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  “No … please! No!” Kitty cried again, trying to draw away from the brute holding her prisoner.

  Quickly losing patience, the general reached up and slapped her sharply into silence. With the countess once again submissive, he pushed the lace of her panties past her hips and with a final deft flick they dropped to the floor. With the final rampart broached, the general’s rapacity could no longer be contained.

  Pulling Kitty down onto the carpet, ignoring her crying, shaking sobs, his face cruel with lust, the general fell on her like a mighty bull, only taking time to unbutton his trousers before plunging in desperately, deeply, causing Kitty to cry out in pain. The chestful of medals on his tunic jacket bruised Kitty’s soft skin and breasts as each powerful surge drove brutally into her. Thankfully, the general’s spasms quickly overtook him. Immediately rolling away, he dozed off in drunken satiation.

  Kitty lay inert, huddled in misery on the floor, tears rolling silently down her cheeks. Filled with horror and loathing, she felt stunned and almost unbelieving of what had happened—was happening—to her. Some minutes later, painfully, resolutely, avoiding the sight of the man who had humiliated and tormented her, she stumbled to her feet and crept into the bedroom, her whole mind and body and spirit drowning in a murky pool of shame, resentment, and physical revulsion.

  After this devastating initiation into her new role of paramour, Kitty collapsed on the bed and retreated from the horror of the real world by seeking refuge in an exhausted sleep.

  The next morning, screaming in startled fright, she woke to feel the general’s hands on her body. He slapped her hard twice, and in the future Kitty forced herself to wake in silence, silently making the abysmal adjustment from dreams to harsh reality. It wasn’t Apollo at her side, as in her dreams, but the ruthless Beriozov.

  The pattern of Kitty’s life settled into a familiar if harrowing routine. The general, with his simple peasant openness, treated Kitty with a naive, deferential courtesy when sober. He was extremely conscious of the exquisite beauty fallen prize to him, but when he was drunk, he was a malignant animal. These spells occurred with great regularity, and at those times he abused and tormented her, satisfying his sadistic personality, taking physical and psychological revenge for all the inequities he felt he had suffered under the tsar’s regime.

  “It has been declared that noble women are common property,” he once pronounced brusquely. “I understand Bolshevism,” he continued with the particular bias that suited his political theories. “It is the realization of one’s will.” At those times, Kitty would feel the brutal results of his hatred, and while the general was correct in declaring silk whips left no marks, they did hurt dreadfully.

  As the most prized of Beriozov’s possessions, Kitty was guarded diligently.

  Despite the wretchedness of her captivity, there were no opportunities of escape. Although she was allowed outside the hotel for carriage rides, she was never unattended by fewer than two guards. Only at night were servants and guards dismissed; the general was quite confident in his ability to guard his paramour, and ill disposed to anyone listening to the occasional cries coming from the bedchamber. He hadn’t yet acquired the aristocrat’s disdain for the world’s opinion.

  Often in those weeks, during the dark hours before dawn, Kitty would take out the vial of morphine and sit, desperate and filled with self-loathing, listening to the drunken snores of Beriozov, wishing for nothing more than oblivion, trying to find the courage to end her life. The thought of Apollo’s child within her stayed her from the deed, but she often wondered if death wouldn’t be a solution for them both. Sometimes she despaired how she could bring a child into a world like the present; a world painted red with the blood of innocent men, women, and children; a world of famine and pestilence. Then she would remember three days in the snowy depths of winter, and a warm, isolated bedroom with Apollo’s teasing smile against her lips and his clever hands cool on her skin. His memory, which returned to warm her a hundred times a day, kept her alive. Was he alive somewhere? Was it possible he still lived? Would she ever see him again? At times, in the deepest depths of despondency, Kitty realized that only the slim hope that Apollo lived kept her on this earth—and that if, in this maelstrom of revolution, she heard otherwise, she would gladly join him in death.

  8

  Apollo arrived at Aladino with Karaim and Sahin three days after leaving Ekaterinodar. The countryside was in turmoil; the roads clogged with refugees, everyone moving south toward the Black Sea ports. In certain areas Apollo and his companions had to avoid Red patrols, and on the last day of their journey into Astrakhan the Red Army activity was so intense they decided to sleep in the daytime and travel the last forty versts at night.

  Inwardly, Apollo was alarmed. Obviously the country had been overrun by the Bolsheviks; troops were numerous on the roads and bivouacked in many of the villages. Had Kitty escaped? Was it possible she was still safe at Aladino? That likelihood appeared remote with the current state of the war, but it was the hope Apollo liked least to relinquish.

  When the Revolution first began, Apollo had entered the conflict with the cold facts of warfare neatly arranged in logical compartments in his mind. He knew after serving on the western front that he might die, and friends could be lost, but he faced these consequences with the military discipline of an officer. How could he have known that the merest chance—one bottle of champagne too many, a few brief days with Kitty—would scatter those neat compartments into irrevocable disarray? Since those days in December, not an hour of his life had he escaped being touched by the glorious memory. Now, when he had finally decided he must see her again, and fate—in the guise of her husband—had practically handed Kitty over to him, the grim fortunes of war might have snatched her away. Apollo was no longer able to view the consequences of war with his former dispassion.

  In the pink haze of a March dawn, Apollo rode up the familiar linden-lined driveway, his heart filled with dread. Even from this distance he could see that the Red Army had preceded him. Remnants and odd pieces of clothing were scattered along the driveway and on the snow-covered verges. Fragments of furniture, ruined tapestries, torn and half-burned books lay helter-skelter where the plunderers had tossed them. With the evidence of wholesale pillage before his eyes, Apollo now hoped, despite his need of her, that Kitty was far and safely removed from this blackened wreck of Aladino.

  Riding into the graveled courtyard, Apollo caught sight of the charred remains of the stables and outbuildings. The huge three-story limestone manor house had survived the torches only because of its construction—the pale stone had refused to burn, and the marauders had had to content themselves with destroying the interior and gutting the home of its furnishings and treasures.

  All the windows had been broken and hammers and sickles smeared in blood decorated the walls as well as the front door, which now hung on one hinge. The three men dismounted before the deserted house, then slowly climbed the marble stairway, crossed the colonnaded portico, and went in through the broken doorway.

  Machine-gun bullets had riddled the fine paneling of the entrance hall. In the drawing room the hangings, saber-slashed, hung in shreds. Red cavalrymen had used the Venetian mirrors for pistol practice, and the Canaletto at the top of the stairs was slashed through. Apollo closed his eyes for a moment, saddened and repelled by the sight, although he had seen hundreds of similar scenes in the last few years.

  He hesitated briefly before ascending the stairs to the second floor, afraid of what bloody evidence he might find in Kitty’s bedroom suite. He mounted each step slowly, paused at the top, then continued down the hallway, bracing himself for the worst.

  The door to Kitty’s room was gone. Apollo stood in the doorway, his pale golden eyes swiftly scanning the room. Every detail of the pine-paneled bedchamber had been etched in his mind during the course of the days he and Kitty had secluded themselves from the outside world. He remembered the large soft bed, the glowing porcelain stove, the sma
ll dining table set before the arched Palladian windows that overlooked the sweep of snow-drifted field. The pungent fragrance of sweet peas flooded the air. Kitty’s favorite flowers. The images, the words, sounds, textures, had all been filed and folded away to be summoned countless times since then.

  Nothing remained now of that idyllic retreat. All the furniture had been carried off, the curtains ripped down, even the carpet had been torn from the floor. Only a few shreds of pale green Kirman still remained tacked in the corners, mute evidence of the haste with which several centuries of a family’s accumulated treasures had been violated.

  A faint glimmer on the floor near the dressing room door caught Apollo’s eye and he walked over to pick up the object. It was one of Kitty’s gilt hairpins. He touched it to his lips before placing it in his tunic pocket. At least there were no bloodstains visible in the room. Whether Kitty had escaped or not, was dead or alive, it appeared quite certain she hadn’t been surprised in her bed and killed in this room. That single positive fact, however, did not alter the multitude of disastrous fates that may have overtaken Kitty. If not already dead, she was vulnerable to all the rest of the apocalyptical horrors. Would he be able to find her in time? Would he be able to find her at all? Was he too late—did she already lie dead in some unmarked grave.

  He started his search. For the remainder of the day the three men scoured the neighborhood for clues to Kitty’s fate. All the peasant cottages were locked tightly. The army that had ravaged the area had moved on only a week previously; no one wished to open his door to an officer, regardless of the intent. The peasants, having suffered from both armies requisitioning food, horses, and supplies, were justifiably suspicious of any soldier.

  Determined to find some clue, however small, to Kitty’s disappearance, Apollo refused to be deterred by the silent huts and closed shutters. He pounded on doors, pleading and threatening until someone would timidly open the door a crack, and in this fashion each peasant in the neighborhood was interrogated. By late afternoon Apollo had tenaciously pieced together the events of the sudden arrival of the Sixth Division’s shock troops, but no one had any specific details about the Countess Radachek. Apollo traced Kitty’s maid Anna to her grandmother’s home, but Anna could tell him nothing of Kitty’s actions after her own flight. Anna suggested Apollo talk to the groom, Boris—as she had fled that night, she had seen him in the stables. If the Reds hadn’t killed him, he might be able to tell Apollo something.

  Apollo was becoming more and more depressed with each interview. In these brutal times, no one had any inclination to do more than save his own skin. It was understandable, of course, but it frustrated Apollo’s quest ruinously, for everyone had been so intent on self-preservation when the Reds had come that no one had given any thought to Kitty.

  Although Apollo wasn’t optimistic, he traveled with Karaim and Sahin to a solitary hut hidden by a deep curve of the river. Approaching the remote farmstead, Apollo recognized two of Peotr’s mounts left behind during their last visit. His heart leaped for joy at the familiar sight, but as he dismounted cold practicality cautioned restraint. The fact that the groom had taken some of the horses from Aladino did not indicate he knew anything about Kitty. Even so, Apollo felt elation at seeing something that had belonged to her.

  The groom answered Apollo’s initial questions with native peasant reticence. The presence of Karaim and Sahin, garbed like mountain savages, did little to loosen his tongue. They both looked as if there weren’t a crime they wouldn’t commit, and they presented a vicious appearance, dressed in their black burkhas, crossed with bandoliers, with kinjals thrust into their belts and Lebel rifles slung on their backs.

  “So you don’t know where Countess Radachek went?”

  “No, Your Excellency.” It was the same, almost mute disclaimer Apollo had been hearing all day. No expression was on the groom’s face, no understanding in his eyes—the mask of ignorance that had protected the peasant for thousands of years. Distrust of authority of whatever political persuasion was as deep-seated as peasant fatalism.

  “Did you see the countess at all that night?”

  “No, Your Excellency.”

  “Well, did you see Anna? She said she saw you.”

  “No, Excellency.”

  “The horses—they’re from Aladino.”

  “Yes, Excellency. They’re too good for the Red Army.” There was an infinitesimal change in expression; a barely perceptible disparagement when he mentioned the Bolsheviks.

  “You don’t want the Bolshis to have Peotr’s horses?”

  “No, Excellency, the count would never allow it.”

  Apollo smiled at the groom’s stubborn loyalty. Here he was, still preserving the count’s wishes when the entire south of Russia was rushing toward an unknown fate.

  “Peotr would be pleased that you have his horses.”

  “Thank you, Excellency.” The groom briefly relinquished his suspicion at the smile Apollo bestowed on him and asked hesitantly, “Will the count be back?”

  Apollo’s face became grave. “No, he won’t be back.”

  “Not ever, Your Honor?”

  “No,” Apollo said in an exhausted voice, “not ever.” All the despair at having reached a dead end washed over Apollo. Suddenly he looked miserably tired, heartsick. Several weeks had passed since the Red invasion. Even if they tried to track Kitty, the odds against success were practically insurmountable. He’d been totally unrealistic. There was no hope.

  Apollo straightened a twisted saddle mount with his gloved fingers, put his foot in the stirrup, and vaulted into the saddle. Gathering the reins, he looked for a moment at Peotr’s horses. What now? Kitty could be anywhere in the teeming refugee population of South Russia, or in the Middle East, or Europe. And he couldn’t find her. Tears wet his eyes, startling and embarrassing him. Good Lord, he hadn’t cried since he was eight. His mind quickly flashed through the rationalizations as he surreptitiously raised his gloved hand to brush away the wetness. It was the frustration, the sense of defeat, the last three weeks of snatched sleep and heavy riding. Everything was taking its toll. He could have withstood everything else, he knew … and, indeed, he had for four long years. It was losing Kitty that was destroying his self-control.

  Karaim and Sahin respectfully looked the other way, allowing the Young Falcon some privacy in his sorrow. If sheer bravado could have produced the young lady, they would have gladly given their lives for their master, but as it was, they both resolved to attempt to track her at first light tomorrow, no matter the overwhelming odds. Neither contemplated failure. They would succeed for As-saqr As-saghir, however long it took.

  Boris, too, noted the shiny gleam of moisture in the young officer’s eyes and quickly reconsidered his position. After all, the count was not returning. All the servants had been aware of the blond officer’s intimate visit with the countess. From the look of it, he cared very much.

  Apollo was wheeling his horse when he heard Boris say, “She went to Stavropol.”

  Apollo jerked Leda around. “What?”

  “She went to Stavropol. I saw her off just as the first armored cars were coming up the driveway.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I didn’t know why you wanted to know.”

  “I promised Peotr I’d see her to safety.”

  “It may be too late. Stavropol is in Red hands now.”

  “You actually saw her get away?” Apollo’s voice was sharp and excited.

  Boris nodded. “She rode toward the river.”

  “If she’s still in Stavropol, I’ll find her.” Apollo spoke softly, more to himself than to the others. His mouth widened into a broad smile. He looked at Karaim and Sahin.

  Answering smiles appeared on their dark faces.

  Apollo leaned down and put out his hand to Boris. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

  • • •

  They slept in the plundered house that night. Apollo curled up in
his burkha on the floor in Kitty’s bedroom and felt more cheerful than he had in days—weeks, in fact. To Stavropol tomorrow. If Kitty were still alive, he’d find her!

  Before Apollo and the mountain warriors could enter Stavropol, it was necessary for them to acquire some identity papers and at least a partial Red Army uniform. By and large the Red Army suffered from a lack of uniforms, so hybrid attire was acceptable; a tunic or two would serve. Beginning early the next morning, all three men shrouded themselves in their black burkhas, packed their papakhas—which bore the green crescent and half-moon insignia of the Savage Division—and, looking as anonymous as possible, set to stalking some suitable victims of sizes and shapes to accommodate them. A certain finesse was essential in requisitioning the uniforms, since bulletholes and bloodstains should be kept to a minimum.

  After midday they came on a small troop escorting an officer into Stavropol. The troop’s horses were tied outside a roadside cafe, and judging from the sounds of laughter coming from inside, the men had been drinking for some time. There were six mounts in all, one with an officer’s holster for pistols.

  “If it looks as if the uniforms will fit, we’ll stay and drink with them,” Apollo stated. “If they’re insistent about our papers, shoot first. Six against three—the best odds we’ve had in two years. Ready?”

  Karaim and Sahin nodded once, never requiring lengthy explanations when it came to killing. They performed extemporaneously with considerable expertise.

  Dismounting, they tied their horses loosely to a rickety wooden fence and walked bareheaded into the dim interior. The soldiers were all grouped around one table, while several peasants sat on a bench against the wall. Apollo strolled over to the group at the table, Karaim and Sahin flanking him two steps back. “Mind if we join you?” he drawled ingenuously.

  The officer looked them over suspiciously and asked who they were.