To Kill a Tsar (32 page)

There would be questions, changes, Dobrshinsky thought as he made his way carefully down the dark stairs. Those who gave thanks to God for saving their emperor were unlikely to ascribe the failure in security to his hand too. There would be many – like General Gourko – who would account the Third Section responsible. The clamour for vengeance and arrests would be deafening.

A crowd was gathering beyond the cordon in the square, and some simple souls were singing a hymn of praise to the Virgin, standing in the driving snow with their heads bent in thanks for the deliverance of their tsar. Were these the people the terrorists were acting in the name of? Dobrshinsky wondered. Mikhailov, Figner, Perovskaya – what did they know of the will of the people? He elbowed his way roughly through the cordon and walked quickly across the square to where his carriage was waiting in front of the General Staff Building. The driver was shivering on the box, nipping surreptitiously at a bottle of vodka wrapped in brown paper.

‘The House of Preliminary Detention, and quick about it,’ Dobrshinsky barked.

He would not leave the Jew’s cell until he’d squeezed every last drop of advantage from him. Every last drop.

The wounded began arriving at the Nikolaevsky in the hour after the explosion. Sixty casualties, soldiers and palace servants, severed limbs and broken bones, severe blast burns and shock. Frederick Hadfield assisted as a colleague operated on one of the soldiers – no more than nineteen years of age – his chest crushed by falling masonry, his right leg attached by only a white sliver of bone. His chances of survival were slim: a tall fair-haired Finnish soldier who would die because he had the misfortune to be on duty at that hour. Had The People’s Will given him a thought? Hadfield wondered. No one was sure how many men had died in the guard room or how many would die of their wounds in the days to come. And yet not a hair of the tsar’s head had been harmed in the attack. On the hospital wards the wounded could hear the city’s bells rejoicing at his escape. For most of the evening, Hadfield was too busy to give it more than a passing thought, but there were moments – restraining a man with agonising burns over most of his body,
and at the bedside of the young Finnish soldier – when he found himself trembling with anger and guilt.

At a little before eleven, the superintendent of the hospital visited the ward where most of the injured were being treated with General Gourko. In a stentorian voice he informed them they would be receiving a royal visitor within the hour and no one was to leave the hospital.

‘The tsar or tsarevich,’ one of Hadfield’s colleagues whispered. ‘The governor wouldn’t be here for anyone else.’

The corridors echoed with shouted orders as guards were posted on the neighbouring wards and at the entrances to the hospital wing. The beds were given fresh covers, porters arrived to scrub the floor, clean uniforms were issued to the nurses and the doctors straightened their ties and brushed their tailcoats. Hadfield could sense the excitement of those wounded men who were conscious enough to be aware of the preparations. What would Anna say if she could see them refusing pain relief or a sleeping draught lest they miss an opportunity to greet their tsar?

A short time later, the regular beat of military steps and the presentation of arms signalled the arrival of the royal entourage. Hadfield stood to attention as the superintendent had bidden them to do for the Emperor of All the Russias. And then the man Anna and her comrades called a tyrant, the despot, the divine villain, stood before them tired and bent, his face drawn and an unhealthy yellow. He cut a lonely figure in the doorway with his staff a respectful step behind, and for a moment he seemed uncertain what he should do. Collecting himself, he turned to speak to the hospital superintendent, then walked with him to the bed of the nearest wounded soldier. After a few minutes he moved on, stopping and talking to each man in turn, regardless of whether they were capable of replying, pressing a small olive wood cross into their hands. And as he moved closer, Hadfield found even his own heart beating a
little faster, caught up in the reverence of the room, the mystery of monarchy.

‘Your Majesty, may I present Dr Frederick Hadfield?’ said the superintendent. ‘The nephew of His Excellency, General Glen.’

The emperor acknowledged Hadfield’s bow with a weak smile and said in French: ‘Can you understand such a thing, Doctor?’

‘No, Your Majesty.’

The emperor stared at him for a moment and Hadfield was struck by the softness, melancholy perhaps, in his large brown eyes. Then he turned to the Finnish soldier in the bed beside him. ‘Poor fellow. Is he badly injured? Please give him this when he recovers consciousness.’ He took one of the crosses from the superintendent and placed it on the cover.

‘Your Majesty,’ Hadfield said with another bow.

The tsar moved on, passing from bed to bed until he stood at the door again. After exchanging a few words with General Gourko, he glanced wearily to the ward for the last time before he turned to leave. Hadfield picked the little wooden cross from the bedcover and placed it on the soldier’s pillow. The young man’s face was livid and stiff, his body heaving then falling back, air rasping in his throat as he fought for breath. Badly injured? He would never know his emperor had stood at his bedside. By the morning he would be gone.

It was almost two o’clock in the morning when Hadfield left the hospital, and for the first time in days the night was still and clear, the sky frosted with stars. He stood for a few minutes at the entrance, grateful for the sharp air in his lungs and its prickle on his face. He could hear the muffled drumming of hooves in the street, shouted orders and the jingle of cavalry harnesses. The police and army had secured the city’s main
thoroughfares in a show of strength, just as they had done after the first attempt on the tsar a year ago. The journey home would be painfully slow, with questions to answer at half a dozen checkpoints. But he had no mind to go there anyway. He wanted to walk quickly, hard exercise to free his mind from a confusing fog of thoughts and feelings. Walk, walk away from the hospital and wounded soldiers, the tsar and those who sought to kill him, walk and keep walking.

He was not sure how he found his way to Malaya Italyanskaya Street or quite what drove him there at that late hour, but he was relieved to see the lights still burning in George Dobson’s study. They had seen very little of each other in recent weeks. Hadfield had spent most of his evenings either in Anna’s company or more usually waiting to hear from her. His friend was in love too – or infatuated – with a ‘graceful creature’ called Natalya, a dancer with the Mariinsky Company. Was she with him now? Hadfield was too empty and tired to feel anything but indifferent to the embarrassment he might cause.

Fortunately, Dobson was writing his account of the attack on the palace. He stood at the door in his shirt sleeves, a cigar smoking between inky fingers.

‘Goodness gracious, Hadfield, you’ve heard the news!’

‘Yes. May I come in?’

For a moment, he stared at Hadfield distractedly, his eyes glittering with excitement, lost perhaps in a half-written line. Then, ‘My dear fellow, of course,’ and he stepped aside to let him pass. ‘What on earth are you doing here at this hour?’

‘Working late.’

‘Ah.’

Dobson ushered him through to the study, sweeping papers from a chair and reaching for a bottle of claret that he confessed he had almost emptied already. Words began to tumble tipsily from him. The tsar almost murdered in his own palace – all of
Europe would be talking of it in the morning: ‘Escaped by the skin of his teeth, old boy. The skin of his teeth. The tsarevich too. And dozens of guards killed.’

‘A dozen. But many more injured.’

‘Oh? What do you know? By Jove, you’ve come to give me more of the story,’ he said, slipping behind his desk and picking up a pen. ‘Good of you. Is this from your uncle?’

‘The wounded were brought to the Nikolaevsky.’

‘With what sort of injuries?’

Hadfield told him what he wanted to know, of the deaths and the wounded and of the tsar’s visit.

‘He looked ill, you say? Who wouldn’t? He’s not even safe in his own home,’ said Dobson. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’

‘Isn’t that how it should be?’

‘Please, Frederick, don’t attempt to explain or condone this.’ Dobson laid down his pen and leant forward to fix Hadfield with a disapproving look. ‘You know they found the body of a student on the Neva yesterday, his throat cut, almost covered in snow. The terrorists said he was an informer and executed him in the name of the people. Tsar, student, soldier – no one who stands in the way of these Jacobins is safe. Don’t be sentimental. They’re murderers.’

‘I am not going to defend that sort of terror,’ replied Hadfield.

‘What puzzles me is how on earth they managed to get away with it.’ Dobson shook his head in disbelief. ‘My contact told me the police raided one of their apartments two months ago and found a plan of the palace and dynamite. It’s criminal negligence. A drop more?’

Rising from his chair, he crossed the room to a glass-fronted bookcase from which he took another bottle of wine. It was open and Dobson pulled the cork with his teeth.

‘He says he’s met you, by the way.’

‘Who?’

‘My contact in the Gendarme Corps.’ Dobson stepped forward and leant over Hadfield to pour a little more wine into his glass. ‘His name’s Barclay. He’s well connected.’

Hadfield must have jumped a little because his glass clinked against the neck of the bottle.

‘Careful,’ said Dobson, grabbing his hand to steady the glass. ‘Yes, Barclay said he ran into you by chance in a village. One of these nihilist women was teaching at the school.’

He collapsed into the armchair opposite and stretched his legs towards the embers of the dying fire. For the most part, their conversation had been good-natured and bantering, but Hadfield could sense the atmosphere was subtly changing. Of course it was late, Dobson was tired, impatient for his bed, but there was something else; a different note, an almost imperceptible shift in tone, a slyness, as if Hadfield was no longer just a friend but a subject too. Dobson’s bonhomie was of the practised kind, the easy familiarity of the skilful correspondent. He could sense the journalist scrutinising him surreptitiously over the rim of his glass.

‘They didn’t catch her.’

‘Who?’

‘I believe her name was Anna, Anna something. I have a note. Barclay says she worked at a clinic for the poor in Peski.’

Hadfield caught his eye and stared at him belligerently, daring him to say more. But Dobson ignored him and, rising to his feet, picked up the poker and began to stir the fire.

‘Yes, George, I did know her. She worked at the clinic. And, yes, I did visit her house. Barclay clearly told you as much.’

Dobson did not reply but kept prodding the ashes. The little of his face Hadfield could see betrayed no emotion. For a few seconds the silence was broken only by the lazy ticking of a clock and the rattle of the poker against the grate. Then, with a casualness that sounded forced even to his own ears, Hadfield said, ‘Anna Petrovna was a very capable nurse.’

Dobson held his hand for a moment, the poker hovering above the grate, then he began playing with the glowing splinters once more. Hadfield watched him, embarrassed by his clumsy deception. It was so much harder to tell a half truth to a friend than a bare-faced lie to a policeman. All the more so when he was aching to be completely frank.

With nothing more in the fire to reduce, Dobson lifted the poker on to the stand and slumped back in his chair. But almost at once he sprang forward again, hands together, forearms on his broad knees, an intense frown on his face.

‘Look, Frederick. I don’t know if you’re involved in something you shouldn’t be, something illegal . . .’ He paused for a few seconds to allow for a denial, but Hadfield offered none. ‘As a friend, I’m telling you – cut all contact with these people, with the clinic, with her, if she is the only one you know. To do anything else would be madness. After the attack on the palace – well, I don’t need to tell you. Frederick, are you listening to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you?’ The correspondent was squirming at the edge of his chair, his eyes bright and fixed on Hadfield’s face. ‘You know your uncle will not lift a finger to help you?’

Hadfield felt weeks of anxiety and doubt rising inside him, a barely suppressed torrent of feelings. He wanted to tell Dobson everything. He wanted to say he loved her with a whole-hearted passion that left him powerless to pursue any other course. Feeble-minded, shameful, yes, but, but . . . ‘She was an excellent nurse.’

Dobson looked at him scornfully, his lips pursed as if sucking something sour, then he leant back abruptly in his chair in a gesture of resignation. They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while, avoiding eye contact, Dobson spinning the stem of his glass on the arm of the chair.

‘Sleep,’ he said at last, rising quickly to douse the lights. ‘You know your way to the other bedroom.’

‘Yes. Thank you, George,’ Hadfield said with quiet emphasis, ‘for everything.’

Dobson turned to look at him with a warm smile. Then, with a small shrug of the shoulders, ‘Remember what I’ve said, Frederick – that will be thanks enough.’

I
t was the distant but unmistakable crack of a gunshot. Anna shuffled closer to the window and gazed furtively into the street below. Gendarmes were scurrying for the cover of doorways and yards. Someone was shouting. She stepped back for a moment to collect her thoughts, breathing deeply to calm herself. She had come within a hair’s breadth of being caught inside a security cordon but the police had taken her for a passer-by and directed her away. Entering the back of a building in the neighbouring street, she had found a stairwell with a view over the Sapernaya and had watched with rising panic as the gendarmes took up positions. It was a little after six o’clock in the morning and her comrades would have been in their beds. There had been shouts, a hollow thumping, someone inside the flat had smashed windows – the glass showering into the snowy street below – and then smoke had begun pouring from the sitting room. Her comrades must have barred the door and were burning their identity papers and the forged travel passes Anna was to have collected that very morning.