The White Russian (16 page)

“My colleague here was informed that you warned the Okhrana to be on the lookout for a man called Robert White, an armed robber from Chicago.”

“Correct.”

“Is that the same man as the Robert Whitewater who has not paid his bill at the Astoria?”

“It is likely. But I cannot say for certain.” Morris handed back the photograph.

“But you don’t know if this is him?”

“No, as I’ve said.”

“The man at the Astoria gave his address as care of the American embassy.”

Morris shrugged.

“He’s nothing to do with you?”

“No.”

“His real name, then, is Robert White?”

“He travels under many names. He prefers to amend genuine passports, of which he appears to have an unlimited number.” Morris tugged at his trousers and adjusted his eyeglasses once more. “His real name is White.”

Ruzsky waited for Morris to go on, but the American just continued to regard him with the same level gaze. “Well, who is he, and what is he doing in St. Petersburg?”

“A warning was handed to your colleagues in the Okhrana, as you may know.”

“What was the warning?”

Morris studied his feet. “It concerned his presence.”

“White was an agent of yours?”

Morris looked up, but didn’t blink. “Quite the reverse. He is a criminal and labor agitator of the worst kind.”

“A labor agitator?”

“In the steel mills.”

“Does your State Department have time to treat all American criminals in this way?”

“Robert White has incurred the wrath of some extremely important and wealthy people.”

“What has he done?”

Morris shook his head slowly.

“So you were looking for him?”

“Yes.”

“And you found him?”

“We had reason to believe that he was returning to St. Petersburg.”

“Why did you have reason to believe that?”

Morris was progressively abandoning any attempt to appear cooperative, but Ruzsky found it hard to fathom why.

“You warned the Okhrana?”

“We asked for more information on White’s previous activities here, and those of one of his Russian associates.”

“But none was forthcoming?”

Morris didn’t answer.

“Who was the Russian associate?”

“You will have to ask your colleagues in the Okhrana.”

Ruzsky thought he detected a hint of a challenge in Morris’s eyes. He held up the photograph. “Is this White?”

“If not, then he has slipped the net again.”

“The man had no identification on him. But our pathologist said he thought it was possible that this man was an American, judging by his dental work.”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Could you get your State Department to send a description?”

Morris looked from Ruzsky to Pavel and back again. He seemed to be assessing them. “Your photograph fits the description.”

“So this is White?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But then you’re not saying anything very much.”

Morris stood. “I’m grateful to you gentlemen for stopping by.”

Ruzsky did not move. “Why here?” he asked. “Why now? A criminal and labor agitator?”

Morris did not answer. He was staring out of the window toward the Admiralty spire.

“An American with a history of labor agitation in his native country comes to Russia at a time when all the talk is of revolution against the rule of the tsars.”

“Mr. White is considerably more interested in crime than revolution.” Morris smiled warily. “And your colleagues in the Okhrana are quite adept at keeping watch on political activists.”

“So they knew this man was in Petersburg?”

“I informed them six weeks ago, just as I have told you.”

“That you believed White was on his way to Russia?”

“Precisely.”

“And the Okhrana did not reply?”

Morris shook his head.

“You have heard nothing from them?”

Morris gave them a tight but knowing smile. Ruzsky got the impression he didn’t like the Okhrana very much.

“Who did you speak to?”

Morris shook his head.

“Something tells me, sir,” Ruzsky said gently, “that there are other things you could choose to share with us.”

Morris smiled, his eyebrows arched. “An investigator’s instinct?”

“The look on your face.”

“It is not my city,” Morris said, shaking his head. “Not my country.”

“Not the American way.”

Morris smiled again. “Not the American way, no.” He looked at Pavel and then back at Ruzsky. “Good day, gentlemen. And good luck.”

For a moment, in the cold street outside, Ruzsky and Pavel stood in silence, each with their own thoughts, Morris’s evident suspicion of the Okhrana hanging between them. “So it was White,” Pavel said. His expression was serious.

“Yes.”

“Robert White. What do you think he was doing here?”

“I have no idea, but I think Morris probably does.”

“He’s suspicious of us,” Pavel went on.

“Or of the Okhrana, or of the city, or of Russia. He looked to me like a man with too much knowledge, who no longer feels confident of drawing distinctions.”

Pavel stared disconsolately at the ground.

“Will you call the Okhrana records office? See if you can get some hint of what they have on White.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“You might slip through the net. Why would the records library know what the senior officers are doing?”

“You’ve been away, don’t forget. No one does anything over there without authorization now, even the most basic query. Vasilyev’s orders.”

“Well, try. See what their reaction is at least.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have to go and see my brother.”

“Lunch at the club?”

“I’ve been in Tobolsk, he’s been at the front.”

“Well, I hope there isn’t another murder this afternoon. I’d hate anything to get in the way of your social arrangements.”

Pavel walked off. Ruzsky called after him. “Fuck you, too.”

Pavel turned around. “Don’t forget you’ve got a briefing to do.”

“When?”

Pavel stopped. “In your own good time.”

“I think we should try and go back out to Tsarskoe Selo this afternoon.”

“If you can fit it into your schedule.”

“We’ll go out straight after lunch and we’ll brief them when we get back.”

“Whatever you say, boss. Enjoy your lunch.”

“Could you do me one more favor?”

“I doubt it.”

“Put out an all stations bulletin. See if any of them have anything on White?”

Pavel turned on his heel and walked away.

A t the Imperial Yacht Club, time had stood still for more than a hundred years. From the carriages parked outside alongside those for the Astoria, the drivers stamping their feet against the cold, smoking and gossiping in small groups, to the ornate, dimly lit stairwell and the gilt-edged mirrors of the dining room, it had remained resolutely the preserve of the elite within the elite.

Ruzsky walked past the boarded-up German embassy and across St. Isaac’s Square, stopping to allow a car to pass. He heard the noonday gun as he reached the grand gray building’s front entrance. Parked right outside stood two sleds with the distinctive gold crowns and crimson velvet upholstery of grand dukes of the Romanov dynasty.

The doorman, dressed in the club’s blue and gold livery, nodded his head. “Good day, sir. Your brother is waiting in the dining room.” For the first time since he’d been sent to Tobolsk, and perhaps for much longer than that, Ruzsky felt like a member of one of Russia ’s leading families. He took off his hat and overcoat and gave them to the doorman, who bashed a few remaining shards of ice onto the entrance mat and then handed them in turn to a porter standing behind him.

Ruzsky hesitated. He wondered who he would see.

He walked up the curved staircase toward the dining room on the first floor.

The Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall beneath a huge painting of the Neva at sunset, his portly frame straining the buttons of his uniform. He was talking conspiratorially through a cloud of cigar smoke with a man Ruzsky did not recognize.

The shock of seeing him again made Ruzsky stop dead. He could feel the hairs standing on end on the back of his neck. The Grand Duke noticed him, but made no acknowledgment.

Ruzsky felt the weight of the man’s contempt and the color rise in his own cheeks before he had recovered enough to turn away and walk on.

The dining room was full. The clink of champagne glasses carried across tables, and the dust in the air, illuminated by the dull winter sun filtering through the windows, looked like gauze. Everywhere, uniforms groaned with gold braid and medals earned by acts of bureaucratic audacity.

Ruzsky steadied himself for a moment. Anyone who recognized him here would see the disgraced scion of one of the country’s leading families, but if they actually appreciated the circumstances he had been reduced to-a dingy one-room apartment around Line Fourteen of Vasilevsky Island-then he’d have been thrown out onto the street.

Dmitri was already seated at the family’s favored table at the far end of the room. He was staring out of the window, a tall solitary figure.

Ruzsky approached slowly, studying his brother in a way he hadn’t been able to the previous night.

Dmitri’s hair was longer, the first flecks of gray creeping into the area around his temples. His face was fleshier than he remembered, though his build was still slight. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked dissolute. He was in the dark green and red uniform of the Preobrazhensky’s, but it looked less distinguished upon him than on either their father or uncle.

Dmitri turned around. For a moment, neither man moved.

Ruzsky searched Dmitri’s face and saw the same things deep in his brother’s eyes that had always been there: love tinged with loneliness, joy at their reunion tempered by the shadows of the past that nothing could dispel.

They gripped each other tight, Dmitri’s hands digging into his back. Neither man appeared to want to break the embrace.

They stepped apart again.

“You look terrible,” Dmitri said. He had already been drinking.

Ruzsky grinned. “You don’t look so great yourself.”

They both sat down. Dmitri’s eyes were drawn toward the door and Ruzsky half turned to see the Grand Duke entering the dining room, still chomping on his cigar.

“Do you know what the tragedy is?” Dmitri leaned forward, his face earnest, but having lost none of his impetuous, exuberant charm. “Father knows everything. He knows it. In his heart, he understands what is going on, but nothing will shake his faith in the system. He doesn’t-or won’t-understand that, to the people, Boris Vladimirovich and his kind are the system: vulgar, lecherous, crass, whoring, drinking, debt-ridden, and corrupt beyond redemption.” Dmitri took hold of his brother’s arm. “Please tell me it doesn’t upset you.”

“What doesn’t?”

“You know what I mean.”

Ruzsky sighed. “That my wife is having an affair, or that my father turns a blind eye to it because he does not like me, and the recipient of her affections is a grand duke?”

Dmitri shook his head despairingly.

“If it is what Irina wants, so be it,” Ruzsky said. “It’s only Michael’s situation that upsets me.”

“The whole thing disgusts me.” Dmitri leaned back. “Michael is a Ruzsky though, isn’t he?”

Ruzsky looked up into his brother’s eyes and saw there exactly what Dmitri was thinking-that Michael could have passed for Ilya-even if his words had not intended to convey it. Dmitri immediately looked away.

Ruzsky felt his pulse quicken.

They were silent. The noise in the dining room-the hubbub of conversation and the sound of silver scraping bone china-seemed unnaturally loud.

Ruzsky picked up the menu. The front was embossed with the yacht club insignia and inside, a handwritten sheet had been glued to the board.

A waiter approached, took the white linen napkin from the table, and placed it on Ruzsky’s lap. “Something to drink, sir, some champagne perhaps?” He was French. All the waiters in here were.

“Damn right, Armand,” Dmitri said loudly, overcompensating for the awkwardness of the moment. “It’s a reunion. Brothers back from the dead.”

“Dom Perignon?”

“Let me look at the list.”

Armand hurried away and returned with it a few seconds later. Dmitri consulted it and then looked up. “Dom Perignon, yes. Make sure it is properly chilled.”

“Of course, sir.” An assistant scurried away.

Ruzsky stared at the menu. He was crucifyingly hungry.

“Vous avez choisi?” The waiter smiled at both of them.

Ruzsky examined the menu with exaggerated care. “The fish and the venison.”

“The same,” Dmitri said.

Another waiter approached with a silver bucket and their champagne. He opened the bottle and poured it into tall crystal glasses. Ruzsky wondered if his brother was still in debt. Before the war, Dmitri had always eaten here because he was able to use their father’s account.

“Begin at the beginning,” Ruzsky said. “Tell me what happened.”

Dmitri waved his hand dismissively. He lit a cigarette. “What is there to bloody say? Everything you hear is true. Thankfully, I nearly lost an arm, or I’d be buried in six feet of mud by now.”

“At least you went. I was being serious when I said the ancestors would be proud.”

Dmitri snorted. “Yes, but the point is that I’ve never consciously chosen to do anything in my whole damned life and you know it. All I’ve done is take the easy way out, and going to war was the easy route. Not going would have been impossible. You know how Father is. And as to our ancestors being proud, believe me, no one could do anyone proud out there, it’s not possible. The war is a disgrace not just to Russia but to mankind and somone will be made to pay for it.”