The Jewel of St Petersburg (56 page)

“You are one of the Bolsheviks,” she stated flatly.

He did not bother to answer.

“Is the money for the revolution?”

“Of course. To finance the socialist cause. Did you think otherwise?”

This time it was she who didn’t answer.

“Why did you shoot Jens Friis and Captain Chernov at the duel?”

A faint smile crossed his face, and for a moment she saw something of the polite chauffeur he used to be. “That is not important now.” He rose to his feet. “I will be back here by this evening.” He nodded at the man beside the door, whittling a stick with a knife. “Mazhik will guard you.” Again that slight tilt of the mouth. “Don’t annoy him.”

Mazhik grinned and cleaned his blade on his beard.

“What will you do, Arkin, when my father says no?”

“You had better hope he doesn’t.”

She didn’t push him further. “Before you go, will you please order Mazhik to open the shutters of our room?” She added, “We cannot escape. The metal mesh is enough. The light would make this ... this”—she gestured to the locked door of the bedroom—“more bearable.”

To her surprise he nodded curtly. No argument. She stood up.
Gently, tread gently
. “And medicine? Would you bring back some morphine, please, for Katya? She’s ... desperate, though she doesn’t show it.”

He nodded again and rubbed a hand over his stubble. It was the gesture of a tired man. “I promise you this, if I get money from your father today, she will get her morphine.”

“If not?”

He shrugged and moved to the door that led outside. The overnight rain had dragged itself northward, and an empty blue sky hovered above as though waiting for something. Silky shreds of mist hung over the flat landscape, trailing gray fingers in the marshes where waterbirds squabbled as they bathed. As he strode down the steps he glanced back at her to ensure she wasn’t trying to escape, but she remained standing meekly by the table. He studied her slight figure in the rolled-up trousers and bulky checked shirt.

“Those clothes look better on you than they ever did on me.”

She clamped her tongue between her teeth and managed not to spit.

Thirty-four

T
HE WIND WAS CHILL WITH THE STREETS DARK AS THE devil without lamps or sidewalks as Jens moved silently through a maze of backstreets. He kept alert as they twisted and turned, splitting into dingy alleyways and courtyards that spilled into one another with no warning. The main thoroughfares were designed by Peter the Great to be the showpiece of the Western world, but behind the palaces and the magnificent façades, these overcrowded hives of the underclasses had spread like sores. Bitterness and resentment festered.

In front of one of the shabby houses, Jens walked down a flight of stone steps to a basement, wet and slippery underfoot. This was no place to live. Down below the water level. The swampland on which St. Petersburg was constructed liked to reclaim its own when the rain was heavy or the tides high. Basements flooded throughout the city, yet here people still lived in them. It was either that or sleep on the street. He banged at a door. It opened warily, and a woman in a flannel nightdress stared up at him.

“I’m looking for Larisa Sergeyeva,” he announced. “Is she here?”

The woman blinked rapidly and backed away into the room behind her, allowing Jens to enter. My God,
bozhe moi,
Jens put a hand over his nose. In the unsteady light of two candles, he could make out that the room was large and stretched away into darkness but was packed right up to the low ceiling with bunk beds and bodies huddled together for warmth. There must have been thirty to forty people. Scraps of sheet were draped over a few of the beds in an attempt at privacy, and children lay on grubby mattresses on the floor.

“Larisa!” the woman in the nightdress shouted. “A gentleman visitor for you!”

Voices jeered good-naturedly and a thin young woman stepped forward from the shadows, a baby asleep in her arms.

“Larisa Sergeyeva?” Jens asked.

“Da.”

“I’d like a word with you.”

“What about?”

“It’s a private matter.” He flicked a glance at the rows of eyes trained on them. “Outside, I think.”

She didn’t argue. She handed the baby to the woman who had opened the door and followed Jens up into the street. He saw her shiver. Good. He wanted her to be nervous. He led her into the slice of murky light that fell onto the road from a nearby window and inspected her. Her face was gentle, with shy uncertain eyes and light brown hair cut in a line at jaw level. One of her feet was kicking at the dirt road with quick jabs.

“You are the widow of Mikhail Sergeyev?”

“Yes.” Her voice was soft. Pleasant on the ear.

“I believe he was a friend of Viktor Arkin.”

Abruptly her foot stopped kicking. Her eyes lowered. “I don’t know.”

He could shake her. Till her teeth rattled and her soft lying tongue fell out. Instead he dropped his voice. “I think you do.”

She shook her head and fingered her lips in silence.

“He brings food to you,” Jens stated.

“Sometimes.”

“I want to speak with him. Tonight.”

Her eyes lifted nervously to his. “Who are you?”

“My name is Jens Friis.”

“Direktor
Friis?”

“Yes. Your husband worked for me.”

“You helped us when he broke his arm.” She touched his hand. “Thank you.
Spasibo
. We would have starved.”

“The baby?”

“She’s well.”

“I wish I could say the same of Valentina Ivanova.”

“What? I don’t understand. Who is she?”

Jens lowered his face to hers and said fiercely, “Tell Arkin I want to see him. Now.”

She shook her head and scurried back down the steps.

S
HE WASN’T CAREFUL ENOUGH, NOWHERE NEAR CAREFUL enough. Larisa Sergeyeva kept looking back over her shoulder as she ran down the alleyways, but at the wrong times and in the wrong places. Ten minutes after he left her, she set off from the house with a scarf over her head and something bulky in her pocket. He could see the way it dragged at her coat. She was too easy to follow.

He tracked her to a narrow passage with high brick walls on either side from which footfalls echoed, but she was running and would only hear the beating of her own heart. He moved in the shadows and merged with the wall when she stopped at the end of the passage, scanning its length. When she suddenly turned into the rear entrance of a noisy bar, he hung back under an archway. Almost immediately she emerged again, and behind her loped a dark figure who was careful to avoid the lamplight from the bar. They drew into a doorway and spoke in whispers. This was the man, the one who had left his fingerprints all over Petersburg. Jens drew a gun from his waistband and checked the pool of darkness behind him in the passageway. Never before had he killed a man, but this one would rot in hell before the night was over. He moved forward to the doorway.

“Arkin! Where is she?”

Arkin made no sound, but Larisa Sergeyeva released a sharp gasp. “I didn’t bring him here, Viktor, I swear.”

Jens ignored her. “Where is she?” The gun was aimed at the bastard’s head.

Arkin stepped away from the woman. He came into the open and regarded Jens with a watchful stare. “The engineer,” he said softly. “If you kill me, she will also die.”

Jens lowered the gun till it was pointing at Arkin’s right knee. “Listen carefully. If you ever want to walk straight again, talk now. Where are they?”

Arkin looked down at the gun and for a moment said nothing. “How did you know about Larisa?”

“You are not the only one with eyes and spies in this city.”

“What do you—”

His voice was cut off as a massive arm came from behind and encircled his neck. The woman screamed.

“Remember our friend, Liev Popkov?” Jens slammed the gun into Arkin’s jaw and heard him grunt. “He was tortured by the Okhrana police because of you. And let’s not forget the hole in my chest because of you. It would give us both a great deal of pleasure to put a bullet in you in return.”

“Let me rip his head off first,” Popkov growled.

Larisa whimpered.

“No,” Jens said. “A bullet in the right knee first, then in the left.”

Arkin struggled in Popkov’s grip, but it was like trying to escape from a bear and when his arm was twisted almost out of its socket, he stopped. Jens stepped closer, his voice harsh. “One last time, Arkin. Where is she?”

“Fuck off.”

“It’s your choice.” He aimed the gun.

“Let him go.” It was the woman.

She was pointing a revolver of her own at Jens. Her hand was shaking and she was shifting nervously from foot to foot, but at this range she couldn’t miss.

“Larisa,” Jens said quietly, “don’t do this. You will ruin your life and your child’s. Whatever you decide, I am going to blow this murdering bastard’s leg off right now if he doesn’t tell me where he’s hiding the Ivanova daughters.”

“If you do, I swear I’ll kill you,” she said. “I need his help, if I am to keep my baby alive.”

“That’s a risk I’ll take.”

She tightened the grip on her gun. He looked away from her.

“Arkin, where is Valentina?”

Arkin stared at the woman and kept his mouth shut. Jens drew a breath but before he could pull the trigger Popkov suddenly released his stranglehold on his prisoner and moved back from him. Before they could blink, Arkin was gone.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jens shouted at the big man.

“The little mouse would have killed you. What good are you dead to Valentina?”

H
OW MUCH DO YOU GIVE?
THE QUESTION HUNG IN VALENTINA’S mind.
What is the price? What is the price one person should pay and where do you draw the line? When do you say no, enough is enough?

Who says where guilt starts and where guilt ends?

Valentina stood with her face pressed against the window grille, breathing in the scents of the wetlands and listening to the birds as if this would be the last time she would hear their songs. She squinted through the mesh toward the open-sided hut outside, where logs were stacked in untidy rows. A rat with half an ear ripped off stared back at her suspiciously from the woodpile.

“Valentina, do you think we’ll go home tomorrow?”

She turned and faced her sister on the bed. Gray lines like the footprints of tears ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth. Valentina smiled. “Of course we will.”

I
T WAS LATE WHEN ARKIN ARRIVED BACK AT THE
IZBA
THAT night and pushed open the door. Valentina heard it slam on its hinges and caught the drag of his footsteps across the boards. Not a good day then. The rumble of male voices lasted no more than a couple of minutes before the outer door slammed again and she heard Mazhik swear thunderously as he stomped off across the yard. Arkin didn’t knock, just unlocked the door to their room and walked in. He didn’t offer even that courtesy.

“Dobriy vecher,
good evening,” Valentina greeted him.

“Here is bread and water for tonight.”

“Morphine?”