To Kill a Tsar (10 page)

Grasping the dvornik’s upper arm, he led him none too gently into the street then almost immediately right through the open doorway of the mansion block. He knocked lightly at the first apartment he came to and Kletochnikov opened the door. In the room behind him another agent – Postnikov – dressed as a labourer in a peaked cap and short woollen coat.

‘Check your weapons again,’ said Barclay, drawing his own Smith and Wesson: six good .44 Russian cartridges in the
cylinder. Then turning to the dvornik: ‘It’s up to you now.’ The man was shaking like a leaf. ‘Come on, you were in the army, weren’t you?’ Barclay placed a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘He isn’t expecting us. Remember, stand aside as soon as he opens the door. Have you got the letter?’

Rummaging inside his padded jacket, the yard keeper pulled out an envelope and offered it in a trembling hand to Barclay.

‘No, no. Dmitry, isn’t it? Dmitry, you give it to Popov.’ He tried to keep the frustration from his voice.

Anxious to get the business over with, the silly Ivan began thundering up to the first landing at a pace unknown to his breed.

‘Wait!’ Barclay hissed. ‘Wait there.’ He turned to Kletochnikov. ‘You first.’ He nodded to the stairs. ‘I’ll follow in thirty seconds. Go.’

He watched the two men make their way as quietly as policemen can up the broad stone steps to the second landing. Then, leaning close to the dvornik’s ear, he whispered fiercely: ‘Try again. And don’t let me down.’

Shoulders hunched, the yard keeper set off up the dark stairs with Barclay at his back. There were six heavy green doors on the third landing. Barclay’s men were on either side of the one at the top of the stairs. Kletochnikov wiped his arm across his forehead nervously and his revolver thumped against the door frame. Barclay shot him a withering look. Was the fool deliberately trying to alert the student?

‘Call him,’ he whispered, pushing the dvornik towards the door. For what seemed an age, he stood there blinking on the step. Barclay was about to step forward when the man finally raised his fist and hammered on the door. The echo bounced up and down the stairs. Barclay pressed himself to the wall behind Kletochnikov.

‘Call him,’ he mouthed.

‘Your Honour. A letter.’

Barclay waved his fist at the wall to indicate he should knock again. But before the dvornik could do so, they heard the turning of the lock on the inner door.

‘What is it, Dmitry?’ There was no mistaking the wariness in Popov’s voice.

‘A letter. An urgent letter.’

Just the degree of obsequiousness one expected from a yard keeper: Dmitry was warming to his role.

The reply came from the thickness of a door away: ‘Push the letter under.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Is there anyone with you?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Suit yourself,’ the dvornik grumbled. For sure, he was earning his rouble now. ‘I’ll take it away then, shall I?’

No reply.

‘Well?’ Dmitry asked.

‘Leave it there,’ came the muffled response.

‘As you wish.’

The yard keeper bent to place the letter at the foot of the door, then, rising, turned with pleading eyes to Barclay who nodded approvingly and gestured to the staircase. The relief was transparent in the dvornik’s face, even beneath his thick beard. But cleverer than he looks, Barclay thought, as he listened to his steady tread – at least he had remembered to take his time.

The echo of his footsteps began to die away and Barclay could sense the revolutionary a few feet from him, his ear pressed to the door. He was acutely conscious of the sound of his own short shaky breaths and of Kletochnikov’s beside him. Was Popov a patient man? It was only a matter of time before one of the other tenants caught them there or a careless movement gave them away. Pressed against the wall like an animal
waiting to pounce, his heart thumping in his chest, Barclay had no sense of how long they had been standing there but his arm was aching with the strain of holding the heavy revolver up in readiness. On the opposite side of the door, little Postnikov was squatting with his head against the wall, his gun beneath his chin, the letter at his feet.

Barclay could hear the groaning of the floorboards behind the door as the student shifted his weight in the hall. Then the rattle of a key pushed into the lock. Kletochnikov raised his weapon. The door swung open and Popov was standing there with a terrified expression on his face, in his right hand a revolver. For a fraction of a second he was caught between fight and flight, pushing at the door and at the same time raising his weapon to fire. But Postnikov’s shoulder was against it: ‘Drop it!’

Then the deafening crash of a shot fired at close range. Kletochnikov lunged at the student’s outstretched arm but missed and struck his head against the edge of the door.

‘I’ll shoot!’ Popov shouted, stepping back into the apartment.

Another shot rang out, reverberating up and down the staircase. A woman in an apartment on the landing below began to scream. At the foot of the door, Agent Postnikov was groaning pathetically, plucking at the right leg of his trousers as blood flowed across the stone in a widening circle. Barclay could hear the boots of the gendarmes racing up the stairs towards them.

‘Come out with your hands above your head,’ he shouted through the half open door. ‘Don’t be foolish. Come out and we can talk.’

There were half a dozen men shoulder to shoulder on the landing now, rifles at the ready.

‘See to him,’ he said, pointing to the prostrate agent. Fat lot of use the rifles would be in a small apartment.

Barclay was angry. A bad plan. An agent wounded. Damn it, he was not going to let Popov get away with destroying evidence
too. There was nowhere for the bastard to go. He pushed at the outer door and it swung open a little further. Beyond it, a small dark hall and beyond this, three doors off a corridor, the nearest the student’s bed-sitting room.

‘Follow me,’ he hissed to Kletochnikov. The agent was pressing a bloody handkerchief to the cut on his brow. ‘Come on, man, he’s a student, not a Leshy.’

He pushed at the inner door. Its stiff hinges squeaked noisily. The corridor was no bigger than the width of a man’s outstretched arms and a bullet fired blind through a door might very well find a mark somewhere. Barclay pressed the flat of his hand against the wall to warn Kletochnikov he should step away from the firing line. Then, taking a position to the left of the first door, he squatted on his haunches and reached for the handle.

‘I’ll shoot anyone who comes through that door!’ Popov shouted, fear ringing in his voice, but determination too. A second later, a shot rang out, deafening in the narrow corridor. Splinters flew from the edge of the door as the bullet ricocheted against it and out on to the landing. Behind Barclay, Kletochnikov was breathing very hard, blood from the wound on his brow trickling unchecked down both cheeks. Barclay clicked his fingers sharply to capture his attention, then shook his revolver angrily at the agent: concentrate, stand ready. Popov’s careless shot had helped clear his mind and in the time it took for the echo to die away he knew what he must do.

‘Lay down your weapon. I’m coming in,’ he shouted and, bending low, he turned the handle of the door. It was neither locked nor bolted. Shards of wood splintered above his arm as another shot rang round the little hall. Go now as Popov’s arm is shaking, his ears still ringing. Go while he is surprised and afraid of the sound of his own weapon. Go. And Barclay launched himself at the door, stumbling low into the room, dazzlingly bright with sunlight. Confused, he cracked his knee
on a piece of furniture and fell heavily on to his shoulder. Where was Kletochnikov?

He could see the silhouette of Popov against the window, only four or five feet from him, his weapon at arm’s length. The shot would be almost point blank.

‘Drop it,’ Barclay shouted. ‘Drop it.’

The gun was trembling in Popov’s hand, the low sun kicking off the barrel. Barclay could not distinguish the expression on his face but he could see the student’s finger curled about the trigger.

‘Drop it,’ he shouted again. ‘You’re under arrest.’ Where was that bastard Kletochnikov? Fire then, damn you. Fire.

But Popov gave a small high-pitched whimper like a child and staggered back against the wall. With a rigid jerk like a marionette, he lifted the gun to his own head. It hovered at his temple for a fraction of a second then ‘crack’. Blood erupted from the side of his head, plastering window and walls, his lifeless body crumpling to the boards with a sickeningly final thud.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

Someone was holding Barclay’s arm but he paid no attention. His gaze was fixed on the window, the sun shining through a coagulated mass of pink and white brain matter sliding slowly down the dirty glass. The spark of life lost in one foolish moment. An impulse. But he owed his own life to that impulse. An accident of time, place, circumstance, and on a different day it would be his tissue the gendarmes would scrape from the corners of the room.

He let Kletochnikov help him to his feet. His knees were shaking. The gendarmes had crowded into the room to gaze at the body of the student.

‘Go on, get out until I call you,’ he shouted. Surely they had seen a dead man before? ‘Not you, Kletochnikov. I want you to see if he’s got anything on him.’

The agent began pulling gingerly at the dead man’s jacket, while Barclay shuffled about the room in search of anything that might be a clue. The student must have been preparing to leave his flat that day, his personal belongings were packed into a small suitcase he had left at the door. In spite of the earliness of the hour, Popov was dressed and had eaten – the remains of a stale loaf and a glass of tea were on a table close to the window. The bed was stripped, the blankets neatly folded at the bottom of it. Barclay picked up the case – it was surprisingly heavy – and threw it on to the bed. Books. The usual texts; Marx, Chernyshevsky, Bakunin, a novel by Dickens and some threadbare and rather dirty clothes.

‘Anything?’ he asked, turning to Kletochnikov.

‘Only this ticket,’ he replied, rising stiffly to his feet. ‘Today’s train to Moscow, and another for Voronezh. Some money. A photograph.’

‘Let me see?’

It was of a woman in her late forties or early fifties, elegant, conservatively dressed, her figure a little matronly, perhaps Popov’s mother, but in any case not a terrorist. But then who could be sure these days?

‘Have you checked his boots and hat?’

Kletochnikov turned back to the body and began pulling clumsily at the dead man’s boots. The student’s navy blue cap had been thrown to the floor by the force of the bullet bursting from the side of his head and was sticky with blood and flecks of tissue. Barclay ripped at the cotton lining and it came away with ease. Nothing. No prisoner, no papers. It was a fiasco. For a few unpleasant seconds his thoughts turned to the interview with Dobrshinsky that would follow later in the day. Picking one of Popov’s shirts from the bed, he wiped the blood from his hands. Kletochnikov was still grunting over the student’s legs, making very heavy weather of a simple task.

In his effort to prise boot from foot, the agent had dragged
the body from the window, leaving a crimson trail across the boards. Barclay’s eyes were drawn to a slash of sunlight flickering across the floor close to the student’s shattered head. The wood was scorched black.

‘Leave it, will you.’

There was a brutal thump as Kletochnikov dropped a booted foot.

‘Help me roll him over.’

Beneath the student’s body was a crushed heap of damp ashes and fragments of charred paper. Crouching beside it, Barclay took a pencil from his coat and stirred the pile for something worth salvaging. Popov had done a good job. There were only five pieces with anything he could decipher. Handwritten on the largest strip were a number of dates and the names of cities in the south – Kiev, Kharkov, Voronezh. The student was about to set out on his travels. There were two small fragments from an internal passport, almost certainly Popov’s own. A wanted man, he would have travelled on forged documents, although Kletochnikov had found none on his body. But it was the last two fragments that proved the most intriguing. They were from the same distinctive light blue letter paper and written, Barclay noted, in a cultured hand. Mikhailov’s? He would be able to establish that beyond doubt because a handwriting specimen collected from the revolutionary’s family was sitting in the top drawer of his desk at Fontanka 16.

Kovalenko will meet you at the station at precisely
. . . The time was lost . . .
money and instructions for you. Destroy all your papers then leave at once, and under no circumstances return to your apartment. It is being watched. We will deal with
. . .

‘. . . with the informer,’ Barclay muttered.

‘Your Honour?’

‘Find the dvornik and ask him when Popov last received a letter. Take a description of whoever delivered it.’

So the student knew he was under surveillance. Mikhailov had warned him. How on earth did he find out? And Kovalenko – that was one of the six names on Bronstein’s list. Who was he? And the names of cities – contacts or meetings? Questions. Questions Barclay would have put to the fool at his feet if he had not blown the little brain he was blessed with about his shabby room.

‘All right,’ he shouted irritably to the gendarmes. ‘You can come in now.’

He would have them take the place apart, but he was quite certain they would find nothing more. At least the student had spared the empire the expense and trouble of a trial for murder. Sadly, the collegiate councillor was unlikely to take quite such a generous view of the morning’s events.

H
adfield remembered why the address was familiar over a breakfast of coffee and warm rolls. Fontanka 16. Foolish to forget. The Third Section of the tsar’s private chancellery. Goldenberg was watching a secret policeman or officer of the Gendarme Corps. Who? He worried at it like a dog with a bone. The answer came to him as he was brushing his jacket. Someone had attempted to take the life of the head of the Third Section. Hadfield had heard mention of it at the opera a few weeks before. A revolutionary fired two shots through the window of General Drenteln’s carriage and narrowly missed with both. Goldenberg was watching the general, no doubt with a view to making a better fist of it next time. But if that was the case, what on earth should he do about it? He was pondering this question before his dressing mirror when there was a sharp knock at the door of the apartment. Sergei, the dvornik, was on the step with an armful of birch logs for the fire, at his back three serving women in peasant smocks with stiff brushes attached to the soles of their boots.