The People's Will (43 page)

Mihail smiled. ‘I might be bluffing,’ he said.

‘There was one other person,’ she added.

‘Who?’

‘I paid him particular attention.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s very pleasant to look at.’

Mihail racked his brains. ‘Mihailov?’

She grinned. ‘You, you idiot. I saw you chatting to the concierge.’

Mihail smiled back. ‘He’s my man on the inside.’

‘I don’t know why you can’t watch the place yourself and leave me out of it.’

‘It’s not their only rendezvous. Besides, I wouldn’t get to sit and have tea with you if I didn’t need to find out what you’ve seen.’

‘You see me most nights,’ she said, her eyes flashing momentarily at him, then returning their gaze to the window beside them. It was true, during the past few days, now that the work on the tunnel was almost complete, she had become an even more regular – and more passionate – visitor to his bed.

‘I don’t deny it,’ he said. ‘But that’s not the same as having tea.’

‘You’re so bourgeois,’ she replied, neither as a joke nor an insult.

‘Because I like to drink tea?’

‘Because you like to dress up what we do to each other at night with displays of conventionality like this. It’s not for your benefit, and you know it doesn’t impress me, so who’s it for?’

Mihail offered no answer.

‘Them!’ she said, waving a hand around the room, her voice raised. A few eyes glanced towards them, but they could not have heard the bulk of what she said. She lowered her voice again. ‘And they wouldn’t even suspect that you were screwing me if you hadn’t brought me here. You’re showing me off – a trophy.’

So vulgar a word on her lips both shocked and thrilled him, but still he wasn’t convinced of her logic. ‘So I meet you here both to disguise the fact that we’re lovers and to announce it?’

‘A typical bourgeois dichotomy. Like ordering a huge meal and then only picking at it. You’re showing the world that you can, even though you don’t.’

‘Not something you’d see very much in Russia,’ said Mihail.

‘Absolutely. You’re really quite an advanced specimen.’

‘But not as advanced as you?’

‘What I do is to please myself, not others.’

As she spoke she leaned forward, hunched over the table, her eyes fixed on his. Beneath it he felt her hand on his thigh, her fingers caressing his flesh through the cloth of his trousers, working their way up. Though the action was hidden from them both by the table top, anyone else in the room who cared to look would see it. He grinned and decided to call her bluff, copying her action, his fingers pressing into her thigh through the material of her dress, searching for a gap. Still their eyes remained locked.

‘My arms are longer,’ he whispered.

She pulled away, sitting upright. Her hands came up to the table, allowing her to push her chair back a little.

‘Now who’s bourgeois?’ he asked.

‘It’s not that,’ she said, ‘but we have a higher duty. We can’t raise suspicion.’

It might have been true, but her flushed cheeks indicated more embarrassment than revolutionary ardour.

‘But come the glorious day …?’ he said.

She reached across to him, above the table, and held his hands in hers.

‘I don’t think we have to wait
that
long,’ she smiled.

Whatever his expectations might have been, Mihail spent that night alone. Before he and Dusya could leave the café, Sofia had entered, her face pale, her eyebrows knitted. She had summoned Dusya over to speak to her in private and then the two women had left together. Of all of them, it was Sofia that Mihail feared the most. She was the most fanatical, the most driven, the most hardened. If anyone were to expose him, it would be she.

And yet what was there to expose? That in reality he had no interest in blowing up the tsar and that his real purpose was to destroy a vampire that had persecuted his family through the generations? If she doubted him, it wouldn’t be because she suspected him of that. There was the fact that Konstantin was his father, and that Aleksandr was therefore his uncle – that would certainly be a black mark against a member of the People’s Will. But that would seem even less likely than his vampire hunting. No; he felt safe; safer still in the sense that he had Dmitry on
his side. Since they had spoken, Dmitry had apparently made no attempt to denounce him. That did not make him an ally, but it meant that the two were locked together within the People’s Will. They had a shared secret and neither would betray the other for fear of betraying himself.

But it was not simply that Dmitry had not denounced him. No one had seen Dmitry for several days. Mihail’s surveillance of Saint Isaac’s had yielded nothing, and neither had Dusya’s at the hotel. All had gone cold – nothing of Iuda, nothing of Dmitry, nothing of Zmyeevich. Those latter two were chiefly of interest in that they might lead to Iuda, but Mihail knew that if the chance came to act against Zmyeevich, he would take it. The world would be a better place without him, but more than that, with Zmyeevich out of the picture Aleksandr would have no reluctance in helping Mihail with his true quest. But there was a greater motivation; it was what Aleksei would have done. There was little point in avenging him if Mihail could not live up to his image. But all that hinged on finding Dmitry and Zmyeevich.

He thought back over what he knew – not recent discoveries, but the things his mother had told him, the things Aleksei had told her. Any connections there might be to Dmitry in Petersburg – anywhere he might go. There was the apartment on Konyushennaya Street where Dmitry had grown up, but that had come to nothing. He tried to think if there might be any remaining military connections with the city, but it was unlikely; the comrades of Dmitry’s days fighting in the Crimea would be old men now. He would not have been able to keep in touch with them, or they would have commented on his eternal youth.

Dmitry had no children, at least not that Aleksei had known about. But then, what would he know? He had been in exile for the best part of Dmitry’s adult life. He and Dmitry had not communicated with each other – or at least the attempts they had made to communicate were intercepted by Iuda. It was quite possible that there were children – other Danilovs – Mihail’s own cousins. But where to start?

Then he realized how stupid he was being. The answer was obvious, and it was valid regardless of whether Dmitry had fathered children or not. He had been married. Tamara had
visited the woman. Svetlana – that was her name, though there was little more that Mihail could bring to mind. It did not matter.

He leapt to his feet and went over to his trunk. Tamara had been an obsessive woman, not least when it came to this. In it were all the notes she had written down, every fact that she could remember; she had told him – but had recorded it as well. It was almost as if … well, she
had
known, known about the thing growing in her lungs, known that it would kill her. It was just a question of when.

He leafed through the pages. They were not well organized, but he could recall seeing what he wanted, high on a left-hand page, about a third of the way in. He soon found it.

Svetlana Nikitichna Danilova,

Apartment 4,

Fontanka 134

Mihail was familiar enough with Fontanka 16, the Ohrana headquarters, but Fontanka was a long thoroughfare, following the entire path of the river from which it took its name. He didn’t know quite where number 134 stood, but he would easily find it.

He returned to his bed. It was a fragile straw, but he gladly grasped at it. Svetlana Nikitichna might be long dead. She might have moved away. Even if she were there, why should she know anything of a husband she had buried twenty-five years before? But for the first time since he’d looked down at Iuda’s severed ear, intact and undamaged, Mihail went to sleep with some sense of hope.

NUMBER 134 STOOD
about halfway along the fontanka’s seven-verst arc through the city, on the southern bank. The river split from the Neva to the south just a little way downstream from where its far mightier sister, the Great Nevka, split to the north. It rejoined the main river just at the point where the Great Neva discharged into the Gulf of Finland.

Mihail looked up at the nondescript building. His mother might have described it to him, but he had forgotten. There were many like it in the city. This was one of the better appointed ones, but as with them all, a
dvornik
sat in his little room, close to the door.

‘I’m looking for a woman named Danilova,’ Mihail explained. ‘Svetlana Nikitichna. She used to live here, I believe.’

The man grunted. ‘Still does, if you can call it living.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s a bit … you know … in the head.’ He pointed to his own head in case Mihail still failed to understand.

‘Does she accept callers?’

‘No one ever tries. I take up her food but she’s not a good tipper.’ His hand came out as he said the final word.

Mihail slipped him five kopeks. ‘It’s number four, isn’t it?’

The coin vanished. ‘That’s right. First floor.’

Mihail went up. The door was much the same as the others on the staircase, but as he approached it he could sense an unpleasant smell. It was nothing too stomach-churning, but not what he would have expected in a block like this one.

He knocked.

There was no answer, so he knocked again. This time there
came an indistinct shout from within – a woman’s voice – but still no one came to the door. He tried the handle; it wasn’t locked.

The smell was stronger inside: unwashed clothes, an unwashed body, rotting discarded food, perhaps even rotting flesh – a rat that had died and not been cleared away. He looked around. Nothing had been cleared away in here for a long time. Dust and cobwebs hung everywhere. Beneath them Mihail could see the remnants of a once well-decorated set of rooms; but that had been a long time ago.

He was in a small hallway. Stairs ascended to another floor, and three doors led off.

‘Madame Danilova?’ he called.

‘
Ici!
’ She spoke in French. Was that because of the way he had addressed her, or a throwback to a time when ladies of her stature spoke only that language? Mihail was reminded of the old man he had met in Senate Square, and who he had turned out to be. He was not expecting to encounter a vampire here, but in his bag he still carried the
arbalyet
.

The voice had come from the door straight in front of him. He went through. The room beyond was in much the same state as the hall. Even his feet falling on the carpet threw up a cloud of dust that caught his nostrils and gave him the urge to sneeze. At least in here, it was bright. Tall windows stood along one wall, unshuttered, looking out on to the street and the river, though no sunlight fell directly into the room. It faced north, slightly to the west. Perhaps it would receive a smattering of the sun’s rays, on summer afternoons.

At the far end of the room, close to the window, sat the apartment’s occupant. She was thin – almost childlike in build, though it was hard to judge her height. Her hair was long, straight and lank. He remembered Tamara had told him it was blonde, and perhaps she had kept that colour. More likely it had turned to white, and the grease that mingled with it had returned it to its former hue. It was difficult to discern any individual strand. Instead the hair was matted into a single block, glistening slightly. Mihail was reminded of rancid butter. Her skin was thin, but not excessively wrinkled. There was no colour to it, but for the blue of her veins.

‘Come closer,’ she said, still speaking French.

Mihail walked across the room and stood a few feet away from her. She looked him up and down. He had worn his uniform, hoping that it would impress.

‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

‘Tell you what?’

‘You have news; from Sevastopol. Why else would you come? It can’t be good. He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Dead?’

‘My husband!’

Mihail had been warned by the
dvornik
. Svetlana was not well in her mind. She was living in the past. Momentarily he pictured a different life for himself. This was just an elderly eccentric aunt who as a child he had been forced to visit and now did so out of sympathy, but rarely stayed long. Such visits would be commonplace for many families, but a closed door for Mihail. He allowed himself only a moment’s regret.

‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘He died bravely.’

‘I knew it. I knew it when she came to see me.’

‘When who came?’

‘That woman, with her questions.’ Svetlana leaned forward in her chair. There was even less to her frame now that it could be seen clear of the upholstery. ‘You look like her. Are you related?’

‘My name is Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin,’ he told her. ‘I’m a lieutenant.’

‘In Dmitry’s regiment.’

‘No.’

‘Then why have they sent you?’

Mihail could provide no answer.

‘What’s the date?’ she asked.

‘19 February.’

‘What year? What year?’

‘1881.’ He could not lie to her.

She sat back, a look of surprise on her face. ‘He’s been dead a long time, then,’ she said simply.

Mihail nodded, hoping she was returning to reality. ‘Twenty-five years.’

She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly seeming to plead with
him. ‘I coped,’ she said, ‘for a while. I was even courted. I could have done well for myself. But he wouldn’t leave me alone.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘Mitka. He walked past in the street.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘He never even bothered to look up, but it was him. I told them, and they said they understood. They didn’t believe me, so I made sure they’d listen. Then they didn’t come back.’

‘When was this?’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, years …’ She paused. ‘Then he stopped walking past, and there was just me. I preferred it when he was there.’ She raised her head towards the ceiling. Her irises disappeared under her eyelids and Mihail could see only the blank whiteness of her eyeballs staring at him. Then her head dropped and she looked at him more normally. ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’