To Kill a Tsar (31 page)

‘May I ask who recommended me to you?’

The special investigator did not answer at first but gave him a cool, appraising look, small dark brown eyes fixed on his face. If he was hoping to intimidate he was doing very well. Hadfield bent down to his medical bag and began searching inside it for a journal.

‘Surely you can guess, Doctor,’ said Dobrshinsky at last. ‘You told one of my colleagues that you were a friend of the chief prosecutor’s.’

‘One of your colleagues?’

‘Major Barclay.’

‘I see. You’re a policeman. I think I may have mentioned Count von Plehve’s name, yes,’ Hadfield said, rising from the bag with his journal. ‘Now perhaps you can tell me what you think the problem may be – your symptoms?’

‘The problem?’ Dobrshinsky gave a little laugh and, with a dismissive sweep of his right hand, brushed a fleck of dust from the knee of his trousers. ‘Please excuse me, Doctor, but the problem is not really with my health but with yours.’

‘Oh?’

‘It seems you’ve been keeping dangerous company.’

‘You mean Anna Petrovna?’ Hadfield interrupted. ‘I explained to Major Barclay: she was an able nurse and I know nothing more about her than that. Naturally I was shocked to hear she was wanted by the police.’

‘Quite so. Quite so. But you didn’t mention to Major Barclay
that you attended an illegal gathering, that there were a number of terrorists wanted by the police there, one of them the Kovalenko woman.’

Hadfield leant forward. ‘I’ve never knowingly been in the company of terrorists. I’m a doctor . . .’

‘We all need doctors, don’t we?’ Dobrshinsky replied with an amused smile.

‘You don’t seem to need me,’ said Hadfield haughtily, ‘but I have patients who do.’ He bent again to his medical bag as if preparing to leave.

‘Aren’t you ready to help our investigation, Doctor?’

‘I can’t see how I can.’

‘Do you know Madame Volkonsky?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you will remember her political salon.’

‘I do remember a rather disagreeable afternoon at her home,’ Hadfield said calmly. And he described briefly the gathering and the discussion, but without mentioning the names of those who were there.

‘So you admit there was talk of the attempt made on His Majesty’s life?’

Hadfield gave a short laugh. ‘There was talk of that in every home in the city.’

‘Do you think of yourself as a Russian?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘And a loyal subject?’

‘Yes,’ he lied.

There was not a flicker of emotion – anger, disbelief, disappointment – in the investigator’s face. He was a patient man – that much was apparent – but Hadfield detected something else, a certain distance in his manner he could not entirely explain.

‘Would you inform the police if you knew someone was trying to kill His Majesty?

‘Yes.’

‘Who spoke up for the assassin?’

‘A small Jewish fellow called Goldenberg. Red hair. Voluble.’

‘He remembers you too.’

‘I should hope so. We argued about the attempt to murder His Majesty.’

‘But you didn’t see fit to inform the police?’

‘I thought he was a hothead but essentially harmless.’

The investigator clucked sceptically: ‘Goldenberg is a murderer.’ He clearly did not believe a word of Hadfield’s story, and for another half-hour he snapped question after question at him, dismissing his man servant with a wave when he dared to interrupt with the coffee. Did the doctor expect him to believe he had not seen Anna at the salon? What about the meeting at the opera? Questions, questions. Hadfield batted them back with either an angry denial or a sad, incredulous shake of the head: ‘Are you going to accept my word or the lies of a murderer?’ he asked eventually.

‘Don’t you think a murderer capable of the truth?’

‘An interesting question to debate at length, Anton Frankzevich, but you have spent an hour trying to prove I am a terrorist, so there really isn’t time.’

‘Simple questions, that’s all, Doctor,’ Dobrshinsky said, his thin lips twitching with amusement.

‘If you’re not going to arrest me for having had the misfortune to accept an invitation to the wrong sort of party then you must excuse me,’ Hadfield replied. ‘You see, I generally charge for my time.’ He paused. ‘But perhaps you would like me to examine you? You don’t look well.’ He bent again to his medical bag. There was nothing more likely to distract and worry a man than a doctor’s professional concern.

‘That isn’t necessary. I’m in good health,’ said Dobrshinsky irritably.

‘As you wish,’ said Hadfield, easing himself out of the low library chair.

The special investigator rose, too, carefully smoothing the creases from his tailcoat. What a peculiar fellow, Hadfield thought, fastidious, with a lawyer’s eye for detail but – what else? He had a certain louche quality.

‘Have you read Mr Dostoevsky’s
The Devils
?’ Dobrshinsky asked. His smile was disingenuous.

‘No,’ Hadfield lied again.

‘You must.’ Dobrshinsky walked over to the bookcase to the right of the fireplace and took out two volumes.

‘But I can buy my own copy.’

‘No, I insist. You can return it. I think you’ll find it illuminating. In particular, the ease with which clever people can be tricked by the unscrupulous acting in the name of principle.’

In the street outside, an image began to form in the back of Hadfield’s mind.

At first it was diffuse, like sunlight through a morning mist. By the time he had hailed a cab, it had sharpened into the recollection of an evening in Zurich in the company of a young man with a pallor and distance very like the collegiate councillor’s. As the evening had progressed the student had become agitated and his thin body had begun to shake uncontrollably.

Hadfield’s exclamation so alarmed the driver he brought his cab to a halt.

‘Is something wrong, Your Honour?’

Of course, he had treated cases since; Dobrshinsky clearly exhibited some of the symptoms. If he was a betting man he would have placed money on his diagnosis – the tsar’s special investigator was addicted to opium.

5 FEBRUARY 1880

‘
I
t’s ready.’

‘It’s ready?’

‘Didn’t I say so,’ Khalturin snapped at her.

‘Then what do we do now?’ Anna asked, turning to the figure at her side.

‘We wait.’ Andrei Zhelyabov’s voice shook a little with excitement. He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘You may have to go back with Stepan to the tavern. His friends are expecting his fiancée.’

After weeks of living on his nerves Stepan Khalturin was unable to keep still for a second, treading the snow about them into a hard crust. Anna could not see his face. Both men had pulled their hats low over their eyes and Khalturin was muffled in a black woollen scarf. They had met close to the workman’s entrance to the Winter Palace and she had watched as they hurried across the square towards her, their heads bent low against the driving snow. It had barely stopped in three days, shaping a new monochrome cityscape with peaks of snow and ice rising from the rivers and canals, the streets unfamiliar, the smallest journey a trial.

‘How long?’ Anna asked.

‘Five minutes at most,’ said Khalturin, his voice strained and unhappy.

‘Did anyone see you in there?’ Zhelyabov asked, resting a large gloved hand on the carpenter’s shoulder.

‘There was one man looking for some tools. The rest are in the tavern waiting for me.’

‘Calm yourself, my friend, calm yourself,’ and Zhelyabov placed his arm about his shoulders. ‘We have only a few minutes to wait and then we’ll be away.’

They stood in restless silence in the shadows beneath the arch in the General Staff Building, fidgeting with hats and gloves, glancing every few seconds at Zhelyabov’s pocket watch. Ministry officials and soldiers scurried past in search of shelter or a cab to take them home. Anna watched the fuzzy glow from the lighted palace windows and tried to imagine the scene in the dining room; the footmen gliding about the table with wine and silver serving dishes, the flutter of excitement at the door as the butler whispered sharp instructions to the servants – perhaps there was someone to taste the emperor’s food for poison. She blinked, then looked away as another image flitted through her mind – the eruption from below, splintering mirrors and the crystal chandelier, tiny stabbing pieces of glass whirling in a dusty vortex. Would there be children at the tsar’s table? She shuddered at the thought. Taking it for nervousness or the cold, Zhelyabov gave her forearm a reassuring squeeze.

‘Any minute now, Anna, then we will—’

But before he could finish his sentence there was a sharp orange flash and the palace plunged into darkness. A throaty rumble like thunder split the heavy white silence, rolling across the square towards them.

‘Oh God,’ Khalturin muttered. ‘Oh God.’

Seconds only, then silence again. They could see nothing but the silhouette of the building through the snow falling steadily, a soft blanket over all.

‘We must leave now,’ said Zhelyabov, turning quickly from the palace.

But Anna could not move. She watched, transfixed, as soldiers poured into the square from the barracks buildings close
by and began to form a cordon about the commandant’s entrance.

‘Come on!’ Zhelyabov tugged at her arm: ‘Come on.’

They walked towards the Nevsky, not daring to glance back again. Police and soldiers hurried past. In the distance they could hear the clanging of fire bells.

‘You’ve done it, my friend, you’ve done it!’ Zhelyabov whispered to the carpenter. ‘I congratulate you.’

But Khalturin’s face was rigid, his eyes fixed on a point directly ahead. Anna could see he was close to collapse.

‘Think what people will say!’ Zhelyabov continued. ‘We have struck at the evil heart of this empire – believe me, my friends, we have shaken the world today.’

What reply could she give her comrade but a polite nod and a smile? If it was a blow for liberty and justice, why did she feel so very sad?

The tsarevich was still at the door of the main guard room when Anton Dobrshinsky arrived twenty minutes after the explosion. The heir to the throne looked like a wraith in the candlelight, his uniform, his face and beard grey with dust.

‘Appalling,’ he muttered, and taking Dobrshinsky for a medical man, urged him with trembling voice to do what he could for the wounded.

The air was thick with choking smoke and dust and the sulphurous smell of dynamite.

‘More light – at once!’ Dobrshinsky shouted to no one in particular.

It was evident from the coughing and heart-wrenching groans – someone was screaming uncontrollably – that the guard room was full of injured and dying men. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that the force of the explosion had blown a huge hole in the floor, tossing granite paving slabs to the sides
of the room. Chunks of plaster and rubble had collapsed into the cellar below.

Behind him he heard General Gourko, the governor of the city, coaxing the tsarevich to leave for ‘the good of the empire’. ‘Your Highness, there is nothing you can do here.’

A troop of firemen arrived with a doctor and began to pick their way through the ruins of the room. By the light of their torches, Dobrshinsky could see figures trapped in the debris – to judge from their dusty uniforms soldiers of the Finland Regiment. Among the smoking mounds of stone and plaster, arms and legs, the ragged white remains of those blown apart in the explosion. And on the walls, black stains where they had left their bloody shadows.

‘More light, for God’s sake!’ barked the governor. ‘Is that you, Dobrshinsky?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency,’ he said.

‘A damn mess. A little more dynamite and they would have wiped out the imperial family. This granite floor . . .’ the general prodded a broken slab with the toe of his boot, ‘saved them – this and a little discourtesy. You know the Yellow Dining Room is directly above us?’

‘No, Your Excellency.’

The hero of the battle of Plovdiv looked uncommonly fierce in the flickering torchlight: ‘What on earth are you chaps at the Third Section doing? This is a disgrace.’

‘Regrettably, I’m not responsible for security within these walls, Your Excellency,’ the special investigator replied coolly.

‘If you’d caught these madmen they wouldn’t have been able to carry out an attack,’ replied the general, pulling distractedly at his large moustache. He turned back to the chaos of the room, bellowing orders to the rescue party, anger and frustration ringing in his voice. Judging there was nothing to be discovered in the rubble while the wounded were the first concern, Dobrshinsky made his way up the dark marble staircase
to the first floor and into the dining room. One of the gas chandeliers was still burning and he could see by its light that the blast had blown open the windows, the draught drawing in flurries of snow and stirring the smoke that hung in a sulphurous yellow layer about the room. The carpets and furniture were covered in dust, and fissures had opened up in the plaster ceiling and walls. China and crystal had been shaken from the table and lay in sad splinters about the floor, but he noticed that none of the chairs had been pulled away, which suggested no one had taken their place for dinner. General Gourko was right: the terrorists had hoped to wipe out the tsar and his immediate family. The bomb must have been planted in the cellar with a timing mechanism, something like a Thomas device. Perhaps a soldier – or more likely a workman – but how had he managed to smuggle so much explosive into the palace undetected? It was fiendishly clever. If anyone was still foolish enough to underestimate the audacity and skill of these people after the train bomb, this would serve as a rude awakening.

‘Can I help Your Excellency?’

A young footman, his uniform and hair thick with dust, had slipped into the room with the silent discretion of the better sort of servant. In answer to Dobrshinsky’s question, he confirmed the tsar had not sat for dinner at the appointed hour but had been kept waiting by Prince Alexander of Hesse who had been late arriving at the palace. This impropriety on his brother-in-law’s part had probably saved the lives of the emperor and his family.