To Kill a Tsar (13 page)

‘Miss Kovalenko, I don’t understand . . .’

Her step did not falter for an instant. She had clearly made up her mind to have nothing more to do with him that day.

‘Wait . . .’ He began to hurry after her.

Their little pantomime was attracting smiles and the comment of cabbies on the opposite side of the square, and a smartly dressed elderly gentleman in a top hat shook his head in disapproval as Hadfield hurried past. As he fell into step with her, Anna quickened her pace.

He reached for her arm: ‘Please. Look, I’m sorry but . . .’

‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, shaking herself free. ‘I didn’t have the privilege of an education like yours but I understand our people!’ She turned away from him with a disdainful toss of the head.

‘So you don’t speak French,’ he shouted after her. ‘Is that it?’ She had turned away from the cab stand, conscious of the glances they were attracting from the drivers. ‘This is ridiculous. Please stop.’

And she did stop, turning angrily to him. ‘You are drawing attention to us.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you couldn’t speak French,’ he said in exasperation. ‘It means nothing. I just thought perhaps that Alexander was your fiancé.’

‘What business is it of yours anyway?’ she snapped at him. ‘Now let me go.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I had no right to ask. And I’m sorry this afternoon has ended so badly.’ He was confused, a tangle of feelings, aching with regret and anger. ‘Let me see you to a cab.’

Her face softened a little with the suggestion of a smile. ‘No, I’m quite all right, thank you. And you should know he is not my fiancé. He’s a good comrade. He will never be my fiancé . . .’ For a few seconds she stood there avoiding his gaze, biting her bottom lip uncertainly, and then she continued. ‘I am not interested in such relationships . . .’ Something in his expression must have suggested he did not take this remark as seriously as she would have liked because she took an urgent step closer, fixing him with an intense blue stare. ‘Believe me, Doctor. Revolutionaries should not marry or have families.’

Hadfield pulled a sceptical face: ‘Aren’t socialists just like everybody else?’

‘No. I’ve given my life to the struggle – like Kondraty Ryleev and many others . . .’

‘And what of love?’

‘I will not change my mind, and . . .’ she hesitated and looked away again, the colour rising to her cheeks, ‘and you should know . . .’ She did not finish the sentence but stood there avoiding his gaze. The seconds passed, a minute, and worshippers began to trickle from the west door of the cathedral onto the pavement, old ladies hobbling home with their black shawls pulled tightly about them even on a summer evening.

‘What should I know?’

Anna turned to look at him and he was taken aback by the intense expression on her face – not of anger this time, or defiance or resentment, but a deep trembling sadness close to pain.

‘You should know I’m married.’

T
he cause of such confusion and not a little heartache was lurking in a doorway a short distance from the Church of the Assumption. Alexander Mikhailov’s gaze was fixed on the shadows beneath the splintered awning of a modest two-storey building. A low drinking den, like so many others in the Haymarket district, it was doing steady trade even on the Lord’s Day. Patrons were obliged to step over the prostrate form of an elderly peasant who had staggered no further than the door before collapsing in a stupor. No one seemed in the least concerned and Mikhailov wondered if the landlord was leaving the drunk on the step as barely living proof of the purity of his vodka. A couple of young women in gaudy rags were accosting all who came and went. That the broad fellow in workman’s clothes who had been following him for almost an hour should try to conceal himself close to frumps plying their trade was nothing short of pitiful. Still, it was a simple enough task to lose one police spy, the sort of challenge he enjoyed, but perhaps there were others.

Without looking left or right Mikhailov began picking his way round the empty market stalls and piles of rubbish, putrid and thick with flies, to the opposite side of the square. On most days of the week the market was bustling with peasants and merchants; this was the ‘belly’ of St Petersburg, with every manner of object and animal for sale, women and children too. Respectable folk only chose to visit the district on business, although Mikhailov had heard stories of literary pilgrims in search of Raskolnikov’s attic. And only the day
before he had seen Dostoevsky in the street with a posse of admirers.

From the square, he walked at a steady pace to the Ekaterininsky Canal then along its embankment into the city. A little beyond Gorokhovaya Street he turned right into a gloomy courtyard and strolled nonchalantly across it to a door on the opposite side. It was open as he knew it would be. Up the bare wooden stair, across the landing and down again to the main entrance, where he paused for a moment to listen for his pursuer. Thump, thump on the bare boards behind him, and for the first time Mikhailov’s heart beat a little faster. Not one but two men. Too bold to be just informers. Slipping out of the front, he crossed quickly to a decaying four-storey apartment block a little way up the street and turned without hesitating through a wicket gate hanging loosely from its hinges. An old lady was sitting on a stool in the yard behind, two small children playing in the dust at her feet. He nodded politely to her as he made his way towards a door at the corner of the building opposite. Behind him, the creak of the gate and the scuffing of courtyard stones as his pursuers hurried towards him. No time to look. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a key and unlocked the door. A shout and the clatter of boots as they broke into a run. Glancing back he could see they were close: two plain-clothes policemen. Time only to turn the key in the lock before the sound of a shoulder crashing against the door.

‘Open up!’ The beating of fists. He waited a moment, collecting his thoughts, his right hand on his pounding chest. It would be only minutes before the banging and shouting on the other side of the door roused the dvornik or one of the tenants. He must move quickly.

Mikhailov was a thorough man and he had gone to great lengths over many months to ensure his comrades would continue to benefit from his very particular skills. He found
the servant’s corridor without difficulty and began weaving his way along it to the front of the building. An old lady in a black dress and goatskin slippers was struggling up the steps of the entrance hall with a bag of laundry. Mikhailov brushed past her and on into the street. Turning right, he walked as quickly as he could along the pavement without drawing attention to himself, crossing to the other side just beyond the railings of the Assignation Bank. A few yards further on he stopped outside a handsome yellow and white classical mansion, glanced left and right then retreated a step into the road to examine the windows on the first floor. At the bottom of the one on the extreme right there was a small blue diagonal strip of paper: it was safe to call.

Tarakanov was waiting for him on the first floor landing, an anxious expression on his chubby face.

‘I saw you in the street,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in quickly.’

Councillor Tarakanov was as timid as a hare. The small circle who knew of his role in the movement had given him the code name ‘Bucephalus’, after Alexander the Great’s highly strung horse. Time in his company passed slowly, but
in extremis
there was no safer place in Petersburg. He was the most trusted of the movement’s ‘Ukrivateli’ – concealers – for he was the last person the authorities would suspect of revolutionary sympathies. Short, fat, fastidious, he was also a councillor at the Ministry of Interior and a social snob.

‘Did anyone see you at the door?’ he asked, stepping over to the window.

‘Of course not,’ replied Mikhailov.

‘You know the lodger downstairs, a nosy old crone with great staring eyes, she’s a milliner, I think, she always looks at me strangely when I meet her. She’s a spy, I am sure of it.’

Mikhailov rolled his eyes by way of a reply.

‘You don’t know the risk I am taking,’ said Tarakanov petulantly.

‘I do, I do, believe me. You’re a good chap. And I won’t be here long, now come away from the window before someone sees you.’

But Mikhailov’s pursuers had given up the chase. Collegiate Councillor Dobrshinsky was listening to their report in the investigation office at Fontanka 16, a map of the city open in front of him. The other agents were bent low over their desks in an effort to avoid catching his eye.

‘He knew his way through the building, Your Honour.’ Agent Myshkin shifted his weight to the other foot, his hands clasped awkwardly in front of him. His companion – Zadytsev – looked just as uncomfortable.

‘He must have known he could lock the door and slip out to the lane at the front.’

‘Show me.’

Dobrshinsky followed the agent’s finger as he traced the route they had taken from the Haymarket. When he had finished the collegiate councillor sat back and stared at them coldly.

‘You made yourselves conspicuous,’ he said at last. ‘What use are you to the investigation if you can’t follow a suspect without giving yourselves away?’

‘He kept stopping, Your Honour . . . He knew what he was doing.’

‘That’s enough,’ said Dobrshinsky. ‘I don’t want excuses. Redeem yourselves. I want you to question every porter and yard keeper in the area.’ He tapped the map with his fingers. ‘Take the local gendarmes with you. And begin with the house where he gave you the slip. I want to know who is helping Mikhailov.’

‘Now, Your Honour?’ asked Myshkin tentatively.

‘Yes. Now. At once,’ said Dobrshinsky, rising abruptly from the desk. ‘What are you waiting for?’

He watched them scuttle out of the office, then turned to
one of the clerks. ‘Do we have the report on the dead informer?’

The clerk opened a file on his desk, took out a single sheet of paper and handed it to him.

‘It took only a few seconds for Dobrshinsky to glance through the report. Just the bare bones. Body in a Peski street. Stab wound to the chest. A vagrant by the name of Viktor who used to keep his eyes and ears open for kopeks. He had given them the student Popov. The dvornik at a local school had found the vagrant’s body on the doorstep. Murdered before he had a chance to give them anything more.

‘Why are we always left with a corpse?’ he muttered under his breath.

Alexander Mikhailov knew it was wise not to presume too often or for too long on Bucephalus’s hospitality. Besides, there was an appointment he had to keep. And so, after an hour spent sipping tea in the comfort and security of the councillor’s drawing room, he made his way by a back stair to a door that opened on to the courtyard behind the mansion. It was nearly eight o’clock, and to avoid being recognised in the empty Sunday streets he hailed a cab with a canopy and directed its driver to take him across the Fontanka. The short journey took Mikhailov along the embankment past the Third Section’s headquarters and he could not resist leaning forward to glance at it as the cab swept past. He was the sort of revolutionary popular writers like Dostoevsky branded a ‘fanatic’ because he dedicated his life to the cause but he was not anxious to be hauled down the steps into the basement cells at Number 16. Stay one step ahead of your enemies, he told his comrades – and with the help of the man he called ‘the Director’ he would do.

The cab driver turned right off Fontanka into one of the handsome little streets opposite the Summer Garden. Mikhailov paid without a word and with just enough of a tip to be unmemorable. He appeared for all the world, if the world
was watching, an unassuming young gentleman, modestly dressed in a light brown summer suit, perhaps a civil servant returning home after a day in the country. He walked at an unhurried pace, saluting a young couple who made way for him to pass on the pavement. At the bottom he stopped and, pretending to check the time, cast a look back down the street. Satisfied, he turned right on to Solianoy Lane and strolled down to the handsome little red and white church on the corner.

The last public service of the day had ended some time ago but the air was heavy with the sweet smell of incense. The church was empty but for an old lady nodding and clicking her rosary beads before the icon of St Panteleimon. Mikhailov paid for a votive candle, lit it and pressed it into one of the iron banks before the iconstasis, then, hands clasped, he muttered a meaningless prayer to a god he did not believe in any more. The flickering light of the candles seemed to breathe life into the grim painted faces of the patriarchs gazing down on him from the pillars and walls. Revolutionaries too, he thought with a smile, recalling the English doctor’s description of Christ as a ‘socialist’. Memories of childhood, his mother holding his hand, the rumble of the cantor, the silver framed icon held aloft by the priest, shimmering in the candlelight – he could feel the pull of that old religious order still. What was it Karl Marx had called it? –
das Opium des Volkes
– but not in a disparaging way. Ordinary people were not going to give up their belief in God and heaven until the world changed for the better and it was no longer necessary to turn to faith for the comfort of hope and forgetting.

‘Please God, where is the Director?’ he whispered under his breath. For how long was he going to have to keep up this pretence of piety? His sacrilegious prayer was answered, for he heard a footstep and was conscious of someone at his shoulder.

The ‘Director’ stepped forward and pressed his own candle into the stand then crossed himself several times.

‘You’re late, Alexander,’ he said at last. ‘I was worried.’

‘A little trouble,’ Mikhailov replied. ‘Nothing that need concern you.’

He led the way to a bench half hidden behind a curtain and in deep shadow at the back of the church. The man who slumped round-shouldered beside him was in his late twenties, thin and rather pasty. He had a long solemn face and a badly trimmed beard, a beetle brow and large brown intelligent eyes, enormous when glimpsed through the lenses of his spectacles. His clothes and general demeanour suggested an industrious but downtrodden junior clerk. ‘The body of the spy was found in the street outside the school in Peski,’ he said. ‘A report has been made by the local station.’