Tom Bradby - The White Russian

“How could you know what threats they would make?” Ruzsky answered. “Or how far Vasilyev would go?”

Ruzsky could not take his eyes from his brother. He felt not anger, but an overpowering compassion. What he saw in Dmitri’s eyes now was a more confused and tortured version of what he had seen in Maria’s the previous night; it was a swirling mixture of love, loss, and regret. But it was guilt, above all, that swam to the surface. He had put his love of Maria and his desire to become the man he thought she wanted him to be above everything. Dmitri had watched his father walking into a trap and done nothing to prevent it closing around him, and it was tearing him apart.

Ruzsky thought of his brother’s fear on the evening of Ilusha’s death as they awaited the summons to their father’s study. He thought of the way they had held each other for comfort and strength. “Dmitri,” he said quietly, “let us go home.”

“I know how they must have threatened him,” Dmitri answered. “I know what happened at that meeting. Father wanted to countermand the order and cancel the movement of the gold and I know how Vasilyev threatened him. You saw the way Father looked at Michael. You know what was in his mind every time he even glanced in his direction.”

“Michael is not Ilya.”

“But which one of us can look at him without-”

“That’s not his fault.”

“It’s no one’s fault, Sandro! It never was.” Dmitri stared at the ice by his feet. “But Father would have moved every mountain in Russia before he’d have let anyone hurt a hair on the boy’s head. He wasn’t going to lose him twice.” His voice quivered with emotion. “I didn’t know what they would do. How could I have guessed?”

Ruzsky did not answer.

“Do you understand why, Sandro?”

“Do I understand?”

“Do you understand why?” Dmitri was pleading with him. “She makes me feel as if I have come home at last. But the past hangs heavily upon her, and, in that one way, I can soothe her pain.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not a coward.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” Ruzsky said sympathetically.

“She needs me. In this, at least, she needs me.”

“Did she ask you to kill them?”

“Once I knew what had happened, she did not need to.”

“She told you what happened to her father?”

“What I am doing is only just, Sandro.”

“She has told you each name? She has informed you on each occasion where they can be found?”

“She is entitled to justice. She will not find it in any other way.”

“The couple on the ice were expecting you. The American and the girl, Ella. You had met them before?”

“Maria hated the American almost as much as Borodin. She was sure the pair planned the murder of her father together. She convinced him the girl Ella was an informer for the city police and the army and that their plan here was in danger of being discovered. He led the girl out onto the ice. He was expecting her to be dispatched by an assassin on the far side, in the shadows of the fortress-that’s what he’d been told. Maria begged me not to harm the girl, but I could hardly have left a living witness.”

“But you left your footsteps. Those last three paces onto the embankment were designed to taunt me.”

Dmitri stared at him. “Not a taunt, Sandro. I knew you would find me.”

“That’s why you didn’t go to the Strelka,” Ruzsky said, almost to himself. “You left the ice to go home.” He looked at his brother. “If he was here, Father would beg you to stop.”

“But he’s not. He’s dead and that house is an empty shell, full of ghosts at every turn. I’ve had enough of ghosts. If I survive, we will leave Russia, begin again…”

“He would still beg you-”

“He would do no such thing. I was never you, Sandro. I was never Ilusha. I was the son he didn’t understand, I was the one for whom he could never conceal his disdain.”

“Dmitri-”

“Though you will deny it, it is true. But he can’t reach me now. I have found a purpose that I have long searched for.”

“Then it is I who must beg you,” Ruzsky said. “And I plead with you on my knees.”

Dmitri looked at him, his anger melting into sorrow and regret. “I’m sorry, Sandro. This is all I have to give her.”

“I cannot lose you.” Ruzsky’s voice quivered with emotion. “Don’t you see that?” He took a pace toward his brother.

“I understand.” Dmitri shook his head, as if to rid himself of his dilemma. “I understand, Sandro, but I must go.”

“Dmitri, I beg you…”

“Don’t try to stop me.”

“In God’s name…” Ruzsky’s cry was taken by the wind.

“Stay there, Sandro!” He turned away and began to run. For several moments Ruzsky watched him go, his tall figure receding into the darkness.

“Dmitri!”

Ruzsky lunged forward, lost his footing, and crashed straight through the ice into the darkness below. The cold was savage, expelling the air from his lungs.

He bobbed up against a solid wall. He gasped, but sucked in only water and began to choke.

Ruzsky kicked down, searching for some sign of light, blood roaring in his ears.

For a moment, these strange and brutal surroundings were familiar. He recognized this place. He remembered once before welcoming its oblivion.

But in his mind’s eye, Ruzsky could see his brother walking across the ice to his fate. He could not let him die alone. He began to kick, his lungs stretched, the cold numbing every fiber of his being.

He saw ripples on the surface of the water.

Lungs exploding, he pushed upward until he burst through the hole.

A hand grasped for his.

A man stooped over him and it took Ruzsky a few moments to recognize who it was. “Pavel?” he asked.

“Be quiet,” the voice hissed. “Save your energy.”

W hen Ruzsky opened his eyes again, Pavel was bending over him, and he could see Katya and Peter looking anxiously over his shoulder. He was in dry clothes, but he was chilled to the marrow. He was lying on the floor of the drawing room in Millionnaya Street, next to a roaring fire, the side lamps lit.

Ruzsky heard Katya whisper something to Peter and then they withdrew, leaving him alone with his deputy. Pavel moved back to the long white sofa.

Ruzsky looked up at the ornate cornices of the ceiling and the low chandelier. His gaze strayed across to the oil of the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the curved saber that hung alongside it. He grasped for the familiar in a world that was growing ever more remote.

“You’ve been following me,” he whispered quietly. “You’ve been watching me from the start.”

Ruzsky stared at the ceiling. He did not want to look at Pavel; he didn’t want to see the guilt and regret he would find there. He had experienced too much of both. “They must have threatened Tonya, or your boy.”

They were silent. Ruzsky listened to the crackle of the fire.

“They didn’t have to,” Pavel said. “It’s been clear how the land lies for a long time. Only you refused to see it.”

Ruzsky closed his eyes again. Pavel’s face merged with Dmitri’s in his mind. He thought of his brother’s solitary progress across the ice, and of the guilt that haunted his every waking moment.

He thought of his father’s body sprawled across the floor of the study.

They could have anyone. They could destroy everything. “I understand, Pavel.”

He shook his head. “No, you would never understand.”

There was a long silence.

“You work for Vasilyev alone? Not Borodin and his group?” Ruzsky asked.

“We all work for Vasilyev.”

“In Yalta, they tried to kill us both.”