The People's Will (28 page)

The other bedroom was clearly the one that Luka had normally used. The bedlinen smelt of human sweat. There were clothes here too. Some of them were women’s; Dusya’s, he guessed. How would she be taking the news of her lover’s death? As stoically as he himself had, Mihail would have to assume. They both had their hatreds: he of Iuda; she of the tsar. It was an effective immunization against sorrow.

He went back to the living room. He’d expected the
ohraniki
to have done their job thoroughly and so there was really only one place they might not have looked. The pictures still hung on the wall, but they could easily have been removed and replaced. Mihail went over to the one that Luka had glanced at when afraid. It was a watercolour, a cheap copy of a view of Moscow by Alekseyev. Mihail lifted it off the wall.

Behind it the wallpaper had been neatly slashed in the shape of a cross – one vertical stroke, one horizontal. Looking more closely Mihail could see that this was in fact a separate square of wallpaper, of the same pattern that covered the remainder of the room, but pasted over at this point. Behind the flapping corners he could see a cavity in the wall beyond. Luka – or someone else – must have removed a few bricks to create the hole, put whatever he wanted in there and then concealed his work with both the wallpaper and the picture. An alert
ohranik
had not been
fooled, but had removed the painting, cut through the paper and uncovered whatever lay within.

Mihail reached inside. It was cold and a little damp in there, but nothing of its contents remained. He looked behind the other pictures in the room, but in each case the wall was solid. He sat down on the same chair he had used when first visiting Luka. So he had been right in guessing where Luka kept his secrets, but had been beaten to the chase. He went over and lifted the picture from the wall again, desperately groping around in the cavity behind in the hope that they – and he – might have missed something. He was about to hang the painting again when he noticed something odd about it.

Instead of the usual cheap brown paper, the picture was backed with wallpaper – the same wallpaper that had been used to cover the hole. He ripped it away and at last found what he was looking for – or at least found something. It was a letter. The envelope was unsealed and unaddressed. Mihail leaned the picture against the wall and pulled out the single sheet of paper from inside the envelope. Handwriting filled one side.

To the manager, Hôtel d’Europe, Saint Petersburg,

As we discussed, please allow the bearer unhindered access to my apartments in order that he may manage my affairs until my return.

Yours faithfully,

Collegiate Councillor Vasiliy Grigoryevich Chernetskiy

Mihail clicked his tongue. It was the only hint he gave of his excitement, both to have a clue that might lead him to Iuda, under whatever pseudonym he went by, and also to have been smarter than the Ohrana.

He quickly checked the other pictures, but none had been similarly used as a hiding place. He sat again and considered. This would be his only chance to search the apartment. Was there anything he’d missed?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of feet on the stairs outside. He heard a shout. Perhaps it was not the Ohrana and perhaps they were not coming here, but he wasn’t going to stay
to find out. He slipped the letter into his pocket and went back to the bedroom, unhitching the rope and clambering out across the windowsill. Already he could hear that they had entered the apartment.

‘Someone’s been here. How the hell did they get past you?’

Mihail did not wait for the response. He slid down and across and in seconds was at the next-door window, moments later through it. He skipped briskly down the stairs and out of the building. The
dvornik
was still asleep.

Out on the street he looked towards the door of number 15, but even the gendarme had gone – rushing upstairs to be upbraided by his superior. There was no need for Mihail even to run. He sauntered calmly away.

‘You’re free to go.’

They were evidently not words that the sentry regarded as a part of his duty to recite, and so he made no effort to hide his childish disappointment. Iuda looked up from where he sat on his straw mattress and smiled broadly.

‘Colonel Otrepyev has relented then?’

‘This came from higher up.’

Iuda had not expected any different. It had taken a few days and countless messages sent and received through the pipes. The People’s Will had little idea that their communication system might be shared with at least one quite distinct set of individuals, whose identity they would despise if they knew it. It was foolish of them. Did Alexander Graham Bell think his new invention would be reserved exclusively for the use of himself and his friends?

The deal was done. Iuda received his freedom and in return all he had to do was visit a certain building at a certain time and discuss an arrangement with a certain highly placed dignitary. The deal would be to their mutual advantage, but even in offering it Iuda had ensured his freedom. But there was never a question in his mind that he would fulfil his side of the bargain.

He took one last look around his cell. He had been here only a week, far less than in his previous gaol. He glanced up at the little window, high above. It was dark now. That was thoughtful on the part of the man who had ordered his release. There would
be no hanging around just inside the gates of the fortress, looking for excuses to delay his departure. Everyone he encountered, it seemed, wanted to ensure he remained alive. It was not by accident. He could only congratulate himself on having become so indispensable.

He was escorted through Saint Peter’s Gate and the Ivan Gate. Only then did they unlock his manacles and allow him to cross the Petrovsky Bridge on his own. He was free. In his head he knew that his first thought should be for safety – not personal safety but the safety of his possessions. Luka was dead – Iuda had heard that through the pipes – but that didn’t mean he hadn’t let slip some information about Iuda’s rooms at the Hôtel d’Europe. There was much there that he treasured.

But he could not deny his nature. He was a
voordalak
, and however much he might insist to himself that he was different and that his brain ruled his actions, he still, like any of them, needed sustenance. He could have taken one of the guards once he was out of his cell, and would still have escaped easily, but that would not have pleased the man who had ordered his liberation. And it would have had to be quick. Much better to slip into the dark streets of Petersburg and hunt at leisure.

Once off the bridge he doubled back on himself and walked along the path beside the Kronversky Channel, separating Hare Island, on which the fortress stood, from the larger Petersburgsky Island. Some former inmates might have tried to get away from the place of their captivity as quickly and directly as possible, but Iuda enjoyed his freedom more for the sight of the building that had contained him. Even so it was soon behind him. He stepped down on to the ice and crossed the Lesser Neva to Vasilievskiy Island. Minutes later he was among the Twelve Colleges, at the heart of Petersburg’s university. It was busy here with students – both rich and poor – out in search of an evening’s entertainment.

It was nothing compared to Oxford. It reeked of modernity. Iuda had already been forty-one years old when Petersburg University was founded. Oxford was founded before … before even Zmyeevich was born. Iuda could not say he had enjoyed his time at Trinity, though he had certainly benefited from it. The young Richard Cain desired solely to learn of the natural world, but
in those days that was only just beginning to be considered a subject suitable for gentlemanly study. His tutors had instructed him in languages, divinity and history, all of which would ultimately prove useful to him, but in studying and understanding science he had been forced to teach himself – dragging knowledge from those few dons who possessed it, instead of having it forced into him as with the other subjects.

On graduating he chose to travel, and managed to bluff his way aboard a merchant vessel – the
White Hart
– as an apprentice to the ship’s surgeon. They sailed south, then through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. It was quite unplanned, but there the ship became part of the great battle between Napoleon and Nelson for the possession of Egypt.

The
White Hart
and its crew – Cain included – had been captured by the French frigate
Artémise
which had in turn been sunk by the British at the Battle of the Nile. Cain had managed to salvage his notebooks, and a little of the captain’s stash of Louis d’Or, then thrown himself to the mercy of the waves. At the age of just twenty he found himself alone, washed up on an Egyptian beach.

He made his way east, following the path of the Israelites, but rounding the tip of the Gulf of Suez rather than waiting for the waters to part so that he could march straight through. He did not linger in the Holy Land but continued north, noting as he went the remarkable fauna he encountered, quite unlike anything he had observed in England. He arrived at the Black Sea coast in the town of Samsun and there, with little real direction to his wanderings but the desire to learn, found a passage to Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula. It was the first time he set foot on Russian soil, little knowing that the country was to become his second home.

It was his detailed study of wildlife in the Crimea that gained him, on his eventual return to England, his fellowship at the Royal Society. He catalogued several species that were previously quite unknown in the West and provided details of the life cycle of many others. His favourite creature – the vampire excepted, of which he had encountered none since leaving Esher – was the scolopendra. He had seen centipedes and the like in England, and
on his travels, but it was the venomous bite and carnivorous temperament of these creatures that fascinated him most. In later years he heard of relatives from South America that grew to over a foot in length and would devour creatures as large as bats and could defend themselves against tarantulas. In the Crimea he only witnessed them feeding on other insects and once a small lizard. Perhaps his life would have been different if his travels had taken him to that distant continent, but he had no regrets.

It was also on that first visit to the Crimea that he reached Bakhchisaray and climbed up to the citadel of Chufut Kalye to explore its caves. Even then he had remarked how the steep cliffs around it had created what, with a little human intervention, might become an inescapable prison – a fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war – but he had not then guessed what manner of creature his prisoners might be.

In total he spent six years in the Crimea, venturing occasionally into southern Russia and on one expedition getting as far as Odessa. He spoke Russian almost perfectly, though when later he travelled to the north of the country he realized that he sounded like a yokel, and quickly learned to adjust his accent. Eventually, he craved a return to civilization and began to make his way back west, sailing first from Sevastopol to Constantinople. By the time he arrived, the Ottoman Empire was at war with Russia, and an Englishman who could speak Russian was seized upon as being of enormous potential use to the sultan. Cain was happy to be made use of – for a fee.

The sultan at the time was Mustafa IV, whose reign was to prove brief and to whom Cain never spoke in person. His grand vizier was Çelebi Mustafa Pasha, who negotiated with Cain and quickly dispatched him north to the Danube where he would be able to channel valuable information back to the Porte. Ibrahim Edhem Pasha, who had later betrayed Iuda, was not even born, but Iuda came to wonder if some record of his first visit to Constantinople might have been passed down through the years.

By the time Cain reached the front lines both the grand vizier and the sultan had fallen from power, and the deal they had struck was meaningless, but for the time being it was safer to stick with the small band of Turks he’d been assigned to lead. They soon
crossed the Russian lines and were in Wallachia. Only a few days into their mission, when he and his squad had camped high in the hills, he saw his chance and crept away. But he was out of luck. In the valley below he stumbled across a Russian encampment. There was no way he could sneak past, and he had no desire to return to the Turks. His solution was elegant. He simply marched in among the Russians, announced himself to be one of their own and revealed the location of his erstwhile comrades.

A platoon was dispatched, briefed by Cain as to exactly where the enemy was situated, and he retired for a relatively comfortable night’s sleep, confident that he would soon be able to give the Russians the slip and head for the Adriatic coast and thence back to England. Outside the campfire blazed, Russian troops sitting around it, chatting and eating. Cain wondered for a moment whether he should join them, but preferred to rest.

It was a little after midnight that the camp was attacked. To begin with all that Cain knew of it was the screams from nearby tents. His first thought was that somehow his Turkish companions had survived the Russian raid and were coming for their revenge. He looked out of the tent and saw silhouettes flitting through the camp in the glowing firelight, running from tent to tent. Guns fired, but he saw no one fall. He had no gun – the Russians had not trusted him enough to allow him to carry a musket. All they had left him was his beloved double-bladed knife, and he doubted that would be much use against even a sword. He looked around him but could see nothing that might be used for his defence, except possibly the pole that supported the tent itself – a thick stake of wood, almost like a lance.

Before he could do anything to get hold of it, he realized that he was no longer alone. He turned and saw a figure standing at the open flap of the tent. The face was instantly familiar – it had not aged or gained one wrinkle, even in fifteen years.

‘Honoré,’ Cain gasped.