To Kill a Tsar (19 page)

At eight o’clock Anna reached for her coat: time at last to take her place. Thank God, she thought, it will be over soon. Her head ached and her chest was tight with anxiety, and she could see the others were feeling the strain too. Sophia’s face was as stiff as a painted doll’s and Lev Hartmann had been biting his nails most of the day. As she hugged him goodbye, she noticed a pulse jumping in his neck.

The clump of bushes she had chosen for an observation post was little more than a stone’s throw from the track. Cocooning herself in her coat and blankets, she settled down to wait, glad to be free of the cottage walls at last. Second train, fourth carriage. The first would be carrying court officials and the emperor’s retinue; the target would follow soon after. It was a bright night with the snow reflecting the light from a sprinkling of winter stars and a white sickle moon. She would see the plume of smoke from the south first, and she knew Sophia would be watching carefully for the same. It was below freezing. Two pairs of woollen socks and she had stuffed her fur-lined boots with newspaper, but it was not enough to preserve the feeling in her feet. If the train was delayed she might be at her post most of the night, but she felt calmer on her own and in the open. From time to time, she jumped up and walked around in a tight circle, stamping her feet, slapping her hands against her sides, confident that she was hidden from view. She took comfort from the candle burning for her in the cottage window and once the door opened and she saw Sophia’s diminutive silhouette against the light.

After two hours she had sunk into something close to a stupor, her mind and body numb with cold. But at a little before ten o’clock she caught a glimpse of a small grey cloud on the dark horizon. It disappeared for a few seconds then reappeared a little closer, and her heart leapt into her mouth. There was no mistaking it now: a pillar of smoke and steam rising from an engine. It was the first train at last and it was gusting towards her, four, five, six seconds and she could see a snake of ten carriages. It disappeared into another cutting, but only for a moment. Closer and closer, just as she had imagined it, the snow plough at the front with the plume of smoke trailing back along the train. And as the ground began to tremble beneath her feet she wondered if it was really possible to dislodge such a force. On to the railway embankment it rumbled, past the little cottage and over the tunnel they had excavated over so many difficult weeks. The driver’s face was lit by the demonic orange glow of the firebox. Blazoned on the side, the symbol of oppression – the black eagle of the Romanovs. The curtains were drawn in the carriages but she could see soldiers on the plates between and more in the guards’ van at the rear. Then with a whoosh of steam it was gone, powdery snow swirling in its wake, and Anna was shaking with excitement for surely the tsar was only minutes away. Minutes.

She could imagine those two pieces of wire trembling in Hartmann’s rough hands. A small electrical impulse that would change Russia for ever. The tension was unbearable. She felt nauseous and struggled to check a desperate urge to jump up and pace up and down. She must be calm. The moment for action was almost upon them. The only way to free the people. Free Russia. She wanted to shout and jump and run to release the agony of waiting, and, pulling off her gloves, she dug the nails of her right hand into the back of her left, pinching herself, distracted for a moment by the pain. She could not say how long she waited, with every minute an hour, staring into a darkness
broken only by pinpricks of light. Once, she was sure she saw something grey on the short horizon and sank back further into the thicket only to realise she had been tricked by her fevered imagination. And slowly the fear began to creep into her mind that the imperial train had been stopped and the sacrifices and hopes had all been in vain. So when at last she saw what might be a spiral of steam – lost for a few seconds then found – she would not accept it was the train until its shadow was quite unmistakable. And with certainty came a cold stillness. As if in a trance, she watched it draw closer and listened to the rails singing close by. Through a junction, across the river and, as it approached the long embankment, its klaxon split the night with a bellow like a wounded buffalo that chilled her to the marrow. Sh-sh-sh. On it came, the two-headed eagle just visible now on the carriages. Courtiers and guards, the kitchen, the dining car and the fourth carriage was the tsar’s saloon. Around the last corner. Seconds from the cottage. The yellow lamp at the front of the engine like a giant’s eye searching the track. The sh-sh-sh filling her mind. Thirty yards, twenty yards. Unblinking and breathless. And the engine rumbling over the gallery packed with dynamite. Now. Now. Do it now. And she bent her head, pressing her hands to her ears. One second, two seconds, three . . .

The white blast sucked the air from her chest and left her confused and completely deaf. For a few seconds she stared senselessly at the dense cloud of acrid smoke hanging over the track. Slowly she became aware of a distant whooshing like an Arctic wind. The engine had ground to a halt close by and the driver was releasing steam from the boiler. Where was the cottage? It was as if she were viewing everything through the bottom of a bottle. Dazed soldiers jumped from the train and half ran, half fell down the embankment into the snowy field below. As the smoke began to drift she could see the train twisting off the track with the ragged silhouette of a carriage
on its side. A splinter of rail rose at a right angle to the embankment, and beneath it the raw earth rim of the smoking crater. It was as if a hand had scooped the train from the track like a toy then dropped it carelessly back. And she felt a warm rush of pride. They had done it! The tsar was dead. No one in the fourth carriage could possibly have survived the explosion. Debris spotted the snow beyond the embankment as far as she could see. Railwaymen and soldiers were still stumbling from the train and a small group was gathering at the lip of the crater. Rising to her feet, she eased her way back through the thicket and away from the hissing engine. Before long they would find the remains of the gallery and follow the trench back to the cottage. Her comrades would be waiting anxiously to hear what she had seen: what news she could bring them! What joyful news. The tyrant was dead.

20 NOVEMBER 1879

N
ot content with ringing the new electric bell, the clerk from the Justice Ministry was banging his fist on the door and making enough noise to wake not only Dobrshinsky’s respectable neighbours in Furshtatskaya Street but the devil himself. The bleary-eyed porter opened it in his nightshirt. Certainly, His Honour was at home but, like every good Christian, in his bed at such an hour. The clerk was insistent: he was required to deliver his message at once. It was a matter of the utmost importance.

The long case clock in the hall was chiming half past three as the young man was shown into the special investigator’s study. Anton Dobrshinsky was standing at his desk in a flamboyant Chinese blue silk dressing gown which would have surprised those familiar with his sober public persona. He had just struck a match and was on the point of lighting a cigarette.

The clerk stepped forward at once with the letter: ‘Compliments of His Worship Count von Plehve.’

Dobrshinsky examined the handwriting on the envelope for a second, then picked up a paperknife and with a single easy motion slit it open. Five polite but deliberately vague lines that left him in no doubt the count had received serious intelligence:

My Dear Anton Frankzevich,

I am sorry for the lateness of the hour, only a matter of the greatest importance to the Fatherland would lead me to request a meeting. I have sent a carriage with instructions to bring you to my home. My dear fellow, please make haste, there is much of a confidential nature that we must speak of at the earliest opportunity.

Yours truly,

Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve.

An attack? Dobrshinsky wondered. This new terrorist organisation, the arrest of the Jew with a suitcase of dynamite: he had warned the head of the Third Section there would be an attempt on a member of the imperial family or the government. The dogs had been barking a warning in the streets.

‘I’ll be down shortly,’ he said, slipping the letter back in the envelope.

It was only a matter of a few minutes’ drive through the empty streets to von Plehve’s home on the Moika Embankment. The count greeted Dobrshinsky in the hall and, with the face of an undertaker, led him to his study.

‘My dear fellow, terrible news,’ he said as the polished mahogany doors closed behind them. ‘It concerns His Majesty . . .’

Dobrshinsky looked at him impassively for a moment then said: ‘I warned General Drenteln the imperial train was in danger.’

‘How did you know?’ demanded von Plehve.

‘The gendarmes arrested a Jew called Goldenberg at Elizavetgrad Station eight days ago. He was carrying a large quantity of dynamite.’

‘You mean this could have been prevented?’ The count gestured angrily towards one of the English armchairs in front of his desk. ‘The Emperor’s Council will want to know why the train wasn’t stopped.’

He slumped heavily into the chair opposite Dobrshinsky and with his elbows on the arms, placed his fingers to his lips and stared coldly over them at the special investigator: ‘The second attempt on the tsar’s life this year. It will be me who has to answer for this.’

That was not, strictly speaking, true. Dobrshinsky knew the names of half a dozen ministers and more senior civil servants who would be asked to account for a failure in security before the count – the head of the Third Section, General Drenteln, for one.

‘It would be helpful if Your Worship told me what has happened.’

‘As you’ve clearly surmised, the emperor has not been hurt,’ said the count dryly. ‘But the imperial baggage train was derailed by an explosion outside Moscow this evening. The order of the trains was changed, the emperor’s was to have been the second train but at the last minute it was agreed he would travel before the baggage.’ The count rose again and walked over to the fire to ring the bell to the right of the mantelpiece. ‘A piece of remarkably good fortune – His Majesty has probably declared it another miracle – you see, the bomb went off beneath the fourth carriage. The emperor’s saloon was the fourth on the imperial train. If he hadn’t insisted on switching the order of the trains he would be dead. And . . .’ the count lowered his heavy frame back into the armchair, ‘and you and I would be eking out a living in a provincial city. Thankfully no one was hurt, but the royal supply of jam was a casualty.’

There was a knock at the study door and a servant entered with a delicate china tea service which he placed on a table by the fire.

‘They’re very well informed,’ said Dobrshinsky with a frown.

‘The terrorists?’

‘It’s possible they were watching the imperial train in the Crimea . . .’

‘But you think there’s more?’ said the count, accepting the cup offered by his footman.

‘I am afraid I do.’

First the dead informer, Bronstein, in the hotel. Then the student who had blown his brains out to avoid arrest. Someone must have tipped him off because he had destroyed his papers and was on the point of leaving Petersburg. And the local police informer in Peski too – the vagabond – he had been stabbed outside a church school on a Sunday. ‘You see, Count, every time we try to place someone in this new party, they are murdered. Every time we try to make an arrest, the bird has just flown. Our promising leads come to nothing?’

‘But you’ve arrested this fellow with the dynamite,’ von Plehve pointed out sceptically.

Dobrshinsky’s face stiffened a little. Was the chief prosecutor implying he was making excuses? ‘It was pure luck. Goldenberg was dragging a bag of dynamite along a station platform. Even the local gendarmes were able to identify him as a suspicious character.’

‘I see.’

For a minute, neither of them spoke but sipped their tea and stared at the crackling fire.

‘Just to be clear,’ von Plehve said at last, ‘you think someone is giving this “People’s Will” intelligence – they have a spy somewhere?’

‘Perhaps,’ Dobrshinsky replied cautiously. ‘Some of them come from noble families. They have influential friends.’

‘This woman, Sophia Perovskaya?’

‘And others. The Volkonsky woman has given us a few names and descriptions, although she was trusted with very little.’

‘The foreigner she mentioned, have you been able to identify him?’

‘Not yet. She thinks he’s German or perhaps English.’

‘A plot to destabilise the country?’ Something in the tone of
this question suggested the count’s subtle mind had fastened on an interesting new possibility. ‘It might be useful to brief our newspapers. They could suggest something of the sort.’

‘I am more interested in the Jew, Goldenberg,’ replied Dobrshinsky. ‘We suspect him of being involved in the murder of the governor of Kharkov.’

Von Plehve put his cup back on his saucer. ‘I am sure you will do all you need to do to extract the truth from him.’

Ah, spoken like a true Russian, Dobrshinsky thought, and he could not help a sardonic little smile.

‘Does that offend you?’

‘Not in the slightest, but it won’t be necessary. I have my own methods.’

Von Plehve grunted. ‘That’s up to you. I don’t care how you break him. Just be sure you do.’

. . . We are convinced that our agents and our party will not be discouraged by this failure . . . They will go forward with new faith in their strength and in the ultimate success of their cause . . .

‘No comfort for the authorities there,’ said Dobson with a short laugh. He was standing in front of the fire in his study, a dogeared leaflet in his hand. It was a bleak Petersburg evening, dark at five o’clock, a wind from Siberia driving all but a few from the streets, snow rattling at the window.

‘These political zealots love their Bible, don’t they, with their talk of “faith” and “sacrifice”, “forgiveness” and “martyrdom”. Listen to this: