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He drew a gun.
Walter pointed his own gun through the gap in the bricks and aimed at the blue tunic, but he was not
close enough to be sure of hitting his target.
The man stood still for a moment, looking all around, clearly undecided about what to do next. Then he turned and walked hesitantly toward the water.
Walter followed him. He had turned the tables.
The man dodged from stack to stack, scanning the area. Walter did the same, ducking behind bricks whenever the man stopped, getting nearer all the time. Walter did not want a prolonged gunfight, which might attract the attention of other policemen. He needed to down his enemy with one or two shots and get away fast.
By the time the man reached the canal end of the site, they were only ten yards apart. The man looked up and down the canal, as if Walter might have rowed away in a boat.
Walter stepped out of cover and drew a bead on the middle of the man's back.
The man turned away from the water and looked straight at Walter.
Then he screamed.
It was a high-pitched, girlish scream of shock and terror. Walter knew, in that instant, that he would remember the scream all his life.
He squeezed the trigger, the revolver banged, and the scream was cut off instantly.
Only one shot was needed. The secret policeman crumpled to the ground, lifeless.
Walter bent over the body. The eyes stared upward sightlessly. There was no heartbeat, no breath.
Walter dragged the body to the edge of the canal. He put bricks in the pockets of the man's trousers and tunic, to weight the corpse. Then he slid it over the low parapet and let it fall into the water.
It sank below the surface, and Walter turned away.
{IV}
Grigori was in a session of the Petrograd soviet when the counterrevolution began.
He was worried, but not surprised. As the Bolsheviks gained popularity, the backlash had become more ruthless. The party was doing well in local elections, winning control of one provincial soviet after another, and had gained 33 percent of the votes for the Petrograd city council. In response the government-now led by Kerensky-arrested Trotsky and again deferred the long-delayed national elections for the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks had said all along that the provisional government would never hold a national election, and this further postponement only added to Bolshevik credibility.
Then the army made its move.
General Kornilov was a shaven-headed Cossack who had the heart of a lion and the brains of a sheep, according to a famous remark by General Alexeev. On September 9 Kornilov ordered his troops to march on Petrograd.
The soviet responded quickly. The delegates immediately resolved to set up the Committee for Struggle Against the Counterrevolution.
A committee was nothing, Grigori thought impatiently. He got to his feet, holding down anger and fear. As the delegate for the First Machine Gun Regiment, he was listened to respectfully, especially on military matters. "There is no point in a committee if its members are just going to make speeches," he said passionately. "If the reports we have just heard are true, some of Kornilov's troops are not far from the city limits of Petrograd. They can be halted only by force. " He always wore his sergeant's uniform, and carried his rifle and a pistol. "The committee will be pointless unless it mobilizes the workers and soldiers of Petrograd against the mutiny of the army. "
Grigori knew that only the Bolshevik party could mobilize the people. And all the other deputies knew it, too, regardless of what party they belonged to. In the end it was agreed that the committee would have three Mensheviks, three Socialist Revolutionaries, and three Bolsheviks including Grigori; but everyone knew the Bolsheviks were the only ones who counted.
As soon as that was decided, the Committee for Struggle left the debating hall. Grigori had been a politician for six months, and he had learned how to work the system. Now he ignored the formal composition of the committee and invited a dozen useful people to join them, including Konstantin from the Putilov works and Isaak from the First Machine Guns.
The soviet had moved from the Tauride Palace to the Smolny Institute, a former girls' school, and the committee reconvened in a classroom, surrounded by framed embroidery and girlish watercolors.
The chairman said: "Do we have a motion for debate?"
This was rubbish, but Grigori had been a deputy long enough to know how to get around it. He moved immediately to take control of the meeting and get the committee focused on action instead of words.
"Yes, comrade Chairman, if I may," he said. "I propose there are five things we need to do. " A numbered list was always a good idea: people felt they had to listen until you got to the end. "First: Mobilize the Petrograd soldiers against the mutiny of General Kornilov. How can we achieve this? I suggest that Corporal Isaak Ivanovich should draw up a list of the principal barracks with the names of reliable revolutionary leaders in each. Having identified our allies, we should send a letter instructing them to put themselves under the orders of this committee and get ready to repel the mutineers. If Isaak begins now he can bring list and letter back to this committee for approval in a few minutes' time. "
Grigori paused briefly to allow people to nod, then, taking that for approval, he went on.
