The Jewel of St Petersburg (17 page)

“Would you?”

“What?”

“Would you buy from people who steal? If you were in business.”

She thought seriously about the question. Would she?

“Yes,” she answered, surprising herself. “Yes, I think I would. If I had to.”

He laughed. “Good,” he said. “Then we shall get on well.”

Didn’t he know? They were already getting on well.

Eleven

O
UTSIDE THE ANICHKOV PALACE AGAIN THEY STOOD together in the drive in front of the triple-arched entrance. A thousand lights blazed out in a brash display of gaudy wealth. The palace belonged to the dowager empress, the tsar’s mother, who was adept at maintaining a magnificent rival court that eclipsed her daughter-in-law’s halfhearted efforts. The guests had grown raucous at this late hour. Some were spilling out into their carriages to move on to other balls that would go on until five o’clock in the morning. There was the clatter of wheels and the jangle of harness. The night was loud and the stars felt worlds away. Neither Valentina nor Jens made any move to re-enter the party.

“Your chaperone will be waiting,” Jens said.

“She will.”

“Will you be in trouble?”

The way he looked at her made her want to stay here exactly like this, with his tall figure in the gray overcoat so close she could touch it. She pushed back her hood.

“My friend’s mother is acting as my chaperone tonight. She’s watching over several of us now that the new season is starting. I expect she’ll be furious, but”—she slid him a conspiratorial smile—“I shall say I have been improving my knowledge by learning about the stars. Anyway she has probably been so intent on her own enjoyment that she scarcely noticed I was gone.”

“The whole room would notice you were gone.”

“Spasibo.
Jens. Thank you for showing me the stars tonight.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the palace, seemed about to say something, then inclined his head instead. “It was my pleasure.”

So formal? So suddenly correct? His face not the face that had peered so intently into hers beside the forest. Is that what a court party did to a person? Made him someone else?

“I wish you luck with your tunnels,” she offered, because she didn’t know what else to say.

“Thank you.”

“Shall I tell you something?”

“Please do.”

His feet didn’t move even an inch closer, yet she felt him edge nearer.

“I know as much about tunnels,” she said, “as you do about stars.”

His long elegant nose gave a snort.

“I may not know the chemistry and biology I need, but I do know my stars,” she said.

She wanted him to laugh but he was staring at her instead, a hard questioning stare. “Why on earth would you need to know chemistry and biology?”

“I intend to become a nurse.”

He studied her face and she couldn’t tell what was going on behind the shadowy green eyes. She saw him breathe heavily.

“My friend is a doctor.” He spoke in a careful voice. “He tells me that to be a nurse you need to be tough. To deal with the blood and the wounds. And you need to work hard.”

“I work hard.”

Slowly he smiled, one edge of his mouth curling higher than the other. “I believe you do.”

“I’ll not faint at the sight of blood. And I can be tough.”

“Maybe you’ll have to work at that one.”

“Trust me. I can do it.” With a lift of her chin, she set off and hurried toward the grand entrance.

“Valentina!”

She turned. Jens still stood there, like the mast of a Viking sailing ship, tall and straight. The night air swirled around him.

“May I call on you?” he asked.

She didn’t even make him wait, didn’t pretend to think about it. “You may.”

“I enjoyed this evening.”

“Even the rifle shots?”

“Especially the rifle shots.”

She knew exactly what he meant.

T
HE ENORMOUS BRAZIERS OUTSIDE THE ANICHKOV PALACE burned with flames that licked at the darkness, painting it a strident orange. Hundreds of coachmen, beards stiff with ice, warmed their hands on the welcome heat throughout the night and abandoned it only reluctantly when summoned back to their carriage by a departing guest.

Arkin watched the sables and the tiaras descend the palace steps. So expensive, so showy, so worthless. Butterflies to be stamped on. What about women like Sergeyev’s wife? Heavily pregnant yet still slaving to earn a pittance, barely enough to stay alive. Did these butterflies have no conscience? But it was not the women he was interested in tonight, it was the men. One man in particular.

Prime Minister Stolypin.

Arkin had changed into his chauffeur uniform, even though Minister Ivanov was not attending the ball tonight. The uniform made him invisible among all the other chauffeurs and coachmen, and he needed to be nothing more than one of the shadows of the night lifting off the thick blue ice of the Neva.

The incident earlier this evening in the forest had set him on edge. Was it an omen? That tonight was a night when things would go wrong? It was the first time they had been caught hauling the guns, and he’d had to restrain himself. The open spaces out there always made him jumpy. A quick bullet, two bodies in the snow. It would have guaranteed silence, but the police would inevitably have come sniffing around and found the cart tracks through the trees. No, just a few shots over the head of the pampered pet in the sleigh, that was enough. But even so. He clenched his teeth and told himself he didn’t believe in omens.

A murmur flicked like a spark around the groups at the braziers, and Arkin was quick to react. He moved silently toward the palace. Someone important was leaving the ball, someone who could stir the jaded coachmen to pause as they took a nip of vodka and turn to look. The tall figure of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin was descending the steps with three others: two young men in bright uniforms and a pretty young woman with almost white-blond hair and a large laughing mouth. These three were nothing to Arkin. He saw only Stolypin.

Arkin reached for the sack that was hooked onto his belt under his liveried coat.
This is political, he told himself. Political. This man is inflicting terror on the people of Russia.
Sixty thousand.
Sixty thousand.
That was the number of political prisoners he’d had executed or sentenced to penal labor in his first three years in office. Thousands more peasants were tried in military field courts when Stolypin decreed that all farm communes must be dismantled. Hundreds of newspapers and trade unions were being closed down by force because their aims did not coincide with Stolypin’s.

I am fighting against revolution.

The prime minister’s words were etched in his brain. No matter how many times Stolypin claimed he was in favor of reform or how many lies slid off his tongue, he believed the only way forward was through vicious repression. Arkin had seen the results of it all around him. Heard the screams at night, seen the heartbreak, felt the scourge on the backs of the workers. Tonight’s action would be a service to Russia. If he died himself.... He shrugged and stood in silence in the black shadow of a sedan car. He pushed an arm inside the sack and lit the fuse. Instantly his heart rate rocketed. He had two minutes. One hundred twenty seconds. No more.

This is political.

But in his head reared an image of his father, a proud barrel-chested farmer arguing with and defying a tall bear of a man who had come to the rural provinces to address a village meeting. That tall man was Stolypin. Another image of crimson streaks slithering down flayed flesh into the dirt, his father’s fingers clenched in agony, his back caving in with each lash of the knout. The shame, not for himself but for his father, would never go away.

This is not personal, this is political.

Everyone knew Prime Minister Stolypin wore body armor at all times and surrounded himself with security men, because this would not be the first attempt on his life. Arkin could see them gathering like cockroaches around the carriage that had drawn up, a pair of horses breathing heavily into the cold air. Arkin had expected a car, but it made no difference. The young people climbed in as other cars and carriages milled around, drivers and footmen jostling for space.

Fifteen seconds.

Lights from the palace threw long shadows, distorting the shape of the carriage, as Arkin edged closer. The prime minister clambered up the steps into its interior, booming his big laugh.

Thirty seconds.

The sack hissed in his grip and there was the smell of scorched fibers as the fuse burned down. With Stolypin safely inside the vehicle, the guards relaxed and started to move toward the front. Arkin slipped forward into the deep shadow at the back, threw the sack under the carriage, and stepped away quickly.

Forty-five seconds.

He was counting each tick of the clock in his head.

“Hey, you!”

A hand gripped his shoulder and his heart stopped. Sweat gathered at his throat. He turned and saw a giant guardsman towering over him. “What do you want?” Arkin demanded gruffly, surprised to hear his own voice so calm. “I’m in a hurry. My minister has ordered me to fetch his car.”

The man registered Arkin’s livery. “What’s your name?”

“Grigoryev.”

“Well, Grigoryev, you tell your minister to wait until ...”

Arkin stopped listening. Stolypin was stepping out of the carriage. He was shouting something over his shoulder to his companions inside.

“Wait here,” the prime minister called, “I must remind Prince Vasily that we are riding together tomorrow.”

Arkin watched every movement as if it were slowed a hundred times. The gleaming shoe pressing down on the red carpet into the palace, the gloved hand opening and shutting like a mouth talking, the lift of a shoulder, the twist of the beard as Stolypin hurried away.

Sixty seconds?

Oh God, he’d lost count.

He tried to pull away from the guardsman’s grip but it remained firm. Quickly he pointed toward the two horses at the front of the carriage, which were tossing their black heads and restlessly stamping the ground. Could they smell the fuse burning?

“You need to help keep those animals quiet or the prime minister’s carriage will be off without him. He won’t like that.”

Instantly the guardsman lost interest in Arkin and headed forward. Other horses were whinnying, struggling to back away into the darkness, and Arkin cast a glance at the shadowy space beneath the carriage, but nothing was visible.

Ninety seconds? Or was it more?

He swung away and started to run, counting in his head. Thirty paces. Would it be enough? He dragged icy air into his lungs, cursing as his legs leapt over curbs and dodged wheels, cursing Stolypin, cursing the guardsman.

Cursing his luck.

He threw himself behind a magnificent Rolls-Royce, solid as a rock, just as his mental clock clicked to one hundred twenty. For two seconds he crouched there, heart slamming into his ribs, not thinking. Nerves raw.

The explosion tore a gigantic hole in the night. A bright flash ripped through the darkness and the force of the blast rocked the Rolls-Royce on its wheels, smashing its windows and bending its solid metal panels. Arkin’s ears pulsed painfully. Glass rained down on him like ice daggers from the night sky. He forced a breath into his empty lungs and made an effort to stand, but what he saw as he stared at the scene of destruction in front of him made him wish he’d just kept running.

Screams, bodies, and blood filled the gap where the carriage had stood. A slick scarlet stream leaked across the road, while the smell of gelignite and fear hung in the night air sharper than the ice daggers. Figures lay on the ground, but panic sent others fleeing this place of death. Arkin felt sick. Directly in front of him lay the two beautiful horses that had pulled Stolypin’s carriage. One was clearly dead, its back twisted at an impossible angle; the other had lost both its rear legs, but it was alive and screaming. Men in uniforms were running around waving guns in their hands, seizing anyone still on his feet. Arkin wanted to melt away into the darkness, away from the carnage, away from the powerful man standing like a vengeful devil at the top of the palace steps, bellowing his fury into the night air. Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. He was still alive.

Arkin cursed him under his breath. Then, oblivious to the risk, he drew a gun from under his jacket, hurried over to the horse, and put a bullet in its brain. The animal’s brown eyes widened in surprise as it died, forelegs thrashing. Tears rolled down Arkin’s cheeks.