Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

Simon Ter-Petrossian had been given the nickname “Kamo” as a child. It recorded his failure to correctly modify the Russian relative pronoun “to whom”. Something else had happened to Kamo as a child—nobody knew, or told—and it had made him take pride in the details of his murders. The adult Kamo sailed by a star of concentrated, malignant insanity.

She remembered the dog: Shout. Shout.

Many a revolutionary would consider himself a master of disguise. Kamo, however, was truly faceless, and allowed each role to possess him. Perhaps it was thanks to his choice of costume, with its echo of chivalry, that Saskia had been treated only to the appearance of the knife rather than its immediate use.

‘If you kill me,’ she said, quietly, ‘you’ll never find the money.’

‘How could I ever kill you, my Penelope Vailevna?’

He was a paradox. While he had cut out the heart of a man for little more than a rumour of treachery, he had, that same morning, organised the rescue of a girl who had fallen into a well. He had reached the last inches for the girl with the same fervour that he had dug into the chest of the informer.

‘They tried to kill me in Switzerland,’ she said.

Kamo pushed her against the rail. To an onlooker inside the carriage, this would have seemed the reckless act of a lover. His smile would embellish the effect. But, close up, the tobacco-stained teeth betrayed the actor inside the costume. His insanity burned with a familiar heat.

‘Let me tell you something, Lynx. When the Party found out that you had flown to Switzerland, many wanted you eliminated. I proposed that you should be contacted and merely interrogated. That cost me.’

Saskia had asked him about his childhood only once. That had been as they lay in a deserted coppice somewhere near Gori. It was two days after he had rescued her from the Cossacks of the Kuban Host. She thought this had brought about a closeness between them and the right to ask an intimate question. She had been wrong.

‘How kind of you.’

‘Listen, Vailevna. Debts must be repaid; information must be disseminated; actions must be underwritten.’

‘Call it piracy if it’s piracy.’

‘I can tell you truthfully that, if all the funds can be recovered immediately, and every rouble accounted for, there will be no special circumstances surrounding your liquidation.’ Kamo ended this statement with a nod.

‘What if there is no money left? What if I’ve gambled it away?’

‘No, Penska,’ he said. His wounded eye tumbled. ‘You have no money to speak of. You’ve hidden the funds in St Petersburg. Why else would you be cheating the casino last night?’

‘So you saw that.’

‘I followed you from Switzerland. I’ve seen everything.’

Saskia looked at the knife. She reached down and cupped his hand with her own. At the same time, she breathed— shhhh —in his ear, just as she had breathed that night in the coppice wood, when the rage within him threatened to erupt at the temerity of her question: Were you like this as a child?

Kamo, nicknamed for a relative pronoun, let his forehead fall against hers. She felt the skin relax and the wounded eye close.

‘Why should we do this at all?’ he asked. His breath smelled.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘We’ll have some breakfast.’

The ladies and gentlemen in the restaurant carriage interrupted their own conversations to look at the beautiful young woman and her officer, unmistakably Russian. Saskia knew that the opulence of Russian court life was open rumour in Europe. To travel its empire was to travel backwards in time. The ladies might admire Saskia’s dress, her upright posture and the fascinator she wore in lieu of a hat. The gentlemen would invent sea braveries for the naval officer. How proper was his insistence that he, not the waiter, pull out the chair for his wife. How economical his movement. The sudden ugliness of his wounded eye would only deepen the impression of heroism. There had been a war, had there not? With the Japans. Yes, this man had had a good war. Saskia felt their silent commentary as though it had been spoken.

Kamo looked self-conscious as he assumed his chair opposite Saskia. Under cover of the mechanical noise of the carriage, and the resumed conversations, he said, ‘So, tell me why you jumped from the train all those months ago. What did it have to do with the gentleman from the government?’

No preamble, then. Saskia attended to those elements of physiology that would betray her lies, and began with, ‘He would have posted men at the station.’ She divided a croissant with a knife. ‘They would have arrested me. I needed to jump prior to the train’s arrival. Surely you can see that.’

She remembered clinging to the side of the train as it approached the tunnel. The sting of the sooty air. The cold. And then the shared look of surprise with her pursuer, leaning from the train with a gun.

‘Odd that you should jump only minutes after I had.’

‘Not so odd.’

‘Tell me about this man. His name?’

Saskia considered lying about this, but there was no true benefit beyond the muddying of Kamo’s thoughts. The cost of the lie was difficult to calculate.

‘He introduced himself as Draganov,’ she said.

Kamo nodded. It struck her as confirmatory. Kamo knew Draganov’s name, then. How?

‘When you and I were three hours from St Petersburg,’ she said, ‘I returned to my compartment. Remember?’

‘You complained of a headache,’ Kamo said. His words were neutral and his countenance steady. He might have been reading the menu.

‘I was intercepted by the tall gentleman whom you recognised as an officer of the Special Section. Will you tell me how you recognised him?’

Kamo put his hands on the table and laced the fingers at the tips. ‘No, I cannot.’

‘He seemed friendly,’ Saskia continued. She made an effort to picture the scene. It made the lie easier. ‘He introduced himself as Draganov. He told me he had been waiting for a chance to get me alone. I tried to interpret this as a proposition and dismiss him, but he was too competent an agent to fall for that.’

‘Never mind his competence,’ said Kamo. ‘I have my own opinion of that. What did he say to you?’

Saskia passed a slice of croissant into her mouth. Kamo had been piqued by her description. That was good. He was falling for the story. She chewed longer than necessary, and said, ‘While you were entertaining those ladies in the lounge with stories of valour, Draganov attempted to recruit me as a double agent.’

‘His leverage?’ said Kamo. His blink rate had increased. That inscrutable property that nobody, not even his best friend, had fully divined—Kamo’s intellect—was dancing about her story.

‘As I recall,’ Saskia continued, in a casual tone, ‘he had no leverage. That is, he did not know the significance of what we were escorting, or that we were escorting anything. It was a routine action for a man who was used to turning agents. He offered me money and protection; a certificate of conduct should I need it; and enough money to retire on the Crimean.’

Kamo stroked his whiskers. His wounded eye was weeping but the other was bright.

‘I wonder at that, my dear. I do wonder. These men of the Special Section rarely risk announcing themselves.’

‘This one did.’

‘He wished to entrap you?’

‘No.’

‘But he must have noticed the absence of your hand. That is a particularly distinguishing feature. And let us also note that he told you his name.’

‘No. He told me a name, Ter-Petrossian.’

His expression frosted. ‘Say that once more and I’ll cut a second cunt in your neck.’