Field of Mars (10 page)

‘Yes, well . . . Thank you for your time, Doctor,' Ryzhkov said, and headed for the door so he would be out of there before they began their work.

EIGHT

Pyotr Ryzhkov spent the next week following Rasputin from whorehouses where his sexual appetites were indulged for free, to restaurants where they would tolerate his taking over the entire room and throwing his food on the floor, to mansions of the rich and addled where they submitted to his insults and religious instruction. When Ryzhkov wasn't standing outside in the rain waiting for the Holy One to surrender to boredom, he was seconded to the ongoing effort to prevent Socialist Revolutionary terrorists from blowing up the capital or shooting its leading dignitaries.

Zezulin, acting on information from Internal agents who were certain that they had discovered a cell of SR bombmakers, had assigned Dudenko and his watchers to conduct surveillance on a suspected ‘explosives factory', a bakery. He, Ryzhkov and Hokhodiev supervised the surveillance in shifts; in addition they were expected to devise a strategy for an eventual raid on the premises.

He read through all the reports, Dima's carefully noted schedules. Apparently the bombers were well along with their work. Luckily for the Okhrana, when the plotters mixed their volatile chemicals the fumes became intoxicating, and they were forced to take frequent walks in the park. They were not thinking clearly at such times, they got lazy and were easy to see. Sometimes they would try to disguise their activities by acting casually, standing around with a lit cigarette they weren't smoking. A long stroll to a newspaper kiosk, trying to look like they were normal people leading a normal life. How many newspapers can you buy in one day?

The answer was right there in Dudenko's cramped handwriting—
seven
.

The neighbourhood was grouped around a filthy little plaza, an unplanned confluence of narrow uneven streets somewhere in the Narva district. There was a brick ‘fountain' in the middle of the octagonal square. It had a pedestal at its centre and the remains of a bronze statue that had gone missing or had been melted down. It was crowded. During the day people came and went constantly, the traffic falling into patterns of astonishing regularity. All of it synchronized to the steam whistles of the gigantic factories that surrounded the district; the
Putilov
armaments buildings, the
Northern Boiler
works, and the
St Petersburg Freight Carriage
factories.

There were no vacant apartments for rent, whole families were packed into two rooms; children were everywhere, running through the street like packs of dogs. The kind of place that was busy all the time, but nothing ever changed. Except that for the last few days, teams of repairmen (all Dudenko's technicians) had been climbing the recently installed telephone poles. At night they'd rope off their wagon at the end of the street. Dudenko and his boys listened from inside the cart, taking it all down in shorthand.

Ryzhkov rode through the street a little after midnight, to all appearances just a drunk in a cab heading home, singing to himself as he admired the unfamiliar neighbourhood. There was nothing happening in the bakery. No lights. Nothing. Finally the plaza vanished behind him as his carriage clattered around a corner.

Taken as a whole it was exhausting work, and he'd fallen asleep in his tiny office, when there was a discreet cough, a quick rapping and Izachik popped his head in the door.

‘Sir,' he said in a stage whisper, pointing one finger toward the ceiling. ‘It appears that Christ has risen, and would like to confer with you.'

He nodded, took a moment to realize where exactly in the universe he was—this is my office, this is my window, those are the leaves falling from my linden . . . ‘Yes, thank you,' he said softly to no one—Izachik had already left the doorway. He stood up, stretched the soreness from his joints, washed his mouth out with tea, straightened his clothing, rubbed his eyes, and headed upstairs.

‘Ah, Pyotr Mikhalovich!' As Ryzhkov knocked on the door of his office, Zezulin was just coming out of the toilet, doing up the buttons on his trousers as he paced across the room in his socks. Ryzhkov was trying to think of an excuse to open a window.

‘Good afternoon, sir.'

‘I'm sure you will be as thankful as the rest of us that this terrorist activity is about to be tidied up, eh?'

‘Yes, sir, I will.'

‘Then we can get back to something resembling normality. Not that pursuing these misguided radicals isn't of value. Yes.' Zezulin smiled, patted his pockets trying to find something he'd lost, padded around behind his desk and started opening the drawers one at a time. He seemed comparatively alert and Ryzhkov decided that he might as well take the opportunity.

‘I wanted to speak to you about the Lvova case, if there's a chance. I'm convinced that there is something more to it all, sir.'

‘Lvova, Lvova . . .' Like Hokhodiev, Zezulin was a big man. Strong, with bushy dark hair and almost blond moustaches. He looked like a sleepy wolverine with a pair of spectacles. ‘What's that again? Perk me up.'

‘The girl that was . . . defenestrated in June. When I spoke to the police I got nothing—'

‘Well, those cretins couldn't find their way out of a paper bag if it had two holes.'

‘And as well, the mortuary report raised some questions. I thought that perhaps further investigation was needed. Blue Shirt was there, that night, after all. And someone is attempting to call it a suicide when it wasn't—'

‘Certainly, Pyotr Mikhalovich. Absolutely. You have my complete trust. Circumspect. Diligent . . .' Zezulin had forgotten about the desk drawers and their contents. He was staring out through one of the little attic windows that overlooked the canal.

‘Thank you then, sir. I'll start on the paperwork.' Zezulin continued his vigil. Ryzhkov might as well have been invisible. ‘Well, then. Will there be anything, else, sir?'

‘Well, there's always something else, isn't there!' Zezulin laughed at his own joke. ‘So! Well, good to have you back, Inspector. And keep me up to date on that . . . on your . . . project. Sounds suspicious, to me. Don't like it.'

‘Yes, sir. Nor do I.'

‘Good, good . . . whatever you need.' Zezulin gave him a kind of salute, a spinning motion with his hand, a cross between a wave goodbye and a Moorish salaam.

‘Very good, sir.'

At the end of that same night Ryzhkov, Dudenko and Hokhodiev treated themselves to a visit to the Egorov baths. At five in the morning they almost had the place to themselves. They passed a bottle of vodka back and forth and talked. Ryzhkov told Hokhodiev about what he had been doing: the Lvova reports, what Bondarenko had said and the odd way he had said it. Hokhodiev just listened and nodded. When it was all over he spat into the drain and sat there for a long moment. ‘Big people,' he said and shook his head. ‘Real aristocrats.'

‘It's an expensive place, that whorehouse,' Ryzhkov said.

‘So, you don't know what to do now? That's not like you. What do you care anyway?'

Ryzhkov looked at his friend for a moment, shrugged. It was a good question. ‘I don't know. Someone killed her, Kostya. Someone is lying about it, now someone is going to get away with it . . . with doing something like that.' He shrugged again. What did he care? It was hard to put into words.

‘Fine, fine. You have a sense of justice, I know, even if she was a whore. It's touching and it's why you have so many friends in the police force, but do you really think there's the slightest chance of getting to the bottom of it? These big shots, they have resources, brother . . .' Hokhodiev wagged a finger and even tried to laugh, but it didn't sound happy.

‘Well, I guess I'll try to see if there are any witnesses, talk to the madam—but I thought I should tell you about it at least.'

‘Look, I don't give a damn if you have to slip it through the cracks, I'll help you, brother, and he will too, won't you—' Kostya turned to elbow Dudenko, but stopped. ‘Look at that,' he said. Dudenko lay sleeping on the narrow bench across from them, wrapped up in a sheet, his hands pressed down between his knees, snoring. ‘A babe in the woods, a sheep waiting for the wolves . . .'

‘. . . teacup in an earthquake . . .'

‘. . . virgin in the barracks . . . God have mercy.' The big man turned and laughed quietly. ‘And, of course, Dima's the only one who'll get out of this, you know that, don't you? He's young, intelligent, he has savoir faire . . . he has a future,' Hokhodiev said and raised the bottle to his lips. The vodka was warm and almost gone.

‘Oh, yes . . . Smart, educated.'

‘Oh, the boy's a genius. A fucking genius, with his little earphones and things that he can screw into your telephone set. Without ones like him they'd be shitting Bolshevik bombs in Peterhof, but does he get any credit, will it do him any good?' He looked up at Ryzhkov and winked.

‘I doubt it.'

‘Nothing. There's no loyalty any more. The three of us here in this room are loyal, the only loyal ones left. Protect the Tsar, protect the Tsarina, protect the grand dukes, the grand duchesses . . . on and on . . .' Hokhodiev closed his eyes for a few moments as if he were falling asleep, then his lids flickered. ‘No one ever asks the question, if these people are so fucking holy why do they need so much protection in the first place, eh?'

‘There's always someone trying to get to the top,' Ryzhkov muttered.

‘Blue Shirt . . .' Hokhodiev said, coming out of his dream, then looked over at Ryzhkov as if he were surprised to be awake.

‘Yes, I know, I know,' Ryzhkov said. ‘We have to protect him, too.'

‘And all of it is just to keep the rich ones getting richer and the powerful ones getting more powerful. But Russia . . . poor Russia, she's just a fucking house of cards and she's just going to cave in on herself. It's all sick, a goddamned pestilence.'

‘It's Rasputin.'

‘All of them, they're all sick. Rotten. Like a fish rots, from the head down. Dima . . .' Hokhodiev looked over at Dudenko and started laughing quietly. ‘Poor fellow, to be coming along in a world like this.'

‘He should do well, he seems to know a lot about the telephone system—' Ryzhkov had started laughing, too.

They talked about women. Ryzhkov's bad luck, about Filippa and her mother, how the disease of irrational femininity seemed to somehow get passed along from mother to daughter.

After a few moments of silence Hokhodiev leaned forward, elbows propped on thick knees, one hand stroking the wispy hair on the crown of his head, and told Ryzhkov that his wife was dying. His voice sounded thick. They had drunk too much. Far, far too much. ‘. . . and you know, Pyotr, it's not a moment too soon, if you ask me.'

‘Is she in pain?' Ryzhkov finally said, his words coming slowly, one at a time; is—she—in—pain.

‘Pain . . .' Hokhodiev said, thinking it over. ‘Well, who isn't?'

‘I mean . . .'

‘In the mornings, yes. Pain.'

‘Mmm.' Ryzhkov closed his eyes.

‘Listen, Pyotr. You're not like me. You're different, you're smart. You still have, you still have . . .'

‘Be quiet.'

‘You look around us? You see these bastards, these fucking cabinet ministers and their grandiose . . . fiefdoms? It doesn't matter about the Tsar. We have no Tsar. It's not Nicholas, it's fucking Alexandra that's running everything.'

‘Kostya, Kostya—'

‘And you see that poor little boy in his uniform . . . and they get Blue Shirt to pray for him and think that's going to make the difference? Where are the damn patriots, that's what I mean.'

‘They're all patriots, just ask them.'

‘Oh, I know . . . patriots are the worst, it's so cheap. The patriots and the fucking Church. You poke around the Narva district for awhile. Are there any blessings, any blessings at all?' He trailed off for a moment. ‘That's what's killing Lena. It's all this shit around us, the impossibility of ever, of ever . . . getting out, or growing, or anything.' They had no children, Ryzhkov remembered. No, that was wrong. They had had one child. Died from typhoid fever before Ryzhkov had met him. ‘And when they do finally look up, when they see how these fools, fucking Blue Shirt, and the fucking Tsarina who will give him any damn thing if he just lets her suck his cock—'

‘Hey, hey . . .' Ryzhkov said gently to quieten him down. They had their own room, but the walls were thin.

‘. . . And then there's your day of reckoning, right there, your Armageddon, and your fucking Sodom and Gomorrah turning into salt. You free all the damn serfs and they don't know any better. They pile into the city, heading for the bright lights, work themselves to death in some factory and they think that's heaven on earth. They just want money like anyone else. And when they wake up, you know who they'll blame? Who they'll be stoning to death in the damn square, when the whole pile of shit goes down the shitter? It won't be the damn Tsar, he'll be on his yacht, safe and sound, heading for some spa—'

‘Hey, Kostya—'

‘No, brother, it'll be
us
that'll be dragged through the streets.
Us
, that's who.'

Ryzhkov reached out and poured out the last inch of vodka on to the floor.

‘You think I'm drunk,' Hokhodiev said, an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

‘Well . . . maybe just a little—' The bottle suddenly slipped from his fingers and he reflexively swiped at it and, only by chance, managed to knock it up on to the bench where it spun around harmlessly. Dudenko woke up with a jerk and looked around with a horrified expression. They both found the spasm funny, laughed and leaned back against the wall.

‘You two are drunk,' Dudenko said dully.

‘I am drunk,' Hokhodiev said quietly. ‘But that doesn't mean I don't know whereof I speak, eh? Remember the words of your friend, the prophet.'