done with it!”
Zamyatin reached out a hand and grabbed for the boy. William struggled, twisting away from the grasping fingers. The Russian lunged and found the boy’s shoulder, but as he did so his hand slipped and struck his neck.
William screamed with pain. Zamyatin’s hand had struck the swelling, breaking the skin. The boy collapsed, falling into Christopher’s outstretched arms. Zamyatin reeled back, horror-struck.
They expected blood or poisoned matter. But there was no blood. It made no sense at first, there was just a seething, something black moving on the child’s neck. And then the blackness broke and became multiple.
The spiders had been on the verge of hatching. Now, suddenly released from the body of their host, they tumbled into the light, tiny legs unfolding and quivering across William’s neck and on to his shoulder. There were hundreds of them, each one no bigger than a very small ant.
Christopher cried out in horror and disgust. The tiny spiders were running everywhere now, masses of them, in search of food.
Chindamani ran across to Christoper and helped him brush the last of the brood from William’s neck. As though transfixed, Zamyatin stood staring at the boy. Spiders ran across his feet and vanished.
Christopher looked up at the Russian. His face was expressionless, his eyes empty of any emotion.
“He’s dead,” he whispered.
Zamyatin looked at him blankly. He did not understand.
“He’s dead,” Christopher repeated in Tibetan.
“My son is dead.”
What happened next was a blur. There was a sound of shouting outside, followed almost immediately by a crash as the door was smashed open. The two guards inside the room panicked and opened fire. Two seconds later, the barrel of a heavy pistol appeared from behind the door-jamb The guards had forgotten to take cover before firing and presented easy targets. Three shots rang out in quick succession, taking the guards and Bodo.
As that happened, Zamyatin whipped out his own pistol and waved it at the Khutukhtu, who was sitting beside Christopher alongside William’s body. Chindamani grabbed Samdup and made for a door at the rear of the room, leading into the tunnel.
The man at the door stepped across the bodies of the guards into the room. He held his pistol high, pointed at Zamyatin’s head.
It was Sepailov.
“Drop your gun, Mister Zamyatin,” he said in Russian.
“Otherwise, I will be forced to shoot.”
“One step closer,” Zamyatin replied without looking round, ‘and your Living Buddha is a dead one.”
“Be my guest.” It was a different voice this time. Von Ungern Sternberg eased himself past Sepailov into the room. He cast a quick glance at William’s body, unable to make out what lay behind the small tragedy. His men were in control of the palace.
Sukebator’s forces had pulled back to the outskirts of the city. The remaining revolutionaries had been rounded up and were already being executed or interrogated. There was just this little matter to clear up.
“The Khutukhtu is a traitor,” he went on.
“I have in my pocket a document signed by him, instructing his forces to transfer their allegiance to the revolutionary army. I have already issued instructions for his execution. You’re wasting your time, Zamyatin. Go ahead and shoot him if you want: you’ll only be doing my job for me.
Zamyatin glanced round. Ungern and Sepailov were in the room now. Only Sepailov held a gun; the baron was too much in control to feel he needed one. Zamyatin looked back at the Khutukhtu, then at Christopher. He needed another card to play, one that would force the baron to bargain. He turned and caught sight of Chindamani and Samdup at the rear door, still hesitating.
‘For God’s sake, Chindamani!” shouted Christopher.
“Get out of here! Take Samdup and run!”
“I can’t go Ka-ris To-feh, not without you. Don’t ask me to leave you.” She had the boy and she knew she ought to make a run for it. His life was at stake: it was her duty to save him. But she could not move. With William dead, Christopher needed her more than ever. Her love for him tore at her love for the boy, like a trapped beast with its claws.
Zamyatin lifted his pistol and pointed it at Samdup.
“You!” he shouted in Tibetan.
“Come over here and bring the boy with you!” He knew Ungern would need the boy now, if he intended to execute the Khutukhtu. Ungern would not let Sepailov fire as long as he was aiming at the boy.
“Ka-ris To-feh!” cried Chindamani.
“Tell him to put his gun down or I’ll have to kill him. Please tell him!”
At the main door, Ungern and Sepailov hesitated. Zamyatin had realized they needed the boy. But why didn’t the woman take the child and run? And what did she mean, that she would kill him?
“There’s no point, Zamyatin,” Ungern said.
“You’re finished.
Sukebator has retreated. The members of your cell in Urga are either dead or in prison awaiting my orders. If you kill the boy, the Khutukhtu lives. If you kill the Khutukhtu, the boy will serve me as he has been serving you. And in either case, Sepailov will kill you. Better just to drop your gun and make the best of it.”
Zamyatin’s hand was shaking. He could scarcely control the gun. He turned from the boy to the Khutukhtu and back again.
Sepailov took a step forward. Zamyatin raised the gun and pointed it at Samdup.
Ungern nodded. Sepailov took aim and fired, hitting Zamyatin in the left shoulder. Zamyatin’s hand jerked, firing his pistol, then he dropped it. It fell like a stone to the heavily carpeted floor.
Sepailov motioned with the gun, directing Zamyatin to join
Christopher, and the Khutukhtu. Clutching his bleeding shoulder, the Buriat complied.
At first, no-one noticed what had happened at the rear of the room. But when Zamyatin moved, Christopher saw Chindamani bending over Samdup, who was lying on the floor. Her long black hair fell over the boy like a curtain, concealing his face. But from the edge of the curtain, like the petals of a tiny flower pushing themselves out above the black soil, fine drops of blood appeared, spread, and combined into a gently moving pool.
No-one spoke. Sepailov continued to cover Zamyatin with his pistol.
Ungern turned his attention to the woman and the boy.
When she raised her face at last, it was smeared with blood, and blood clung in fantastic drops to her hair. She said nothing. All her eloquence was in her face, in the blood that had fastened to her cheeks and lips, in her eyes, staring past her matted hair into the still room.
Christopher rose from his seat. He felt a great numbness come over him, striking his limbs into immobility. He remembered Chindamani’s words, speaking of the prophecy: he will have to die in order to be reborn yet again. Her blood-streaked face chilled him. He knew that some terrible doom had taken hold of them and was harrying them towards an end of sorts. Or a beginning: it was all the same now.
“Let me go to her,” he said in English, addressing Sepailov. The Russian did not move. He held his pistol pointed at Zamyatin, ready to fire again. Christopher stepped towards him, but Sepailov did not alter his position. He let Christopher pass.
Ungern watched as though fascinated as Christopher walked up to Chindamani and raised her. Samdup’s head had been shattered by the bullet: there was no question of saving him. He held her against his chest, feeling the futility of everything.
They stood like figures of wax, separate, immobile, dreaming individual dreams. There were no prayers to take away the blood or the spiders, no gestures to bring life back to the dead. No-one saw Chindamani move, or if they did, they ignored her.
From the folds of her jacket, she took out a gun, a small Remington she had somehow managed to palm and hide during the tour of the Khutukhtu’s treasures. She had no certain idea how it worked, or whether it was loaded, or whether it worked at all.
She had picked it up without my notion of what she intended to do with it. Now she knew.
