David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

Shatilov’s voice was crisp. ‘It is not for you to inquire why you have been taken into temporary custody by the local authorities here, Powerscourt or whatever you say your name is.’

Powerscourt said nothing. Two of Shatilov’s thugs were lounging on the chairs in the middle of the room. One of them was fiddling with a very long piece of rope.

‘My request is quite simple,’ Shatilov said, managing to imbue even those innocent-sounding words with a charge of venom. ‘All you have to do is to tell me the nature of your conversation with the Tsar.’

Powerscourt paused for a moment. ‘Don’t translate this bit,’ he said to Mikhail, speaking very fast, ‘I want to make him lose his temper. My conversation with the Tsar was confidential,’ he went on more slowly. ‘It is not my business to tell you of his business any more than it would be for me to tell you of any discussions I might have with my King in London. What right do you think you have to make such a request?’

Shatilov was beginning to warm up nicely, Powerscourt thought. His fingers began strumming on the table.

‘Those of us in charge of the security of the imperial family are entitled to know all of his conversations! All of them. For his own safety! Now will you please tell me the nature of your conversation!’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly what would happen if it became known that the Tsar was planning to send his children abroad. It would say, as surely as if he had signed a proclamation, that he was not in control of events, that he had lost faith in the ability of his regime to protect his children. The Emperor himself would be announcing that he has no clothes. The myths and facade of autocracy, built up over nearly three hundred years of Romanov rule, would vanish like mist on a summer morning. Maybe the monarchy would fall and the Tsar would have to follow his family to England to stick family photographs into English albums and watch an English sea lapping at an English coast. The alternative, of course, might be worse, the Tsar’s children blown into minute fragments by a terrorist bomb, or murdered in their beds. It was, they had said to him in London before he left, a matter of vital national importance. Well, Powerscourt thought, looking absently at the Major’s scar, it certainly was for Tsar Nicholas the Second. And for King Edward the Seventh? The presence of the Tsar’s family in England would surely lead to an alliance with Great Britain. Confronted by the vast forces of France, Russia and the British, surely even the Kaiser would not risk a war, particularly when those other English-speakers, the Americans, might join the battle on the side of the Allies. A matter of vital national importance in London as it was in St Petersburg.

‘I would like you to tell me about a different conversation, Major Shatilov, a conversation you had, possibly in this very room, with a predecessor of mine, a man called Martin who came to St Petersburg, who saw the Tsar on a Wednesday evening, and who was found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt later that night or very early the next morning. Did you come across Mr Martin, Major? Did he perhaps sit in this very room with you and your thugs?’

There was a quick muttering from the pair in the chairs. ‘I know little or nothing of this man Martin,’ said Shatilov. ‘I repeat, before my patience runs out, tell me what happened with the Tsar!’ He looked meaningfully at the whips in the corner.

Now it was Mikhail Shaporov’s turn to speak very fast. ‘We weren’t meant to hear it, but one of the chair people said, “Mind the same thing doesn’t happen to you,”’ and then he went on to translate the rest of it.

Powerscourt wondered how much longer Johnny Fitzgerald and the man from the Black Watch were going to be. He had no doubt that they had begun working on a rescue mission as soon as he and Mikhail had been taken away. He too looked with some suspicion at the whips in the corner. Whatever happened he had no intention of betraying the Tsar. He wondered how painful it might be.

‘Did you kill Martin? Here in this room?’ He spoke with as much hostility as he could muster.

‘Shut up about Martin!’ shouted Shatilov, half rising now out of his chair. ‘I want to know about the Tsar!’

‘Did you kill Martin?’ If Powerscourt had wanted to make the Russian Major angry he had certainly succeeded.

‘Shut up about Martin! For the last time, I want to know about your conversation with the Tsar!’

Powerscourt was certain the man was lying about Martin.

‘Did you kill Martin?’ Powerscourt shouted for the third time. Mikhail Shaporov raised his voice to the same pitch.

‘That’s it! That’s it! I’ve had it. Vladimir! Boris! Tie them up!’ Shatilov had turned bright red.

‘The full treatment, boss?’ one of the soldiers asked.

‘Not yet, tie them up first,’ said Shatilov, going over to the corner and picking up a whip.

‘Sorry about this, Mikhail,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll be all right in the end,’ said the young man cheerfully.

By now the two men were tied securely to their chairs. Powerscourt found he could just about move his arms. If there was a deus out there somewhere, he said to himself, he wished he would hurry up and get out of his machina. Shatilov was pacing up and down behind the chairs, brandishing the whip in his left hand. Powerscourt felt there appeared to be a poverty of imagination in Russian torture methods, whips, whips and more whips.

‘Do you see this, Lord Powerscourt?’ Shatilov was showing him the leather thong. ‘In a moment, this is going to tear into the bare flesh of your back. After a while there won’t be any flesh left. All you have to do is to tell me the nature of your conversation with the Tsar and nothing will happen to you.’

‘Is this what you did to Martin? Whip him till he died?’

‘Cut his coat off!’ Shatilov was shouting to his assistants. Powerscourt felt his jacket being ripped away from his back.

‘You can keep your shirt on to start with, you bastard,’ yelled Shatilov, and the whip whistled through the air to bite deeply into Powerscourt’s back.

‘Tell me about your conversation with the Tsar,’ Shatilov shouted. ‘You’ve got ten seconds before I whip you again. After that your shirt comes off. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six -’

On the count of six there was a tremendous crash as Johnny Fitzgerald and the sergeant from the Black Watch rushed into the room, pistols in their right hands. They made straight for the two soldiers who had left their guns by the chairs in the centre of the room. But it was Ricky Crabbe who was the real revelation in the rescue party. Powerscourt was to say later that he had seen David as in David and Goliath reborn in a dingy house on the outskirts of the Tsar’s Village. He had bestowed about his person a number of large stones. The first of these, less than a second after Johnny had entered the room, he despatched with remarkable accuracy at the head of Major Shatilov. It took him right in the centre of his face and he collapsed to the ground, blood pouring from his face, hands searching amidst the blood for what might remain of his nose.

‘Fantastic shot, Ricky!’ said Powerscourt as Johnny Fitzgerald released them from their ropes. ‘I am so glad to see you all! Now, let’s tie them up. I want to have a word or two with the Major here when he’s strapped to the chair.’

The Black Watch sergeant was expert at binding the prisoners in ways they would not be able to escape from. Shatilov was spitting blood down his uniform as he was locked in position. Powerscourt took a pistol from Shatilov’s pocket and pulled up a couple of chairs next to him.

‘Can you make this sound as bloodthirsty as you can, Mikhail? He’s got to believe that I mean it when I say I’m going to kill him.’