To Kill a Tsar (23 page)

Something or someone had flitted into a doorway a little way up the street. Hadfield changed his grip on the stick again. He was still standing with the key in the lock between his fingers when the man stepped out of the doorway and began walking towards him. But it was not a man. It was a young woman who walked with upright carriage and a short purposeful stride. And he knew her at once: beneath the thick coat, the rabbit fur hat and scarf was Anna Petrovna Kovalenko. A frisson of excitement tingled down his spine. After weeks, months, out of the darkness as if in a dream or a fairy tale, why, what was it she wanted after all this time?

‘Miss Kovalenko. What a surprise.’

She stepped up to him and his heart jumped a little. She had pulled her scarf over her mouth and nose but even in shadow her blue eyes were twinkling like ice and he could not help but smile at the little frown lines on her brow.

‘Call me Anna. Are you well, Doctor?’

‘Call me Frederick. What are you doing here? How long have you been waiting? You’re shivering.’ He turned the key in the lock. ‘You must come in. I’ll light a fire.’

‘No, it’s just that—’

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘No.’

There was a fine crust of snow on Anna’s coat and hat and he could tell from the distance in her voice that she had been waiting some while and was chilled to the marrow.

‘Look, you’ve come to see me. It’s too cold to stand on the step,’ and he stood aside to let her pass.

She stood in the middle of his drawing room dripping on the rug, teeth chattering, too cold and exhausted to remove her coat and hat. Once the gas lamps were lit, Hadfield busied himself with the fire, drawing an armchair close.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘For what? Give me those wet things. Here.’ He handed her his dressing gown, and placed some trousers, a warm jumper and blankets on the chair. ‘Now is not the time to stand on ceremony. Go into my dressing room and change. I’ll arrange for the maid to bring you hot water.’

Would she do as he asked, he wondered, as he made his way down the stairs to the maid’s room? The poor girl had to be dragged from a deep sleep and it was some while before he could be sure she understood what was expected of her.

Anna had taken off her wet clothes and was wearing his dressing gown, curled in the armchair beneath a couple of blankets. She looked totally worn out, her head resting on her arm, her skin quite ashen.

‘We’ll have some tea, but first a glass of brandy.’ He went over to the drinks tray and poured a little into two tumblers.

‘It’s been so long. Didn’t you think of writing to say where you’d gone?’ he asked, handing her the glass.

‘Why should I? We’re just comrades.’

She was staring into the flickering fire, careful to avoid his gaze. Hadfield flopped into the chair opposite, his legs crossed, glass balanced on his knee. ‘Just comrades? Then why are you here?’

‘I’ll go, if you like,’ she snapped and lifted her eyes in an unequivocal challenge.

‘Of course you can’t go.’

‘I’ll leave when I want.’ Her voice was determined now and her bare feet slipped to the floor.

‘Please stay. I . . . I’ve missed you.’

So it had slipped from him already. He could not help himself: how beautiful she looked in the yellow firelight, lost in his father’s old silk dressing gown, strands of hair loose about her face and elegant neck. She gave him a sweet, accepting but weary smile then lifted the brandy to her lips, hiding her blush behind the twinkling glass.

‘I’ll light another fire to dry your dress,’ he said, anxious all of a sudden to be busy.

‘I’ll do it.’

‘I’m a doctor,’ he said, reading the concern in her voice. ‘I’m used to women’s clothes – and bodies.’

And he saw with some satisfaction that he had made her blush again.

Later, they sat in silence drinking cups of sweet tea and Hadfield watched her struggling to keep awake in the warmth of the fire, too exhausted to answer questions, close, he thought, to an emotional edge. After half an hour or so, she lost her battle, drifting into sleep, her small hand gripping the tea glass. Gently, he lifted her fingers from it and, placing it on the tray, settled back in his chair to watch her, rising from time to time to prod at the fire. There were many questions he wanted to ask but for now he was content just to sit with her. He had found her again, or, to be truthful, she had found him.

When the English long case in the hall struck three, he crouched down beside her and shook her shoulder gently. She whimpered and woke with a start.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing important, it’s just I think you should go to bed. There’s a guest room.’

‘No. No, thank you,’ she said, her eyes half shut. ‘I’m fine here by the fire.’ And barely conscious of what she was doing, she reached up to brush his cheek lightly with the tips of her fingers. He caught her hand, held it then lifted it to his lips. Her eyes were closed now but she smiled and made no effort to withdraw it. ‘There’s something I want to tell you.’

‘In the morning. You must go to bed.’

‘It’s been two years since I saw my husband,’ she said sleepily. Her eyes were still closed. ‘He never loved me. He treated me badly.’

‘So you left him,’ he said, squeezing her hand.

‘No. He left me. But I would never go back. Never.’ Her eyes flickered open long enough for him to glimpse her pain. Pulling her hand free, she placed it palm up on the arm of the chair and settled her head on to it again.

‘Do you still love him?’

‘I never loved him.’

When Hadfield woke, there were only glowing embers in the fire and the chair was empty but for the red silk dressing gown. He called her name, but she did not reply. He searched the flat but she had gone. On the mantelpiece among the gracious printed invitations from gentlemen and ladies to dinners and parties and balls was a note on a scrap of paper:
Meet me in the main reading room at the Imperial Library at 4.30. Anna.

The dynamite had been moved the day before but a drum of detonation wire was still sitting in the middle of the polished mahogany table. Collegiate Councillor Dobrshinsky ran his fingers across its top. There was a fresh scratch in the varnish that must have been made by a careless policeman.

‘Where were his papers found?’ he asked, turning to look at Agent Kletochnikov at the door.

‘In the drawer of the desk by the window, Your Honour. They’ve been sent to your office.’

‘And Kviatkovsky’s companion?’

Kletochnikov took a step into the room to balance his file on the edge of a side table: ‘Evgenia Figner. She’s not an illegal, but her sister Vera is wanted by the police, and another sister – Lydia Figner – is serving a sentence in the east.’

Dobrshinsky nodded. ‘And the three who escaped?’

‘Liubatovich and Morozov were living together at 124 Nevsky Prospekt. They rented the place with stolen papers. The other woman’s papers are in the name of Anna Kovalenko.’

‘Kovalenko?’ the special investigator asked sharply. ‘Do you have a description?’

Kletochnikov lifted the file to peer at the page: ‘Small, dark brown hair, heavy brow, blue eyes – the police sergeant described them as light blue – he said she was quite pretty . . .’

Dobrshinsky closed his eyes for a moment and sighed with exasperation.

‘Your Honour?’ Kletochnikov was blinking anxiously at the collegiate councillor, his right hand holding the rim of his glasses.

‘I want you to telegraph all the details you have on this Kovalenko woman to Kharkov at once.’

‘Kharkov?’

‘Yes. Kharkov. And Kletochnikov . . .’

‘Your Honour?’

‘Circulate this description to the police stations in the city again, but this time describe her as Anna Petrovna Kovalenko, sometimes known as Romanko.’

When the agent had gone, Dobrshinsky began examining the revolutionary’s books, pulling open drawers and cupboard doors in the desultory hope of finding something the police had overlooked or discarded as unimportant. Then, feeling a little dizzy, he stepped over to the window and sank into the chair before Kviatkovsky’s open desk. The leaf of the bureau was down and
covered in roughly printed propaganda sheets. Without thought, he leant forward and swept the leaflets to the floor with his forearm. Buried beneath them was a small soft leather sketchbook. He picked it up and began turning the pages. Someone – perhaps Evgenia Figner – had drawn a number of fine pencil portraits of serious young men and women. One of the sketches was of Alexander Mikhailov. On another page, the profile of a young woman with a high forehead and small girlish features who closely resembled the section’s photograph of Sophia Perovskaya. He put the sketchbook down and, half rising, reached into the pigeon holes of the bureau. A pen, a pack of playing cards, some clips and in a manila envelope he found three seals. Lifting them to the light he could see they were engraved with the imperial eagle for official use.

He was still sitting at the desk a short time later, his fingers pressed to his lips in thought, when Major Vladimir Barclay knocked at the drawing-room door. Kletochnikov was standing at his shoulder.

‘Have you heard?’ Dobrshinsky turned to face him. ‘They let three terrorists just waltz out of an apartment on Nevsky.’

Barclay nodded.

‘See if any of the policemen who saw them can find a drawing of Kovalenko in this.’ The special investigator held up the sketchbook. ‘There are others in here too.’

‘I thought the police had searched this apartment,’ said Barclay, stepping forward to take it from him.

‘So did I.’

He stared intently at Barclay for a moment then leant to his right so he could see beyond him to the door. ‘Leave us, Kletochnikov, please,’ he said.

The agent was taken aback. ‘Your Honour?’

‘Now.’

The door closed behind him and Dobrshinsky turned to pick up the seals.

‘Recognise these?’

‘They look like ours.’

‘I think this one must have been particularly useful to them,’ Dobrshinsky said, offering the gendarme officer the largest of the seals.

Barclay held it close to his eye. ‘For authorising identity papers. But how on earth did they manage to lay their hands . . .’

‘I think we should keep this between ourselves for now, Vladimir Alexandrovich,’ said Dobrshinsky, cutting across him. ‘Tighten security, but say nothing. We don’t want to frighten their informer. We want to catch him.’

T
he Imperial Library on Nevsky was a peculiar choice for a rendezvous, but quite how much so was only apparent to Hadfield when he peered through the doors of the reading room for the first time. Beneath the vaulted ceiling, a sea of heads bent as if in prayer to the goddess of learning; venerable academics poring over leather-bound tomes and their acolytes – students in the uniforms of the university, the engineering school and academies, and the populace too, many with no interest in study but grateful for the silence and the warmth. Once inside, he stood in front of an enormous gilt-framed picture of the tsar, casting about for a table that might offer a view of the traffic to and from the reading room. How could he possibly speak to Anna in here? The studious silence was broken only by shuffling feet, the flutter of pages and the occasional strangled cough.

He found a seat at the end of a row, opposite a man in his sixties with a full grey beard who smelt of pipe tobacco. He was huffing over the French language
Journal de St Petersbourg
, shaking his bald head in disgust, much to the undisguised irritation of his neighbours at the table. Taking his journal from his medical bag, Hadfield pushed it into the circle of light beneath the brass table lamp and settled back to wait. It was too cold to walk far but there was a pleasant confectioner’s opposite the library that served hot chocolate and cake.

‘They always blame the Jews.’ The grey beard opposite had lowered his paper and was addressing Hadfield in a very audible whisper. ‘Some ignorant muzhiks in Kiev are driving them from
their homes. For God’s sake, how can you blame Jews for the attack on the emperor?’

He was interrupted by his neighbour – a well-to-do student, judging from his clothes and the silver pince-nez on a ribbon he was twirling foppishly in his hand – who hissed at him and wagged a patronising forefinger.

‘Don’t shush me,’ the old man replied indignantly, shaking his newspaper at the student. ‘Show more respect!’

‘This is a library.’

‘I know that, you ignoramus. I come here every day.’

Heads turned and one of the library supervisors in the gallery above the main floor began to make his way to the stairs.

‘Tell him to be quiet.’

‘Tell me yourself!’

For some reason both men had begun appealing to Hadfield for support.

‘Please, Your Honours.’ The supervisor had scuttled over to restore order. ‘Doctor Bloomberg, please.’

The exasperation in the supervisor’s voice suggested the grey beard was well known to the library. The argument rumbled on until, with very ill grace, the student was persuaded to move to a seat some way from the old man. Annoyingly, the kerfuffle had drawn Hadfield’s attention from the entrance long enough for Anna to have slipped into the reading room.

Pushing his chair away, he walked between the tables to the bookshelves that lined the walls beneath the gallery and, picking a book from the nearest – Rousseau in French – he stared over the top of it at the bent heads, confident he would recognise hers. To be certain, he shuffled along the bookcases to the far end of the hall: if Anna was there she would surely see him. She was a little late – but perhaps she had missed the train from Alexandrovskaya or did not have money for a cab. He returned to the table with his copy of Rousseau, pulled back the chair and was easing himself into it when he noticed
someone had pinned a small square of paper to the cloth cover of his journal. It had clearly been ripped from the flyleaf of a library book. A note was scribbled in a small hand he did not recognise:
Anna is sorry but she cannot meet you.

His first thought was that it had been left there by his eccentric neighbour. He stared at Bloomberg for a few seconds but the old man was too engrossed in his newspaper to notice. No one else at the table made eye contact or seemed in the least bit interested in him.