The Kremlin Games(148)

The barge the czar was on went right on by the dock at Bor, but the barge behind it didn’t. It hit the dock a little hard and the troops aboard it were almost jarred off their feet. They would have but for the captain’s warning at the last minute.

“Move!” came the very carrying squeak of young Lieutenant—now General—Lebedev.

* * *

Ivan had heard that squeak before. His friend’s voice tended toward the falsetto when he was excited. And suddenly he knew. He knew that the czar was here to take the dirigible, that Tim for whatever reason was on the czar’s side. And he knew. Knew for a certainty that he could stop him if he moved now.

And he froze.

Ivan had the vice of his virtues. General Sherman’s vice. The vice of a very smart man who, when taken unaware, will tend to overthink the problem rather than act when action is what is needed. It was why, in another universe, Sherman would be Grant’s subordinate, not the other way around. And that—not any silliness about good blood or bad blood, not even the accident of fate that had put Tim in the right place—was what made Tim, not Ivan, the czar’s general. Whose side was Ivan supposed to be on? Tim was on the czar’s, but Tim’s family was on the boyars’. Ivan could see in his mind what he had to do to stop Tim’s attack and what he could do to aid it and did neither. Not because he lacked courage or even moral courage. But because he needed time to think things through when they hit him out of the blue.

* * *

Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov didn’t have that flaw, but he didn’t understand what was going on either.

“What the devil is he doing?” Ruslan wondered. The czar was sailing by, waving at everyone, and most of Ruslan’s people were watching him do it.

There was some minor disturbance down at the docks, but what did Czar Mikhail think he was doing?

It took Ruslan minutes he didn’t have to realize . . . “Oh my God. He’s the decoy! The czar of all Russia has let himself be used as a decoy!” And the decoy had succeeded. He’d locked Ruslan’s attention away from where it was needed.

At that point, Ruslan raised his rifle and sighted on Czar Mikhail. Then he stopped. It wasn’t because his target was the czar. At least not mostly. It was respect for the czar all right, but for the czar as a man. A man he had always thought of as good, but never until that moment thought of as brave.

Instead, finally, minutes too late, Ruslan turned to try to save his command. Grabbing a dozen men who happened to be standing near him watching the czar and the czarina wave from their barge, he shouted “Follow me!” and ran for the attackers.

* * *

“On me!” Ruslan shouted, blinking into the setting sun’s glare. “Push them back onto their boat!”

And he fired into the crowd of soldiers quick-marching up the street from the dock.

“Keep moving,” Ruslan heard a high, squeaking voice shout as he pulled the chamber from his AK4 and stuck it in his pocket. He pulled another chamber out, and looked up as he inserted it into the rifle. “Fire, fire!” he shouted. And his men did, all twelve of them.

Some of their rounds hit, for he saw men fall. But then that high, squeaking voice came again.

“Column halt! First rank, kneel! First and second rank, ready your weapons.” And the first and second ranks, at least thirty men, leveled their rifles at his scratch troop.

“Aim!”

And Ruslan heard his men turn and start to run. Ruslan looked back, looked at the troops across the street, then followed his men. Then the high, squeaking voice again. “Fire!”

That was the last he knew.

* * *

It was the ricochet that brought Ivan out of his frozen state. He couldn’t change sides this fast. He just couldn’t. But he also couldn’t fight his friend Tim and the Czar of Holy Mother Rus. So what can I do? he wondered. I can get Nick. Nick had been a friend since Ivan arrived, even though Ruslan had taken command on their arrival. Nick hadn’t held that against Ivan. He hadn’t even held it against Ruslan. And Nick was someone Ivan could talk to, so it was to Nick, not Ruslan, that Ivan went.

* * *

With ninety percent of the inhabitants of Bor still gawking at the czar and his family, mopping up took much less time than Tim had thought it would. Even with one of his men dead and three wounded, he was able to get the column moving quickly, by leaving the wounded under the command of Filip, who had a flesh wound of his own.

Once they reached the hangar, his men came to a halt without orders. Tim had heard how big the Czarina Evdokia was, but hearing and seeing were not the same. He spent several minutes assigning guards and trying to figure out where to assign guards. While he was still in the process of this, he saw Ivan and Nick approaching.