Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

‘Drygin was following our friend Trigoni,’ said Barclay, pointing to a fuzzy photograph of a young man in a student’s uniform.

‘Yes, Your Honour. A busy chap today. Really put me to the test.’

Drygin picked up his notebook and turned slowly to the correct page: ‘The subject left his apartment late this morning — a long breakfast in bed, perhaps — then he walked along the Nevsky to a cheese shop on the Malaya Sadovaya. It is run by a couple called Kobozev. The shopkeeper is from somewhere near Voronezh—’

‘The superintendent of the block says his papers are in order…’ Barclay interrupted.

‘The subject left at approximately midday and strolled over to the public library on the Bolshaya Sadovaya where he met a young woman — small, about twenty-five, brown coat, brown hair, quite pretty—’

‘Anna Kovalenko?’ asked Dobrshinsky.

Drygin shrugged. ‘She gave him a note. They were together five minutes at the most. Then I followed Trigoni to a restaurant on Nevsky where he had lunch. At about 2.30 p.m. he took a droshky to the Nikolaevsky Hospital. He gave the note to a porter, with instructions that it should be delivered at once. The porter delivered it to me first. It was addressed to a Dr Hadfield, just a couple of lines — I’m sorry it’s been so long. Tomorrow 22.00. With my love . ’

‘Good,’ said Dobrshinsky. ‘Then I want four of our best men with him tomorrow, and someone in the hospital. And no mistakes this time.’

The old man gave a respectful little bow then shuffled off in search of sustenance.

‘I want that cheese shop searched, Vladimir Alexandrovich,’ Dobrshinsky said when he had gone.

‘Yes, Your Honour.’

‘And I want you to take charge of Kovalenko. She’s the one we want, but if we find them together we can bring him to trial too. Now,’ Dobrshinsky turned back to the rogue’s gallery, ‘do you remember the names on the list we found in the hotel room on the Nevsky?’

‘Bronstein’s list? I think so: Mikhailov, Kovalenko, Morozov, Presnyakov, Goldenberg and Kviatkovsky.’

‘All of them are dead or in prison except for Anna Kovalenko. Even this one,’ and Dobrshinsky tapped his finger on the face of Nikolai Morozov. ‘The gendarmes arrested him at the border last week. He was trying to cross into Russia on false papers.’

Barclay watched the special investigator, his chin in his hand, his little brown eyes flitting from photograph to photograph. He was greyer, thinner, wearier than when they had met over the body of the Jew in that dingy hotel room. The last two years had certainly taken their toll.

‘His Majesty’s still with us, of course,’ said Dobrshinsky. ‘For that we can be thankful. But are we any closer to winning? It isn’t possible, is it?’

‘It is possible to arrest the bitch Kovalenko,’ Barclay replied. ‘And there will be satisfaction in that after all this time.’

Anna could not take her eyes off the jar. It was sitting on the kitchen table in front of her, the size of a small amphora of wine but with all the nitro-glycerine they needed to send the tsar and his entourage to a better place. In a few minutes one of the men would collect it and pass it with great care along a human chain to the end of the gallery. Then it would be packed between sandbags to direct the charge into the street above. The enterprise had almost come to grief more than once. The police had inspected the premises and questioned the shopkeeper and his wife, then one of the tunnellers cut a sewer pipe and flooded the cellar with effluent. The stench lingered in the shop for days.

In those fraught weeks Anna had felt too unwell to be of real service to her comrades. She had tried to hide her sickness but her room-mate had seen her more than once with her head bent over a bowl. And although she prevailed on Praskovia to say nothing, some of the others had noticed how pale she looked and that the slightest thing would bring her close to tears. No one was used to seeing Anna Kovalenko close to tears.

‘You’re suffering from nervous exhaustion,’ they told her. ‘You must rest.’

Exhaustion, yes, because they were all tired of standing at the edge. More arrests, the constant fear of informers and discovery, and security was not what it had been when Mikhailov was there to instruct them all.

‘You have to say goodbye to it.’ Andrei Zhelyabov had come into the room and was standing at her shoulder. His face and beard were flecked with clay, and it was caked on his shirt and trousers.

‘Goodbye?’ She did not understand.

‘Now don’t frown at me,’ he said with an amused smile. ‘I mean the jar. You were staring at it as if you were hoping to summon a genie.’

‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful,’ she said with feeling. ‘Then our problems would be over.’

‘Can you instruct a genie to kill someone, I wonder.’

‘We could magic him away.’

He pulled a chair from the table and sat beside her, placing his large mud-stained hand on top of hers: ‘Are you all right?’

‘I… yes…’ But at the warmth of his hand, his affectionate look — the easy informality of the village — Anna’s chin began to tremble and she had to fight the wild uncontrollable tide of emotion welling inside her. After a few seconds she was able to say in a strong voice: ‘Yes, fine. Really.’

Zhelyabov gave a heartfelt sigh: ‘You know, when this is done, I will escape. Go south. Rest. Spend the summer there. You should do the same.’

‘Will Sophia go with you?’

‘I hope so, yes. And you should take your English doctor.’

Anna bit her bottom lip hard in an effort to hold the tide again: ‘Can it happen? Vera Figner will call it selfish.’

‘Yes. And perhaps Sophia too. But two years of hiding, looking over our shoulders, plotting… there is something terrible about being a terrorist. It dominates your mind so much that it affects your freedom of judgement.’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘But it will happen. You’ll see.’

Zhelyabov carried the bottle through to the tunnel entrance. The charge was packed in place and a firing line run along the length of the gallery. It would be ready for the next Sunday parade. They sealed up the wall with a board of painted plaster and rolled the cheese barrels back into place. The lookout in the street gave a knock at the window — the coast was clear — and alone or in pairs they left the shop, Anna with Zhelyabov. On the Nevsky he took her hand and bent to kiss her cold cheek: ‘Goodbye, Anna. Be careful. Remember our promise. Summer in the south.’

She watched him walk away, collar up against the biting wind, hat pulled low, the son of the serf with his princess, prepared to break all society’s codes. Would Frederick feel the same?

The droshky took her to the Nikolaevsky Station and from there she walked on by a maze of small streets, stopping at corners and in doorways to be sure there was no one dogging her steps. The freezing air and the need for vigilance helped settle her nerves a little. The old lady had heard her footsteps on the stairs and was waiting on the landing to embrace her warmly.

‘Just as well you arrived when you did or I’d have taken him for myself,’ she whispered in Ukrainian, her body rocking with barely suppressed laughter. She led Anna into the room by the hand like a village bride.

Frederick was sitting at the table, playing with the wax at the base of a candle. He rose at once with a broad smile of relief and pleasure: ‘Thank God. Why has it been so long?’

She stood at the door in her old brown coat and hat, waiting for him to draw her into his arms.

‘I’ve missed you more than you can imagine,’ he said, taking the hat from her and stroking her hair.