Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

‘A few months only. She used to help at a clinic I run in Peski. That’s why I’m here,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. She’s been away. But she’s a very capable nurse and I was hoping to persuade her to come back to us.’

‘Ah. I see.’ The policeman scrutinised his face carefully, his bushy eyebrows meeting in a frown. ‘You’re smiling, Doctor.’

‘Am I?’

‘Please, share the joke.’

‘Oh, just that it occurred to me you may have missed your calling, Major. You have an excellent bedside manner.’

‘I haven’t missed my calling, Doctor,’ said Barclay coolly. ‘I am an excellent policeman.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Hadfield replied. ‘But I would be grateful if you would have the courtesy to explain what on earth is going on here.’

‘When did you last see Miss Kovalenko?’

‘Three months ago. But I refuse to say another word until you tell me why you’re in her house.’

‘Then I will arrest you and take you to a station for questioning.’

It was quite apparent from the steel in the policeman’s voice that he was in earnest. Hadfield could feel the colour rising in his face. Once inside it would be impossible to disguise his involvement with the sort of people his family and patients considered undesirable and dangerous.

‘Well?’ Barclay asked.

‘Well, I will explain to my friend, the chief prosecutor, when he visits me in your cells that I was happy to answer your questions but you were unwilling to offer me the common courtesy of an explanation.’

‘You know the Count von Plehve?’

‘Yes. He’s a friend of my uncle’s.’

‘And your uncle is… ?’

‘General Glen.’

Barclay pursed his lips thoughtfully. There was a cool intelligence in his manner that suggested he would not be intimidated by names. But no policeman in Russia would be foolish enough to ignore rank or connections entirely.

‘Of course you’re right, Doctor,’ he said at last. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Turning, he shouted over his shoulder to one of the gendarmes.

Coat pulled tightly about him, a glass of tea burning his fingers, Hadfield sat on the torn couch and listened to the major speak of the woman he had knelt beside and whose hand he had kissed only a short time before. Anna Petrovna Kovalenko, also known by her married name of Romanko, a member of the terrorist organisation The People’s Will, suspected of involvement in an attempt on the emperor’s life, a dedicated revolutionary who had only recently escaped from house arrest. The policeman’s eyes never left his face.

‘Believe me Major, I had no idea,’ he said. ‘She seemed a good-hearted woman…’

There were more questions. Hadfield answered them without difficulty. Yes, he promised to inform the police if Anna Petrovna visited the clinic or tried to make contact with him, and yes, of course he would be happy to identify her. No, he had not met her friends, nor had she spoken of them, but the major could be sure he would do anything he could to help bring a terrorist to justice.

The major was grateful. The major was prepared to let him go. ‘I hope we meet again, Doctor,’ he said, offering his hand.

And Hadfield was conscious as he walked from the house that he had just played the first moves in a subtle and deliberate game. Not even the laziest policeman in an empire that was not short of them would leave it there. And Barclay was no ordinary officer. He was working for the Third Section, and he would use its network to pick at every piece of Hadfield’s story. By this evening one of the clerks at Fontanka 16 would have written his name at the top of a new file with special reference to the terrorist Anna Kovalenko.

The driver was cursing, his horses blown by the time the carriage slid to a halt before the steps of the House of Preliminary Detention. Barclay dumped the bearskin on the seat beside him and hoisted his stiff body on to the pavement. It had been quite as unpleasant as he anticipated, shaken and jolted for two hours. But there was no time to waste, not since the attempt on the tsar’s train, not since the bungled arrest of some of those responsible. The mantra was ‘results now, results now’. The Third Section could not afford to fail again.

‘Major Vladimir Barclay for the special investigator, His Honour Anton Frankzevich Dobrshinsky.’

He handed his identity papers to the greasy clerk in reception, who scrutinised them carefully although he had seen Barclay many times.

‘Hurry up, man, hurry up.’ He was in no mood for petty-fogging bureaucracy. It was a wonder anything was ever achieved in the empire. When it really counted, the system proved itself anything but careful. A warder led him across the vast exercise yard, the snow packed hard by the boots of the prisoners, to a door in the corner of the east wing. ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here,’ he muttered to himself as he stepped through the door once again. Who would have predicted that hell would rattle like an empty bin? The clatter of boots along the iron galleries, the clanking of the heating pipes and the tap, tap, tap of the prisoners in solitary, desperate for human contact even if it meant spelling it out with a spoon. A constant soulless echo that Barclay felt sure would threaten his sanity if he had to endure it for more than a few hours at a time. But then the inmates’ sanity was surely in doubt in the first place — and none more so in Barclay’s judgement than the Jew, Goldenberg. Perhaps that was why Dobrshinsky was spending so much of his time trying to befriend him. A special case, he had said, cryptically.

The special investigator had received word of Barclay’s arrival and was waiting for him on the landing outside the interrogation room. ‘I can see you have news for me,’ he said, as Barclay approached. ‘That’s good.’

‘I’ve come straight from the Kovalenko woman’s house. A matter of some urgency, Your Honour. A delicate matter.’

Dobrshinsky led the way to the warder’s office at the end of the wing. But for the cheap furniture and an engraving of the tsar, it resembled one of the prison’s larger cells, the walls painted dark grey, the floor of black asphalt with only a small double casement window on to the world. As they entered, the occupants jumped to their feet, one of the clerks knocking his chair over in his haste.

‘Leave us, please. You,’ Dobrshinsky pointed to the unfortunate clerk, ‘bring us some tea.’

As soon as the door closed behind them, the special investigator turned his sharp little eyes to Barclay like a fox sizing up his supper. ‘Well? A delicate matter, you say?’

‘Yes. Yes it is. But first, Your Honour was quite right. Anna Kovalenko does meet the description of the woman seen leaving the square after the attempt on the emperor’s life in March. The police in Kharkov have confirmed that her married name is Romanko. Her poor dupe of a husband is a village merchant — he used to be a policeman — of course he knows nothing about her activities.’

‘He should have taken better care of her, shouldn’t he?’ Dobrshinsky said sardonically. ‘Check the file, but I think you’ll find she meets the description of the woman seen leaving the Volkonsky house with Alexander Mikhailov too. A busy little bee. And if you remember, Kovalenko was one of the names on the list our informer left at the Neva Hotel.’ His face wrinkled in an uncomfortable frown. ‘Damn the city police for their incompetence. But you said there was a delicate matter?’

Barclay began to describe his meeting with the English doctor and the substance of their conversation. ‘I would have brought him in for questioning but he seems to be very well connected.’

‘Oh?’

‘His Excellency the financial controller is his uncle and he says he’s a friend of Count von Plehve’s.’