Part 5 (2/2)

'Yes.' Her voice was a little husky, barely more than a whisper: 'Yes, we will.'

8.

It was clear from his restless movement that the yard keeper did not relish the opportunity he had been presented with to serve his tsar.

'Calm down, man, for G.o.d's sake.'

Major Barclay had no time for his squeamishness. What was his name? Barclay had forgotten. These smelly gatekeepers all looked the same with their padded jackets and s.h.a.ggy beards. They were side by side beneath the carriage arch of a large terracotta-coloured mansion block, the soft early sun blinking over the roof of the building opposite. Five minutes to the signal. His men were in place. Both ends of the 3rd Izmailovsky Regiment Street and the open courtyards in the district sealed. Two entrances to the apartment block. The front covered from the building on the opposite side of the street, and the back by a dozen gendarmes in the doorways and shadows of an especially gloomy little yard. If he had any sense, Popov would have reconnoitred a number of escape routes, but Barclay was confident he had covered all the possibilities. He glanced at his pocket watch: 'All right, it's five, let's get him.'

Grasping the dvornik's upper arm, he led him none too gently into the street then almost immediately right through the open doorway of the mansion block. He knocked lightly at the first apartment he came to and Kletochnikov opened the door. In the room behind him another agent Postnikov dressed as a labourer in a peaked cap and short woollen coat.

'Check your weapons again,' said Barclay, drawing his own Smith and Wesson: six good .44 Russian cartridges in the cylinder. Then turning to the dvornik: 'It's up to you now.' The man was shaking like a leaf. 'Come on, you were in the army, weren't you?' Barclay placed a firm hand on his shoulder. 'He isn't expecting us. Remember, stand aside as soon as he opens the door. Have you got the letter?'

Rummaging inside his padded jacket, the yard keeper pulled out an envelope and offered it in a trembling hand to Barclay.

'No, no. Dmitry, isn't it? Dmitry, you give it to Popov.' He tried to keep the frustration from his voice.

Anxious to get the business over with, the silly Ivan began thundering up to the first landing at a pace unknown to his breed.

'Wait!' Barclay hissed. 'Wait there.' He turned to Kletochnikov. 'You first.' He nodded to the stairs. 'I'll follow in thirty seconds. Go.'

He watched the two men make their way as quietly as policemen can up the broad stone steps to the second landing. Then, leaning close to the dvornik's ear, he whispered fiercely: 'Try again. And don't let me down.'

Shoulders hunched, the yard keeper set off up the dark stairs with Barclay at his back. There were six heavy green doors on the third landing. Barclay's men were on either side of the one at the top of the stairs. Kletochnikov wiped his arm across his forehead nervously and his revolver thumped against the door frame. Barclay shot him a withering look. Was the fool deliberately trying to alert the student?

'Call him,' he whispered, pus.h.i.+ng the dvornik towards the door. For what seemed an age, he stood there blinking on the step. Barclay was about to step forward when the man finally raised his fist and hammered on the door. The echo bounced up and down the stairs. Barclay pressed himself to the wall behind Kletochnikov.

'Call him,' he mouthed.

'Your Honour. A letter.'

Barclay waved his fist at the wall to indicate he should knock again. But before the dvornik could do so, they heard the turning of the lock on the inner door.

'What is it, Dmitry?' There was no mistaking the wariness in Popov's voice.

'A letter. An urgent letter.'

Just the degree of obsequiousness one expected from a yard keeper: Dmitry was warming to his role.

The reply came from the thickness of a door away: 'Push the letter under.'

'I can't.'

'Is there anyone with you?'

'No.'

'I don't believe you.'

'Suit yourself,' the dvornik grumbled. For sure, he was earning his rouble now. 'I'll take it away then, shall I?'

No reply.

'Well?' Dmitry asked.

'Leave it there,' came the m.u.f.fled response.

'As you wish.'

The yard keeper bent to place the letter at the foot of the door, then, rising, turned with pleading eyes to Barclay who nodded approvingly and gestured to the staircase. The relief was transparent in the dvornik's face, even beneath his thick beard. But cleverer than he looks, Barclay thought, as he listened to his steady tread at least he had remembered to take his time.

The echo of his footsteps began to die away and Barclay could sense the revolutionary a few feet from him, his ear pressed to the door. He was acutely conscious of the sound of his own short shaky breaths and of Kletochnikov's beside him. Was Popov a patient man? It was only a matter of time before one of the other tenants caught them there or a careless movement gave them away. Pressed against the wall like an animal waiting to pounce, his heart thumping in his chest, Barclay had no sense of how long they had been standing there but his arm was aching with the strain of holding the heavy revolver up in readiness. On the opposite side of the door, little Postnikov was squatting with his head against the wall, his gun beneath his chin, the letter at his feet.

Barclay could hear the groaning of the floorboards behind the door as the student s.h.i.+fted his weight in the hall. Then the rattle of a key pushed into the lock. Kletochnikov raised his weapon. The door swung open and Popov was standing there with a terrified expression on his face, in his right hand a revolver. For a fraction of a second he was caught between fight and flight, pus.h.i.+ng at the door and at the same time raising his weapon to fire. But Postnikov's shoulder was against it: 'Drop it!'

Then the deafening crash of a shot fired at close range. Kletochnikov lunged at the student's outstretched arm but missed and struck his head against the edge of the door.

'I'll shoot!' Popov shouted, stepping back into the apartment.

Another shot rang out, reverberating up and down the staircase. A woman in an apartment on the landing below began to scream. At the foot of the door, Agent Postnikov was groaning pathetically, plucking at the right leg of his trousers as blood flowed across the stone in a widening circle. Barclay could hear the boots of the gendarmes racing up the stairs towards them.

'Come out with your hands above your head,' he shouted through the half open door. 'Don't be foolish. Come out and we can talk.'

There were half a dozen men shoulder to shoulder on the landing now, rifles at the ready.

'See to him,' he said, pointing to the prostrate agent. Fat lot of use the rifles would be in a small apartment.

Barclay was angry. A bad plan. An agent wounded. d.a.m.n it, he was not going to let Popov get away with destroying evidence too. There was nowhere for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to go. He pushed at the outer door and it swung open a little further. Beyond it, a small dark hall and beyond this, three doors off a corridor, the nearest the student's bed-sitting room.

'Follow me,' he hissed to Kletochnikov. The agent was pressing a b.l.o.o.d.y handkerchief to the cut on his brow. 'Come on, man, he's a student, not a Leshy.'

He pushed at the inner door. Its stiff hinges squeaked noisily. The corridor was no bigger than the width of a man's outstretched arms and a bullet fired blind through a door might very well find a mark somewhere. Barclay pressed the flat of his hand against the wall to warn Kletochnikov he should step away from the firing line. Then, taking a position to the left of the first door, he squatted on his haunches and reached for the handle.

'I'll shoot anyone who comes through that door!' Popov shouted, fear ringing in his voice, but determination too. A second later, a shot rang out, deafening in the narrow corridor. Splinters flew from the edge of the door as the bullet ricocheted against it and out on to the landing. Behind Barclay, Kletochnikov was breathing very hard, blood from the wound on his brow trickling unchecked down both cheeks. Barclay clicked his fingers sharply to capture his attention, then shook his revolver angrily at the agent: concentrate, stand ready. Popov's careless shot had helped clear his mind and in the time it took for the echo to die away he knew what he must do.

'Lay down your weapon. I'm coming in,' he shouted and, bending low, he turned the handle of the door. It was neither locked nor bolted. Shards of wood splintered above his arm as another shot rang round the little hall. Go now as Popov's arm is shaking, his ears still ringing. Go while he is surprised and afraid of the sound of his own weapon. Go. And Barclay launched himself at the door, stumbling low into the room, dazzlingly bright with sunlight. Confused, he cracked his knee on a piece of furniture and fell heavily on to his shoulder. Where was Kletochnikov?

He could see the silhouette of Popov against the window, only four or five feet from him, his weapon at arm's length. The shot would be almost point blank.

'Drop it,' Barclay shouted. 'Drop it.'

The gun was trembling in Popov's hand, the low sun kicking off the barrel. Barclay could not distinguish the expression on his face but he could see the student's finger curled about the trigger.

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