Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (40 page)

‘They’re coming, sir.’ Ricky Crabbe was grinning as he went into his first battle. ‘The women are holding them up. Looks like they’re getting a right lecture,
sir.’ Ricky positioned himself behind his bench, eyes peering through the slats. Powerscourt, further back, almost at the door to the roof and the outside world, could hear footsteps overhead
as Johnny and Mikhail and the sergeant made their way along the train. Powerscourt hoped the noise wouldn’t travel to the next carriage.

The young man who opened the connecting door couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He had joined the military as a better alternative to life in his peasant village. It was
almost certain that he had never heard of the story of David and Goliath. Ricky’s missile caught him almost in the centre of his right eye. For a moment the Russian soldier blundered about
thinking he was blind. Then he whimpered and collapsed on to a bench, holding his face. The soldier behind him gazed in astonishment at his colleague. He hadn’t seen the stone. Then he too
received a present from Ricky Crabbe, smack in the centre of his teeth. He reeled backwards and blocked the doorway. ‘Now!’ said Powerscourt, and fled towards the open air. He knew that
the next thing likely to come through the doorway was a stream of bullets. He had given his gun to Ricky to give himself one last burst of covering fire before he disappeared upwards. If Ricky was
as good a shot with a pistol as he was with a stone or a rock, Powerscourt imagined he would hit the bull’s eye at two hundred yards with a gun in his hand. Now Powerscourt began to climb
towards the roof. There were eight rungs to go. Still no sound from down below. Maybe the Russians were demoralized. Maybe the Major was giving them a pep talk.

Powerscourt was now walking uncertainly along the roof. The train was travelling at about twenty-five miles per hour. Light snow was beginning to fall. He saw that the gap between the two
carriages was only four or five feet, not too hazardous a leap even for a person who was terrified of heights and regarded the roof of a Russian train as being about the same height as a skyscraper
in Chicago. Then he heard it. There was a volley of shots down below, followed by a small cheer. Five seconds later there were four rounds from the pistol, followed by two screams and the sound of
Ricky Crabbe coming up the steps and along the roof. Powerscourt thought there might be a pause down below while the wounded were attended to. Perhaps the other three were dead. As he jumped across
to the top of the fourth carriage he saw that Ricky was now lying flat, waiting for the first Russian head to surface on to the roof of the carriage before he blew it away. Telegraph transmission
seemed to be a good training ground for war. For the first time Powerscourt began to hope that they might survive this escapade. He had done what he was called on to do. He had fulfilled his
mission. He dared not imagine what Lady Lucy would think of him cavorting about on top of a Russian train in the middle of the night, pursued by a gang of Russian soldiery. Lady Lucy, he realized
bitterly, would be even less pleased with him now. For Nemesis had arrived at the other end of the third carriage. Johnny Fitzgerald and Mikhail must have descended back into the train before
Nemesis began his climb.

Major Shatilov was looking at Powerscourt, delighted with his prey.

‘Good evening, Major.’ Powerscourt was trying to sound calmer than he felt. ‘A very good evening to you.’

The Major was standing right in the centre of the roof of the carriage. He took a gun from his pocket and shook his head. He shouted at Powerscourt in Russian. Then he pulled a whip from his
other pocket and waved it vigorously towards his enemy. After a while he cracked it a couple of times. The thong seemed to Powerscourt to travel through the air at incredible speed. Then Shatilov
pointed to his watch and his right hand went round many many times. It’s going to be a long-drawn-out affair, Powerscourt thought, death that might take a week or maybe two. Shatilov shouted
some more. Powerscourt remembered the dreadful stories of Russian criminals sentenced to a thousand birch lashes in the terrible punishment known as running the gauntlet. When the victims collapsed
after three hundred lashes or so they were carried off the parade ground. But when they had recovered they were merely restored to the gauntlet at the point where they had stopped on the previous
occasion. Second time around most of the prisoners dropped dead long before they reached the thousand blows.

Powerscourt wondered if Ricky Crabbe could hear the crack of the whip or the sound of Shatilov’s voice. Maybe it was lost in the wind. He wondered if he should jump off the train and take
his chance with a broken leg on the hard ground. He thought of his children and said a prayer for Lady Lucy. Maybe he should never have accepted this assignment and should have remained with the
transepts and clerestories, the chantry chapels and the sarcophagi of England’s cathedrals. The Major was still fingering his whip, feasting his eyes on Powerscourt and his plight. Then
Powerscourt saw hope. He saw more than hope. He saw Nemesis coming this time for Major Shatilov, as long as he didn’t look around. Powerscourt began talking to hold his attention. He
pretended to plead for mercy. He sank to his knees, his hands raised in supplication. All the time his brain was calculating speed and distances and the time he would have to act unless he was to
meet the same fate as the Major. On and on he went with his pleading. Already he had worked out what to do when the last moment came. It was nearly here. Shatilov was still looking at him. Now!
Now! Powerscourt flung himself down and pressed his head and his body as tightly as he could into the roof of the carriage. The full force of the centre of the brick bridge hit Shatilov between the
shoulder blades and broke his back. He was flung on to the roof of the carriage and his body scraped along the top of the bridge’s arch for a while before he toppled over the side. He was
further mangled by the wheels of the train as they passed over him and rolled on into the night.

Ricky Crabbe crawled over to Powerscourt. ‘I had him covered, sir, but I didn’t want to shoot in case I only wounded him and he shot you. I’ve seen off one of those soldiers
coming up to the roof. Don’t think the rest will be in any great hurry.’

A couple of minutes later they were dropping down into the first carriage, nearly stepping over Johnny Fitzgerald who was lying flat on the floor with a pair of enormous spanners in his hand.
The sergeant was by his side, his tunic removed, his shirt sleeves rolled up, ready for some enormous feat of physical exertion.

‘Am I glad to see you, Francis. The peasants pretending to be soldiers are all down at the back of the train. We’re all here now, us and the four ladies.’

Powerscourt saw the women huddling together as if for warmth right in front of the door into the driver’s compartment. Mikhail stood between them and the door. God only knew what
debauchery they expected now there were four of the foreigners to play together. Powerscourt told Johnny about the Major’s end. ‘I bet you were glad to see the end of him, Francis.
Killed at the bridge eh? Like Horatius he asked, “Now who will stand on either hand And keep the bridge with me?” No answer in both cases. Now, if you’ll stand back, I’m
going to try this. I’ve nearly finished but I had to wait till you showed up, Francis. All my life I’ve wanted to do this.’

Johnny took one of his enormous spanners and bent over the divide between the first and second carriages. There was an enormous grunt, then another, closely followed by a screech of metal. Then
he and the Black Watch sergeant lent all their force into pushing the second carriage away from the first. As Powerscourt stared at the second carriage he saw a wounded soldier enter it at the far
end. But as the man began to walk towards the front of the train, he seemed to be getting, not closer, but further and further away. They could see a look of astonishment on the man’s face as
he realized he would never reach the front of the train, that he would not reach the doctors of St Petersburg on this journey. Johnny had decoupled the engine and the first carriage from the rest
of the train. What remained of Shatilov’s pathetic army would soon be stranded in the middle of the countryside with no engine. They would probably block the line until they could be towed
away. As Powerscourt looked round his little band, Johnny with grease on his hands and his arms, Ricky Crabbe, his clothes filthy from crawling along the roof, Mikhail with a great bruise on his
forehead from bumping into the rungs up to a carriage roof, the sergeant trying to get the dirt off his arms, he felt very proud of them. Johnny was still staring out the back, rubbing his hands
together in his delight, rejoicing in his severed train. It was Mikhail who spoke.

‘I’ve managed to convince the ladies, Lord Powerscourt, that you at least are a respectable person. I’ve told them you can reassure them in Russian. They’re going to ask
you now.’

With that Mikhail had a brief conversation with the four women. One of them stared hard at Powerscourt and fired a rapid salvo at him in Russian.

‘I am from the British Embassy and we all have diplomatic immunity,’ Powerscourt replied in what he hoped was his best Russian and trying to remember where Mikhail had told him to
put the emphasis. There was another blast from the four ladies. Powerscourt looked inquisitively at Mikhail.

‘What have we here?’ he asked.

‘They say,’ Mikhail laughed, ‘that you’re nothing better than a damned horse thief and they’re going to report you to the authorities the second this train reaches
St Petersburg.’

Before he went to bed that night Powerscourt drafted a letter for the Ambassador to send in the morning. It was addressed to the Tsar and outlined in considerable detail what
had happened to him and his colleagues, the theft of the horses, the beginnings of torture, the total lack of respect afforded to citizens of the United Kingdom and a man attached to its Foreign
Office. How would the Russians feel, he asked rhetorically, if a member of their diplomatic staff on a mission to the King in Buckingham Palace was hijacked on his way out and taken to be stretched
on the rack at the Tower of London? Powerscourt made no reference to their escape and the little battle on the train. Nor did he say anything about the substance of his conversation with Nicholas
the Second. He doubted very much if the letter would reach the Tsar himself. Some court official would doubtless read it, but even that, he felt, should be sufficient to put a stop to the
activities of Major Shatilov’s successors. In that assumption he could not have been more wrong.

For at eleven o’clock the following morning a distraught and tearful Mikhail presented himself at the British Embassy. Natasha, he told a weary Powerscourt and de Chassiron, resplendent in
a new shirt from Paris, had disappeared. A friend of hers was in the city that morning. Natasha had told her, Mikhail reported, that she thought she was being followed by some of the soldiers of
the guard. Perhaps they had taken her prisoner. Perhaps they were going to mistreat her.

‘She disappeared once before, didn’t she,’ asked Powerscourt as gently as he could, ‘and she came back again, didn’t she?’

‘That was because the little boy was ill, my lord,’ said Mikhail. ‘He’s not ill now, at least not for the present.’

De Chassiron saw how upset the young man was. Anybody might fall in love with Natasha. He himself could easily have fallen in love with her. Perhaps the entire squad of soldiers in the Alexander
Palace had fallen in love with her.

‘You don’t suppose,’ Mikhail was tormenting himself now, ‘that they will take revenge on Natasha for what happened to the Major and the others last night?’

That thought had crossed Powerscourt’s mind some moments before. He looked at his watch. The engineless train should have been discovered by now. Perhaps Shatilov’s mutilated body
had also been found. It would take some time, he thought, to work out how he had met his end. The presumption would be that he had been killed by one of the Englishmen rather than destroyed by a
bridge. He stared hard at a print of King’s College Cambridge behind de Chassiron’s desk, the Chapel standing out like a bulwark or a beacon of man’s love of God in a sceptical
and scientific city. He could see de Chassiron lounging about on the grass in his gown, arguing with the dons. Powerscourt wondered if the print followed him on all his postings, a travelling
reminder of the glory of youth accompanying him into the shallows of middle age.

It must have been the print that made up his mind, he told Johnny later. For when he turned his gaze back to de Chassiron he knew exactly what he was going to do.

‘There’s only one thing for it,’ he said. ‘The Ambassador has, I hope, sent on the letter I drafted for him last night. That made no mention of the little battle on the
train or the death of the ghastly Major. Any references to those events would, it seems to me, be likely to have the most unpleasant consequences. Who are these English people anyway? What is their
business here? They are spies. Of course they are spies. And what happens to the heroic defenders of the person of the Tsar and the integrity of his realm when they apprehend these villains and try
to extract information from them by traditional Russian methods? Why, the heroic Major is slain doing his duty. Powerscourt and the rest of his English rabble are murderers. To the cells with them!
Death to the traitors! Long live the Tsar!’

‘You could have a point there, Powerscourt,’ drawled de Chassiron. ‘At the very least you could be locked up for years before any case came to trial. Last night you were up on
the roof of a railway compartment. Maybe in view of the fact that these people guard the roads and the railways you’ll have to leave on another.’

‘I’m damned if I’m going to crawl out of this country like a criminal,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The important thing at the moment is to rescue Natasha. I’m going
to rouse Johnny Fitzgerald and then he and I are going to pay a visit to General Derzhenov at the Okhrana headquarters on the Fontanka.’