The Jewel of St Petersburg

Twenty-five

FEAR COMES IN MANY GUISES. FOR JENS IT CAME IN THE form of a pen, the pen in his questioner’s hand. When his questioner was calm it lay still and somnolent between the man’s fingers, but when he grew agitated it adopted a fast flick-flick-flick. Jens’s heart rate echoed its beat.

“Ask Minister Ivanov,” Jens said for the twentieth time. “It’s his house, not mine. I came to collect my horse, that’s all.”

“Why was the horse there in the first place?”

“I told you. I was visiting the minister’s daughter.”

“Or were you using that excuse just as a cover to give you access to the stables?”

“No.”

“To retrieve the box of hand grenades from where you’d hidden it.”

“No.”

“When did you secrete the grenades in the stables?”

“I didn’t.”

“Who asked you to collect them?”

“Nobody. I know nothing about them.”

“You attacked my agents with a whip.”

“They were killing the Cossack.”

“So you admit this Liev Popkov is your accomplice in an anti-government plot.”

“No. I hardly know the man. He is a servant there; that’s all I know of him.”

“You’re lying.”

“No.”

They danced around in circles. Flick-flick-flick. Jens sat as though indifferent to it all as he replied to the same questions again and again. Yet it was all so civilized. No bare interrogation room, no harsh lights, no handcuffs tearing his skin. A chair with padded arms, even the offer of a cigarette. Which he declined.

They were seated in an ordinary office with manila folders and a flourishing potted plant on a shelf. A smart new carpet on the floor. No bloodstains, Jens noticed. His questioner was a small balding man with a patient face and large ears, which he fingered in moments of uncertainty. Each time Jens said, “Speak to Minister Ivanov. He is a loyal servant of His Imperial Majesty,” the fingers sought out an earlobe. The questioner was treading with care, feeling for how thin the ice was under his feet.

The damn Cossack was a fool. Nowhere was safe, nowhere unobserved by Okhrana eyes. If Popkov thought the stables of a government minister would be a clever place to hide antigovernment weapons, he knew nothing about the way the secret police worked. Nevertheless he found it hard to believe that Popkov was a Bolshevik. Damn it, it gave him the shivers to think of Valentina anywhere near such a lethal package.

“Where is Liev Popkov?” he asked abruptly.

“The revolutionary is being interrogated.”

Jens’s blood chilled. Interrogated.

“I don’t believe Popkov is a revolutionary. Anyone could have put the grenades there to endanger the minister.”

“Including you.”

“No, not me.”

“What you believe is irrelevant.”

The man’s eyes were hungry. He wanted to unleash his teeth and devour Jens, but something was holding him back. Jens realized it was the title beside his own name on the front of the folder on the desk. JENS FRIIS: ENGINEER TO His MAJESTY THE TSAR.

ENGINEER TO HIS MAJESTY THE TSAR.

He would make use of it, that title. Why not? His pulse drummed in his ears. He knew there were a hundred reasons why not, a hundred interrogation cells in the basement nowhere near as cozy as this one. Ones with chains attached to the chairs and dried blood on the tiled walls. He spoke pleasantly to his questioner.

“Where is Liev Popkov?” he asked. “I want to see him.”

It was plain the man was annoyed by the request but struggled not to show it. After a long silence during which the pen flicked back and forth he rose to his feet, walked over to the door, and swung it open with such force that it banged off the wall.

“Come.”

JENS GRIPPED ONTO THE EDGE OF HIS FURY. STOPPED IT FROM banging its fist against the metal door, prevented it from seizing his escort’s neck and ramming it through the narrow observation flap. He stood outside the prison cell and called Popkov’s name.

Inside the cell he could make out a broad back, blood pouring from fresh wounds. He moved closer and through the rectangular peephole in the door saw the Cossack chained by his wrists to the opposite wall. Stark naked but still on his feet, face pressed to the filthy tiles. The massive muscles of his buttocks were black with bruises; electrodes trailed from his genitals to a battery. Feces slithered down the back of his legs.

Stink. Sweat. Blood.

THE NOISES OF THE CITY WERE MUTED. IT WAS LATE EVEning when Jens arrived at the imposing residence of the Ivanovs and he half-expected to find it locked and shuttered, soldiers on guard outside, its windows black and lifeless. But no. Lights blazed. That was a good sign. He was admitted immediately by a footman whose eyes skipped away, small nervous eyes. Whatever had gone on here between Minister Ivanov and the police, after he was carted off with Popkov, had left its mark.

Jens carried his own mark too. His right shoulder throbbed where one particular bastard had been too free with his rifle butt during the arrest. The footman led him to the blue salon, the one where he had sat with Valentina that first time, but he didn’t expect to see her tonight because her father would have shut her away. Her name had to remain untainted by the scandal in his stables.

“Jens Friis,” the footman announced.

Jens entered the brightly lit room and took a moment to adjust. To his surprise they were all there. General Ivanov looked formal in a dark green frock coat, his back to the fire, his bushy eyebrows pulled together over weary eyes, one foot tapping the marble hearth. Elizaveta Ivanova sat as unmoving as a doll on the ottoman, hands in her lap, a glass of water at her side.

But Jens hardly noticed either of them because Valentina filled his eyes. She was seated on a sofa next to her sister. Both were wearing cream dresses but the contrast between them could not have been greater. Katya’s face was streaked with tears, although she smiled at Jens at once. She looked relieved by his arrival. But Valentina gave him no such welcome. Her brown eyes were almost black with rage, and he could see it was not her father with whom she was furious, it was him. Her hair was tied back from her face, and this time it was not her beauty that struck him so forcefully, but her strength. A fine steel mesh under the skin. He had sensed it before but never seen it so clearly. He wanted to sit down and explain to her why he’d gotten into a fight with Okhrana agents, but instead he turned to her father.

“Minister Ivanov, I am thankful to see you all safe.”

“Friis, what the hell do you think you were doing in my stables? Lashing out at the police with a whip? I’m amazed they’ve released you after a display like that.

“The police were mistaken,” Jens said firmly. He didn’t look at Valentina. “They were killing one of your servants. Don’t you care?”

“Damn you, man. I care that there was a box of grenades in the stables that could have blown us all to hell.” Ivanov started to pace back and forth in front of the fire. Shoulders tense, fists clenched.

Jens remained where he was near the door. He was not invited to take a seat.

“Popkov was not the only one who could have been killed,” Valentina said in a flat voice. “You took a terrible risk.”

“I couldn’t leave him there to be kicked to death in the straw.”

“I know.” Valentina shook her head as if to rid it of something. “Where is Liev now?”

Jens directed his response to her father. “He’s in a stinking prison cell. That’s why I’ve come. He needs your help tonight or I swear to you he will not be alive in the morning.”

Katya moaned. “Papa! You must help him.”

Ivanov ignored his daughters, his attention still on Jens. “Why did they release you?”

“Because I had nothing to do with the grenades. And because”-he paused, considering how far Ivanov could be pushed-“I have friends at court. You and I both know, Minister, this city functions on who you know and on what favors you are owed.”

Ivanov blinked, considering exactly what that meant. He took out a cigar from a silver humidor on the mantelpiece to give himself breathing space but didn’t offer one to Jens.

“So do they know who planted the grenades?” Jens asked.

“It was Viktor Arkin,” Valentina told him. “Our chauffeur.”

“Did he confess?”

“No,” Ivanov growled. “My daughter saw the box at the back of the garage last week-without realizing what was in it, of course. He must have moved it in case the Okhrana came sniffing around. I’ll have the traitor shot if ever they track him down.”

“Has he disappeared?”

The minister inhaled heavily on his cigar. “He’s run off. A damn revolutionary. In my own home. God curse the man, I hope his body is washed up in the Neva and his eyes are eaten by crabs.”

“He was a good chauffeur. I liked him.”

All attention turned to Elizaveta Ivanova with her water glass in her hand. It was the first time she had spoken.

“He was never impudent,” she continued, “the way the Cossack horseman is. Or as filthy.”

“Papa^?”

It was Katya who called for him. She held out her hand, a pale thing that lingered in the air, and her father came quickly to her, taking her hand in his. “What is it, little one?”

“Do as Jens says, Papa. Please. Help Liev.”

Jens witnessed the struggle within the man. His desire to please his younger daughter over a worthless servant, in the balance against his ruthlessness in political maneuvers. But there was something more within the man, something that intrigued him. It was fear. What is this minister of the tsar so afraid of?

“Katya, my dear child, you don’t understand,” Ivanov said soothingly. “I know you are used to this ignorant Cossack, but-”

“Used to?” Valentina interrupted. “Used to? It is a little more than that, Papa. This ignorant Cossack has worked in your employ all his life; he watched his father die because of who you are and because he rode out to find me that day. Liev Popkov detests this infestation of Bolsheviks the way he hates an infestation of rats in his stables. Yet you are going to leave him to die in a stinking Okhrana prison cell?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t.” She leapt to her feet, breathing hard. “You must make a telephone call to the chief of police to demand his release right now,” her voice was shaking, “or I-”

She glanced at Jens and something unguarded in her expression alerted her father. He turned on Jens immediately. “What the hell are you doing here, Friis? Why are you interfering? Is something going on between you and my daughter?” He did not wait for any response. “Get out!” he shouted. “Get out of my house! Stay away from her, do you hear me? I forbid you ever to enter my house again.”

Jens turned to Valentina. “Come with me? Now. Leave this house with me.”

It was a murmur but it echoed through the room as if he had shouted. His words seemed to pull something loose inside her. Her limbs grew soft and the rigid muscles of her face slackened as her gaze held his. The rage gave way and in its place a look formed in her eyes as languid and tender as any she’d given him in the privacy of his bedroom. For one foolish moment he believed she would come.

Her lips parted, and he drew her wrist into his hand. “Come with me,” he said again.

She let her wrist lie between his fingers, but her head turned back to her father. He could see the effort it took, the tension in her neck.

“Papa,” she said, “if you do not demand Popkov’s release immediately tonight, I will ask someone else who will.”

“And who might that be?”

“Captain Chernov.”

“No,” Ivanov spoke quickly. “Valentina, listen to me. I cannot permit our name to be beholden to the Chernovs or they will think you too weak and insignificant to be worthy of the agreed marriage.”

Agreed marriage. The words scraped against Jens’s mind. It had gone that far. Agreed marriage. He released Valentina’s wrist abruptly. A curt bow to her mother, that was all, and he strode from the room.

WAIT!”

Jens was swinging up onto Hero’s back and closed his ears to her shout. He needed to ride fast, to pound the image of her sweet treacherous mouth from his skull. My heart will never have anything to do with Captain Chernov, she had promised. On her sister’s life she had promised. Not her heart maybe, but her marriage bed.

“Jens!”

She came flying through the darkness into the stable yard and hooked an arm around his foot in the stirrup, so that if he rode off he would drag her with him. He looked down at her pale upturned face, at her shoulders shivering in the cream silk, and he felt his heart turn over.

“Good-bye, Valentina.”

“Don’t go.”

“I have no reason to stay.”

“Jens, I love you.” Her eyes blurred and tears strayed down her cheeks. “Only you.”

He smiled at her sadly, bent down and kissed the top of her head. “It seems love isn’t enough for you.”

With a kick he urged the horse forward, so sharply that it broke Valentina’s grip on his leg and at the same time snapped something within him. As he cantered from the yard he didn’t look back.

HER FATHER’S STUDY WAS EXACTLY THE SAME, HIS DESK full of papers, his cigar box open. Out in the hall she could hear the whisper of a broom over marble flooring. The cough of a footman, the creak of a stair. The same sounds. As though nothing had changed. As though her world didn’t lie in pieces on the cobbles in the stable yard. She tried to concentrate on what her father was saying, but all her ears could hear was the deadness in Jens’s words: I have no reason to stay. All she could see was the look in his eyes. The imprint of the hard muscles around his shinbone was embedded in her hands, and she couldn’t unclasp her fingers in case she lost it. It was all she had left of him.

“Papa,” she interrupted, “there is no agreed marriage.”

He placed both his hands on his desk and leaned his weight on them, in need of support. “Valentina, please don’t make more trouble for me than I have already.” He spoke so quietly it unnerved her.

“Very well, Papa. But first, deal with Popkov. Please make the telephone call.”

He didn’t argue. He walked over to the black telephone on the study wall, wound the handle, and requested the number from the operator. Whoever it was he talked to, it was brief, a few curt commands. Valentina heard the words chief of police, but that was all. When he returned to his desk he sat down heavily, placed his elbows on its surface and his chin in his hands. He looked at her with dull dismayed eyes.

“It’s done,” he said. “Now go.”

“Papa, we couldn’t leave Popkov in the hands of the Okhrana.”

He gave a grunt and lowered his face into his hands. The patch on the top of his head showed where his hair was thinning, and the sight of that small human weakness triggered in her a sudden rush of sorrow for him.

“Papa, I want you to understand that I will not marry Captain Chernov. Nothing will make me go to the imperial ball at the Winter Palace with him.”

The stifled grunt came again, but he didn’t look up. “I need you to.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Papa.” She walked toward the door.

“Valentina,” her father muttered, “he has no money.”

“Who has no money?”

“Your engineer.”

A pulse thudded in her chest. She stood with one hand on the door. “He has enough.”

“Enough for you perhaps, but not enough for me.”

His heavy chin was bunched in his hands, his eyes were observing her, and she could see where his gold signet ring had made a dent in his flesh.

“Papa, why would you want his money?” She gestured around the room at the fine English rifle on the wall, at the French landscape paintings, at the leather-bound books on the shelves. “I don’t understand. Why?”

His eyes blurred. They changed from brown to mud. The veins on his whiskered cheeks drained of blood, and she saw his mouth go slack. For a second she thought he was having a heart attack.

“Papa^?”

The moment seemed to stretch until it touched the walls.

“Papa^?”

She moved toward him, but he pulled himself up straight. “Very well. I will tell you why I need the money, Valentina. It’s simple. I am bankrupt. Don’t look so shocked. I’m in debt. To banks. To money lenders. Even to thieving Jewish merchants. To anyone who would take my promissory note. Let me tell you that if you don’t marry Captain Chernov, I shall go to prison for embezzlement. Your mother will die in a pauper’s grave and your beloved sister will be turned out on the streets.”

He released a long sour breath, as though it had been building up inside him for months, and fastened his gaze on her.

“Is that what you want, Valentina?”

ARKIN LAY ON THE FLOOR. HIS BED CONSISTED OF A COUPLE of sacks flung down on flagstones and his blanket was a priest’s ceremonial vestment. A candle burned in a tin lid at his side. It was ironic. Here he was, seeking refuge in the house of the God he despised and finding it hard not to feel grateful to him, just the way his mother had always done. He lay on his back and imagined the church with its icons and its glut of prayers towering over him. Protecting him. Spasibo. Thanks. The word grew hot in his mouth and he parted his lips to let it escape.

A rat scuttled in the shadows, its feet scratching like saber tips on the stone floor. Saber tips haunted his mind. Sharpening themselves on it whether he was awake or asleep. The pain in his shoulder was less now, the wound beginning to heal, but the pain in his heart grew worse each hour he lay here. He stared up at the great black timbers above his head and tried to think. The room was unheated and the air so cold now that it was impossible to sleep, but he had no wish to, not while his mind was like this.

“Spasibo,” he said aloud. “Thank you.”

It was not for God this time. It was for Father Morozov, for giving him refuge. Morozov claimed he was a servant of his God, but he was wrong. He was a true servant of the people of Russia, and no tsar could rule such a man.

Against Arkin’s hip lay the small pearl-handled pistol, warm and loaded. Betrayal was not something he could forgive.

VIKTOR ARKIN, VKHODITE, COME IN.”

Sergeyev’s wife opened the door and treated Arkin to a warm smile of welcome. She looked… Arkin sought for a word… she looked transformed. The way a gray shapeless caterpillar is transformed into a vivid and vibrant butterfly. She was full of color and it all came from within. Her hair was unwashed and her clothes were as drab as ever, and yet she shimmered. Is that what having a child did to you? Satisfied something that hungered deep inside. For her sake he wanted to turn around and walk out, but he didn’t.

“Hello, privet, Viktor. It’s good to see you.”

Sergeyev stuck out a hand, but Arkin couldn’t bring himself to take it. Instead he leaned over the drawer that lay in pride of place on top of the table and looked down at the pink infant swaddled inside it. Everything was too tiny to belong to a human being: its fingers, its nose, its pointed little chin. Ears like a bird’s soft feathers and minuscule gold threads for eyelashes. A pain nudged his chest and he breathed awkwardly.

“Her name is Natasha.”

“Pretty.”

“She is wonderful.”

“I congratulate you.” He studied her mother with an odd sense of awe. She was thin but her breasts had swelled, and he felt an unexpected desire for her. Quickly he turned away to Sergeyev. “May we speak in private?”

They lived in only one small room. Bed and table squeezed together around the stove. The place was clean and smelled of pine-cones with bright handmade poloviki on the floor, but the plaster on the walls was crumbling and cracks ran back and forth like rail tracks across the ceiling. Privacy was not to be had.

“Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Larisa. It’s too cold to go outside.” Sergeyev sat down in a chair to emphasize the point. “She knows what we are doing.”

“Does she?”

“Of course.”

Sergeyev seemed on edge, unwilling to be alone with him.

“How’s the arm?” Arkin asked mildly.

“A bloody nuisance.”

Larisa stood beside the drawer, oblivious, one hand resting on it as if she couldn’t bear to let it go, a contented smile on her face. Arkin looked away. He’d had enough.

“You are fortunate, comrade,” he said quietly. “You missed the apprentices’ battle against the army.”

“I’m sorry. I heard it was bad.”

“It was worse than bad.”

“I’m sorry,” Sergeyev said again. His gaze was on the drawer. “Were you hurt?”

“A few cuts, nothing much.”

“We never thought the bastards would attack such young boys, did we?”

“No. We were wrong.”

A sad silence sucked the air from the room. Sergeyev was breathing hard.

“Why did you do it?” Arkin asked.

“Do what?”

“Betray them.”

Larisa gasped. “Take that back, Comrade Arkin,” she said fiercely.

But Sergeyev said nothing, just stared at the drawer.

“Why?” Arkin asked again. “The soldiers were waiting for us. Ready to charge. Why did you do it?”

“Because of the baby,” Sergeyev whispered.

Larisa clapped a hand over her mouth.

Sergeyev didn’t look at her. “The Okhrana caught me again that night when we had our run-in with them. After you and I parted, Viktor, they cornered me like a rat. Beat me in the gutter till my arm was in pieces once more. They threatened to throw me in their fucking prison to rot. What about Larisa? What about the baby we were about to have? I had to do it.” His eyes shifted to Arkin’s. “My friend,” Sergeyev said harshly, “you don’t know what it is to love someone more than your own life. Even more than your own beliefs. I couldn’t let my wife and child be tossed out onto the street to freeze to death.”

Larisa was crying silent tears. The baby sensed her distress and started to wail.

“Comrade,” Arkin said in a stiff voice, “let us continue this discussion outside. Your wife and child do not need to hear it.”

He reached out and dragged Sergeyev to his feet. As they left the room Larisa lifted the baby into her arms, tucking its head under her chin and crooning soft sounds to quiet its cries. Arkin turned his back on the image, but it stuck in his mind. Out on the street the two men walked some distance without speaking. The snow had stopped, but it hung in heavy blankets from the roofs, trying to slide down on unwary pedestrians as they passed. Russia was like that. It pounced on you, smothered you, destroyed you if you let it.

“My friend…,” Sergeyev started.

“I am not your friend.”

“Viktor, please, I-”

“You betrayed the apprentices. They trusted us, and that trust got them killed. And you betrayed me. You informed the Okhrana that I had hidden the grenades in the Ivanovs’ garage.”

“No, no, not you, Viktor. It was the Ivanovs themselves I meant to get the blame.”

“Don’t fuck with me, comrade.”

They were passing one of the narrow dark alleys that snaked between the backs of the houses, littered with frozen filth and dead rats. Viktor stopped. With no change in expression he drew the small pistol from under his coat, put it to Sergeyev’s head, and pulled the trigger. He swung the lifeless body into the alley and walked away. The image of Larisa clutching the baby went with him.