The Jewel of St Petersburg (14 page)

V
IKTOR ARKIN’S FACE WAS DISTORTED. ONE EYE SLID away into his hairline while his mouth stretched to the size of a wrench. For a second he stared at his reflection in the curved surface of the Turicum’s brass headlight and wondered what else in him might be distorted, somewhere deeper where he couldn’t see. It worried him how much he loved this car. It was dangerous. To love something or somebody that much—it created a weak spot inside you. He couldn’t afford weak spots. Nevertheless he smiled fondly at the gleaming blue curve of the front fender and ran a cloth along its graceful line.

“A visitor for you.”

Arkin looked around at the sound of Liev’s voice. The Cossack stood in the doorway. He looked amused. Not a good sign.

“Where?”

“In the yard.”

Arkin folded his polishing cloth and placed it on the shelf before moving past the Cossack and out of the garage into the yard where darkness was just beginning to fall, laying shadows like dead creatures on the cobbles. On the right stood the stables and the coach house, in front of him a water pump and trough, but to the left rose an archway over a path that led around to the front of the house. Just beside the archway stood a young woman. She wore a headscarf tied tightly under her chin against the icy wind and a long belted coat that looked as though it had once belonged to a man. Her manner was awkward, a self-conscious dip of her head.

“A friend of yours?” Popkov laughed and gestured to his own stomach, making a wide imaginary bulge over it.

The woman was heavily pregnant. Even under the coat it was obvious.

“Go and polish a hoof or comb a mane or something,” Arkin said, and went over to the woman. He greeted her cautiously.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m here with a message. From Mikhail Sergeyev.”

Immediately he took her arm. It was thin and unresisting. He led her into the garage, where, out of the wind, her face relaxed and she gave him a shy smile.

“I’m Mikhail’s wife, Larisa.”

In that moment, something came undone inside him. All that he’d been keeping so tight and orderly in his head seemed to shift out of place. The way she said it, so simply, so proudly.
I’m Mikhail’s wife, Larisa.
Her hand resting on her swollen stomach. He recalled his mother saying the same.
I’m Mikhail Arkin’s wife
,
Roza,
her hand resting on her swollen stomach. Two weeks later she and the unborn child were dead from septicemia because his father had no money for a doctor. It happened on his ninth birthday. With a sense of something close to pain, he found himself wanting a child of his own, wanting a woman with a swollen belly that carried that child, despite all that he’d said to Sergeyev about families being a thing of the past. He smiled at her, shaken.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

She nodded. Her lips were pale, her eyes dark-ringed and anxious. “It’s Mikhail. He was hurt in an accident at work.”

“Is it bad?”

“His arm is broken.”

He gave her a smile of reassurance. “It will heal quickly,” he said. “Mikhail is strong.”

But he knew what it meant for them. No work meant no money. For food, for rent, for the baby. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his last three cigarettes and a few coins. It was all he had.

“Here, give this to your husband.”

She let him place his offerings in her small hand. “Can you spare it?”

“Get him to Father Morozov’s church hall. There’s hot food there.”

“Spasibo,”
she whispered. “His boss gave him enough roubles to pay our rent.”

“That’s unusual. Who is this man?”

“Direktor
Friis.”

“Are you still working in the glue factory?”

She shrugged.
“Da.
Yes.”

He felt the fire in his gut kick into life, the one that burned to bring justice to this wretched city. One brass headlight. That’s all it would take. He could wrench it off the car and give it to her to sell. Enough to mean life for the new baby, enough to prevent its mother’s milk drying up from starvation.

“He’s worried,” she said nervously, “about... the job he has to do with you tonight.”

“Tell Mikhail from me not to worry. I’ll deal with it. Go home and rest. Eat something.”

“Spasibo.”

“Good luck with the baby.”

She smiled, a gentle hopeful smile. Slowly she set off back across the uneven cobbles with the rolling gait that belongs to a drunken man or a pregnant woman. Arkin watched her until she was out of sight, standing there in the wind. So the time had come. He felt a nerve start up on the edge of his jaw, and no matter how hard he tried to control it, he couldn’t. But he was ready for what he would have to do tonight.

Nine

J
ENS WAS NOT A DANCING MAN. HE’D COME TO THE DAMN ball to waylay Minister Davidov, for no other reason, but so far there was no sign of him. He lingered briefly in the Anichkov Palace’s opulent anterooms but their marble columns and lavish gilt moldings were hardly relaxing, so he took himself off to a salon where a game of cards was in progress.

After an hour he was content to pocket a handful of roubles and promissory notes. He enjoyed gambling. But he was wary of it, too. He’d seen what it could do to a man. He’d sat at a card table with a man who put a revolver to his forehead in the middle of a game and blew his brains out. And once on a station platform he’d embraced an old friend who was being carted off to ten years in Siberia for taking part in a conspiracy. The man had risked everything on an intrigue at court to oust Grand Duke Vladimir from control of the army. He’d gambled and lost.

Yes, Jens liked to gamble, but he picked his moments. Tonight was one of them.

F
RIIS, I DIDN’T EXPECT TO FIND YOU HERE.”

Jens was surprised that Davidov sought him out among the crowd, but it made the first step that much easier.

“Good evening,
dobriy vecher,
Minister.”

They greeted each other with a formal incline of the head, not exactly a bow but close. The minister was a saturnine creature with heavy eyebrows, and after the clash the other day in the meeting over the tunnel funding, there was a certain frigidity in his manner. He was wearing an elegant tailcoat with a stiff white waistcoat and collar but had the look of a man with his mind set on things other than enjoying himself. Nevertheless his cheeks were florid instead of their usual ash gray, and Jens wondered how much good French brandy he had already consumed.

“Good evening, madam.”

Jens bowed over the hand of Andrei Davidov’s wife, a small, fluttery middle-aged woman in a violently purple gown. She smiled a lot, as though to make up for her husband’s solemn face.

“What a lovely evening,” she beamed. “My goodness, how I love to see you gentlemen looking so grand.”

The place was thick with military men in dress uniform. Elaborate braid and colorful shoulder boards strutted the grand rooms as young soldiers vied with each other to attract the flutter of a fan from one of the young ladies. At social events in St. Petersburg the army officers dominated the room, magnificent in their white or blue or scarlet uniforms, the Hussar Guards always the most splendid and the most arrogant. It was the army that had made Russia strong, and they never let St. Petersburg forget it.

The master of ceremonies, in powdered white wig and tight red breeches, struck the marble steps three times with his golden staff to announce yet another new arrival.

“Do you dance?” Madam Davidova asked Jens, her head tilted to the side like a hopeful sparrow.

Jens’s stomach sank. He glanced at Davidov.

“Go ahead,” the minister urged. “Not a dancer myself.”

“I’d be honored, madam,” Jens responded with a gallant bow. As he offered his arm to escort her toward the dance floor, he said casually over his shoulder, “Davidov, a word or two later, if you don’t mind.”

Davidov’s eyes narrowed, but his wife chirped, “Of course you will, won’t you, Andrei?”

Jens turned to his dance partner with new respect. He smiled. She smiled back.

T
HEY DANCED A MAZURKA. IT WAS ONE OF THOSE ENERGETIC dances that gave him the shudders, a set of eight couples weaving inexplicably between partners. Finding the right path among the sliding steps was worse than threading his horse through a forest in the dark.

He was concentrating so hard on the fast tempo that he almost missed the pair of deep brown eyes staring at him from across the room. He stumbled. Apologized to his partner. But when he glanced back, the dark eyes had gone, lost amid a swirl of elegant coiffures and a shimmer of silk. He recalled a striking impression of a long pale neck, a delicate line of cheek, and a white dress with high white gloves. The images had vanished in the crowded ballroom, but he’d recognized those eyes. And he intended to find them again.

D
ON’T WASTE YOUR BREATH, FRIIS.” ”Minister Davidov, I suggest you listen to what I have to say.”

“More money. That’s what you’re after. More funds for the bloody sewers.”

Jens found a tight smile. “I’m not here to talk sewers.”

“What then?”

“Land.”

The minister expanded his narrow chest. “I’m listening.”

“The population of Petersburg is increasing at a rapid rate, as we both know. The result is a severe housing shortage. So the cost of a house or apartment in the center of the city is growing exorbitant.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Yet there are many vacant plots. Scraps of scrubland in the poorer areas and on the outskirts of the city that are available for a few hundred roubles. But no one wants them.”

“Because they’re in the bloody slums.” Davidov snorted out a coil of cigar smoke. “If you want to go off and live packed into a filthy shack with ten other families, feel free. But don’t expect the rest of us to follow you.” He started to move away.

“Some of those areas won’t be slums much longer.”

The minister stopped. Turned back. And Jens knew he had him.

“People always want houses. But at the moment the wealthy only want to live where there are shops, restaurants and, more importantly”—he paused, making Davidov wait—“modern hygienic sewers and water supplies.”

He watched the minister’s eyebrows lift. “Go on.”

“Modern bathrooms. Modern kitchens. These are made possible by the tunnels I am building under the city. And it means that a plot of land, worth nothing one day, can be worth a small fortune the next.”

Davidov’s thin lips stretched into what was meant as a smile. “You’re right.” He drew on his cigar thoughtfully. “Damn you, you’re right.”

“Who is the person,” Jens asked softly, “who controls which tunnels are excavated into which areas? Who is the person who knows which parcels of land will therefore rise in value?”

Davidov placed sinewy fingers on Jens’s wrist, gripping hard.

“You do,” the minister said in a hoarse whisper. “You bastard.”