To Kill a Tsar (4 page)

‘But as you see,’ said Barclay, ‘someone must have discovered he was working for us.’

Dobrshinsky stared at him, an intense appraising gaze that would have cowed many, but Barclay returned it without flinching. A competent officer, a man of careful method, Dobrshinsky thought, just the sort of fellow he could use. The Third Section was supposed to be an elite branch of the police, all-powerful, all-seeing, with special responsibility for suppressing political subversion in the empire. Its head was the Chief of the Corps of Gendarmes and he answered to the emperor in person. But the last incumbent had been stabbed to death in the street on the way to the section’s headquarters and his successor, General Drenteln, had only weeks before escaped the same fate by the skin of his teeth. If the section was unable to protect its own chief, Dobrshinsky thought, what hope for emperor and empire?

‘All right, shall we look at him, Major?’

There was a startled look on Bronstein’s thin white face, as if his death was impossible to imagine, his brown eyes wide, his mouth a little open. His goatee beard was thick with blood, and so were his trousers and peasant shirt.

‘There’s something attached to his chest,’ said Barclay, squatting beside the body. ‘A piece of card.’

He reached across to unpin it and was obliged to steady himself by placing a hand on the rug. ‘Damn it, I’ve got the Jew’s blood on me.’

He got to his feet and handed the card to Dobrshinsky. ‘In case there was any doubt . . .’

Written on the card in capitals was:

N.V. BRONSTEIN, TRAITOR, SPY, CONDEMNED AND EXECUTED BY RUSSIAN SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARIES. THOSE WHO FOLLOW BRONSTEIN’S EXAMPLE WILL SHARE HIS FATE. DEATH TO ALL JUDAS BETRAYERS!

As he gazed into Bronstein’s dull eyes Dobrshinsky reflected that it was hard to feel sorry for a dead Judas, even if he was your own. He turned away to examine the room. It was small, just a single bed, three plain wooden chairs, a table covered in a grubby checked cloth and a large unvarnished wardrobe of pine. As Bronstein had thrashed despairingly for air he had speckled the furniture and walls with his blood. But the murderer had severed the windpipe, not the jugular, so there was less than might have been expected. Bronstein had almost certainly drowned in his own blood and he had been dead for at least twenty-four hours. One of the chairs lay on its side at the bottom of the bed and the sticky pool on the boards beside it suggested it was there the murderer had cut his victim’s throat.

‘Go through his pockets,’ said Barclay, nodding to one of the gendarmes at the door, ‘and the rest of you – turn this place upside down. Clothes, papers, anything, I want to see it all.’

He led Dobrshinsky into the dingy corridor: ‘Do you smoke, Your Honour?’

‘No.’

Taking a Sobranie from his cigarette case, Barclay rolled it gently between his fingers, squeezing the packed tobacco down into the black paper. He was a curious-looking man, in his late forties, short and a little overweight, with a ruddy clean-shaven
face, heavy but perfectly arched eyebrows and thinning brown hair. He had spent ten years in the Gendarme Corps but still looked uncomfortable in its sky blue uniform, as if by some quirk of fate a man born to manage a bank had been miscast as a military policeman. He would be trustworthy in either capacity, Dobrshinsky thought, thorough and energetic and, when necessary, ruthless.

The bedroom door opened behind them and a gendarme sergeant stepped into the corridor and saluted. ‘We found this under the mattress, sir.’

Barclay took the small scrap of paper. Scrawled on it in pencil were six names:
Kviatkovsky, Goldenberg, Presnyakov, Morozov, Mikhailov, Kovalenko.

‘Bronstein,’ said Barclay, handing the note to Dobrshinsky, ‘I recognise the hand. He must have hidden it.’

‘And the names?’

The policeman rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his chubby fingers. ‘Goldenberg is wanted for the murder of the governor general of Kharkov – and Presnyakov . . . Presnyakov has been living in exile for the last two years, after he murdered one of our agents.’

‘Perhaps Presnyakov is back in the city,’ said Dobrshinsky. ‘He may be involved in the new party Bronstein spoke of.’ He stood gazing at the names for a few more seconds then slipped the paper into his waistcoat pocket. ‘You will be hearing from me soon,’ he said, and nodding to Barclay he began walking down the hotel corridor in the direction of the staircase. The gendarme officer watched his bent shoulders for a moment and the image of a fox on hind legs flashed through his mind. Like the fox in the old folk tale, he thought, who seemed so mild and inoffensive but stole the fisherman’s food and appropriated the warmest corner of his home.

In the bedroom, his men were beginning to prise the
floorboards from the joists. Bronstein’s body still lay crumpled on the rug.

From the opposite bank of the Fontanka river it looked like a nobleman’s mansion, and even those who passed beneath the delicate wrought iron canopy that hung over the pavement in front of its entrance were hard pressed to detect any clue as to its true purpose. And yet Fontanka 16 was one of the best known and – for all its elegance – least loved buildings in the city. Dobrshinsky had been given a large room on the second floor, with windows overlooking the river. The head of the Third Section of His Majesty’s Chancellery and Chief of the Corps of Gendarmes, General Drenteln was on the opposite side of the grand staircase, close enough to make his presence felt but a comfortable corridor away from the day-to-day business of his section. At first the general had resented the appointment of a special investigator from the Justice Ministry to his headquarters, but after only a few days it was evident to all in the building that he had gratefully accepted the excuse Dobrshinsky offered to delegate most of his work. And the special investigator did not blame him for taking the opportunity: who wouldn’t have done the same? It was a delicious irony that a force feared more than Baba Yaga herself and invested in the public imagination with some of the same supernatural powers was in reality so close to collapse. In a country renowned for the corruption and incompetence of its institutions, the secret police had distinguished itself by its inefficiency. The task of clearing this stable was now Dobrshinsky’s, and when there was time to reflect upon it he found himself close to laughing aloud. Protect the emperor and bring the nihilists to justice, and in the course of your work breathe new life into the Third Section – that, in so many words, was how von Plehve had put it to him. Failure would bring disgrace, of course. So General Drenteln was doing what any
old soldier would do when faced with overwhelming odds – retreating with as much of his honour as he could salvage. It was Dobrshinsky’s lot to lead
Les Enfants Perdus
.

The clerks in the outer office jumped to their feet as he stepped through the door.

‘I want the files on these names now,’ he said, handing a clerk the scrap of paper.

Within the hour Agent Fedorov from Investigations was standing at the edge of his desk with the little the Third Section registry held on the men. Barclay was right, all of them but one were listed as ‘illegals’ wanted by the police, dangerous men capable of murder – capable of regicide. Kviatkovsky and Goldenberg had been seen last in Kiev, Presnyakov was thought to be living abroad – until now – and Morozov’s whereabouts were unknown. It was the fifth man, Mikhailov, who interested the special investigator the most: Alexander Dmitrievich Mikhailov. From a family of gentry, he was in his early twenties, educated in Petersburg, active in the student demonstrations in ’75 and reportedly the leader of a small cell of revolutionaries who styled themselves ‘Death or Freedom’. Clever and elusive, there was circumstantial evidence implicating him in the planning of the murder of the last Third Section chief the year before. There was no mention of a ‘Kovalenko’ in the section’s files, but clearly he was a member of the same group.

‘And we have this too.’ A single sheet of paper was trembling in Fedorov’s hand. ‘It’s from an informer.’

Dobrshinsky took the paper and glanced down at it quickly. The source was the man now lying in a crimson pool on the bedroom floor of a third-rate hotel on Nevsky. Bronstein had reported to his contact that Mikhailov had visited the Neva two days ago. He had taken Popov aside and spoken to him in a confidential whisper, and for a time Bronstein had been afraid that his role as an informer had been discovered. He had only just managed to quell a desperate urge to run from the room.
But Mikhailov had been civil to him when he left, quite the gentleman – although such things were not meant to be of importance to socialists – and this had allayed his fears. Later, Popov had told them all that Mikhailov was an important revolutionary with ‘progressive’ views on ‘the struggle’ for freedom. Bronstein had taken this to mean he was an advocate of terror. One of the other men in the hotel room said he knew their visitor to be a friend of the man who attacked the tsar in Palace Square. Popov had flown into a rage at this, railing about the need for better security and for everyone to hold their tongues. And again, Bronstein had been frightened that the remark and the anger were directed at him in particular.

He had been right to be afraid, Dobrshinsky thought. His throat had been cut only hours after seeing his police contact for the last time.

‘I want descriptions, personal details, everything we have on these men circulated to police and gendarme stations,’ he said, looking up at the little agent. ‘Speak to their families, watch known associates. I want our agents to talk to their informers. These men will be living under false names and with false papers. Our people need copies of any photographs we have. I’m particularly interested in Alexander Mikhailov.’

‘Yes, Your Honour.’ Fedorov turned to leave. But as he was reaching for the door Dobrshinsky spoke again.

‘I want you to find another office on this floor – empty one if you have to. An officer will be joining me to help with this investigation.’

‘May I ask who, Your Honour?’

‘Major Barclay of the Corps of Gendarmes. Although . . .’ Dobrshinsky gave the agent a dry smile, ‘. . . the Major does not yet know of his good fortune.’

W
inter slipped away in the night. The city woke to the jangle of cathedral bells that second Sunday in April to find the Neva flowing freely after months choked with ice. By midday its banks were lined with Petersburgers enjoying the sunshine and the spectacle of the governor’s barge as it made its stately way upriver to the Winter Palace, a flotilla of smaller craft in its wake. In the splendour of the Great Antechamber, the tsar and court were waiting as the clergy prepared a little wooden chapel on the embankment for the traditional blessing of the river’s slate-grey waters. There was still a carnival atmosphere three hours later as Frederick Hadfield’s droshky began pushing slowly through the crowd spilling on to the road before the Admiralty. Caught by the change in the weather, his driver was sweating profusely in a padded kaftan, exuding a vintage odour of stable shit, foul enough to offend even the horse. With relief they turned on to the Fontanka Embankment at last, and at the Chernyshev Bridge he jogged the smelly Ivan’s elbow. The cab rattled to a halt, he paid then waited at the edge of the pavement as it pulled away.

The three- and four-storey mansions on either side of the Fontanka were not as imposing as those a little further up the river; many had been sold by the great families that once owned them and divided into apartments for army officers, lawyers, Class 6 civil servants and below, and after years of neglect they were in desperate need of a coat of paint. Number 86 was on the opposite bank, a pink and white house in the Russian
classical style with an elegant blind colonnade of four pillars in the middle of its facade. Hadfield had found an excuse to saunter past earlier in the week – to check the address, he told himself – but once there, he had begun to make a mental note of the embankment, to search for men loitering in doorways or at windows, to scrutinise the faces of passers-by. After only a short time he had given up, forced to acknowledge he had no idea what he was looking for and that an anxious imagination was capable of turning every builder and bargeman into a police informer.

Number 86 looked a brighter shade of pink in the sunshine but in all other respects quite as it had before. Did it matter? He was visiting it at the invitation of his friend Vera: a tight ball in the pit of his stomach told him it did matter. A scruffy dvornik was loafing at the door of a neighbouring mansion with his pipe in hand, but he eyed Hadfield with no more than mild curiosity. Beyond him four well-dressed children and their governess were throwing crusts to a flotilla of swans. A fine brougham with a coat of arms painted on its shiny blue door clattered past. It was Sunday quiet and Hadfield had the uncomfortable feeling that the only person behaving furtively was himself. He leaned forward to flick imaginary dust from his trousers, then, rising quickly, he walked across the road to the end of the bridge and between its great stone pavilions to the opposite bank.

After glancing up and down the street again, he stepped forward to the door of Number 86 and gave the bell a decisive tug. It was opened by a footman in a faded green velvet uniform, a gangly youth of no more than eighteen with a long pimply face. He ushered Hadfield inside at once. The entrance hall and the marble stairs that led from it were elegantly proportioned but shabby, the yellow and white painted walls stained with damp, the burgundy runner threadbare. With a graceless sweep of his hand, the footman indicated to Hadfield he should follow him to the first floor.

‘Who lives in the house?’

The footman sneezed then wiped his nose on his sleeve. The iron filigree of the banister was thick with dust.

‘My mistress, Yuliya Sergeyovna Volkonsky, Your Honour.’

An aristocratic name – Hadfield remembered from his school books that a Volkonsky had commanded Russian forces at the battle of Austerlitz – this member of the family must have fallen on hard times. A full-length portrait of a soldier in the white uniform of the Life Guards dominated the landing. A polished mahogany door to the right of the picture was ajar and voices were gusting through it. The footman walked across the landing and opened it without ceremony. The sudden movement must have startled those close to the door because faces turned to Hadfield and for a few seconds there was a wary hush. But a young man in tweed with a rakish soft blue tie and shoulder-length hair was most unlikely to have arrived with a troop of gendarmes and conversation resumed with something close to a collective sigh.