didn’t know they had any. It’s all tanks and humvees now, isn’t it?’
Shalakov gave Nico a look of sarcastic pity.
‘You don’t know the Red Army doctrine of horse warfare. I was taught this as a cadet in Budenyi Cavalry Academy in Moscow. Never mind the mechanized age, cavalry units are still an important independent arm of war and can be deployed in many ways.’
He began counting the ways on his fingers.
‘They can be used for reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance and patrols, but they are essentially raiders. They can attack at speed, silently and with minimum preparation. They can operate at night, cross narrow mountain passes and swim rivers.’
He spat over the side into the silky-smooth water of the marina.
‘Horses. We should have made more use of them in Afghanistan.’
‘So how many studs were there?’
‘At their peak, during the Great Patriotic War, there were forty-seven. Half that number by my own time, and most of those were then sold off by Yeltsin. They were geographically separated right across the Soviet Union, so that we got a spread of animals biologically suited to different kinds of terrain. In the cavalry we did much research into this.’
‘I didn’t know you were a cavalry man.’
‘Not for many years. But I always kept a few horses. And I bought six of the stud farms from the government. The best ones, of course. Now we are creating a new hippodrome in Moscow. One day it will be the greatest centre in the world for racing horses.’
Nico was used to this kind of talk. With Shalakov everything he touched would one day be the greatest, the priciest, the ultimate in grandeur.
‘That would be something, General,’ he agreed.
Shalakov motioned for the steward to refill Nico’s champagne flute and followed up by asking, almost casually,
‘You know this market well? I mean the racehorse market, here in the west?’
So this was the reason Shalakov had invited Nico today: he had a new project in mind.
‘Oh yes,’ said Nico blithely. ‘I know it inside out.’
He sipped thoughtfully from his glass. It was not strictly true, but since he regularly attended the cream of Europe’s race meetings—Deauville, Ascot, the Curragh—he knew people who’d be only too willing to feed him the inside track on classic breeding, bloodstock sales and top trainers.
‘And are you contemplating a particularly large investment, General?’
‘I never do anything by halves. And, as you well know, I deal only in the finest.’
By the time Nico went ashore he had agreed to make enquiries about how Shalakov could acquire and manage a string of the best racehorses in Western Europe.
Uncle Pat had been right about Doyle’s yard: it was a fair operation, with a staff of fifty or more. But that made it all the harder for Tipper. Now he didn’t even have Sam to talk to. He didn’t know anyone or anything in this new world. He was back to square one. He didn’t even have Red to look forward to every morning. Hardly a day went by when he wasn’t bollocked for doing something wrong.
For the first two years he was just one of twenty indentured slaves, sixteen-year-olds kicked out of their beds at four-thirty every morning, seven days a week, riding work, mucking-out, grooming, and feeding. If they weren’t required at the races they would get a few hours to themselves in the afternoon; and then it was back to mucking out at evening stables. One afternoon a fortnight was all they got off.
A little of Tipper’s riding ability was noted on the gallops, and as time passed he even got a few rides on no-hopers at country race meetings. But he was so withdrawn. The black cloud that had descended on him after his Ma died hadn’t entirely lifted. He was painfully unsure of himself and made scant impression. He hated sharing a room with three other boys. He was always having the mickey ripped out of him, and hadn’t yet learned how to rip it back. In bed at night he lay under the sheets wishing he could be back at the stud coaxing Red.
Tipper’s loneliness was all the more intense because he’d begun thinking about girls. His were hopeless fantasies, alternating between the sexual and the impossibly romantic. None of the girls in the village would ever talk to Tipper, let alone dream of going out with him. He earned a pittance in wages, and for a year he looked like a tramp, not being possessed of a single good garment to wear. He spent the first twelve months saving for just one thing—a cheap suit to go to the races in, or the pub, or maybe even a club. Until then he had only the clobber he worked in, and that stank because, when it rained, the wet muck-sacks he carried across the yard leaked all over him. No girl would let him near, even if he’d had the courage to go up and ask for a date.
Tipper had been slaving at Doyle’s for two years when, during the winter off-season, word got around the yard that an interesting new two-year-old filly with a pedigree like royalty was coming to them. She’d had a disastrous start to her career on the oval US dirt-tracks and been picked up cheap in New York by Rupert Robinson, a pal of Doyle’s. Robinson, the youngest son of a hereditary English peer, thought of himself as a society playboy. Though he liked a gamble, he usually lost; a trend which his more astute friends thought unlikely to be reversed by this new acquisition.
‘She’s got the temper of an alley-cat,’ said her handler to Doyle when the fractious filly arrived in the yard. ‘She doesn’t like you anywhere close and she’d scratch your face to ribbons if she had claws.’
Watching from a distance, Tipper said nothing. But at lunchtime, as soon as the yard was quiet, he went to her stable, stood in front of the halfdoor and whispered her name: not the name chalked on the board by the door, Stella Maris, but his name for her. For Tipper had known her from the moment she’d jinked and propped her way down the ramp of the transporter.
‘Red!’ he whispered. ‘It’s me. Remember me?’
The filly’s first reaction was to lay her ears flat and try to bite his head. He dodged the attempt and, sliding the bolt open, slipped inside the stable. At once Red turned her back on him and let fly with one of her hind legs. She was anticipating a smack. So that was the trouble, Tipper thought. Some twat had been thrashing her, thinking it would bring her to hand. Naturally, it had had the opposite effect.
Quietly reciting her name over and over, he stooped and lowered himself until he was kneeling. Slowly, very slowly, he began inching towards Red, uttering calming words in a light singsong. Praying that she wouldn’t lash out again. If she did, and caught him on the head, she could kill him. But because he had crouched down he didn’t pose a threat to her. By the time he was a couple of yards from her he saw, maybe, a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. He slowly turned away and moved towards the door of the box. The straw behind him rustled. Then he felt the filly’s nose gently exploring his back, and he knew it had happened. She’d remembered him.
Five minutes later Tipper was standing at her head, rubbing her ears; for the first time since he’d arrived at Doyle’s, he began to feel hope. In fact it was stronger than that. He felt a tinge of excitement.
