David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘Who knows?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Sergeant,’ he said to the man from the Black Watch, ‘can you make sure these people are properly tied up? So they won’t escape for days? And gag them so they can’t make a noise,’ he added, thinking incongruously of the victims of Derzhenov’s basement. ‘When you’ve done that, let’s go home.’

‘Francis.’ Johnny Fitzgerald had been inspecting the cupboards in and around Shatilov’s quarters and had collected a burglar’s haul of hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, jemmies and other tools. It looked as though he was expecting trouble.

‘There’s something you should know.’

‘What’s that, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt, his mind still focused on the late Martin.

‘We don’t have a coach any more,’ said Johnny.

‘We don’t have a coach any more?’ replied Powerscourt.

‘We don’t have a coach any more,’ Johnny Fitzgerald repeated. ‘Two of those bastard soldiers stole the horses. And we don’t know where they took them.’

Powerscourt started to laugh. ‘Sorry, I know it’s serious, but I was just thinking of the Ambassador, not the most popular man in the Embassy, having to tell Mrs Ambassador that the coach which used to take her round fashionable Petersburg has disappeared. Is the actual carriage worth keeping?’

‘We’ve hidden it in an outhouse for now,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘But the problem is this. These people we’ve just tied up, the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division, whatever they’re called, guard all the roads and all the railways round St Petersburg. If our friend Shatilov is found and released before we get back to the Embassy, we’ll be joining your man Martin as food for the fishes.’

‘What’s the fastest way to get back? Apart from the horses we don’t have?’ Powerscourt was beginning to grapple with this new problem.

It was Ricky Crabbe who provided a possible solution. ‘There’s a goods train coming through at eleven o’clock, my lord, going to St Petersburg. God knows where it ends up. The last passenger train is half an hour after that.’

‘I don’t like goods trains,’ said Powerscourt, who had been locked up in a goods carriage in India for an entire afternoon at the hottest time of year with a herd of incontinent cows for company, ‘but I’m happy to try again if people feel that would be better.’

‘Once you’re in one of those damned carriages,’ said Johnny, ‘you’re a sitting duck. If they lock the humans in like they lock the animals in, you can’t even jump off the bloody train.’

Shortly afterwards a small but determined group were lurking in the shadows at the end of the platform of Tsarskoe Selo station. Johnny Fitzgerald had been making small experiments with his new tools. He disappeared at one stage into a siding full of unwanted carriages. Various grunting and swearing noises announced that he was still of the party. Ricky Crabbe had appropriated a couple of stout bags which he was filling very methodically with large stones. Powerscourt was trying to learn and amplify a basic message in Russian: I am from the British Embassy, we all have diplomatic immunity. Mikhail was assuring him that if he set his mind to it he could be fluent in Russian in six months. The coach driver, saddened by the loss of his vehicle and possibly his livelihood, had taken delivery of a large number of roubles from Powerscourt and set off in search of the missing horses. He said he would be able to buy them back if only he could find the thieves. The sergeant from the Black Watch was looking out at the distant road, waiting to see if the enemy would appear.

The train was late. Local trains in Russia, Mikhail informed Powerscourt, were often late. Powerscourt practised saying I am from the British Embassy, we all have diplomatic immunity to Johnny Fitzgerald but it failed to have any impact.

‘You could be saying put all your money on Shatilov in the two thirty at Doncaster for all I know, Francis,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and I think you should sound a little more guttural, if you know what I mean. But carry on practising. It may turn out useful sooner than we think, if only the bloody Russians would understand what you’re saying to them.’

Maybe it was the mention of Shatilov that brought their problems. To their left they could hear, approaching at a good speed, their train, gusts of smoke almost matching the colour of the surrounding snow. To their right the night air was rent with whistles and the sounds of shouting men on the other side of the platform, hurrying to reach the station before the train could leave. Somehow or other Shatilov’s men must have been alerted to the flight of the English party. Maybe, Powerscourt shuddered as he thought of it, he was leading this revenge mission in person, whip conveniently stuffed into a coat pocket. Powerscourt did not rate his chances very high if he met Shatilov again. The train was drawing to a halt at the little station. There were half a dozen carriages with a guard’s van at the rear. There were more passengers than you might have expected. The sergeant was swearing viciously under his breath.

‘Do we take the train or not, Francis?’ asked Johnny.

‘We go,’ said Powerscourt, ‘last carriage before the guard’s van. If we stay here we’re marooned, miles from anywhere.’

The whistles were very close now. The train driver would have to be deaf not to hear them. The five men bent double so their heads would not protrude above the height of the carriages as they raced into the train. They could hear feet running up the platform. Powerscourt hung briefly out of the window in time to see a party of twelve men marching into the front carriage behind the driver. The last man aboard, his face wreathed in a series of bloodstained bandages, with a pistol in his left hand, was Major Shatilov, with a face, Powerscourt reported to his friends, like thunder.

‘Never mind, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, fiddling with some giant spanner in his stolen bag, ‘you can say to them as they come through the connecting door that you’re from the British Embassy and we all have diplomatic immunity. That should do the trick.’

Everybody laughed. Their compartment had a dozen wooden benches with a party of four middle-aged Russian women at the front. Mikhail placed himself on sentry duty at the connecting door where he would be able to see any soldiers coming on their way down the train. The sergeant kept him company, fingering one of the Russian guard’s pistols in his pocket as he stared up the carriage. ‘Can you get on to the tops of these coaches, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Did you have time to see as the train came in? And could you jump from one to another?’

‘The answer to both of these questions is Yes,’ said Johnny, returning the spanner to his bag, ‘particularly if you come from the British Embassy and have diplomatic immunity.’ Ricky Crabbe was fingering the stones in his David’s pouch, selecting the ones he liked best and putting them in his coat pocket. Powerscourt checked that he had the gun and the bullets from the Shatilov villa. Not for the first time that evening he regretted that they had not been able to bring any weapons with them but Powerscourt was certain that anybody trying to enter the Alexander Palace with a gun would have been in Siberia inside a fortnight if not trussed up and gagged in one of Derzhenov’s basement cells.

‘This is what I think we should do,’ Powerscourt said, looking anxiously at the four middle-aged women. ‘We can’t stay here in this carriage with the ladies. I don’t want to retreat into the guard’s van. Johnny, I think you and Mikhail and the sergeant should get on the roof now and move forward as far as you can, all the way into the first carriage. That way you’ll be behind these soldier people. If things get really rough, you could attack them from behind. Ricky and I are going to be Leonidas and the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae here for a while but I don’t think we’ll hold them very long. Then, unlike Leonidas, we’re going to bolt too. Mikhail,’ Powerscourt recalled the young man from his sentry duty, ‘can you get rid of these ladies here?’ As he pointed to them Mikhail paused briefly, then a look of great seriousness appeared to descend on his young features. He began speaking loudly to the women. After a while he pointed vigorously up towards the front of the train. One of the women appeared to ask a question. Mikhail shouted back and pointed again. Looking with horror at the three Englishmen, the four Russian ladies grabbed their belongings and shot out of the carriage.