To Kill a Tsar (29 page)

‘I can’t be sure. He lied to my officer. I’ve had him followed and he’s given my men the slip once or twice.’

‘Do as you see fit, but we don’t want a diplomatic incident with the British.’

For a time, Dobrshinsky remained in the assistant governor’s bare office, reflecting in a haze of cigarette smoke. What was it von Plehve had said? ‘Your future will depend upon making progress’. It had been impossible not to smile. No one was more adept at claiming credit and reapportioning blame than the chief prosecutor. A Supreme Security Commission would ask questions the count would have to answer, so it was important for him to be able to pass the responsibility for failure on to others. Vanity, ambition, fear came in so many guises. What was there of substance to distinguish the chief prosecutor in his immaculate ministry uniform from the helpless Jew in his prison greys? Goldenberg was naive, vain, despicable, but at least he believed in something. Dobrshinsky was almost sorry for him. He leant forward to grind his cigarette into an ashtray, a spiral of smoke still curling before him like a temple offering. Really, was stupidity the worst crime?

Taking headed paper from the pile on the desk and the pen from the silver stand, he wrote a short note, slipped it into an
envelope and addressed it in a careful hand:
Dr Frederick Hadfield, The Nikolaevsky Hospital
.

‘See this is delivered at once,’ he said, dropping the letter in front of the assistant governor’s clerk as he left the office. It was time he met this English spy.

T
he first time Anna asked Hadfield for money he gave it without question. The second time, she told him she needed a little for clothes.

‘Of course, darling,’ he said, running his hand over her smooth skin and leaning forward to kiss her forehead. ‘How much?’

The third time he refused to give more. They were lying together on the old mattress, the diffuse light of a Sunday morning in January creeping into the makeshift bedroom, their conversation conducted in whispers lest they wake the old lady and her granddaughters.

‘You’re still wearing the same clothes,’ he said.

Anna was lying on her back staring at the ceiling, but even in the dim light he saw her face stiffen to a scowl.

‘Why are you wearing the same clothes?’

Ignoring his question, she gathered the sheet to her shoulder and turned to lie on her side with her back towards him. And at once he felt a pang of regret. How could he refuse her? It was money, nothing more. He reached out to stroke her hair. ‘Of course I’ll give you money. You don’t need to lie to me.’

She turned sharply to look at him, the sheet sliding from her chest. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t tell me you want money for clothes. Don’t tell me anything.’

She blushed a little and her face softened. ‘No. I won’t.’ And she leant forward to kiss him tenderly, her fingers resting on his cheek.

But Anna did not ask for more money. She asked him to pay the party in kind. On the first occasion, he arrived home late one evening to a note urging him to ‘come at once’ to the Ekaterininsky Embankment. A ‘friend’ was in great need of medical care. The dvornik’s brain was too fuddled with alcohol to be sure when the note had been delivered.

It was close to midnight when the droshky dropped him in front of a smart terracotta-coloured mansion near the Voznesensky Bridge. To his surprise, the door was opened by a young footman in a blue and gold uniform.

‘Doctor Hadfield – I’ve been asked to call.’ He gave the flunky his card. A moment later, he was being shown up the stairs to the first floor and into an elegant drawing room. Anna was standing before a large pier glass between the windows with Sophia Perovskaya.

‘Why has it taken you so long?’

He was irritated by her proprietary manner. ‘I came as soon as I received your note.’

‘Thank goodness you’ve come,’ said Sophia with more grace, holding out her hands to greet him.

‘The midwife is with her but there are complications,’ said Anna, her face tense with anxiety.

‘Who is this woman?’

‘Does it matter? She needs your help.’

The young woman had been struggling for more than fourteen hours and was in great distress. The midwife had done what she could but the baby was breech.

‘This woman should be in hospital! Why have you waited so long?’

‘She can’t go to hospital, she’d be arrested,’ said Sophia. ‘They would question her – if she’s feeling weak she will give too much away . . .’

Sophia’s face was milky white and she flinched as the woman screamed in pain.

‘You’re prepared to take the risk of losing mother or baby, or both?’ Hadfield asked incredulously.

‘Can’t you do anything for her here?’

‘I may have to perform a Caesarean. Pray to God I don’t,’ he said, rolling up his shirt sleeves.

Two hours later the baby was born, his exhausted mother weeping tears of relief and pain and gratitude. He had to cut her, but he was able to deliver the boy without an operation. Nineteen-year-old Tatiana was strong. ‘Congratulations,’ he said, sweeping damp hair from her face. She was lying in a nest of pillows, her baby pressed naked against her breast. The midwife was hovering on the opposite side of the bed with a swaddling sheet. There was a knock at the door and it opened a few inches.

‘Can we come in?’ Anna’s voice trembled a little with emotion.

‘For a moment. She needs to rest.’

Anna and Sophia tiptoed across the room as if frightened of what they would find.

‘Dark eyes like his father,’ said Tatiana when they were at her bedside. She bent to kiss his little head. ‘Would you like to hold him, Sophia?’

‘I would like to,’ said Anna, and she lifted him with the confidence of one used to holding babies. She held him close, her cheek brushing his head, and when she looked up again Hadfield saw that her eyes were wet with tears.

‘I will come back tomorrow,’ he said, as they left the room.

‘It would be best if you came late in the evening,’ Sophia replied. ‘This house belongs to a friend of the party but we don’t want to draw attention to our presence.’

‘Is Tatiana safe here?’

‘For now, yes.’

‘And the father?’

‘He’s in the “Preliminary” awaiting trial. He was caught distributing copies of the party’s paper at the university. He may not see his baby before the revolution.’ Sophia seemed detached,
as if speaking of the everyday, a tram ride into the city, shopping at the market.

‘A terrible price to pay.’

‘But his son will live in a better world.’

That night Hadfield persuaded Anna to return to his apartment and they made love without the inhibitions of others close by. There was an additional strange intensity to their lovemaking, as if the birth of the baby had left its emotional stamp on both of them.

‘I saw you wipe away a tear,’ he whispered, his cheek against hers, their naked bodies together.

She did not reply.

‘It will be so hard for her,’ he said.

‘She should have been more careful.’

‘Careful?’ he asked, edging from her a little to look at her face.

‘Revolutionaries shouldn’t have children.’

‘Ah yes, revolutionaries can’t be happy. I forgot.’

‘Don’t be sarcastic. It’s cruel, a sin to have children when we could lose our freedom or our lives at any time.’

‘All this talk of martyrdom and sin,’ he said, leaning forward to kiss her lips. ‘I thought you were no longer a believer.’

‘Don’t tease me. Go to sleep. I don’t want to talk about it.’ She turned abruptly from him.

But he could not sleep. Curled about her, her skin warm to his, his mind restless, he felt sad. If it was foolish for a revolutionary to have a family, was it foolish to risk love and tenderness too? What were her feelings for him? He pressed closer, trying to empty his mind of all but the happiness he felt lying at her side.

A few days later his surgery assistant brought him another note from ‘a friend of Anna’s’.

‘The messenger says it’s urgent and that he’ll wait for a reply,’ his assistant said apologetically.

The note was in a scruffy hand and badly spelt: an emergency, a ‘comrade’ badly hurt, ‘come at once’. A friend of Anna’s? He cursed quietly under his breath: what on earth was she thinking? He would not become the party’s physician of choice. The messenger was standing, cap in hand, at the waiting-room door. It was evident from his manner and dress that he was a worker at one of the factories or shipyards on the island.

‘Your Honour, it’s only a short walk. We must hurry.’

Instructing his assistant to rearrange appointments, Hadfield grabbed his coat and medical bag and followed the man from the surgery. At the end of Line 7, they turned on to one of the island’s arteries, bustling with horse trams and cabs and traders at their stalls, stamping their feet, blowing into frozen hands. Hadfield did his best to make conversation but his guide was tongue-tied, incapable of more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to simple questions. They slithered along the icy pavement for five minutes, turning left at Line 11 and walking on until they reached the door of a run-down three-storey house at the far end of the street. His guide gave two sharp knocks, paused for a few seconds then gave two more. The door was opened with an impatient jerk by a dishevelled man in his twenties who was plainly suffering from shock, for his face was drained of colour, his pupils abnormally dilated.

‘Thank goodness – come . . . come in . . . come in,’ he stammered. ‘It’s poor Valentin – this way, please.’

Hadfield followed him along a short corridor and into a ground-floor apartment.

‘We wouldn’t have brought you here but Anna . . .’

‘Is she here?’

‘No, no.’

‘Where’s the patient?’ Hadfield snapped.

‘In here, please.’ He held the door open.

The injured man was sitting on a damp mattress with his back to the wall, a bundle of bloody rags round his right hand. There was a deathly pallor to his face and he had clearly lost a lot of blood because his shirt was stained red, and there were dark patches on his woollen waistcoat and trousers.

‘Valentin, I’ve brought a doctor.’

The injured man nodded weakly but did not open his eyes. The room was furnished with nothing more than the mattress and a simple wooden chair.

‘You, what’s your name?’ Hadfield turned to the first man.

‘Kibalchich, Nikolai Ivanovich, at your service.’

‘Well, Nikolai Ivanovich, I need water, towels, soap, and quickly.’

While he was away, Hadfield began gently peeling the rags from the injured man’s hand. It was a severe trauma injury, ragged tissue, ragged bone, three fingers gone, forefinger and thumb reduced to bloody stumps.

‘How did you do this?’

‘A piece of machinery, Doctor,’ said Kibalchich from the door. He was holding an enamel bowl, a towel draped over his shoulder.

The loose skin round the wound was blackened and in places red raw. Hadfield could smell burnt flesh and the injured man’s hair and eyebrows were singed, his shirt sleeve too. ‘A piece of machinery that burns?’

Kibalchich licked his lips uncertainly and looked away.

‘I’ll do what I can, but you know he should be in hospital?’

‘Is there anything else you need?’ Kibalchich asked, kneeling beside him with the bowl.

‘You must help me, I need to give him an anaesthetic.’ Hadfield took out a bottle and sprinkled some drops on to a gauze pad: ‘That should be enough.’ It was hard to judge the correct dose.

‘Ether?’

‘Yes. I can see you’re interested in chemistry,’ said Hadfield,
giving a nod to the injured man’s hand. The irony in his voice was not lost on Kibalchich.

It took almost an hour to clean the wound, to cut away the dead flesh, tidy, stitch and dress.

‘He’s in pain still,’ said Kibalchich, as the patient groaned long and loud.

‘He’ll be in pain when he comes round. I’ll give you some morphine, but you must take him to a hospital.’

‘Your hospital?’

Hadfield frowned: ‘It would be better to take him somewhere else. The Nikolaevsky’s a military hospital.’

‘I’ll speak to Alexander Mikhailov.’

‘If you can’t find somewhere, contact me – but discreetly. The wound needs to be checked and dressed regularly. Now I must wash.’

Kibalchich left the room to fetch clean water. Getting to his feet, Hadfield stretched on tiptoes to the ceiling, blood flowing back into his stiff limbs. There were patients waiting to see him, he was to be at the hospital in two hours and he had no intention of lingering in the apartment. The less he knew of their chemistry experiments the better.

He stepped out of the room into the gloomy corridor. ‘Hey, Nikolai?’ Where was his water? He walked down the corridor and opened the first door he came to.

He stood with his hand on the knob, staring in amazement at the workbenches with their flasks and clamps and Bunsen burners. There was a confusion of broken glass and laboratory instruments on the bench furthest from the door and a large black smoke shadow on the wall. Valentin had lost his fingers in an explosion. If he took the trouble to look he would find them on or below the bench.

‘As you can see – the party’s laboratory.’

Alexander Mikhailov was standing in the hall at the end of
the corridor, with Kibalchich at his shoulder. His voice was calm, even relaxed, but Hadfield felt a prickle of perspiration creep over his skin as he turned to face him.

‘The scene of Valentin’s unfortunate accident?’

‘Yes. A mercury fulminate. Nikolai,’ Mikhailov addressed his companion, ‘the doctor is still waiting to wash his hands.’

Kibalchich stepped forward too quickly, sloshing water along the corridor.

‘Put it in the laboratory,’ said Mikhailov, slipping out of his black coat. ‘We have nothing to hide now, the doctor knows our business.’

As he stood at the workbench soaping his hands and forearms, Hadfield was conscious of Mikhailov’s lazy-lidded eyes watching him intently.

‘You’re the only person to set foot in this room who isn’t a party member,’ he said, leaning forward to offer a towel. ‘Quite an honour.’