to take in at the moment, and he was glad there was no one with him to witness his tears. If you’d have asked him ten years ago if he’d ever imagined himself possibly sitting at the foot of his son’s bed weeping, he would’ve said no.

No one could’ve imagined how life would change so drastically over the last ten years. First, there’d been the Great War which had prefaced the Revolution, followed by the death of the Tsar and his family, and finally the Russian Civil War; all of it leading to what could only be described as the greatest mass exodus and retreat in Russian history. And through it all, he’d done everything he could think of to try and stop it, but to no avail. He’d had no time to think, or concern himself, with the health and welfare of his own family, not when his immediate family—his mother, father, sisters, brothers; aunts, uncles, cousins, all of them—were either dead, or dying.

He looked down at Anatoly again, suddenly overcome with guilt at not having been a proper father to him. He knew it could’ve been worse—it could’ve been a lot worse. The doctors told him Anatoly could’ve lost his entire leg. Because it can always be worse, can’t it? Which only served to remind him about last night’s fiasco. It didn’t explain it, it didn’t explain anything—but it served as a reminder of everything else that had gone wrong in the last three weeks. He couldn’t understand how everything in his life had just fallen apart as it had, but it seemed that it had. The White army was in retreat—a humiliating retreat—much the same as the Irish Republican Brotherhood had lost their own Irish Civil War—and rightfully so, he told himself. But with the Brotherhood being forced to disband, they’d simply re-emerged as the new Irish Republican Army.

If they’re calling themselves an army, it’s only a matter of time before things start to unravel now then, isn’t it? he told himself, before lighting a cigarette and staring at his reflection in the window. The Brotherhood. It was difficult getting his head around the idea of an Irish Republican Army; all the same, he told himself they’d be a relentless adversary. They’d needed the guns as bad as the Whites did, and were desperate to rearm. Chernetsov knew they’d hunt him down and probably kill everything he held dear. Again, that’d be things getting worse now then, wouldn’t it? He took a long pull on his cigarette—the tiny red cherry obscuring his face in the window’s reflection—as he looked down at Anatoly’s missing foot again.

The boy looks peaceful enough, but how long do you think that’s going to last?

He felt certain that by now the Brotherhood knew it was Anatoly who’d been behind the hijacking of their guns. He supposed it was prudent to assume the Brotherhood had been searching the docks and warehouses in and around London since the night the guns first disappeared. That they hadn’t been found was a testament to Kazakoff’s elaborate planning. But it had only been a matter of time before they’d begin looking further afield, and when they did, it hadn’t been long before they found them.

We have to get him out of here, he told himself, looking down at Anatoly, sleeping peacefully.

He tried convincing himself that last night’s plan had been good, but in reality, he didn’t really believe it had been any good at all. But what plan ever is? The meeting had always been set to take place at the docks—and in Plymouth—but there was no other reason for that other than that’s where the ship had been headed. If the ship would’ve been scheduled to dock in Liverpool, he was pretty certain that’s where the meeting would’ve been. The whole idea had been to stow the guns under the cover of darkness once the ship was docked. Getting them out of London when they did had been the best thing they could’ve done. As far as he knew, there’d been no practical reason for the guns not to be stowed away—but things had gone wrong. Horribly wrong. The ship had been held up for whatever reason—nautical, mechanical, weather. Did it really matter? All he knew was that the ship had been delayed, and as a result, they’d been unable to stow the guns in its hold. His first thought at seeing the guns was that they didn’t even have enough tarpaulin to cover the damn boxes. He remembered seeing the BSA name stencilled on the sides of the boxes. As well as invoice numbers.

And with everything else going wrong the way it had, he was thinking someone had to have betrayed their location to the Brotherhood. How else would they have known where to find them? They knew the exact warehouse. He had to think and figure out who it could’ve been. He refused to think it was one of his footmen. Michael, Andrew and Anthony had been with him since before the Great War. He trusted them; they’d served their country—they’d proven their loyalty; while the few men Kazakoff brought along knew nothing of the intended meeting, or the guns.

He looked down at Anatoly’s stump, dropping his ashes on the floor before staring out of the window again. The sky was clear all the way to Paris, he thought, thinking how wonderful it would be to be sitting there right now, sharing a light supper with Colette.

And when will I ever see her again, he wondered?

His first thought as to who may have betrayed them was the farmer—the pieman, O’Dowd—but he’d seemed just as shocked with how things had escalated as much as everyone else. He’d seemed genuinely shocked to see the guns in the warehouse, as much as he’d tried to keep his personal issues pushed aside once he’d discovered he was dealing with the Solomon brothers.

He must’ve known they were involved, and yet, he still agreed to the meeting with them. Why do you suppose he agreed to that?

But if it wasn’t O’Dowd, then who? The Solomons? That would’ve been his first thought, because it was the obvious answer. But the obvious answer was never the direction a person’s mind should take him. No, I’ll have to look into it deeper, he told himself. It was possible that they’d been betrayed by the Italians, but it seemed unlikely. The Italians were honourable men who prided themselves on their honesty when it came to business. They were only dishonest to their own business adversaries, but that was simple ambition. A man didn’t rise to the top without stepping over the corpses of his predecessors.

The door opened soundlessly and Bubbi walked in, looking at Chernetsov with what he could only describe as a look of cold, calculated, disdain, as if he was responsible for Anatoly falling off a railing he had no business being on in the first place. Her eyes had an icy hardness to them he’d seen many times over the years—again, it was as if she blamed him for something that was out of his control. She walked to Anatoly’s bedside, picking up his hand and kissing it gently before laying it down again, patting it gently as she laid it over his heart.

There’ll be tears in her eyes soon enough, he told himself, and mumbled prayers to her empty God for a speedy recovery. He knew in his heart that she didn’t blame him—not entirely. If she blamed anyone, she’d blame herself. At this moment, he told himself, it didn’t matter what he said to her. He told himself he could understand her reasons, but only to a point. Even if she’d been in the same room as Anatoly when it happened, he knew she was likely to blame him nonetheless. She was the boy’s mother, first and foremost—Anatoly’s mother, not his—and as such, felt responsible for the welfare of all her children.

Chernetsov knew she blamed him for a great many things over the years, the first of which was taking her away from her family home. Maybe blame wasn’t the right word? Accountable? There would always be some degree of accountability as far as she was concerned. It was an old bone of contention as far as he could see, and one she wasn’t prepared to let go of, not under the present circumstances. It didn’t matter that her family had managed to escape, had somehow managed to send word they were en route to Shanghai, and had even managed to find a freighter bound for England. He doubted if it mattered to Bubbi that he’d purchased the tickets in their names. He’d supposed they had nothing with them except the clothes on their backs, all the time hoping they’d at least had the presence of mind to take whatever they could.

But none of that matters as far as Bubbi’s concerned.

Still, he loved her—almost as much as he loved Colette and the memory of Paris—or, perhaps a little more? He couldn’t even begin explaining it to himself, let alone anyone else for that matter. All he knew was that he loved his wife and swore to himself he’d do whatever it took to make things right. If that meant leasing a home for her family in Shanghai while they waited for a ship to England, he would.

And what, exactly, do I have to do to make it right?

His one need was to protect his family. Is that even possible, he wondered? It was only a matter of time before things began to escalate, and he wondered again if he was prepared to go to war with the Brotherhood?