The Jewel of St Petersburg (41 page)

I
’VE NEVER SEEN VALENTINA SO HAPPY.”

Jens smiled at Katya and balanced the tiny teacup on his knee. “It’s working in the hospital that has done it. She has gained a sense of purpose.”

“That’s what Mama says.”

“Your mother is probably right.”

“Mama does not know her as well as I do.”

“What is it,” he asked carefully, “that you know, that your mother doesn’t?”

“Jens, I may not have the use of my legs but I can still use my eyes.”

“So what is it you see?”

She laughed. “I see the way her skin glows when it should be gray and weary from long hours at the hospital, how her step grows heavy when she is forced to spend the day at home. I see the way her mouth smiles a secret smile when she thinks no one is watching, and the way her breath catches. She’ll be in the middle of a sentence and suddenly she can’t speak.” Katya’s voice grew wistful. “I believe it happens when she has just remembered something.”

“What kind of thing?”

“A moment. One that invades her mind.”

“Katya, what an acutely observant girl you are.”

“She’s my sister. I love her.”

Their gaze held. “So do I,” he said softly.

She nodded, bouncing her blond curls. “I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know Valentina. She is in love, and she is loved.”

“I will take great care of her, Katya.”

She smiled at him. “I believe you will, Jens. But be careful. If Papa finds out that she prefers you over Captain Chernov, he will deny you entry to this house.”

“Thank you for the warning.”

It could not be easy for Katya to give him her sister so readily.

J
ENS HEARD THE UPROAR FROM THE STABLES BEFORE HE reached them. Fearing for Hero, he moved quickly. Shouts and crashes were reverberating off the wooden walls, and he found five men beating the hell out of Popkov. The big man was lumbering and lunging like a drunken bear, blood pouring from a gash above his eye. The other grooms had fled, and that meant only one thing. They knew exactly who these men were in their black coats and polished boots, and knew enough to keep away. But five against one struck Jens as harsh odds.

He seized one attacker’s shoulder, spun him around, and received a fist in his stomach as a thank-you. He grunted. Before another fist could come his way, he rammed his head into the other man’s chest, knocking the bastard off balance. A quick upward jerk of Jens’s neck and his head cracked the man’s jaw. A scream ripped through the damp air, setting the horses into a frenzy of kicking and whinnying. Curses and crowbars crunched down on Popkov’s shoulders till he hit the ground, but he took two men with him. Boots thudded and chests heaved with effort.

“For Christ’s sake,” Jens shouted, “stop this now. You’ll kill him. What’s going on here?”

One head half-turned. A face with heavy features and a mulberry birthmark glared at him from eyes that were nothing but dense black pupils, deep greedy pits of enjoyment.

“Get lost. Unless you want some of the same.”

A crowbar swung from the side and threatened to smack against Jens’s skull. He had no idea what this fight was about, but he no longer cared. He ducked, snatched the knout from a hook on the wall and unleashed it. Its lash was tipped with metal barbs.

The first crack of the whip ripped open a man’s back; the second sliced a strip of flesh from an unguarded neck. Blood spurted onto the straw. The two men, who were still standing, abandoned their Cossack prey and turned on Jens, but another flick of his wrist curled the length of rawhide through the air in elegant swinging loops. They backed off. Too late they became aware of the wounded man on his feet behind them. The stolen crowbar in his fist slammed down first on one head, then on the other, and they dropped like stones.

“Fuck them!” Popkov bellowed.

“Fuck you!” Jens muttered, breathing hard. “What the hell did you do to start this fight?”

They were both looking at each other, trying not to grin. Unexpected blood brothers.

“Damn it,” Jens said, “what have you gotten me into?”

A quiet voice came from behind him. “Put down that whip. And you, oaf, drop that metal bar.” No threat in it. Just a quiet statement. “Or I will put a bullet in your brain.”

Twenty-five

F
EAR COMES IN MANY GUISES. FOR JENS IT CAME IN THE form of a pen, the pen in his questioner’s hand. When his questioner was calm it lay still and somnolent between the man’s fingers, but when he grew agitated it adopted a fast
flick-flick-flick.
Jens’s heart rate echoed its beat.

“Ask Minister Ivanov,” Jens said for the twentieth time. “It’s his house, not mine. I came to collect my horse, that’s all.”

“Why was the horse there in the first place?”

“I told you. I was visiting the minister’s daughter.”

“Or were you using that excuse just as a cover to give you access to the stables?”

“No.”

“To retrieve the box of hand grenades from where you’d hidden it.”

“No.”

“When did you secrete the grenades in the stables?”

“I didn’t.”

“Who asked you to collect them?”

“Nobody. I know nothing about them.”

“You attacked my agents with a whip.”

“They were killing the Cossack.”

“So you admit this Liev Popkov is your accomplice in an anti-government plot.”

“No. I hardly know the man. He is a servant there; that’s all I know of him.”

“You’re lying.”

“No.”

They danced around in circles.
Flick-flick-flick.
Jens sat as though indifferent to it all as he replied to the same questions again and again. Yet it was all so civilized. No bare interrogation room, no harsh lights, no handcuffs tearing his skin. A chair with padded arms, even the offer of a cigarette. Which he declined.

They were seated in an ordinary office with manila folders and a flourishing potted plant on a shelf. A smart new carpet on the floor. No bloodstains, Jens noticed. His questioner was a small balding man with a patient face and large ears, which he fingered in moments of uncertainty. Each time Jens said, “Speak to Minister Ivanov. He is a loyal servant of His Imperial Majesty,” the fingers sought out an earlobe. The questioner was treading with care, feeling for how thin the ice was under his feet.

The damn Cossack was a fool. Nowhere was safe, nowhere unobserved by Okhrana eyes. If Popkov thought the stables of a government minister would be a clever place to hide antigovernment weapons, he knew nothing about the way the secret police worked. Nevertheless he found it hard to believe that Popkov was a Bolshevik. Damn it, it gave him the shivers to think of Valentina anywhere near such a lethal package.

“Where is Liev Popkov?” he asked abruptly.

“The revolutionary is being interrogated.”

Jens’s blood chilled.
Interrogated.

“I don’t believe Popkov is a revolutionary. Anyone could have put the grenades there to endanger the minister.”

“Including you.”

“No, not me.”

“What you believe is irrelevant.”

The man’s eyes were hungry. He wanted to unleash his teeth and devour Jens, but something was holding him back. Jens realized it was the title beside his own name on the front of the folder on the desk. JENS FRIIS: ENGINEER TO His MAJESTY THE TSAR.

ENGINEER TO HIS MAJESTY THE TSAR.

He would make use of it, that title. Why not? His pulse drummed in his ears. He knew there were a hundred reasons why not, a hundred interrogation cells in the basement nowhere near as cozy as this one. Ones with chains attached to the chairs and dried blood on the tiled walls. He spoke pleasantly to his questioner.

“Where is Liev Popkov?” he asked. “I want to see him.”

It was plain the man was annoyed by the request but struggled not to show it. After a long silence during which the pen flicked back and forth he rose to his feet, walked over to the door, and swung it open with such force that it banged off the wall.

“Come.”

J
ENS GRIPPED ONTO THE EDGE OF HIS FURY. STOPPED IT FROM banging its fist against the metal door, prevented it from seizing his escort’s neck and ramming it through the narrow observation flap. He stood outside the prison cell and called Popkov’s name.

Inside the cell he could make out a broad back, blood pouring from fresh wounds. He moved closer and through the rectangular peephole in the door saw the Cossack chained by his wrists to the opposite wall. Stark naked but still on his feet, face pressed to the filthy tiles. The massive muscles of his buttocks were black with bruises; electrodes trailed from his genitals to a battery. Feces slithered down the back of his legs.

Stink. Sweat. Blood.

T
HE NOISES OF THE CITY WERE MUTED. IT WAS LATE EVEning when Jens arrived at the imposing residence of the Ivanovs and he half-expected to find it locked and shuttered, soldiers on guard outside, its windows black and lifeless. But no. Lights blazed. That was a good sign. He was admitted immediately by a footman whose eyes skipped away, small nervous eyes. Whatever had gone on here between Minister Ivanov and the police, after he was carted off with Popkov, had left its mark.

Jens carried his own mark too. His right shoulder throbbed where one particular bastard had been too free with his rifle butt during the arrest. The footman led him to the blue salon, the one where he had sat with Valentina that first time, but he didn’t expect to see her tonight because her father would have shut her away. Her name had to remain untainted by the scandal in his stables.

“Jens Friis,” the footman announced.

Jens entered the brightly lit room and took a moment to adjust. To his surprise they were all there. General Ivanov looked formal in a dark green frock coat, his back to the fire, his bushy eyebrows pulled together over weary eyes, one foot tapping the marble hearth. Elizaveta Ivanova sat as unmoving as a doll on the ottoman, hands in her lap, a glass of water at her side.

But Jens hardly noticed either of them because Valentina filled his eyes. She was seated on a sofa next to her sister. Both were wearing cream dresses but the contrast between them could not have been greater. Katya’s face was streaked with tears, although she smiled at Jens at once. She looked relieved by his arrival. But Valentina gave him no such welcome. Her brown eyes were almost black with rage, and he could see it was not her father with whom she was furious, it was him. Her hair was tied back from her face, and this time it was not her beauty that struck him so forcefully, but her strength. A fine steel mesh under the skin. He had sensed it before but never seen it so clearly. He wanted to sit down and explain to her why he’d gotten into a fight with Okhrana agents, but instead he turned to her father.

“Minister Ivanov, I am thankful to see you all safe.”

“Friis, what the hell do you think you were doing in my stables? Lashing out at the police with a whip? I’m amazed they’ve released you after a display like that.

“The police were mistaken,” Jens said firmly. He didn’t look at Valentina. “They were killing one of your servants. Don’t you care?”

“Damn you, man. I care that there was a box of grenades in the stables that could have blown us all to hell.” Ivanov started to pace back and forth in front of the fire. Shoulders tense, fists clenched.