Not Less Than Gods (38 page)

“Sir, I can’t deny I pity any nation that groans under such a tyrant. But the guarantee held out to the rebels will be that they may keep their serfs,” explained Matthews. “Consider a union of slave-holding nations. What hope has abolition, outvoted by such a majority?”

“Happily, the specter will remain insubstantial,” said Nikitin, with a chuckle. “When we were graciously granted permission to withdraw, His Majesty was an interesting shade of purple and roaring, positively roaring, the orders for Reverend Breedlove’s arrest.”

“Well done,” said Bell-Fairfax. Matthews acknowledged him with a half-bow.

“Ah, here is your driver.” Nikitin turned as a man in the clothing of a muzhik entered the room. “Gerasim Fyodorovich, is the wagon ready?”

“Ready for the gentlemen now.”

“Then let’s not waste any time.” Ludbridge took out his watch and glanced at it. “Nikitin, if all goes as planned we’ll return before sunrise.”

The wagon traveled ponderously along Admiralty Avenue. Its load appeared to be crates of tea; in reality they were the exteriors of crates jointed together to enclose one space. Ludbridge, Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove sat inside on a bench, jostling uncomfortably as the wagon rolled over cobbles.

“First target,” said Ludbridge, pulling on his gloves. “Personally drew up the orders for the massacre of three regiments of Hungarians, after they had surrendered. First advanced the suggestion that the Czarevich would be more useful as a martyr than as the inheritor of the throne.”

The wagon slowed, stopped. “Go,” said Ludbridge. Bell-Fairfax pushed open the rear wall of their enclosure—it swung on hinges, like a door—and held it as Pengrove and Ludbridge scrambled out and dropped to the street. He followed them and closed the door. The wagon rolled on at once. They ducked into the shadows under a stand of trees.

They stood on pavement beside a wall, looking into the garden on the other side. Beyond the garden they recognized one of the mansions carefully photographed by the Kabinet’s intelligence-gathering crew.

“Should be two mastiffs on thirty-foot chains, southwest corner of the house,” prompted Ludbridge in a low voice.

“I know—” Pengrove unslung the tranquilizer rifle from his shoulder and, raising it, peered through the thermal sight. “There they are! One’s lifted his head. Looking this way.” He took aim and fired. There was a muffled yelp. He cocked the weapon, dropping another dart into the chamber, and aimed and fired a second time. No yelp, but a highpitched
keening whimper. Pengrove put the gun back over his shoulder. Ludbridge took out his watch and counted off sixty seconds.

“They’ve both fallen over, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax. “Wait for it,” said Ludbridge, and went on counting a moment longer. “Right. Circling the house, from the right-hand side. Go.”

Pengrove attempted to scale the wall. Bell-Fairfax picked him up and set him astride it; he swung his leg over and dropped down the other side. Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax followed him. They strode across the garden toward the house, silent on the damp earth. Ludbridge noted uneasily that, late as the hour was, there was still a lamp burning on the ground floor, and two dimly visible above, though neither shone from the location intelligence had identified as the target’s bedroom.
House full of insomniacs
, Ludbridge thought.

They passed the silent dogs and stepped up on the flagstone coping that surrounded the house. Bell-Fairfax approached the lit window—French doors, actually—with caution. A dull red glow, lamplight through drapes, and a single bright bar where the curtains failed to meet. He leaned in sidelong to peer through. He turned to Ludbridge, his face rigid with tension, and pointed.

Ludbridge came close and looked for himself. He summoned his memory of the floor plans the Kabinet had obtained. This should be the target’s study. The man seated at the desk, therefore, was likely to be  the target. His shaven head and build answered the target’s description. He was leaning forward, writing, turning his head at regular intervals to consult something. And the door fastened with a simple catch three-quarters of the way up . . .

Pengrove had already drawn his knife and, standing on tiptoe, slid the blade through between the doors. Bell-Fairfax flattened himself against the wall on the other side, poised to move. Ludbridge hoped they remembered that the doors opened out.

Evidently they did. Pengrove slid the blade upward until the catch lifted, but he did not let it drop. Bell-Fairfax swung the left-hand door open and stepped through, drawing out the braided-wire garrote. Ludbridge followed as closely as he could, but a gout of blood had already
shot out and struck the wall by the time he stepped through the curtains; the target was slumping backward against Bell-Fairfax, garroted with such force the carotids had been sliced open.

Bell-Fairfax lowered the dead man to the floor slowly, carefully, and disentangled the garrote. He leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. Ludbridge stepped past him to glance at the papers on the desk. He grinned savagely. Grabbing up the coded message and the cipher book that lay open there, he turned and saw Pengrove staring in at the dead man, horrified. He struck Bell-Fairfax lightly on the shoulder. “Go,” he muttered. Bell-Fairfax lurched upright and ran out, with Ludbridge close behind him, and Pengrove sprinted after them to the garden wall. Bell-Fairfax recollected himself sufficiently to hoist Pengrove over the wall first, and then they were all three together in the street beyond. The wagon—which had circled around and come past again—rolled on ahead a few yards away. They ran after it. Bell-Fairfax pulled the door open and they scrambled in.

“God, this is easier when you needn’t attempt to conceal anything,” said Ludbridge. Bell-Fairfax doubled over, gagging.

“One down, five to go, what?” said Pengrove, with a trace of hysteria in his voice. “I say, Bell-Fairfax, are you all right?”

“Of course he’s all right. Aren’t you, my boy?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax with a gasp, sitting upright.

“A damned bad fellow got what he richly deserved just now,” said Ludbridge, sliding the papers and cipher book under the bench. “And the world’s a better place.”

“Didn’t think there’d be quite so much blood, however,” said Pengrove.

“There’ll be more, before we’ve done.”

At Ekaterinskaya Place the wagon stopped again, in the pool of deep shadow thrown by a tower. “Second target,” said Ludbridge. “Authorized the murder of a prison guard to enable Kazbek to escape. Over the past twenty years has arranged for the murder of eight survivors-in-exile of
the Decembrist uprising. Lives alone in an upstairs flat with a female servant.”

They climbed down from the wagon and it rolled on. They found themselves in a somewhat less palatial neighborhood, residences above shops, but the shops sold costly wares and the residences were anything but shabby.

“There.” Bell-Fairfax pointed. “Rear entrance.”

The building in question was a jeweler’s shop, and to its right an archway led to a courtyard behind the building. All the windows they could see were dark. They walked up the passageway quiet as cats. The yard was in utter blackness under a clouded sky, but so thoroughly had they studied the layout of the place on paper that they needed no light. As one, they turned to the left and made their way up the brick staircase that connected to the upper story.

The door at the top of the staircase was locked. Ludbridge took out a case of lock picks and worked patiently at the door until, with a faint
snick,
the lock gave. Ludbridge stood, putting the case away, and, lowering his face to Pengrove’s, he whispered, “Servant.”

Pengrove stared at him a moment in incomprehension before nodding and reaching into his coat. He withdrew a small bottle. Ludbridge opened the door and nodded at him.

Pengrove walked into the darkness of the flat. It was warm, and smelled of good food recently prepared. Counting doorways, he made his way to what the Kabinet’s intelligence had said was the servant’s bedroom. The door was standing open. With great caution he tilted past the frame to peer in.

The bed was empty.

Pengrove heard his own heart pounding loud. He turned and retraced his steps to the back entrance. Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax looked at him expectantly, but he jerked his thumb in the direction of the servant’s bedroom and shook his head. Ludbridge scowled.

“Right. In her master’s bedroom, I expect. Proceed as with Target Five.”

Bell-Fairfax nodded and slipped past him into the house, with Pengrove following. They made their way to the target’s bedchamber.

The servant lay on the side of the bed nearest the door, turned toward her master, who lay on his back. Pengrove took a sponge from his pocket, uncorked the bottle with his teeth, and shook a little of its contents onto the sponge. He leaned over and quietly pressed the sponge against the servant’s face. Her eyes shot open, her hand clutched spasmodically; then she relaxed into deeper unconsciousness.

Bell-Fairfax walked around the side of the bed, irresolute. Pengrove saw his difficulty. How to garrote a man lying on his back? At last Bell-Fairfax drew the knife and, leaning down, cut the target’s throat. He wasn’t quite quick enough; the target opened his eyes and managed a hoarse squawk before his mouth filled with his own blood.

Ludbridge was in the doorway at once. “What the hell happened?”

“He woke up,” Bell-Fairfax said. His hands were shaking. “It’s all right now.”

Ludbridge took in the scene in a glance. “Next time put a pillow over the face first. He’ll wake up, but he won’t be able to shout. Now clean your knife on the sheet and let’s go.”

Moving mechanically, Bell-Fairfax obeyed and sheathed his knife. He came around the foot of the bed and bent to lift the servant in his arms.

“Bloody fool! What d’you think you’re doing?” Ludbridge clenched his fists.

“We can’t leave her to wake beside
that
.” Bell-Fairfax walked down the hall with the girl, into her room, and put her down on her own bed. Fuming, Ludbridge waited by the door. Pengrove slipped past him down the steps, followed, a moment later, by Bell-Fairfax. Ludbridge closed the door and followed. They ran, all three, down the passage and out to where the wagon waited in the shadows.

“You’re a chivalrous idiot,” said Ludbridge, when they had seated themselves and the wagon rolled on.

Bell-Fairfax shook his head, as though to clear it. “Coriander. Garlic. Beets. Vodka. Red pepper. Cumin. They must have been in his last meal. His blood reeked of them.”

“You’re imagining it,” said Ludbridge gruffly, though he suspected Bell-Fairfax hadn’t imagined it at all. “Calm yourself, for God’s sake.”

“But you were right to move the girl,” said Pengrove. “Take heart, old chap. Worse things happen at sea, what? And you certainly ought to know! You were a Navy man, with a sword and all. Thought you must have become positively inured to spilled blood in the service.”

“I never killed in cold blood before,” said Bell-Fairfax.

“You’ll become accustomed to it,” said Ludbridge. “You must, son. Suppose a surgeon had to get his blood up before he could make himself amputate for gangrene? And we’re surgeons, in a way. A calm hand’s needed when the stakes are high.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax.

“You’ll do better on the next one,” said Ludbridge. The wagon rumbled on.

“Third target. Active in crushing the rebellion of the Poles; arranged for the poisoning of the Polish rebel heroine Emilia Plater,” said Ludbridge. Bell-Fairfax’s expression settled into hard lines.

“Filthy thing to do,” he said.

“Just so. No squeamishness, now.”

“No, sir.”

“Dog at this one, Pengrove. Chained at the rear of the house, by the back gate.”

The wagon stopped. They emerged into a bush, or so it seemed; their driver had pulled them up into a service alley running behind a rather grand house, paralleled by a ditch thickly screened with scrub willows. They avoided getting their boots muddy and walked to the gate at the rear of the property. They could hear the dog on the other side growling a threat, a low rolling snarl punctuated by
whuffs
. Bell-Fairfax hoisted Pengrove onto his shoulders. Pengrove rose over the fence, into the view of a momentarily astonished borzoi, who was shot with a dart before he could react. He yelped and ran away, to the length of his
chain; paused a moment to lick the spot where the dart had hit him, and folded up in a heap, unconscious.

“Wait for it,” said Ludbridge, counting off the seconds. “Go.”

Pengrove stepped onto the fence, jumped down and opened the gate from within. Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax entered the yard. They surveyed the imposing mansion. Immediately before them were steps going down to what must be a kitchen entrance. Lamps shone behind curtains, and there was a sound of drunken merriment.

“Servants having a party,” said Ludbridge, smiling. “Very nice.”

Someone began to sing, in a high pure tenor, a sweet and melancholy folk tune. His voice carried; they could still hear it when they circled around to the front of the house. Ludbridge pointed up at the balcony.

Bell-Fairfax nodded. He bent and made a stirrup of his hands for Pengrove, who swarmed up him and stood on his shoulders. He could just reach the lower edge of the balcony and pulled himself up on its rail. Uncoiling a thin rope from around his waist, he made one end fast on the balustrade and tossed the other down. As Bell-Fairfax climbed up hand over hand, Pengrove turned and went to work on the balcony door with a case of lock picks.

They entered the room. There, as they had expected, was the target in his bed, flat on his back and snoring. Pengrove glanced nervously at the open balcony, through which the servant’s song was now floating, quite audible.

Bell-Fairfax advanced on the bed. Dutifully, he took a pillow and thrust it down over the target’s face. The target woke at once and began fighting like a madman, clawing to throw off Bell-Fairfax, who had to lean on the target with all his weight. He groped with one hand to draw his knife, but the target nearly threw him off.