Part 3 (2/2)

'She's visiting our family in Kazan . . .' Evgenia hesitated. 'My mother . . .' The uncomfortable frown hovering between her dark eyebrows suggested to Hadfield this was a half truth at best. Anna came to her rescue.

'Which hospital do you work at?' The question was fired with a peremptoriness that made him start.

'The Nikolaevsky, Miss Kovalenko. And I have some patients of my own.'

'Patients who can afford to pay.'

'Yes,' he said, drawing the word out into a challenge. He was not going to be bullied into feeling guilty.

'The Nikolaevsky is a military hospital, isn't it?' Again it sounded like a criticism.

'But it doesn't treat only soldiers.'

'You said at Madame Volkonsky's salon you believed in working among the people, winning their trust, and that you thought that was the only way to make them listen to us.'

'I do believe that.'

'There is a clinic for the poor not far from your hospital, in the Peski district. Evgenia and I do what we can there on Sundays. We need a doctor. Will you help us?' She leant forward a little, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with fervour. Hadfield could feel the colour rising in his face.

'What a wonderful idea! Do say yes, Doctor,' Madame Volkonsky gushed. 'I am sure you're right. If we help them, they will learn from us. That is the only way to bring about reform.'

How foolishly sentimental Madame Volkonsky made his views sound, he thought, patronising too. Anna was still looking at him intently with those piercing blue eyes, and his heart beat a little faster.

'Well, Doctor, will you help us?'

'Of course, yes.'

A small satisfied smile was playing on Anna's lips and she looked away at last, the spell broken. The theatre bell began to ring for the third act, the musicians drifted back to their seats in the pit, the auditorium began to fill with the excited hum of antic.i.p.ation.

Sitting in the darkness behind Lady Dufferin, Hadfield wondered what on earth possessed him to agree. He was being drawn into a.s.sociation with people who for all their philanthropy believed killing and maiming could fas.h.i.+on a civilised society. Perhaps they were at the Mikhailovsky to plan just such an outrage, taking note of discreet corners beneath the imperial suite, while on the stage the ba.s.ses thundered the unthinking dogmas of Meyerbeer's Anabaptists. The light catching the pearls around the neck of the amba.s.sador's wife, the scent of pomade from the hair of her young gentlemen, crisp white cuffs and polished black shoes, and the thick orange velvet covering of the balcony rail; he took pleasure in these details like a scientist examining a slide beneath a microscope, for they were the comforts of the world in which he lived most of his life. But how much keener his appreciation if there was the risk of losing them a small chance, granted but enough to give life more edge. In Russia, guilt by a.s.sociation might secure even a well-connected doctor several years in a katorga in Siberia. Excitement, then, and no small satisfaction, in Sunday work the student doctor of his Zurich days would have respected.

The stirring last chords, a polite second's silence then a crescendo of applause as the heavy curtains swept back to reveal the first of the princ.i.p.als. With moist eyes, Lady Dufferin turned to her party then back to the stage, her gloved hand gripping the edge of the balcony. Hadfield leant forward a little to peer over the countess's, shoulder, and through the dark forest of hands he could see there were four empty seats. He felt a pang of disappointment: dowdy clothes, her neat little figure, her softly spoken accented Russian, her strange physicality, the frown that hovered between her dark brows a little too closely set for cla.s.sical beauty her arrogant defiance and yet a certain reticence, and those searing blue eyes those and more. He was intrigued and pleased, pleased he was now obliged to spend the following Sunday at Miss Kovalenko's clinic.

6.

28 MAY 1879.

Major Vladimir Barclay did not see the executioner kick the steps away but he heard the gasp of thousands like the sighing wind on the winter steppe. The charged silence that followed was broken only by the priest's prayers and the lazy creaking of the scaffold. Alexander Soloviev was twitching at the end of the rope. This was what they wanted, the young merchants and the old ladies wrapped in black, the frock-coated civil servants, these were the precious seconds they had waited an hour or more to witness. Kicking and shaking and slowly turning as life was choked from him before their eyes.

What a spectacle! Turning his back on the scaffold, Barclay began pus.h.i.+ng through the crowd towards the line of carriages in front of the s.e.m.e.novsky Barracks. It was not that he felt sympathy for Soloviev it was only what he deserved but the business was managed so badly. The hangman was a drunken criminal who emptied a bottle of vodka down his throat before he fumbled through his task.

Barclay's driver had abandoned his post for a favourable view of the execution and was now lost in the crush of spectators. After a few minutes he came puffing up, red-faced, peaked cap in hand, which he swept before the major as he bowed contritely.

'Fontanka 16 and smart about it,' Barclay snapped.

But the entertainment was well and truly over, the crowd drifting away, and for all the driver's easy cursing, the brandis.h.i.+ng of his whip, the carriage crept on to Zagorodny at no more than a walking pace. A file of soldiers was marching along the prospekt to the lazy beat of a drum and the driver was obliged to join the carriages trundling in its wake.

Barclay had spent twenty years in uniform with the army and then the Gendarme Corps. Secret policeman, guardian of the state, he sometimes wondered if his name and background had directed his choice of role, as if he had felt it necessary to prove his loyalty to the empire. The Barclays had made their money in the timber trade; worse still, they were 'foreigners' of Scottish descent. Collegiate Councillor Dobrs.h.i.+nsky was the same. He was a member of the hereditary n.o.bility from Kiev, but his family was Polish they were 'foreigners' too. After observing his new superior for a week, Barclay was inclined to the view that this was almost the only thing they had in common. Dobrs.h.i.+nsky was single and unattached, a curious state of affairs for a thirty-five-year-old gentleman who, if not handsome, was quite prosperous enough to be eligible. Of course, there were many senior government servants who preferred the society of the demi-monde but no one Barclay had spoken to suspected the collegiate councillor of an exotic private life. He was bookish, an academic by disposition and a lawyer by training, distant, even a little cool with colleagues, and yet he enjoyed a formidable reputation as an interrogator, not of the bullying sort but as a student of the mind, a follower of Professor Wundt and the German school.

Barclay was flattered Dobrs.h.i.+nsky had singled him out to join the special investigation, although a good deal of his enthusiasm was dissipating as the size of the task they faced became apparent. Dobrs.h.i.+nsky had explained in his quiet measured way that it was their duty to protect His Imperial Majesty, and if that meant arresting every radical in the empire then that was precisely what they were going to do. With good intelligence that would not be necessary; well placed informers, more agents and better trained, a complete shake-up of the Third Section. Failure was unthinkable, the consequences immeasurable.

The special investigation team at Fontanka 16 had begun to creep across the first floor. A score of agents was a.s.signed to the inquiry, clerks, copyists, an archivist and even a dedicated telegrapher with one of the new Baudot transmitters. The Third Section had seen nothing quite like it since the days of Tsar Nicholas. From dawn until long after dusk, clerks scurrying from room to room with telegrams and reports from gendarme stations across the empire, plain-clothes officers taking witness statements or questioning known radicals, street superintendents flicking through photographs in an effort to identify 'illegals' in their districts, and at the heart of this frantic activity, the special investigator himself. Dobrs.h.i.+nsky was at a blackboard with an agent when Barclay stepped inside the main inquiry room. There was an unnatural hush; the officers bent low over their desks like schoolboys before their teacher. Cheap furniture had been crammed into the office to meet the needs of the investigation and the agents sat in a phalanx of desks pressed together in the middle of the room. Along one of the walls, three large sash windows with a view over the Fontanka; against the rest, wooden filing cabinets, bookcases, blackboards and tables.

'Vladimir Alexandrovich, how timely,' said Dobrs.h.i.+nsky with an expression Barclay took for a smile. 'We have something of great interest at last, please . . .' and he indicated with a look and a brisk sweep of the hand that the gendarme officer should follow him into his office. 'And you too, Kletochnikov,' he said, addressing the agent at his side.

'A good show?' Dobrs.h.i.+nsky asked as he settled behind his perfectly ordered and polished mahogany desk.

'A large crowd, Your Honour.'

'No need for formality,' said Dobrs.h.i.+nsky, offering them both the leather library chairs opposite. 'It was a pointless waste. In time, I might have won Soloviev's confidence. Justice has not served us well in this case, a little too blind and impatient, I fear. But we have something . . .'

He reached into his drawer and pulled out a red leather-bound file, opened it and spread his hands on the desk in front of him in a gesture of satisfaction.

'Yes, thank goodness we have something. Two valuable pieces of intelligence, the first, a report taken from a yard keeper on the Fontanka Embankment a short distance from here. The second, well, that is why Agent Nikolai Vasilievich is here.'

Kletochnikov coloured a little with embarra.s.sment and glanced down at his hands twisting in his lap. Well, well, a secret policeman who blushes; Barclay suppressed the temptation to smile. The poor fellow seemed very young, no more than thirty, slight, round-shouldered, with a thin intelligent face and spectacles.

'The dvornik was questioned by a local constable and he gave a remarkably good description of what was almost certainly an illegal gathering at a mansion opposite. It's owned by a . . .' Dobrs.h.i.+nsky glanced down at the file, 'a Madame Volkonsky, a sentimental old aristocrat, a champagne revolutionary.'

It was a Sunday afternoon, which was why the yard keeper was sober, he explained. The old man puffed on his pipe and watched the comings and goings at Number 86 with keen interest and with a surprising eye for detail.

'Students, some respectably dressed young women, a young man in tweed with an exotic blue tie, but of more importance, these two.' Dobrs.h.i.+nsky took two small photographs from the file and slid them across the desk to Barclay.

'The one on the right is Mikhailov rather an old photograph, and on the left, the Jew, Goldenberg. The dvornik had no difficulty in identifying him. Mikhailov arrived and left with a young woman, pet.i.te, dark.' Dobrs.h.i.+nsky paused, lifting his elbows to the desk, hands together as if in prayer, intense concentration written on his face. 'Her description seems to match one we have of a woman seen leaving the square after the attempt on His Majesty's life.'

'Do you want me to arrest Madame Volkonsky?' Barclay asked.

'Leave her for now. Keep the house under surveillance. Have her followed. I don't expect Mikhailov tells her anything, but he may risk using Number 86 for another gathering. She's probably giving him money. I think it's fair to a.s.sume Mikhailov and Goldenberg are still in the city. And now, if you please . . .' Dobrs.h.i.+nsky nodded to the young agent perched anxiously at the edge of his chair.

'Yes, Your Honour.' Kletochnikov looked unsure quite what was expected of him.

'Tell Major Barclay what the city police have told you.'

'It's Popov, Your Honour, the student revolutionary implicated in the death of the informer Bronstein. He's been seen among the men at the Baird Works.'

One of the foundry hands had tipped off the local police, Kletochnikov explained. Popov and the Muscovite labourers with whom he shared the room at the Neva were organising political meetings in the homes of sympathisers, distributing propaganda, agitating for a secret trade union, and the socialist gospel they preached was attracting new recruits, although the city police could not be sure how many.

'So, as you see, another opportunity,' said Dobrs.h.i.+nsky, impatiently pus.h.i.+ng back his chair and rising to his feet. 'Which is well and good because General Drenteln and the Justice Ministry are impatient for results. Soloviev was a n.o.body. It's the men who gave him his gun and sent him out that we want.'

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