Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (16 page)

The Tsar read well. His voice was quiet but he knew when to raise it for effect. Natasha wondered if it was true what they said in the servants’ quarters, that he was a bad ruler, that his
indecision and his incompetence would ruin Russia. As the children filed out and began to make their way upstairs for bed, she felt the touch of a hand on her shoulder.

‘Natasha, my child,’ said the Empress Alexandra, ‘you know something, don’t you? Something about what happened in the city today?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ said the girl. ‘I do know something, but whether it is true or not, I do not know.’

‘What do you know, child?’ said the Empress, drawing Natasha over to sit on the edge of a sofa.

‘All I have heard, Your Majesty,’ said Natasha, remembering her father shouting at her brothers not to believe every bloody rumour they heard in this rumour-sodden city, ‘is
that there was a lot of shooting in St Petersburg, and many people were killed by the soldiers.’

Suddenly she wanted to cry for her unknown dead, mown down on a January Sunday.

‘They were bad people, very bad people.’ The Empress had raised her voice. For one glorious moment Natasha thought Alexandra was talking about the soldiers who had killed the
marchers. ‘They’re all the same,’ she went on, and Natasha knew her hopes were false, ‘assassins, revolutionaries, bomb throwers, constitutionalists, liberals, seekers after
the false gods of freedom and democracy. These are the people who murdered the Tsar’s grandfather, and God knows, they have tried to blow us all up enough times since. Why do you think we
have to hide away out here, child? I will tell you. It is because the authorities tell us it is too dangerous for the moment to live in Petersburg. Until these people realize who rules Russia, we
shall have more crackpot episodes like today. Do you know what they wanted to do, these scum? They wanted to hand over a petition to the Tsar! As if they had any right to tell him what to do! Let
us hope that the rabble have learned their lesson today. If not we will just have to shoot more of them next time.’

Natasha bent her head so the Empress might not see her horror.

‘On Tuesday, Your Majesty, it is my afternoon off. Could I have permission to go to the city in the afternoon to see my family?’

‘Of course you can, my child,’ said the Empress. ‘I have no doubt you will find opinion in the city even firmer against the rabble than my own.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was confident enough now of his knowledge of the geography of central St Petersburg to make his own way to the Shaporov Palace to collect Mikhail for
their second meeting at the Interior Ministry. Snow had fallen during the night, obliterating the last stains of Bloody Sunday. Bits of clothing flapped about the streets, fragments of hats and
caps were stuck on the railings, the front of a shirt, the sleeve of a jacket now shrouded in white. Dogs patrolled the area, still seeking, and occasionally finding, pieces of human flesh. Small
scraps of proclamation still fluttered around the Neva. There was a bitter wind and the sun was in hiding. Powerscourt was just turning into Millionaires’ Row when two men in dark greatcoats
stopped him.

‘You are to come with us,’ the taller one said in broken English.

‘Please,’ said the smaller one, though he didn’t sound as if politeness was his normal stock in trade.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Powerscourt, trying to walk on, but finding his way barred, ‘I’m going to meet a friend just up the road here.’ If he shouted, he
thought, they might just hear him in the palace.

‘Later you meet friend,’ said the taller one, who seemed to be the chief spokesman. ‘Now you come with us.’

‘Please,’ said the smaller one again, ‘no trouble. We no want trouble.’ Powerscourt felt something hard and round pressing into his side from the pocket of the smaller
one’s coat. This was trouble.

‘Do you mind telling me who you are?’ said Powerscourt angrily, as he was frogmarched back the way he had come. ‘The British Embassy will hear about this.’

‘British Embassy!’ The taller one laughed. ‘This is St Petersburg, not London. British Embassy go to hell!’

They left him at a tall building on the Fontanka Quai by the Fontanka river that flows through the centre of the city and whose banks are graced by many fine buildings. A bald man shook him
warmly by the hand and brought him indoors. ‘I think you will find it is warmer inside today,’ he said, in flawless English. ‘I hope my men did not inconvenience you too
much.’

‘I have been inconvenienced quite enough,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and I demand to be released. It is barbaric to go around threatening people like this. And who the devil are
you?’

‘I thought you might have worked that out for yourself by now, Lord Powerscourt, a man with your reputation as an investigator. My name is Derzhenov, Anton Pavlovich Derzhenov. I am a
general in the army of the Tsar, and Chief of the Okhrana, the secret police charged with the responsibility of defending the person of His Majesty and the integrity of his state. At your
service.’ He bowed deeply to his visitor.

De Chassiron had told Powerscourt about the many different secret organizations charged with extirpating terrorism, special sections of the police, of the military, of the troops guarding the
imperial family, even of the customs. None, in his view, could compare with the Okhrana in the cruelty of their interrogations or their determination to achieve their goals. Not that General
Derzhenov looked like a secret policeman. People seldom did. His most distinguishing characteristic was that he was completely bald. Powerscourt didn’t think he had ever seen a man so bald.
He looked as though he had never had any hair at all. Perhaps, Powerscourt thought, he had been born bald and nothing had ever grown on the top of his head. He was of average height with a small
goatee beard and he was conservatively dressed as if he was going to a board meeting. Powerscourt felt he would not have looked out of place in an Inn of Court, relentlessly harrying opposition
witnesses and flattering the jury.

‘Let me give you a very brief tour, Lord Powerscourt. Our visitors are always curious about what goes on in the Okhrana.’ Derzhenov laughed an ominous laugh.

With that he led the way down a flight of stairs to a very long corridor in the basement. Powerscourt saw that the building went back a very long way. There was a series of doors in antiseptic
green on either side of the passageway, some with small glass peepholes near the top. There was a very bad smell that might have been rotting flesh. Powerscourt thought he could see a trail of
blood oozing out of one of the doors at the far end.

‘It’s a lot quieter since we taped up all their mouths, Lord Powerscourt.’ Derzhenov spoke as if he was showing a potential purchaser round a desirable residence in Mayfair.
‘The neighbours used to complain about the screams. One or two of the guests manage to free themselves of the tapes but not for long.’

He talked, Powerscourt thought, as if he were discussing a new method of producing pig iron or some other industrial process rather than the torture techniques of the Russian secret service. He
shivered slightly.

‘We’ve been trying out some new methods,’ General Derzhenov went on, peering in through one of the grilles and making approving noises. ‘We’ve recruited a number of
former peasants recently. They have a remarkable aptitude for the work.’

The General tapped lightly on the glass and made winding movements with his hand as if he thought the rack or the press holding the victim should be made even tighter. Then he waved happily as
if his suggestion had worked.

‘Do you know what goes on in the peasant villages, Lord Powerscourt? No? Fascinating, quite fascinating. Some of the miscreants in these places,’ Derzhenov went on, walking slowly
along his corridor, ‘were known to have had their eyes pulled out, their nails hammered into their body, legs and arms cut off, and stakes driven down their throats. We find most terrorists
are only too happy to talk before they get to the end of that.’ This time Derzhenov beamed happily at his visitor.

Powerscourt saw to his horror that the man was worse than a sadist. He was a connoisseur of torture, discussing its refinement as Johnny Fitzgerald might compare the more expensive brands of
Bordeaux.

‘Another favourite punishment in the peasant village,’ Derzhenov went on, smiling slightly at the cruelty, ‘was to raise the victim on a pulley with his feet and hands tied
together and to drop him so that the vertebrae in his back were broken; this was repeated several times until the victim was reduced to a spineless sack.’

They were halfway up the corridor now. Powerscourt was feeling sick. Through the door to his left he could hear the swish of a whip. It sounded as if two were being applied at the same time.

‘One last example, Lord Powerscourt, one of our most successful imports from the peasant village.’ Derzhenov was smiling broadly now, rather like a wolf, Powerscourt thought, as he
looked at the dirty teeth of the secret policeman. ‘The naked victim is wrapped in a wet sack, a pillow is tied around his torso, and his stomach is beaten with hammers or iron bars, so that
his internal organs are crushed without leaving any external marks on his body. Not a single one! Neat, don’t you think?’

A single piercing scream came suddenly from the last cell on the right. It was followed by a second, even more agonized than the first. Then Powerscourt heard a terrible thump as if somebody had
hit the victim in the stomach with tremendous force. Then the General disappeared into the cell himself. Again Powerscourt heard the sound of whips applied in a frenzy. Derzhenov was sweating
slightly as he came out, rubbing his hands together.

‘Sorry about that, Lord Powerscourt. Fellow was quite out of order. Now then, pity we’ve got to leave here but you mustn’t be late for your appointment with the Interior
Ministry. Come, we’ll talk in my office upstairs.’

How, Powerscourt wondered, did the man know about the time of his interview at the ministry? He hoped the General didn’t have a torture collection in his room, glass bookshelves perhaps,
filled with whips and clamps and racks. He wasn’t very far wrong.

‘I think I’m going to open a torture museum when I retire, Lord Powerscourt,’ General Derzhenov said, taking the stairs two at a time. ‘Maybe you’ll be able to send
me some contributions from England. I particularly like the sound of the Scavenger’s Daughter from the time of the Tudors. Very labour-saving, that one, I’ve always thought. You just
fit the hoops on the criminal, making sure he or she is properly bent over, and you can leave them, for days or weeks if necessary. You don’t have to go on pulling the bloody levers as they
do with the rack.’

The General seated himself behind an enormous desk. There was not a note or a file to be seen. It was as if the General or his staff tidied up every scrap of paper after his day’s work
each evening. He waved Powerscourt towards a small uncomfortable chair to the side. A great brute of a man with thick black hair and a black beard that almost covered his face slipped into a seat
opposite Powerscourt. He was enormous. His hands looked as though they could pull a normal person’s arms or legs off with a couple of tugs.

‘Colonel Kolchak, my assistant, Lord Powerscourt. He will be helping us in our interview.’

The Colonel growled at Powerscourt who folded his hands neatly on his lap and tried not to look alarmed. The combination of what he had seen in the basement and the presence of the human gorilla
across the desk was unsettling, to say the least. It was the General with his intelligence and his obsession with the refinements of torture who frightened him most. He wondered what role the
Okhrana might have played in the death of Roderick Martin.

‘Perhaps, Lord Powerscourt, you might be able to help us with our inquiries, as your London policemen say.’ The General was smiling at his victim, like a headmaster welcoming a
miscreant schoolboy to his study for another beating.

‘Of course, General,’ said Powerscourt, whose brain was beginning to move very fast indeed. ‘I am here to inquire into the death of Mr Roderick Martin of the British Foreign
Office, who died in this city some days ago.’

‘The unfortunate Mr Martin . . .’ The General was almost purring. Powerscourt wondered if Martin had been a guest of the Okhrana in one of their bloodstained cells down in the
basement. ‘Tell us if you can, Lord Powerscourt, we are all friends here after all, do you know what Mr Martin was doing in St Petersburg? He must have come for a reason, such a distinguished
diplomat, such a clever man.’

The remains of a scream that had travelled up four floors from an opened grille window in the basement to the General’s office temporarily stopped the conversation. Derzhenov grabbed a
black telephone and dialled furiously. When answer came he shouted very loudly and very violently in Russian. He began to turn red, so great was his fury. ‘My apologies, Lord Powerscourt.
I’ve told the fool down there that if he can’t put the bloody tape on properly, he’ll be the next victim himself.’ Powerscourt wondered if the man had been an older recruit,
not one of the recent peasant intake who showed such aptitude for the work.

‘I come back to Mr Martin, my friend,’ the General went on. ‘What did you say he was doing in St Petersburg?’

‘I know it must sound strange, General,’ Powerscourt was conscious of a continual scowl directed at him from Colonel Kolchak, ‘but I don’t know. I honestly don’t
know.’

‘Does that mean,’ the General said, doodling on a large piece of paper he had taken from one of his drawers, ‘that his mission was so secret that only the Ambassador was
cleared for it perhaps? I am not sure I would put great faith in your Ambassador myself, Lord Powerscourt, but did he know?’

‘No, he did not,’ said Powerscourt, realizing suddenly how improbable it all sounded.

‘The clever Secretary, Mr de Chassiron, did he know?’

‘I know it sounds unlikely, General, but he didn’t know either.’

‘Let me just get this straight, Lord Powerscourt.’ Derzhenov smiled a truly evil smile. ‘You expect us to believe that you did not know why Martin was here, Mr Secretary de
Chassiron did not know, the Ambassador did not know. Do you have an Embassy cat, Lord Powerscourt? Did the four-legged one know what the two-legged ones did not? This is hard to believe,
surely.’