Field of Mars (50 page)

Always dreaming up something fantastic, something no other engineer had even conceived. Fortifications too far-fetched to be constructed, barracks that would house only fantasy legions. His life a mystery of frustration, a self-created puzzle, because finally he had never understood why he had not progressed any further. He'd never understood that he aspired to a world from which he would always be excluded; an Olympus where effort and inventiveness didn't matter, where the hat one chose to wear was of more interest than the brain it sheltered. Yes, his father had craved a glittering world perpetually just out of reach; like the sound of music emanating from a spectacular party to which one had not been invited.

And he never knew it.

I'm the same way, Ryzhkov thought sadly. I've inherited his closed-mindedness. I'm just like him, blind as a bat. Tilting at windmills, pushing boulders up hills, chasing my own tail. The realization stopped him for a moment, depressed him even more, as he gazed down at the photographs of Russia's young aristocrats.

Well, it was too late to change, he told himself, as he shook the depression off. He didn't want any of it anyway. He didn't want to be like any of the men whose photographs were in the books. He'd seen too much to want any of that.

He had Evdaev's published pamphlets, nearly a dozen altogether—revisionist histories that traced the Slavic race's rise to power in ancient Russ, attempted to justify their displacement from the Mediterranean by the treacherous Moors, fulminated against their denial of the Aryan homelands of India by the British. Always surrounded, thwarted, displaced. A slow rhythm of frustration that permeated all of Evdaev's adulthood. The books were stacked on the corner of Ryzhkov's table, printed on the highest quality paper, bound in blue morocco with gilt lettering. And beneath the signature on the title page the colophon of Andrianov's publishing houses. Suddenly the Apollo Bindery made sense.

After that it was just a matter of finding the right books in the stacks; the annual of the Imperial Yacht Club. And in only a few minutes, as he opened the fine leather binding, as he turned through the heavy pages, let his gaze scan the happy faces of the members in their carefully posed photographs—Ryzhkov found the conspirators at play.

Yes, Andrianov's mentor had started in the army, in his beloved Corps des Pages. He had become an aficionado of history, a specialist in conspiracy and in the dark arts. Perhaps it was then that he began his long love affair with the sea. With the great Russian dream to possess Constantinople, to open the Black Sea. Perhaps Gulka had seen himself as a catalyst, hoping to play a part in the creation of a new Peter the Great, a great navigator, the founder of a New Russia. When Andrianov had given Gulka the opportunity to ascend to the top of the Third Branch he had accepted it at once, smoothly. Gracefully, invisibly with no pomp or ceremony.

The Third Branch had been Gulka's own personal Constantinople, the strategic fulfilment of his own ambitions. A way to shape destiny to his way of thinking. Control. Perhaps it was the illusion of being in control of the elements that drew Gulka to the sea. Perhaps it was the feeling of freedom.

He was an experienced mariner; the librarian brought Ryzhkov a dozen previous annuals that all revealed Gulka with his yachting friends, born high and low. A giddy celebration with Gulka lifting a silver plate awarded for a second place in the Petersburg to Stockholm race for 1909. Evdaev had been on the crew. Ryzhkov followed his voyages through the years, the boats getting larger and larger. A photograph of Gulka and his late wife, standing with a group of other happy sailors. In the most recent annual, for 1913, he came across Andrianov, a little too well dressed for a day's sailing, smiling tightly as he held on to one of the stays of the yacht, Evdaev and Gulka posed beside him, armin-arm like brothers. All of them smiling in the sun.

There was the sound of a drumroll and a clattering outside as a squadron of cavalry passed by the windows, and, as he looked out on to the dusty street, a great settling came over Ryzhkov. He had been staring out of the window for some minutes without realizing, because he only snapped out of it when the librarian came over.

‘Anything else, sir? We are closing in just a few moments.'

He shook his head politely and the librarian smiled at him.

Even with his bruised face and dishevelled clothing, he must have resembled the kind of patron she liked. Well-mannered, gentle. Civilized. An enthusiastic reader who knew what he was looking for, sat quietly, and didn't fold over the corners of the pages.

FORTY-SIX

‘Oh, God . . . look at you. Stay here, I'll get her,' he heard a woman saying. It took him a second or two to place the voice—Larissa. When he opened his eyes, she had gone, and after a moment he realized he was in the back lane behind the Komet. He must have fallen asleep in the rubbish. Then he thought that Larissa seeing him was a mistake, something he should have been careful to avoid. He couldn't let anyone see him. Even as Pravdin he had been too afraid to register for a room in Petersburg. Too late now . . . And then, bone-tired, he tried to get up, in order to leave before anyone else came along. And by that time Vera had come out and was helping him stand up.

‘Are you crazy?' she said. ‘Are you completely crazy? You can't come back here, you have to leave, Pyotr. The police come around here all the time now.' She was looking down the lane to make sure they hadn't been seen; over her shoulder he saw Larissa guarding the door. The two women glanced at each other and Larissa nodded, waved them away and ducked back inside.

‘Let's go,' Vera said. ‘I know a place.' And he found himself staggering down the alley in the pearly light, propped up by her strong dancer's legs.

The place she knew was a flea-bitten hotel with rooms rented by the hour. She left him outside while she made the deal with the receptionist. He went past the counter with his head down, face turned away, just another drunk, embarrassed, married man.

At the top of the steps he grabbed her, spun her around. What he wanted to do was kiss her, to hold her and beg for everything to be like it was, or like he had wanted it to be. What he really wanted to do was go back in time. He would never see her again, he was thinking. Never.

‘Don't, Pyotr,' she said quietly. He had already let her go and she looked down and fiddled with the key, unlocked the door. He went into the cramped room, stood at the window, found himself reflexively watching the street. Going to the Komet had been insane, he thought, but there was no other choice. Where else could he go? But he needed her and so he couldn't stay away. One more time, that's all he had wanted. Just one more time.

There was a knock on the door, and he heard her open it and bring in the samovar. A tinkling of glasses.

‘You'd better drink that tea before it gets cold,' she said.

‘Yes. Thanks . . . I'm going to be leaving,' he said as he kicked off his shoes, began fumbling with his trouser buttons.

‘Do you know where?'

‘No.'

‘Have you seen this?' She dug a sheet of paper out of her bag, unfolded it. It was leaflet printed by the police; a smudgy photograph occupied most of the page. There he was—younger, unfathomably more innocent, staring into the camera with a slight air of superiority, as if the whole thing were just a waste of time. Below it his life had been reduced to a list of dates and addresses and a warning that he was considered armed and dangerous and that any information leading to his arrest would fetch a substantial reward.

‘You should grow your moustache out,' she said. ‘I can bleach your hair for you, if you want.' For the first time he realized she had turned herself into a blonde.

‘It's nice,' he said.

‘Thank you.'

‘Did you get the roses I sent? I was running. I couldn't say much of anything on the card.'

‘Oh yes. I didn't try to find you, but of course I didn't know . . . I didn't know anything. I still don't.'

He gave her back the police leaflet. ‘I can't stay here, there's nothing here anyway, I'm sure Filippa's lawyers have taken everything. I'd only get killed if I tried to get back my part of it . . .' He was talking nonsense.

‘So?' she said quietly.

‘So . . . Pyotr is dead,' he shrugged. Then he sat there with one leg in his trousers and one out and told her the long story, starting from the explosion in the street that took Fauré and the entire team, Gulka and the race to Sarajevo, Hokhodiev on his lonely mountaintop, and the blood-stained confessions he'd grabbed when he fled Evdaev's.

‘Do they know about me?' she asked.

‘No, I don't think so. If Andrianov really thought you were dangerous he would have had his contacts pick you up already. Gulka's gone, so he doesn't have access to all the information—' He was suddenly seized with a fit of coughing. She passed him the tea, he took another drink and the coughing stopped.

‘Everyone's gone, dead, or run away,' he said. ‘Everyone but me . . .' And looking up at her, he changed it to—‘Everyone but
us
.' Wondering why they'd been spared; was an angel keeping him safe so that he could be God's sword of vengeance against Andrianov? After that would God need him any more?

‘Andrianov the zillionaire?' She was staring at a photograph of Andrianov he had ripped out of one of the yearbooks, picked it out of Pyotr's pile of papers.

He nodded.

She looked at the photograph for another long moment. ‘These people. What a life. Everybody knows you, they follow your exploits in the paper. If you stumble on the pavement, they say you're drunk, and if you are a drunk, they say you're a visionary genius. Sergei Andrianov, he's behind all this?'

‘If I can find him, I'll kill him,' he said in a tired, thin voice.

‘I'm sorry, I don't understand. Someone like him? He has everything anyway, what else does he want?' she said, looking at it with a little frown. ‘Patron of the arts, king of the city, new, modern man. He needs more than that? I guess so. Everybody's on their own now anyway.'

‘You know, once upon a time I found your name on a list,' he said. ‘It was before Fauré, just a standard surveillance report. Thousands of them are written each week. I don't know why they started the file; perhaps because of Kushner. They were probably following, you know . . . someone else.'

‘It was Kushner. Maybe he's right, I don't know. You look where things are heading and you start thinking he's right. All the blue-bloods are starting a war and we're supposed to rush to defend their honour? Why? What are we supposed to be thinking? Whatever the newspapers tell us? Kushner says we're building a movement, so I go along with it; I tell him things to make him go away. What do I have against German dancers, or the Vienna ballet? Are they supposed to be my enemies? Who's cooking it all up, you tell me. Rasputin? Monsters like this?' She dropped the photograph on the table.

He had fallen into staring at the pattern on the tablecloth, something intricate and oriental with repeating symbols around its borders, cleverly making knots about themselves, all somehow working out evenly so that there was no beginning or end to the maze.

‘You need to sleep. Come on . . . we'll stay here. For tonight.'

‘I love you,' he said. The way it came out, it didn't sound ardent, just a fact, a sad fact. Something almost gloomy, a statement of a medical condition or a boring scientific principle. So that it was equal in importance to everything else—I have six legs, I am an insect, I have a tumour in my chest. It is raining. I love you. They are trying to kill me . . . us . . .

He was sorry he'd said it. It was over now, anyway. Escape from Andrianov? Somebody with that much money could do anything, follow them to the ends of the earth even if it took years. No matter how far he ran, or how many colours she dyed her hair. For them it was over. Fast or slow, it was still over.

He would be gone, gone tomorrow. No moving in with her, no picking out wallpaper, no more blissful dreams. No furniture.

‘Come on . . . you need to sleep,' she said again, and reached around and helped him with his braces.

‘Vera . . .'

He was suddenly plunged into a great dark pit, a sadness so great that he thought he would begin sobbing. There was nothing for them. No matter how much he dreamed, how many romantic fables he invented with the two of them in starring roles, none of it, none of it would ever come true.

‘I should be going, but . . .' he said, but he didn't move.

‘You won't get very far without your trousers.' She reached across and took his hand. Her fingers were cool. The room was suddenly chilly and he shivered as if someone had walked across his grave.

‘You go. I shouldn't have anything to do with you any more . . .'

‘And vice versa, I'm sure, but I think it's probably too late for that, don't you,' and she had taken him in her arms. Warmth.

‘You might be falling ill,' she said, and he felt her cool fingers on his battered forehead. ‘You don't need a love-slave, you need a nurse.' And she led him to the bed, helped him pull off his clothes, and pushed him under the quilt. Climbed in behind and balled herself around him. Pushed her face tight against his neck, reached around and splayed her fingers across his heart and pulled him close.

It wasn't long that she had to wait. In a few minutes he had fallen into a deep sleep, his breathing slow and regular. Then she slowly slid out from under the covers, slipped his pistol into her handbag, crept out of the little room, and locked the door behind her.

FORTY-SEVEN

Is that the artist's curse? To never know oneself, one's true
self
, to spend your life with another you on your shoulder, always watching, always judging—do it better, do it harder, hold it longer, be more graceful, move a few inches into your light, speak a little louder for the balcony. Whether you're a great diva or a simple street performer, the curse is the same. Perhaps it is a way of never being alone, an even more terrifying fate for a performer.