To Kill a Tsar (34 page)

The Director poured vodka for them both. ‘Perhaps they’re using the Englishman as a channel,’ said the Director quietly, turning his glass on the table. ‘I suppose you’ve considered that?’

‘Yes.’

The bottom of the glass tick-ticked like a broken clock as he
turned it slowly against the chipped wood. A drunk was shouting incoherently in the room above; the crash of a chair and, a moment later, the light beat of a woman’s shoes on the stairs.

‘What will you do?’

‘What will I do?’ Mikhailov fixed the Director with a cold stare: ‘Whatever needs to be done. Don’t I always?’

F
rederick Hadfield was in his carpet slippers and dressing gown when the dvornik knocked at his door with the note. His heart leapt with joy and relief. For all the lateness of the hour, the regret, the shame he had felt since the explosion at the palace, he was desperate to be with her. But he took no pleasure in the necessary deception; it was no longer an adventure. Since the interview with Dobrshinsky he was sure he was under surveillance, and he presumed the dvornik had been instructed to report on the hours he kept and on his visitors. Dressed as a doctor and with medical bag and coat he made his way noisily down the steps to the front door. Sure enough Sergei the dvornik was there to greet him with an obsequious bow.

‘Is everything all right, Your Honour?’ He pushed his fleshy face, flushed with drink, towards Hadfield’s.

‘Acute myocardial infarction,’ said Hadfield. ‘A serious case.’

The dvornik looked at him blankly. ‘Does Your Honour wish me to summon a cab?’

But it was an emergency, no time to waste. Hadfield brushed past him and into the snowy street.

The city’s clocks were striking midnight at St Boris and St Gleb, and half past the hour by the time he reached the rooming house door. The old Ukrainian lady greeted him with a warm wrinkled smile. The rest of the building was sleeping. Anna was curled beneath a thick feather bedspread he had not seen before. He knelt beside her and swept a strand of hair from her face. She looked tired and there was an angry graze high
on her right cheek. He took off his clothes and lay on the mattress beside her. And she turned to him with her eyes closed, lifting her chin, an invitation to kiss her full on the lips.

‘You were so long,’ she whispered sleepily.

‘What happened to you? You must let me look at your cheek.’ She smiled. ‘My personal physician.’ And she pressed closer, sharing her warmth, her head upon his arm, his thigh raised between her legs. ‘Things are so difficult, I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you tell that man Dobrshinsky?’

‘No more than we agreed.’

‘Good.’ She leant forward to kiss him, plucking playfully at his bottom lip with her lips. Then she said, ‘But you must be even more careful. They won’t leave you alone.’

‘I know. He knew much more than I expected. Your friend Goldenberg has changed sides.’

‘That’s not true!’ she said sharply, pulling her head away to look him in the eye.

‘I’m sorry. It is true.’

‘Did Dobrshinsky say so? How can you be sure?’

‘I’m sure.’ And he told her of his conversation with the special investigator. She listened with a deep frown of concentration, propped on an elbow, her eyes an intense darker blue in the candlelight.

‘But that only proves he told them about you,’ she said. ‘He must have thought they wouldn’t hurt you.’

Hadfield raised his eyebrows sceptically. She fell back on the pillow beside him, a hard expression on her face.

‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ he said, reaching up to stroke her hair.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It explains everything.’

‘Does it?’

‘I must tell the others. I should go.’

‘For God’s sake!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve only just got here.’

‘Shsh. Someone will hear you.’

Their faces were inches apart, her chest rising and falling against his chest, his leg pressing her pelvis, and yet, and yet, it was as if they were drifting away from each other, the confused feelings of the last days creeping between them.

‘I spoke to the tsar,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘He visited the hospital after the explosion. I helped treat some of the wounded.’

She closed her eyes, her face stiff, even hostile.

‘I helped to remove the leg of a young Finnish soldier, but he died in the night.’

‘Please, Frederick, don’t.’

‘Why not? Is it so hard?’

‘I’m going.’

‘As you wish.’

But she made no attempt to rise, and he did not relax his hold upon her.

‘Come away with me. Leave this madness,’ he whispered, pulling her closer, his cheek to hers. She winced with pain.

‘Is that such an awful thought?’

‘No. No. It was my cheek.’

‘Then say yes.’

‘I can’t, Frederick. You know I can’t, I can’t . . .’

‘Then what do you want from me?’ he asked coldly. ‘This? Is this all I am permitted to share? A damp mattress?’ Anna did not reply, and after a few seconds he pulled away a little to study her expression: ‘Well?’

Still the stubborn, passive silence. A darkness in which resentment, unhappiness, despair might breathe.

‘Do you love me?’ He wanted to shake her.

Her face stiffened with anger and she opened her eyes and stared at him: ‘Yes.’

‘Why was it so hard to say? Then let’s leave this country.’

‘No. I have a duty to my friends and my people. A higher duty.’

‘A higher duty?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Some might call it a passion for martyrdom.’

‘Be quiet,’ she hissed.

‘What about those soldiers at the palace – my young Finnish soldier, or the student they found murdered on the ice? What about those people?’

‘Keep your voice down!’ She gave him an angry shove. ‘You should go.’

‘What sort of country will you build with your terror? A place where anyone who stands in your way is judged to be an enemy of the people?’

‘Shut up.’ She pulled away so no part of her was touching him, but he shuffled closer again, reaching out for her shoulder.

‘We can be our own country.’

‘Go!’ She pushed at his chest.

‘What’s more important?’

‘I’m going, then.’ She began to rise, pulling the bed clothes with her to cover her nakedness. He could see she was lost in an angry mist and quite beyond reason. She did not want to look at him. She would not listen to him.

‘Don’t be silly. I’ll go,’ he said.

‘Don’t patronise me.’

‘I’ll go,’ and he got to his feet and began to dress. She had put on her underwear and was struggling in the corner of the tiny room with her dress, determined to stand as far from him as possible. It was comical, and he fought a mad urge to laugh. Look at us, he thought, just look at us.

‘I don’t think we should see each other again,’ she whispered, her back still to him.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘It is what I want.’

They finished dressing in cold silence. When he was ready Anna picked up the candle and snuffed it out with her fingers.

‘That simple?’ he asked.

‘You leave first.’

‘You know I love you,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, Frederick, but this is best for you.’

‘Don’t tell me what’s best for me,’ he said bitterly, and he stepped across to the entrance and tugged the curtain aside. He glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘You know how to find me, Anna.’ And the curtain fell back silently behind him.

Anna walked until her chest ached, faster, faster, stumbling in the dark, sliding, almost falling. She walked in a mist, the city streets opaque and confusing, and yet by five o’clock she had found her way back to Podolskaya Street in time to become Elizaveta the Ukrainian maid once more. Hollow, heavy-footed, she climbed to the second floor and let herself into the apartment. The bedroom she shared with Praskovia was at the end of the hall, but to avoid waking her and the questions that would follow she decided to spend what was left of the night on the couch. Staggering like a drunk with the effort, she removed her boots and shuffled slowly down the hall to the small drawing room. The door was a few inches ajar. She gave it a gentle push and stepped inside. The shutters and drapes were closed, the room as black as a coalhole, and she was obliged to use the wall and furniture to grope her way towards the couch. She was on the point of collapsing exhausted on to it when she heard a light scuffing noise and with a shudder of fear she realised there was someone in the room. She could feel him there at the shuttered windows. She began to edge away, every muscle tense, poised to run. Then a blinding yellow flash. He had struck a match.

‘You,’ she said, trembling with rage.

Alexander Mikhailov lifted the flame to a candle and, rising from his chair, walked over to the stove to light another, the light playing across his face.

‘Did I startle you?’

‘You wanted to.’

He stared at her, inscrutable like a cat, a face that kept secrets. The room was cold and he was still in his coat and scarf.

‘What are you doing here at this hour?’ she asked, dropping on to the couch. ‘Did you see the Director?’

He stepped over to the door and closed it quietly: ‘Yes.’

‘And what did he say to you?’

‘Have you been with your Englishman?’ he asked, settling into the chair opposite.

‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped.

‘Have you been with him?’

She stared at him defiantly, refusing to answer. ‘I’m tired. I need to sleep,’ she said at last.

His insolent smile made her blush with embarrassment and anger.

‘I want to sleep,’ she said again and she began to shuffle round, preparing to lift her legs on to the couch.

‘Is he still useful?’ Mikhailov asked. ‘You said he was useful.’

‘Yes, yes, he’s useful,’ she said angrily.

‘Keep your voice down . . .’

‘The help he gave Valentin – and tonight he told me Grigory had broken and was giving them information. So, yes, he’s useful.’

‘Goldenberg? How does your doctor know?’

Anna hesitated. ‘From the special investigator.’

‘Dobrshinsky?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did he speak to Dobrshinsky?’

‘Two weeks ago.’

‘And did you know he was speaking to Dobrshinsky?’

‘Yes. But I trust him.’

‘You trust him?’ Mikhailov gave a short laugh: ‘You’re blind.’ He leant forward, his podgy hands together like a judge before a court. ‘Your doctor met the special investigator at his home.’

‘Why ask if you know? Please, can we talk of this later?’

‘What did your doctor tell Dobrshinky?’

‘What?’ He had pushed her too hard and her fragile temper snapped: ‘Everything, everything,’ she shouted, jumping to her feet to stand shaking with anger before him. ‘Everything. Satisfied?’

He stared at her, the colour rising to his cheeks. ‘Sit down and be quiet. What did he tell Dobrsinsky?’

She was too tired to fight him. ‘Nothing. He said nothing.’

‘You’ve taken too many risks,’ Mikhailov said. ‘You’ve forgotten your loyalty to the party.’

Oh, that’s your verdict, is it, Comrade Mikhailov, she thought with disgust.

‘It must stop. No one is more important than the party. That is the promise we made each other.’

‘It has stopped,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve told him I can’t meet him again.’

‘Or have any contact?’

‘Didn’t I say so?’ Did he want her to write it in blood? She wanted to cry, to scream, to tear at his smug face with her nails, but she was not going to let him see how hurt she felt.

‘We must all make sacrifices,’ Mikhailov said, rising to his feet. ‘You are a good comrade, Anna.’

She said nothing but watched him cross to the door, turning to glance back at her before he slipped from the room.

Praskovia Ivanovskaia found her later that morning curled on the couch.

‘You look ill. You must go to bed at once,’ she said, blinking
myopically at Anna. And she did go to bed. She lay beneath the covers in her clothes, listening to her comrades about the apartment, the thump of the press, conversation and companionable laughter. She tried not to think of Frederick, but snatches of their conversation kept forcing their way into her thoughts and she buried her head in the bedclothes, her eyes tight shut. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked her again and again, and she groaned silently.

She rose at midday and joined the others. They must have been talking about her because the air of gaiety was forced, as if they were trying a little too hard to lift her spirits. At two o’clock there was a knock on the apartment door. Printing stopped at once, a cover was thrown over the press, type and papers were cleared away and the sitting-room door was locked. Anna was sent to receive their visitor. She was surprised to find Sophia Perovskaya on the doorstep. Party members were discouraged from visiting the little print works unless their business was approved by the committee. Anna led her friend into the kitchen and introduced her to the others and they made tea and spoke for a while of the arrests, of foreign newspaper reports and the fear of more attacks that still gripped the city. But Sophia Perovskaya was uneasy, her tiny hands turning in her lap or playing with her glass. The others must have sensed it too because the conversation began to peter out, the awkward silences to lengthen, and there was something close to a collective sigh of relief when she turned to Anna at last and announced that she had come with a message from the executive committee.

‘We met this morning, Annushka,’ she said, when the others had gone.

‘Oh? And did you volunteer or were you instructed to deliver its message?’ asked Anna acerbically, her eyes fixed on her friend’s face.

‘The committee thought it best if I spoke to you,’ she replied,
reddening a little. ‘It would like you to take Stepan Khalturin to Kiev. His nerves are lacerated since the explosion. He’s close to a breakdown. After all those weeks at the palace he thinks he’s failed us. He can’t be trusted.’

‘Ha!’ Anna exclaimed with an angry wave. ‘So the committee wants both of us out of the way.’

‘No, Annushka, no.’ Sophia leant forward for her hand but Anna refused to give it.