A Game of Soldiers
Stephen Miller

For Wendell

And down the embankment of history

Came not the calendar

But the real Twentieth Century

Akhmatova

Excerpt

The decadent Ottoman Empire is in retreat.

Poised on her northern borders, the Austrian and Russian Empires intrigue ceaselessly to further their own ambitions. For Russia it is the dream to possess Constantinople and guarantee herself an outlet to the Mediterranean. For Austria, it is hegemony over the Balkan nations, and naval domination of the Adriatic. Unable to restrain herself, in 1908 she annexes the province of Bosnia – a stroke that inflames Serb patriots.

By 1913 the Great Powers are locked into a frenzied arms race, spending themselves into debt producing dreadnoughts, howitzers, repeating rifles, experimental aeroplanes, and undersea boats. At the same time humans are connected as never before – by motorized vehicles on improved roads; by faster vessels, telephone exchanges, and telegraphic cables that girdle the Earth.

As the Ottoman tide ebbs, all the Balkan nations begin vying for supremacy over their neighbours. In a mad dance of betrayal and avarice, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Serbia fight a bloody war. Momentarily separated by an armistice in April, they are joined by Rumania to clash again barely two months later.

Although the wars in the Balkans are remarkable for their cruelty and casualties, the Serbs are doing well. Their star is in the ascendant, but they are anxious that in a future war against Austria-Hungary they cannot win alone. As fellow Slavs they look towards Russia for protection.

Everyone is afraid to provoke mighty Russia. Her multi-million peasant armies are thought capable of annihilating any opposition. But Russia’s Tsar is more remarkable for his faults than his virtues. St Petersburg might be one of the great cities of Europe, but the court is in the grip of sycophantic corruption. Nicholas is an indecisive man who likes domestic life, who enjoys noting down the changes in the weather. The Tsarina Alexandra has given him four daughters and an heir – Alexei, afflicted with the barely-understood disease of haemophilia. Deeply religious, and despairing, the Romanovs are easy dupes for a series of faith healers and charlatans who promise a cure for the Tsarevich.

None of this is a secret. Indeed all of these topics are endlessly discussed in newspapers, cafés, and bars; in the streets and on trams, over expensive dinners in the finest restaurants, and over cigars and brandy in diplomatic salons, in bedrooms and bordellos. A whirlwind of gossip, speculations, and nightmares. Amateur strategies, and apocalyptic theories. All is known. All is pondered, all is anticipated.

Yet still there are secrets.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

Excerpt

St Petersburg 1913

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

EPILOGUE

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

St Petersburg 1913

ONE

St Petersburg shimmered like a vast hallucination. It was three in the morning, but on this white June night the sun flared like a beacon over the deserted boulevards.

Lost in their dreams, the innocents slept. It was the hour of the prostitute and her final client, the hour when the drunk had collapsed into his nightmare, the hour when the suicide ceased his pacing. It was the hour of the thief and the hour of the investigator, the hour when tears had dried and laughter was just a memory. The hour of the predator and the hour of the victim.

Petersburg was a premeditated city. A metropolis with artificial neighbourhoods and preposterously wide boulevards that ran arrow-straight to the horizon. It was a place even a peasant could understand, its avenues designed for military parades, bisected by canals whose bridges could easily be blocked by cossacks.

Three centuries of Romanov rule had not mellowed the city’s master plan; there were the parks with their silent green foliage, cathedrals looming over statues of long-dead Tsars, garish sentinels protecting the most important circles and plazas.

An artist’s eye might linger on the barges moored against the embankments, the golden flash of the Admiralty’s spire, the leaden green light across the broad waters of the Neva, the row of red-painted government buildings interrupted by the gigantic yellow General Staff building. But no colours could enliven Russia’s purpose-built gateway to the world – a city built upon the corpses of serfs enslaved to the horrific aspirations of Peter the Great. A capital born with its cord anchored to a swamp – beautiful, on the surface.

On this garish morning two carriages were drawn through the heart of the empty city. Leading was an opulent troika pulled by white horses. Beneath its luminous black lacquer one could still detect the ornamental crest of the House of Romanov. At a discreet distance a threadbare izvolchik followed, with three members of the Okhrana secret police crammed inside. Beyond boredom, they had nothing to look forward to and no plans, for anything might happen at such an hour. They had raised the top of the cab to protect themselves from the glare and two were sleeping while their superior leaned his head against the window post and fought to stay awake.

Pyotr Ryzhkov watched the city glide by – a long blur of apartment blocks, office buildings and markets, most of them built in identical style, from identical materials to an identical height. The slow pace of the carriage gave him the illusion that he was falling – sinking into an eternal void.

Ryzhkov was the most ordinary-looking of the three. With unruly dark hair and strong brows, he looked like his father without the moustache. Eyes that were blue, but with dark pupils, as if always starved for light. He seemed a little older than his years, the hard life had done that. Here and there he had a scar; wrinkles of concern, and a slight frown that had etched itself into the mask he had worn as a face for too many years. He needed a shave and a few regular meals. He needed a vacation, some new clothes. To sleep. A new life.

Ahead of them the elegant troika slowed, turned off the embankment on to a narrow side street. Muta flicked his whip, and in a few seconds they reached the intersection in time to see the troika stopping at the entrance to an ornate office building.

‘All right. He’s decided to stop…’ Ryzhkov nudged Konstantin Hokhodiev awake. Kostya was a big man. He yawned and stretched and tried to straighten his legs in the small carriage. ‘Whose place is it this time?’ he groaned without opening his eyes.

‘I don’t know. Someone with money to spend, just looking at it,’ Ryzhkov said. Down the street a queue of expensive carriages and motorcars rested at the kerb, their drivers sleeping or standing about smoking. The windows of the mansion were open and there was a wash of sound: music, laughter, groans.

Dima Dudenko, the youngest member of their team, yawned and also tried to stretch his legs in the carriage. His feet got tangled in Ryzhkov’s and he woke with an irritated jerk, then realized where he was. ‘Good Christ, this is insane. Doesn’t Blue Shirt ever sleep?’

‘Here he comes…’ Ryzhkov muttered as the door of the troika opened and the mad monk – Grigori Efrimovich Rasputin – stepped down on to the pavement. The prostitutes were tipsy. They laughed and stumbled into the street behind him. Hokhodiev managed to blink himself awake just as Rasputin and his friends climbed the front steps. A sign hanging above the portico read Apollo Fine Papers & Binding. The front doors opened and Rasputin threw his arms wide as a blast of applause engulfed him. A clutch of men in formal dress stepped out to kiss his hand. Laughing, he was dragged inside.

They were in a fading neighbourhood, a little too far away from the canal, not close enough to the theatre, and much too close to the stench of the market on a warm day. Ryzhkov cleared his throat and spat out on to the cobbles. ‘This is…Peplovskaya Street, yeah, Muta?’ he asked the driver.

‘Peplovskaya, yes, excellency. Only a small street,’ Muta said in his thick Georgian accent. Ryzhkov had been along the little street dozens of times; still, he had never really noticed it. An uninteresting street, the kind that could only take you somewhere else.

‘Well, he’ll be in there for hours,’ Dudenko muttered. ‘Does anybody want something to eat? There’s a place down the corner, they might have something?’

‘Not me,’ Hokhodiev said, got out and walked a few paces out into the street and began to urinate.

‘Go ahead. I suppose he’s probably safe enough in there.’ Ryzhkov climbed out of the carriage to shake the stiffness out of his legs, took a moment to roll his head around on his shoulders.

Ostensibly the Okhrana were charged with watching over Rasputin to ensure that he did not come under the influence of foreign agents or revolutionary elements that might use him to gain access to the Imperial family, but really they were guarding ‘Blue Shirt’ – as the Internal branch knew him – from embarrassment in the newspapers. There was no detective work involved. Everyone knew the secret police were trailing the staretz, not because he was a threat to the Imperial family, but because he was their pet.

In less than a decade Rasputin had become a legend. He was thought to be a holy wanderer who could speak directly with God, a creature with unlimited sexual appetites who could cure illnesses with a simple caress. Everyone in the capital knew that if you wanted something – a posting to a particular ministry, special attention paid to your proposals, consideration when it was time to hand out military decorations – anything at all, you would need Rasputin as an ally. His favour was a necessity in order to ensure a successful career, his wrath could obliterate a cabinet minister in a single morning.

Thus, when their rotation came around Pyotr Ryzhkov and his men dutifully trailed Rasputin back and forth across the city. It amounted to a series of sleepless nights that only ended when Blue Shirt fell into his bed in the company of a final prostitute he would select from the group waiting at the entrance to his building. It was boring unless you enjoyed watching the upper crust humiliate themselves at the feet of a con artist, an exercise which Ryzhkov had long since ceased to find amusing.

His memory of the street gradually came back – apartments over shops down at the corner of Sadovaya, a couple of shabby wooden houses and a little warehouse up on the market end of the street – Peplovskaya. The only thing disturbing the peace of the street was the noise coming out of the Apollo Bindery.

‘Look at this,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Oh, yes, all you need is the money and you can buy a little taste of heaven…’ Hokhodiev joined him as he walked along beside the carriages. Painted on their sides were the crests of some of Russia’s most powerful families. At the head of the queue, the black troika of Prince Yusupov, behind it a carriage inscribed with the gold filigreed crest of the House of Orlovsky. A flaming fortress indicated the Evdaev family, next was the gleaming Renault of Prince Cantacuzène.

‘Well, they must be sewing together some extremely rare books. A very literate clientele, by the looks of it…’

‘High flying, even for our friend,’ Hokhodiev said. ‘You want me to get the numbers?’

‘Oh, yes, whatever the circumstances we must complete our paperwork. Do you have enough space in your book?’ The carriages and motorcars continued for the length of the street past the bordello, vehicles belonging to an assortment of devotees, perverts, aristocrats, power-mad debauchees of every stripe.

‘If I run out of pages, maybe I’ll go up and buy a new one from the management, eh?’ Hokhodiev laughed and walked away down to the start of the queue.

Ryzhkov stood in the centre of the street, fiddled for his watch and checked the time. Nearly four in the morning. The sky above him was a pearly white tinged with streaks of yellow. From above one of the prostitutes was crying out in pretend-orgasm. The chauffeurs looked over and he shook his head and they laughed. Down at the end of the street he watched Kostya gathering the meaningless licence numbers.

‘No point,’ he said. He sighed and headed back to their carriage, the most unkempt vehicle on the street. ‘No point whatsoever…’

Dima came back with rolls and a pot of tea. When Ryzhkov took a drink he flinched. ‘Are you all right?’ Dudenko asked, his narrow face frowning.

‘Oh, it’s just this tooth, it’s started up again. I’m fine.’ He took a sip from the glass of tea that Dudenko gave him. The heat brought another jolt of pain to his jaw.

‘You should do something about that, an infection can lead to serious illness, eh?’

‘Yes, yes, yes…’ He held the hot liquid on his jaw and waited for the pain to go away.

They sat in their shabby little carriage and shared out the food among themselves. Muta took the opportunity to fall asleep with the reins in his hand. After a few minutes Hokhodiev returned, opened the door of the carriage, sat on the step and smoked. They talked about the schedule for the next day. It should have been the end of a hellish week of Blue Shirt surveillance, but the Tsar was in the capital and the three of them were to augment the Imperial Guard at the Marinsky Theatre. What that meant was – less sleep all around.

Dudenko gathered their glasses and had taken only a few steps down the pavement when they heard the screams.

There was a sudden crashing that came from the end of the street. All the drivers and chauffeurs looked up. It sounded like one or two women – angry. A man’s voice, lower. Something crashed into splinters and shards.

‘What…what is this? Tell me he hasn’t gone and got into something stupid…’ Ryzhkov stood up in the carriage. Muta woke up and his pony took a nervous step forward. There was another long scream from the upstairs of the building.

‘It’s down there –’ Dudenko stooped and placed the glasses on the pavement, stood and peered down the street. Ryzhkov could see the drivers at the end of the queue looking at something masked by the edge of the building.

‘Something going on in the lane down there,’ Hokhodiev said.

Ryzhkov jumped out of the carriage, ran across the cobbles and down to the corner of the bindery. There at the beginning of the lane a group of drivers were standing still, serious expressions on their faces. In the distance sounded the shrill blast of a police whistle. He rounded the corner and saw what he first took for a bundle of clothes tossed on to the pavement.

And then –

One of the drivers had covered her with a jacket, but it was too small and Ryzhkov could see the fan of her blonde hair across the stones. Reflexively he moved closer and one of the drivers reached out to stop him. He shook the man off and held his Okhrana disc up for them to see. From the back of the building the cooks and servants had come running out. An old man was standing over the girl, rubbing his hands on his apron.

‘She fell…’ the old man said in a weak voice. He looked at them as if he hoped someone would help him find a better explanation for the dead child on the cobbles, for the sparkling wreath of broken glass all around them. ‘Yes, she fell, excellency,’ the old man said again. ‘From up there someplace –’ The old man pointed to the windows above them, and they all craned their necks trying to see up to the top floors of the building and the yellow sky beyond.

He walked forward and pulled the jacket off her, brushed the long blonde hair away from her face. An angel, was the first thing he thought of. An angel tumbled right out of the heavens.

Pale white body, tall for her age, he thought. Wearing a little night-dress that clung to her, a gossamer wrapper that had ridden up, making it look as if she were dancing. Leaping, with her arms to the sky, a pink satin ribbon around her waist, celebrating something that she’d never seen before. A long smear of blood down both of her legs, but nothing else. The long blonde hair wreathed around her, half-undone. All that was missing were the wings.

He pulled her hair back a little and, looking closely, saw marks around her neck. Rubbed, raw. Her face was smiling, almost. Only a little blood at the corner of her mouth. You might mistake it for lipstick gone awry.

Her eyes were open; eyes rimmed with dark orbs of kohl, rouge that had been brushed on, too dark for her skin. Skin pale as milk. An angry gash on her forehead that hadn’t bled very much, he thought. Her clear blue eyes open and staring out at the glass like diamonds sparkling all around.

‘Pyotr…’ he heard Hokhodiev behind him. ‘We have to find him and get out of here, eh?’

Behind him there were more whistles and the drivers scurried aside to let a St Petersburg Police Ambulance manoeuvre into the narrow lane. Ryzhkov pulled his eyes from the girl and saw three officers had run up from the other end of the alley.

‘Hey…Blue Shirt, Blue Shirt, Blue Shirt…’Hokhodiev prompted, giving him a little tug. He realized now that he was standing over her in a daze, staring at all of them, the officers, the servants, the drivers who had crowded into the lane.

‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Let’s find him and get him out.’

He started back on to Peplovskaya Street, his heart beating like a racehorse, Dima running ahead. Rounding the corner they saw a gallery of men in formal dress and varying states of intoxication leaving the building, pushing their way towards their carriages as quickly as possible. Men with money. No blood on any of them. None of the gendarmes was doing anything.

Right in front of him there was an angry shriek and Ryzhkov saw a young woman being pulled away from the gate. She was strong and she fought her way down the steps and out to where the men were trying to escape. There was the crack of a whip and a carriage bolted away in front of her; at the last moment someone jerked her out of the path of the wheels and she stumbled and fell into the gutter.

She got up. ‘No, no…no!’ Slapped her way free of the gendarmes, and started running down the pavement towards the lane. ‘Murder!’ she called with her face lifted to the high windows of the building. And then the police were upon her, wrenching her arm back so that her face contorted in pain.

On the entrance stairs a uniformed officer from the Life Guards was in conversation with a clutch of police. He was laughing, his hand extended to offer the overawed policemen cigarettes from his silver case. The madam of the house was there on his arm, her dazzling red hair piled up with feathers, a beaded dress with a décolletage that provided an easy view of her ample bosom. She was smiling through it all as she wished everyone goodnight.

Behind them Ryzhkov saw Hokhodiev and Dudenko pushing Rasputin out of the foyer towards the street. A little mob of aristocrats were jammed up there, all patting each other on the back and moaning their goodbyes.

‘Let them through!’ Ryzhkov growled at a gendarme sergeant who was smiling and bowing and apologizing for the situation. The man’s eyes suddenly went wide with fear and he backed up two steps when Ryzhkov held up his disc. Suddenly the knot of pleasure-seekers parted and Rasputin was right in front of him.

‘Unfortunately, we must be leaving, Holy One,’ Ryzhkov said, trying to take the sarcasm out of his voice as he reached out and grabbed Rasputin by his satin shirt. The man smelled of tobacco, body odour, and lavender perfume.

‘But, I thought we were here for the music?’ Rasputin was saying to the woman behind him. Ryzhkov had Rasputin by the shoulder and steered him down the steps towards his carriage. There was an enthusiastic chorus of goodbyes and blessings for a safe journey. The guards officer watched them go, smiling faintly.

‘What happened in there, Holy One?’ Ryzhkov asked Rasputin.

‘I don’t know. We haven’t even started and boom it’s all for nothing.’ He seemed genuinely perplexed by the whole thing. Hokhodiev looked over at Ryzhkov and shrugged. ‘But there’s always another party going on somewhere. Who knows? It’s probably for the best, eh?’ Rasputin said.

‘Perhaps, Holy One. Go, now…’ They pushed Rasputin into his carriage and the driver flicked his whip. Around them the policemen were helping the guests on their way. He and Hokhodiev stood there for a moment, looking down at the end of the building, both of them thinking about the girl. He didn’t want to go back down there.

‘Whoever did it has had lots of time to get out,’ Hokhodiev said quietly.

‘Yeah, yeah…’ Ryzhkov took a sharp breath, shook himself like a dog. His fingers had cramped around the knife he carried in his trouser pocket.

‘But Blue Shirt certainly was under control. I found him at the table, just like a gentleman.’

‘He has a sixth sense.’

‘Exactly, he can sniff trouble. He knows, I’m telling you…’ Hokhodiev frowned, put a big hand on Ryzhkov’s shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Yes…’ he said, but he wasn’t and they both knew it. A St Petersburg police officer was a few paces away and Ryzhkov walked over, flashed his disc. ‘Hey, who owns this place?’ The lieutenant shrugged, gave a thin smile and pointed to the sign over the portico. ‘Well, this isn’t a book factory, there’s obviously some kind of apartments up there. What about those?’

The lieutenant was still smiling. ‘Yes, a Finnish gentleman has leased the entire building. Unfortunately, he’s not on the premises. Tonight appears to be a private party, some friends of his.’ The young officer shrugged. He wasn’t going to give Ryzhkov much help no matter what service he was from.

‘Hey, who’s paying you off, pal?’ Hokhodiev stepped forward to intimidate the gendarme, but the lieutenant didn’t budge.

‘It’s a suicide, from what I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘Some little vertika tail-twister jumped out of one of the windows around the corner.’ They all looked down to the lane. ‘It happens more and more,’ the lieutenant said with a sad smile.

Suicide. Ryzhkov thought about it for a moment, tried to put it together with what he had seen in the lane. Maybe suicide was becoming fashionable, but he hadn’t realized that children were doing it. The whole thing was a lie, transparent as the dead girl’s dress. He turned and looked at the officer for a moment, gave him a smile of his own. ‘Sleep tight, little fellow,’ he said and walked back towards the alley.

The gendarmes backed away as soon as they rounded the corner.

Ryzhkov stood there, a little unsteady, looking down at the girl, memorizing it all. Maybe he had been thinking she’d wake up, or move, or say something. Maybe he’d been thinking that he could heal her somehow. He looked up to the opened windows on the top floor. There was still gramophone music playing up there, crazy, jangling ‘negro music’ that filled the street.

‘Ah…if we hurry, we can catch up with Blue Shirt…’ Hokhodiev said gently. Dudenko only shrugged.

‘Pyotr, she’s gone, and we have to go too,’ Hokhodiev said.

‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said finally, backing away so that the attendants could free her from the pavement and roll her on to the stretcher.

A crowd had formed now; neighbourhood residents who had heard the commotion and had rushed to their windows, then thrown on their robes and come out on to the street. As they headed back through the crush he saw officers from both the Preobrazhensky and the Grenadier Guards regiments, and what he supposed were uniforms of at least two foreign countries. There was even a pair of court pages there, boys not yet grown into men, who strode away nervously, heading towards the busy intersection of Sadovaya Street.

‘Excuse me, sir –’ A nervous gendarme rushed towards the gates where several women were being briskly escorted off the property. Ryzhkov saw the same angry one among them.

‘There you have it, Pyotr,’ Hokhodiev mused. ‘An entire flock of whores, judging by the feathers…’ Six or seven of them, pulling on their brightly coloured robes, being rushed out of the building before they had time to finish dressing, hair undone, clutching their bags.

Ryzhkov saw that the angry one had fallen behind the others; she was spent now. No longer screaming about murder, just standing there alone. Hat jammed down over her head, clutching her bag across her breast, just staring down towards where the ambulance attendants were doing their work. He thought he could see her lips moving, talking to herself.

‘Are we ready, now? Have we done our careers enough damage now?’ Hokhodiev said, trying to make it all go away, trying to turn it into a joke.

‘Yes…why not?’ Ryzhkov said.

‘Good, while we all still have jobs, eh?’ Hokhodiev steered him out of the lane. Ahead of them Ryzhkov saw their cab drawn up at the corner by the teahouse.

It was a scruffy place, there was no sign above the shop, just a long arc of painted flames that spanned the width of the establishment. Muta was sitting there pretending to be calm, taking a pull from his pipe. The ejected prostitutes had gathered at the door and were talking with some of the customers and angrily pointing back to the bindery.

Hokhodiev pulled him across the cobblestones to avoid his being trampled as an expensive carriage glided by – inside Ryzhkov could hear the passengers laughing. Now that they had got away without arrest or embarrassment the whole event had become an exciting, giddy experience. Not something to tell their wives and children about, but nevertheless, a most unusual night. A thrill, even though somewhat frightening for a time, surely, but invigorating for all that, and even fun…

‘Hey!’ Dudenko suddenly cried out and rushed ahead to their cab. Two of the prostitutes were now angrily demanding a ride from Muta. Dudenko began waving them away but the girls simply parted and neatly circled him.

‘Thank you…thank you…ladies, I’m sorry we are full.’ Hokhodiev pushed the girls away, yanked Dudenko up on to the step.

‘This place looks like your home for the night, girls,’ Hokhodiev called out to them. The men at the door of the café laughed and one of the girls slung her bag at Hokhodiev as he got into the cab. Ryzhkov saw it was the angry one again, the same girl he had seen staring down the street. He watched as she pirouetted on the pavement in a complex negotiation between her friends and the laughing men in the doorway.

He could see her closely. She was even more dishevelled now, certainly intoxicated, hysterical from the shock. Her tears had made dark rivers down her cheeks. Her nose was red, from crying. Attractive, if you went for women of that type. On the thin side. Yes, certainly, somewhat attractive. Even beautiful in a lewd, trashy way.

Then suddenly there was the crack of Muta’s whip and she was gone.

TWO

Led by the splendid figure of Prince Nestor Vissarionovich Evdaev, two thousand horsemen proceeded along the embankment of the Yekaterininsky Canal, a route which took them past the Church of the Resurrection, a short way from the capital’s huge parade ground, the Field of Mars. It was a great plain, a huge rectangle with one end sliced off by the Moika and the Mikhailovsky Gardens, a corner defined by the Marble Palace, and one long flank bounded by the Summer Gardens.

A breeze billowed down the canal, thick with the heat of an early summer and the many fragrances of soldiery. Prince Evdaev’s mount was Khalif; snow-white, his mane shorn and ribboned with satin – a perfect animal. For two weeks Zonta, his groom, had trained Khalif, fed him a secret diet devised by the old equerry. In preparation for today’s ceremonies Evdaev and his officers had returned to the gymnasium and he was hard now, his skin browned by the hot Russian sun, his legs strong, his moustaches waxed, freshly bathed and barbered that very dawn, his cheeks stung with a mint lotion. His valet had spent an hour polishing his helmet, his breeches were newly tailored for the occasion, his gloves chalked to perfection.

Oh, and were the streets not glorious! No expense had been spared for today’s celebrations, only one of a year’s worth of events marking the 300th year of the Romanov dynasty. Oh, it was wrongheaded, of course. An extravagance. A veneration of incompetence. But nevertheless, Evdaev thought…glorious.

Golden double-headed eagles, flags hanging from every lamp standard, decorations in every shop window. The evening before (only a few hours ago!) he had been here in the throng, giggling at the amazing fireworks overhead – a display especially designed by talented Spaniards, a gypsy family that specialized in the beautiful and the dangerous.

They clattered along the cobbles that curved beneath the Church of the Resurrection. Evdaev looked up to the mosaics set into the bricks, the arms of the great royal families of Russia. Above he saw his own family’s arms – a burning flame suspended over a bloody stockade wall – the House of Evdaev. He bowed his head, made the sign of the cross, a small act of contrition as he rounded the site. The next time he raised his eyes he saw the ikons of the saints staring down at him and for just a moment he could see his own image there – his face transformed into a grinning skull, with eyes burning hellfire for eternity.

Treason! I am committing treason!

Was God watching him, protecting him? The church was new, only completed a few years earlier, and known as the Saviour on the Spilled Blood, because it had been built on the exact spot where Tsar Alexander II was killed. On that bloody day a terrorist had thrown a bomb as the Tsar arrived to visit his aunt. Alexander had escaped injury from the blast, and had even attempted to help wounded bystanders, truly a saintly act.

But there was a second assassin lurking with a second bomb and Alexander had died in his palace, the bedroom preserved as it was when he’d succumbed; the bloodstained sheets, his last lists to himself. A water glass, reading glasses. Could Alexander’s ghost see into his traitor’s heart?

There was still time, he thought.

He could dismount, crawl up the steps to the church, confess and make his penance atop the bloodstained cobbles. Still time, still choices to make.

But…thousands of hooves clattering on the road blended with the cheers of the bystanders – a buoyant, jittery torrent of sound. The crowd was screaming, their faces upturned; smiling red-faced shopkeepers off for the day, families dressed in their finest marshalling their children into some sort of order, newly arrived peasants transfixed with amazement, girls laughing with their hands covering their mouths, boys running ahead to keep the pace.

Everything was too quick, everything was irrevocable. Evdaev held his breath, waiting for the dead Tsar’s revenge, waiting for a Romanov curse to strike him from the saddle.

But it did not come.

They rounded the church and gradually the apparitions vaporized behind him. Nothing ahead of him but cheering citizenry. No curse, no ghost, no revenge.

‘God give his blessings to you, sir!’ his young adjutant shouted to him, and Evdaev turned and saluted. ‘And to you, Lieutenant. But we are late, we’d better hurry along!’ He smiled, raised his sabre, and spurred Khalif into a canter as they reached the bridge. A scream of trumpets heralded their arrival and an immense cheer went up from all sides of the field.

Evdaev sighted the blaze of lime spread across the ground ahead, all but eradicated by the caissons of the artillery and the herds of infantrymen who had shuffled across the field. By the time the trick riders of the Caucasian Regiment had done with their acrobatics – diving beneath their saddles to retrieve handkerchiefs tossed by the young grand duchesses – there was nothing but a chewed-up field of stubbly grass. Then, because of the extraordinary heat, his guardsmen had been delayed yet again by a comical team of sprinkling carts unloading themselves in a futile attempt to keep down the dust.

Finally the whistles blew. Now his guardsmen waited – two thousand gleaming statues as the priests finished their blessings. There was no way that a regiment of cavalry could charge across the field and bring their mounts to an abrupt stop without some accident taking place. It could happen to anyone, a horse would certainly go down, bringing others with it. There would be blood, broken bones, fractured spines, death. Certainly it would occur here in just a few moments. Somewhere inside he was praying.

Afterwards, after he had celebrated with his officers, he would go to meet Sergei.

Somewhere secret, somewhere utterly safe. They would feast, and drink toasts to the success of their camarilla. Things were progressing well, he’d been informed. There was not much longer to wait. Surely before the year was out.

Across the holy ground, soil that was consecrated with the blood of generations of Russia’s soldiers and their animals, sheltered within a gingerbread-trimmed pavilion, sat the man he was destined to supplant. Nicky. The Tsar. The Tsar of all the Russias. One sixth of the world’s surface. They had been children together, cadets. Courted and bedded the same ballerinas. A lifetime of memories.

And soon…surely before the year was out. He would have to die. And the boy.

Evdaev could see the royal family, Nicholas shuffling into his seat. The pretentious lieutenant’s dress uniform that he wore. Flaunting his power by dressing as a junior officer. Absurd. The dull eyes, the invisible smile beneath the moustaches that covered up his rotten teeth. Smiling and blinking. He’d grown into a silly, even weaker version of his childhood self.

Soon.

Besides, the money continued to arrive. Money and even more money, for longer than a year now, ever since he’d agreed to the Plan. Under Sergei’s astute direction he had invested most of it, and the returns had been spectacular. They were building a war chest – funds to purchase arms, to purchase men, to purchase allegiance.

Khalif twitched between his legs, pawing the dust. The horses always knew, they remembered from one year to the next. They could smell the excitement, the smoke, and the blood. It had been bred into them for generations. Drums began to pound and the artillery fired a rippling salute. Now he was screaming a command and his men drew their sabres…the sudden gleam of sharpened steel against the white sky.

He had hardly to touch the spur to Khalif, and they were off.

THREE

Sergei Andrianov sat in his box in the dignitaries’ grandstand that spanned the long eastern dimension of the Field of Mars. The enclosure was a wooden creation with finely turned filigree along the eaves of the roof, wide awnings freshly painted in the Imperial colours. Pennants flew from every flagstaff, from every post – a rush of red, white, and blue. The men surrounding him were in summer suits, some with straw hats and coloured feathers pinned to their lapels. The women were fanning themselves against the heat, chattering and cheering. Almost everyone had opera glasses.

There had not been time for him to take his private car and he was exhausted because he had been forced on to the express, then had spent a sleepless night mulling over the chaos that had taken place at the bindery. In the hours before dawn he arrived in Petersburg, and took a carriage straight to his house; a mansion inherited from his father and refitted with all the modern conveniences, built upon the rise of the Kamenoovstrovsky Prospekt, giving on to a fine view.

Andrianov, except for the quality of his clothing, was the kind of man that was overlooked, until he moved. He knew that it was his energy people first noticed. Business, pleasure, whatever he did, it was like that. Not stopping was attractive to some women, not attractive to others. He couldn’t help that. The rules of life were made for ordinary men, not someone like him. A cultivated man, a man with money. A fine nose, even features. Perhaps more Teutonic than Slavic in his appearance, with blond hair and eyebrows that emphasized his brow and the shape of his skull. Looking out over the field below him, as the gleaming cavalry regiments organized themselves into multi-coloured patterns, he was glad he had elected to come alone, mainly because he could make an easy exit when the festivities were finished.

Unfortunately he had to share the box with Dr Lemmers and they’d found themselves beside the repulsive Brogdanovitch who was wedged into his seat, red-faced and sweating. The moment Brogdanovitch had laid eyes on him, he’d abandoned his wretched family and leaned across to hector Andrianov about the new electric engines he was experimenting with in his mills.

Andrianov listened and nodded, pretended to be more interested than he was. But inevitably it was too much; he let Brogdanovitch’s theories on oil transport fade away, turned his attention to the field and watched Prince Evdaev as he wheeled his horse and took his place at the head of his cavalrymen. Behind him the regiment cantered smartly to their stations.

Andrianov looked along towards the military enclosures, the ornate uniforms, the splashes of gold braid and feathers creating a perfectly ironic display of romantic traditionalism. A lesser man would be laughing at the absurdity. All around him in the capital he could see the chaos mounting. How many others on the Field of Mars had the blessing of such sight? A dozen?

Less than a dozen, he decided.

He had only reached out to a select few of these visionaries. He could bring the others into the Plan later, when the time was right.

He shook his head at the plumes, the polished brass, gold, and silver – the huge lie that was being paraded before him. Evdaev’s beloved military had grown soft under the command of an inherited elite, unable to project Russia’s will even within her borders. It amounted to a supreme obscenity to which this horde of perfumed aristocrats was utterly blind. The best rifles in the world were British, the best light howitzers French, the best heavy ones German, the best General Staff, German again. So much for Russia as the great military steamroller.

Domestically? The economy was as thin as pasteboard; he knew its fragility intimately, and, yes, he had taken advantage of the markets, why not? The police were ineffectual and corrupt. And all of it ruled by a teetering autocracy – Nicholas held in thrall to Alexandra, his German-born Tsarina, and her grotesque companion, Rasputin. Throughout Russia were cries for reforms that would never be granted until it was too late. And Andrianov was supposed to simply sit on his hands, put his holdings at risk while the Tsar and his sycophantic ministers dithered? They were like a pack of blind children, stumbling towards the brink!

The looming threats were there for anyone to see, but none of this crowd had ever visited the darker quarters of the city, none of them could begin to grasp that surrounding their perfect palaces and sculptured gardens was a rising tide of revolutionary ferment.

If the Tsar did nothing, sooner or later someone would take matters into their own hands. And Sergei Andrianov had long realized that the future belonged to the one who struck first.

That morning he had struck over breakfast.

Breakfast was with Bear, otherwise known as General A.I. Gulka, head of the Third Branch of the Imperial Chancellery, the Okhrana. Alexandr Ivanovich was a large man, more porcine than ursine, with puffed, watery eyes. Like all military men he was fond of his uniform and decorations, and he wore them at all times. He wheezed, and ate his meal enthusiastically while Andrianov listened.

‘I can assure you there is no cause for worry, excellency. It is an insignificant death,’ Gulka breathed.

‘You’re certain? Nothing that would put Gosling in jeopardy?’

‘Mmmn…absolutely nothing at all.’ Gulka chewed reflectively for a moment, knife and fork standing at attention, and then, after having decided that he believed what he’d just said, returned to his plate. When Andrianov had not made a comment after several seconds, he looked up. Innocent. Unknowing.

‘You didn’t have to intervene…send anyone to take care of it?’ Andrianov asked quietly.

‘Mmm, no, no. Nothing could be simpler. It’s purely a municipal police matter. Some little whore, she’s disgusted by her life, lovesick, homesick, who knows? She throws herself out a window in order to end it all. It’s plausible.’ Another shrug.

‘And no relatives have come forward, no one to look under the rugs?’

Gulka half-laughed, shook his head. ‘Girls like that, Sergei. No one wants them back, eh?’

Andrianov stared at him. Gulka was one of his most valuable assets. His resources were infinite. The coup would be impossible without his cooperation. If he had not been brought into the Plan, Andrianov would have been forced to kill him. Appropriately, Andrianov’s payments for his services ran to thousands of roubles each month. What made it more difficult was that the fat man knew his worth, exploited it at every opportunity, constantly tried to raise the stakes. Not for the first time Andrianov reflected that Gulka’s greed might bring the entire scheme crashing down.

‘Good. I’m glad there’s no trouble, because Gosling is important, very important, Alexandr Ivanovich. He may seem like a small bird, but we need him, eh?’

‘Mmnn…Yes, if you say so, Sergei. He’s our holy grail if you say so.’

‘He’s the one who signs the papers, and he doesn’t know us, cannot be traced back to us, yes? He’s the one who’s in front. He doesn’t know it yet, and we’ve taken these steps to ensure that he will never turn on us. That was the rationale all along, that was Ivo’s big idea. To isolate Gosling from the rest of us, yes? I’ve never met the man. You yourself said it was a good idea. I’m sure you understand his value, and I’m sure you are aware of the danger. If something were to go wrong –’

‘Nothing is going to go wrong, Sergei…’ Gulka was laughing and eating at the same time.

‘But…if something were to go wrong, better Gosling than one of us, eh?’ He waited for Gulka to comment, but the man only kept on eating. A waiter appeared, refreshed their champagne. The windows were open against the heat and the noise of the traffic along the embankment wafted into the restaurant. Andrianov stared at his own untouched plate, reached into his jacket for his wallet. ‘That’s why he’s important. He’s our insurance.’

‘I promise you, Sergei. I’ll take care of it. I have taken care of it. It’s all been taken care of,’ Gulka said without looking up from his plate.

Andrianov stared at him for a long moment. One day he would erase Gulka, he promised himself, if only for his patronizing attitude. ‘Well, good. That’s excellent, wonderful. I suppose, Alexandr Ivanovich, no news is good news as they say.’ He forced himself to smile, extracted a fifty-rouble note and slipped it under the edge of his plate. ‘Just remember, if anyone makes enquiries we shut them down, and quickly.’

‘Mmm…but of course…’ Gulka nodded, his mouth full of food, waving his fork in an ornate salute as Andrianov headed out of the room.

He met Heron inside the arched entrance to the Summer Gardens at the Alexander Nevsky Chapel, a particularly ironic spot, Andrianov thought. The chapel had been built in memory of Alexander II’s survival of an assassin’s bullet, and there was a warning inscribed on the walls – ‘Do not touch the anointed sovereign.’ It had taken the People’s Will terrorist group eight attempts to get him.

It wasn’t the same these days, he thought.

Andrianov only had to wait for a moment or two and then a carriage pulled up and Count Ivo Smyrba, the Bulgarian military attaché, leapt out, smiling. Heron was a little man, meticulous with his dress and toilet, always in fashion, utterly disorganized and distracted by his ready eye for the ladies. In some ways Smyrba was a tolerable presence, but in others vastly more disgusting than General Gulka.

Andrianov had recruited him carefully, mindful that he might be loyal after all, and funnel information straight back to Bulgarian military intelligence. Using him was delicate; valuable because Andrianov made frequent trips to Sofia, and hoped to make more. His business interests were expanding there, there was money to be made even during the recent fighting, and Smyrba had cooperated over the months, helping with introductions, information, rumours, gossip – in short, the grease that turned the wheels of industry more efficiently, war or no war.

Andrianov reminded himself to stay in control of his emotions, to maintain an even temper as they talked, yet everything that had gone wrong had been Smyrba’s fault as far as he could tell.

‘Please, I had no idea, I assure you, that the Baron…I mean, that this Gosling was like that…’ Smyrba waggled his hand to indicate an instability of mind.

‘Violent, you mean?’

‘Of course. He showed absolutely no indication. You would have never thought. A distinguished man of that sort, a man of taste. Naturally we all knew he was a paedophile. He liked children, fine. That was always the basis, the entire basis of the…’

‘Yes, your idea was good. Blackmail him, bind him to us for as long as we need him. Tell me about the photographs,’ Andrianov said quietly.

‘Oh, yes…’ There was hesitation in Smyrba’s voice.

Andrianov stopped, there on the walkway, grabbed the little man by the sleeve. Now he could see the fear in Heron’s eyes. He kept his expression muted, his face calm.

‘It’s best, Ivo, if you tell me everything,’ he said quietly. He even smiled. Perhaps that was why Smyrba was so frightened.

The little Bulgarian cleared his throat, his eyes flicked down the pathway. ‘Yes, excellency, we do have the photographs, but they are barely useable. Blurred, you see…’

‘Blurred?’

‘Well, he was moving very quickly and there was insufficient light…I brought these…’ Smyrba reached into his jacket, extracted an envelope and handed it to Andrianov. ‘As you instructed, the negatives have been placed in a box for safekeeping.’ Smyrba smiled reassuringly.

Andrianov tipped the envelope and extracted a sheaf of photographic prints. The paper was thick and textured, the kind of thing you would use if you were giving your mother a sentimental portrait.

All of them were abstract shapes. He could make out the slash of a door, the spill of light from a window, the line of someone’s back and shoulder. He was drawn immediately to Smyrba’s own face, blurred yet recognizable, as he stood in the doorway, his hands on the shoulders of a child. Another photograph showed the hallway in the background, prostitutes running out of the rooms, what looked like a man’s raised arm.

He shuffled through the photographs, but the only one that showed Gosling with clarity was a shot taken over his shoulder; the man’s white hair and side whiskers showed clearly. There was a wild expression on the face. Terror? Ecstasy?

Smyrba fumbled in his jacket for his cigar case, offered Andrianov one. Together the two men lit up. ‘You see what I mean, Sergei. I’m sorry but I’m not sure they are any good, eh?’

One by one Andrianov slid the photographs back into their envelope. ‘But still, Ivo, if we showed just one of these to him, let’s say this one where you can see his face…he wouldn’t know about the quality of the others, yes?’

For a moment Smyrba looked up at him with confusion, then he understood. ‘Yes, of course. I see. No. And we could perhaps add something…perhaps there is a police photograph, something of the dead girl that might be added –’ Smyrba giggled and sucked on his cigar ‘– for spice.’

‘Yes, Ivo. That’s very good. Let’s look on the bright side. Gosling won’t put up a fight once he thinks we’ve got photographs of him strangling a child. You will approach him, and it’s simple, either he cooperates entirely, or that photograph is all over the press. And we have the police to threaten him with.’

‘Yes…’ Smyrba was smiling now. Relaxing.

‘Good. So, now we have to clean up the mess. Did anyone see him do it?’

‘No,’ Smyrba said quickly. Maybe too quickly. ‘No, excellency. No one.’

‘Fine. What’s his condition? Is he composed, is he falling apart? What?’

‘I saw him only yesterday. Naturally, he’s nervous. He tried to get away from me. It is as if he blames me for everything that happened, you know? I think he is sinning and sinning, and now it is time to repent, and I am the one reminding him of his sin.’

‘Well…we’ll perhaps send someone around to question him, or put a little scare into him, you know?’

‘A policeman?’

‘A policeman. I don’t know. Perhaps…just something so that he doesn’t think he is off the hook. Perhaps we can organize it so it happens just when you are passing by, or visiting…’

‘He may not wish to see me.’

Andrianov smiled. ‘Oh, he’ll see you, Ivo. And when it’s all over a day or two later, you return and tell him not to worry, that he has friends, eh? Tell him that you’ll take care of him. Tell him that. Tell him that he’s in great danger but you know people who can help.’

‘I know someone who can help.’

‘That’s right, Ivo. If he plays along you can make it all go away. No one will ever know.’

‘Yes. Yes. Go away. Absolutely,’ Smyrba nodded.

Andrianov pointed to the last photograph, the one where Gosling was shown in a sweating profile, used his finger to etch a box around Gosling’s face. ‘Have this one made larger.’ He smiled. ‘So he can get a good look at himself.’

His last meeting was with Prince Evdaev and it took place at Evdaev’s mansion, an older building on Kronyerkskaya just above the Aquarium, not that distant from his own house. He was less anxious now, after seeing Gulka and Smyrba. It appeared that the crisis had been managed. They would continue with the Plan.

‘An event like this, Sergei, I don’t mind telling you, it makes you worry,’ Evdaev said quietly. At heart the man was a coward.

‘It’s been taken care of, Nestor.’

‘Yes, but…weren’t you saying that he, ah…Gosling, that he was the key? The key to the whole thing, yes?’

‘One of the keys, Nestor. One of the keys.’ They had been drinking. It was the only time to meet with Nestor. After the marches and inspections. After the parades and the endless war games were over. He wanted to leave and see Mina, but she would be asleep by now.

‘What about the detectives?’ Evdaev seemed nervous.

‘There were no detectives. She’s been delivered to the morgue.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Yes, Nestor. Not to worry.’

‘No witnesses, no names?’

‘You were there, did you see anything?’

‘I was downstairs. I stayed away.’ Evdaev was squirming in his seat. If he hadn’t been holding a glass of schnapps, he would have been wringing his hands.

‘Good. You did the right thing, and I didn’t want you anywhere near Gosling.’

‘Yes. I have no idea.’

‘That’s not your role. And you shouldn’t concern yourself further.’

‘Yes, thank you. I don’t mind telling you, this whole business…’ Evdaev sighed, wiped his hand across his brow.

Andrianov smiled. The man was an utter coward, a baby. The whole day had been like that. All through his conversations he had become less and less impressed with his recruits into the scheme. Yes, they were all important men, necessary parts of the conspiracy; yes, they had all screwed up their courage to commit treason. Yes, they all had the necessary sentiments and ideological underpinnings to carry them through the storm, but underneath they were weak, ineffectual. They loved the romance of the code names, the secret rendezvous, and, of course, the payments. But for anything difficult, anything that might involve a little dirt or blood, all of them were play-actors. He even had his doubts about how Gulka would react in a crisis. Evdaev was fit to sit on a throne and take orders, fool enough to charge into battle, but for anything dangerous he had no will whatsoever. It was one more symptom of the dry rot that had disabled the whole of Russian society.

‘We have nothing to fear, Nestor. There are no names and no witnesses. Certainly no one reliable. It’s only a whorehouse, after all.’ Andrianov laughed and after a glance at him Evdaev did too, a little self-consciously. They touched glasses.

Andrianov smiled. On the night of the consummation, he had pushed the first envelope across the surface of Evdaev’s table. Eagle, the great warrior, had been afraid to take it, recoiled from the thing as if it were a viper. By rights the prince should have reached for the telephone, called for the gendarmes. But he hadn’t. Instead he had listened, he had let Andrianov’s words draw him in, subduing his reason like the narcotic smoke of a genie’s lamp. Hardly believing as the logic coiled around him, overwhelmed him, seduced him.

‘I know what you love, Nestor,’ he said, and waited. ‘But me? I love my businesses. I have love for Mina, of course. My father’s house is one of my greatest treasures. But more than all of those…it’s Russia that I truly love.’

Evdaev was nodding at him, staring into his glass and bobbing his head. Tears starting to form in his eyes.

‘And, yes, sometimes, when we love something, and it means everything to us, and it’s been hurt or broken, well…we have to repair it, restore it. So it is with Russia…we have to sweep out the cobwebs, break out the rot, and glue things back together. Is this not true, Nestor?’

Nodding that big head.

‘We are not alone, you’re not alone, Nestor. Indeed, you are surrounded by secret friends and believers. And we offer you the world. We offer you the chance to be the saviour of your nation. We do this because honour prevents us from doing otherwise. I am here, and I devote myself to you, brother, and to our cause. And as a brother, I pledge my life to you.’ He let himself laugh a little. ‘But, I don’t have to tell you, you know. You’re a soldier. One small life, one life is nothing, not really.’

‘No,’ Evdaev said. Trying to make his voice courageous. It only came out as a burbling sound of drunken assent. Andrianov reached into his jacket, pushed a new envelope across the table. Nestor reached out quickly to save it from the spilled wine.

‘There will be more expenses. Men will have to be compensated. We will have to entertain, persuade, blackmail. There will be blood. It will not be pretty…’

‘I know,’ Evdaev said, serious now. Sobering up.

‘It’s not treason, Nestor.’

And now the big face looked up at him. Stricken. A scared stupid boy waiting for the lash.

‘No…Is it treason to see? Is it treason to realize that we’re surrounded by enemies! We’ve been humiliated by the Japanese. Who’s next, the Turks? Meanwhile our brothers in Serbia are fighting and dying to stave off conquest by Hapsburg pigs and the Jews of Vienna! We watch and dither and sit on our hands. No one is doing anything about it except us. We are the true patriots!’

‘Does Nicholas ever listen to God?’ Evdaev suddenly blurted.

‘He listens to her.’

‘Yes…’

‘And she listens to that fucking monkey Rasputin, with his chants and his séances. We need to get rid of him, all of them…It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘But the boy…’

‘Yes, yes. It’s terrible. It’s unsavoury, I admit, but the boy will be dead before he reaches the age of twenty whatever we do.’

‘Yes, I know, Sergei…they must all go, they must die, I know that, but…’

‘Yes, all of them. But our hands are clean. We’re sitting on a powder keg primed and ready to blow. When this little revolution comes, well…what they do is not our fault. They might spill some blood, but they won’t last. They’re too fragmented. One cell believes this, another believes that. But by doing this, we will clean out the stables and leave them empty and waiting for us, Nestor…Then when you become Tsar, we will hold Russia for all time. But we need a little war, a little revolution. First create a crisis, Nestor. Then control it.

‘To the death of the Romanov dynasty,’ he said and Evdaev smiled more broadly. They drank. He looked around the room. Dark, draped with carpets and tapestries found in the most distant corners of the East, a Japanese flag and crossed axes Evdaev had brought back from Port Arthur, all of it ringed with stuffed heads of boars, panthers, stags, pheasants and fish – prize specimens that Evdaev or one of his ancestors had taken at the hunt. A pair of crossed spears above the fireplace, a sooty canvas of a sixteenth-century noble in full boyar costume posed in front of a sulphurous horizon of burning trees and defeated barbarians.

Andrianov had a happy moment. How far would these sanctimonious idiots go? He shook his head, gave a worried sigh.

‘What?’ Evdaev looked up, suddenly nervous all over again.

‘Well, I’ve been wondering who is paying for the vertika’s funeral. Someone should. We can’t just let her be thrown into a pit. In a way, she’s part of the Plan after all…She’s our sister.’

‘Ah…yes, I suppose so.’ Evdaev looked suddenly sad. Almost as if someone had taken away his puppy.

‘She’s our first real casualty. I suppose that in a way she’s fallen in the service of our battle, yes?’

‘Oh, yes. Very true, very true, very true, she’s a heroine.’

‘I suppose the bindery might cover the costs, that would be appropriate.’

‘Yes, you’re right, Sergei. I’ll telephone. The company will take care of it. I’ll personally see to it.’ Suddenly Evdaev had gone all pious, a tragic note had crept into his voice like a bad actor.

‘Yes, by all means. Let’s be seen to do the decent thing,’ Andrianov said, marvelling at the gullibility of ‘patriotic’ men.

FOUR

Barely awake, Pyotr Ryzhkov was the last one to climb out of the carriage that had drawn to a halt on the shady side of the Nevsky Prospekt. It was his team and he had the training, the seniority, the responsibility…and the list. Hokhodiev and Dudenko waited while he fished it out of his pocket, and then stepped back to look at the numbers on the building. Behind him a troop of cavalry passed noisily down the wide boulevard. It was only the beginning of what would probably be an excruciatingly long day – a series of extravagant military ceremonies designed to ennoble the Tsar’s dedication of a new dock on the Admiralty Quay, a break for tea, followed by a special performance at the opera – all of it more of the tercentenary celebrations.

‘This is it, right here,’ Ryzhkov told them. It was a storefront with ornate bars that protected the glass windows: Nevka Fine Sterling. There was a pair of golden double-eagle warrants painted on the glass to show that the shop served the households of the Tsar and Dowager Empress. He went over to the door and tried it. Locked. He tapped with one knuckle on the glass as he looked through the window.

Ryzhkov thought he saw a light inside. He tapped again, harder; held the list up to the window. The silversmith was a little man, maybe in his sixties, perhaps older. White wisps of hair that had come astray and a black apron protecting his white shirt.

‘We’ve closed for the celebrations, excellency.’ The old Jew was bowing and backing through the showroom as Ryzhkov pushed his way into the shop. An equally old woman peeked out from the back. The daughter came down the stairs. She was dressed in black and held a pair of binoculars in her hand.

‘You have to leave, Father,’ Ryzhkov said, smiling. ‘Sorry.’

‘But we’re closed, and…’

‘Hey!’ Hokhodiev said sharply from over in the corner where he was inspecting a display of silver samovars. The family had taken all of their merchandise out of the window for the day. There was an extra rack of bars that closed over the window from the inside of the shop. They probably had a safe in the back somewhere, Ryzhkov thought.

‘We’ve got you on our list. You have to clear out, eh?’ Ryzhkov held up the list so the old man could see it. As if the presence of the paper explained why a Jewish silversmith might be suspected of wanting to murder the Tsar.

‘We’re closed,’ the girl on the stairs said.

Dudenko walked over to the bottom of the stairs. ‘You have to close and lock the upstairs windows, too. Didn’t they tell you that?’ The mother came out from the back and scurried over to put herself between Dudenko and her daughter. ‘I’ll do it,’ the girl said to her mother.

‘Go up with them,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to the old man. ‘He’s from Kiev.’

‘We were going to watch from upstairs, where will we go?’

‘Go home, or watch down on the corner, what about that?’ Ryzhkov said, trying to help a little. There were a lot of things about his job that he didn’t like, things he couldn’t escape, things that were just part of the atmosphere.

‘Yes…’ the old man said, staring at Ryzhkov’s chest, his hands clutching his apron. Upstairs Ryzhkov could hear Dudenko and the women shutting up the windows.

‘How did a family of Jews wind up with a shopfront on the Nevsky?’ he finally said, to break the silence while they waited.

The old man looked up at him, a little confused. ‘We inherited from my wife’s uncle. We were very fortunate,’ the old man trailed off. Ryzhkov shook his head. Why they wanted to watch the Tsar ride by when an Imperial eye-blink could exile them all to the Pale mystified him. ‘Well, just go for a walk somewhere. Anything. But you can’t stay here.’

Hokhodiev had lifted the samovar and was checking the workmanship on the base. The old man was watching him with alarm, one hand floating out, too frightened to ask him to put it down. The girl had come back down.

‘How long is this going to take?’ she said. Her voice was sullen and her face was red.

‘Well, how can I say? It’s not up to me. You know these priests, they go on and on. No one knows. When the Tsar is ready to go home, I suppose. Come back around two, that ought to be long enough,’ Ryzhkov said, trying to smile a little so she’d go along with the dance.

‘Yes, yes, of course. Two.’ The old man had overcome his fear, slipped around Ryzhkov and was heading for Hokhodiev, who had turned his attention to the valves on the samovar, screwing them this way and that. ‘Are you interested in this item, excellency?’

‘What? Oh, no. Just looking. Nice stuff, some of this.’

‘Yes, thank you, thank you.’ The old silversmith settled the samovar back on its base.

‘They can’t pray for all that time,’ the girl was still complaining. She had put on a jacket.

‘Probably not, but just lock up, now. We’ll stick around to make sure, eh?’ Ryzhkov said, and headed for the door.

‘Everything’s closed upstairs,’ Dudenko said, looking the girl over as he passed behind her at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Look,’ the girl started, still not giving up. ‘This doesn’t make sense –’

‘Don’t,’ said Ryzhkov, tired of it all, tired of cajoling. The girl stopped when she heard the edge in his voice. All of the policemen were looking at her. Ryzhkov reached into his pocket and pulled out his disc. He held it up so the Jews could all see that they weren’t just ordinary cops. ‘We don’t want to make any trouble. It shouldn’t be that hard for you to find somewhere to spend the day. Go and sit in a restaurant, but hurry up. We have others. We have a whole list to do before the procession starts.’

He turned to the old man. ‘Tell her what’s what,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

They went outside and stood around watching the street start to fill up. Women, children, families all dressed up for the occasion. Little flags on sticks for the children to wave when the Imperial family passed by. Dudenko looked around and saw Ryzhkov’s sour expression and then looked away out into the street. Sometimes it was better to just leave Ryzhkov alone when he was looking like that.

‘What’s wrong?’ Hokhodiev asked, seeing Ryzhkov’s expression and watching him reach up and rub his jaw. ‘Are you sick? Toothache?’

‘I don’t know, maybe.’

‘Hmm. You’re not going to make a mess, are you?’ Hokhodiev asked, frowning.

‘No. It’s not like that,’ Ryzhkov muttered. The pain went away as fast as it had come.

Ryzhkov consulted the list and they moved further down the wide limestone pavements of the Nevsky. They followed the Jews to make sure they didn’t just come straight back. Dudenko still had his eyes on the girl. Hokhodiev looked over and nudged the young man out of his reverie. ‘You could convert, eh? I think she liked your dominating personality back there, you know? Having you visiting her bedroom, and all,’ he laughed.

‘Go screw yourself, Kostya,’ Dudenko said, but he still kept looking at the girl.

‘Here we are. This place here.’ Ryzhkov had found the next address. They ascended a narrow staircase that led to a set of offices used by three different suspect newspapers. The names of the publications had been painted on one of the glass doors, Beacon, Russian Alert! and Popular Knowledge. They banged on the main door that was marked as the entrance, and then went along the corridor banging on all the doors but no one answered. Ryzhkov got Dudenko to find the dvornik, a kind of combination caretaker, porter and concierge for the building, and extract him from his shack in the courtyard. Absurdly the dvornik had forgotten his pass keys, so Ryzhkov fished out his picks and in a few seconds they had broken into the offices.

Inside was a musty collection of desks, writing lamps, battered typewriting machines, and cluttered bookshelves. There were piles of paper on every surface. In one corner was a small hand press, something you could use to whip off a few hundred radical leaflets in half an hour and then wipe clean.

‘We ought to seal this place, eh?’ said Hokhodiev, but Ryzhkov shrugged. If the editors of the collection of newspapers had managed to pass the censors, who was he to shut them down? Maybe they were paying someone off. Whatever it was he didn’t want to fool with it.

There was only one more address on their side of the Nevsky, a café, supposedly a centre of wellheeled, intellectual, hot-blooded anarchism. When they got there the owners had already closed. Ryzhkov stepped down into the street so that he could see the topmost windows. Everything appeared to be shuttered.

‘Knock anyway,’ he told Dudenko. ‘Go around the back, Konstantin,’ he said to Hokhodiev. ‘See if they left anyone up there.’ He had started to fantasize that some assassin was waiting in an upstairs room for the Tsar’s carriage, a marksman with a hunting rifle and a lot of tangled ideas about starting a Slavic version of the French Revolution. He waited while they went about their tasks. Stood there and had a cigarette and watched the street.

The Nevsky: one of the great thoroughfares of Europe. Nearly two miles long, running arrow-straight from the golden spire of the Admiralty to Moscow Station where it turned, angling south towards the domes of the Alexander Nevsky monastery.

Ryzhkov loved the street at the sudden start of spring, when the pedestrians came out to promenade; all of them drawn to the bustle, the elegance, and the energy of the great boulevard. Along the sides of the street the cobbles had been replaced by hexagonal wooden blocks in an effort to dampen the noise of the carriages. Still, on a busy day it was the sheer cacophony that defined the prospekt – the shouts, the whistles, the clattering of the horses’ hooves, the carriages flying past, the splutterings of the motorcars, the yelping blasts of their horns, the ringing of the bells on the trams. The murmur of thousands of conversations, the buzzing of the throng as they moved from shop to shop; laughing, arguing, complaining, lecturing. Shop assistants mingled with soldiers, who mingled with priests, who mingled with tea-sellers and princesses. Some walked briskly, desperately about on some pressing business, faces grim. Others simply idled along, content to be part of the great stream of humanity with no place better to go, admiring their reflections in the shop windows. An endless promenade; a blend of the ultra-rich in silks and feathers, with newly-arrived peasants clutching their hats in their grimy hands, staring up at the fantastic buildings. That was life on the Nevsky; it was the spine, the vibrant centre of modern Russia.

But this morning all that vigour was restrained, forced off the balconies, and out of the windows, everything cordoned off to allow the Tsar free passage.

‘I got in up there. Nothing,’ said Hokhodiev from behind him. Dudenko was talking to a man on the corner. They were pointing to the café. The man was smoking, trying not to show his nervousness at being grilled by one of the Okhrana. Dudenko nodded and the man smiled with relief and ran back across the street. Coming back to them, Dudenko looked happy, almost blushing, Ryzhkov thought. Like a spring bride. Young, alive, and maybe even delighted to be pushing people around who were too scared to fight back. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he reported.

Hokhodiev looked over at Ryzhkov again. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling up to all this?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Fine for now anyway.’

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