Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

It had not occurred to Saskia that the parallel residence of the Nakhimovs would be other than the house on the Moika, but Pasha gave the taxi driver an address on Apothecary Island, where the houses were isolated, grand structures rather Swedish in style. They stopped at a gate whose white columns were grey shapes in the night. The courtesy lantern was unlit. That put Saskia in mind of the Swiss villa. The taxi rolled away and Saskia and Pasha stepped to the gate. In the low starlight, Pasha gasped at what Saskia had already seen: the gate was ajar. No St Petersburg house left its gate open overnight, even up here. Pasha swore and reached for his sword, but Saskia pressed on his hand.

‘No. They’ve gone already.’

‘Who?’

‘Whoever forced the gate. Come.’

The drive wound through an apple orchard. As he jogged, Pasha’s regimental paraphernalia jangled and his fur-edge cape flowed. Saskia matched his pace. They emerged from the orchard to see a long, three-storeyed house in the baroque style. Its shape was little more than a dark outline against the stars.

‘We should check on Pyotor,’ said Pasha, gesturing at a small building near a knoll on the seaward side of the grounds. ‘There should be a light burning in his cottage.’

Here, on the exposed hill, a wind from the Gulf of Finland cooled Saskia’s skin. She bowed her head against it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The observatory.’

‘If anything has happened to my father because of you, I won’t answer for the consequences.’

‘I would not expect you to.’

They walked hillward, east of the house, to the grove beyond. An owl moved silently across their approach. There was no moon but starlight and the familiarity of home allowed Pasha to stride into the trees. The path was a pale cataract. Saskia listened to Pasha’s breaths, which came hard. It took a fit man to move with haste in the uniform of a Hussar. The Pasha she had left behind, dying, on the floor of the Amber Room matched this Pasha for height and strength of spirit, but not muscle. This Pasha had thrived in a richer soil.

Soon, the observatory appeared at the end of the path. It was set on a concrete base twenty feet high. The dome was open to the sky. Starlight reflected from the dome but it was otherwise dark.

‘Wait here,’ Pasha whispered, drawing his sword.

‘I was about to say the same to you.’

Pasha turned to her. Even with the darkness adaption of his eyes, Saskia knew he could not see her expression. His, however, was perfectly readable as one of determination and intelligence. He was the model of the man her own, dying Pasha would have wanted to be.

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked. ‘Is there a password?’

‘There is no password.’

He frowned. His eyes searched the shape of her face. Then he seemed to give up on her, or remember the danger to his father. He charged on the observatory. There was something absurd about the paraphernalia of his uniform, and Saskia was doubly afraid for his life. She hurried after him.

The interior of the observatory was too dark even for Saskia. She slid her glasses from her collar and put them on. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth.

‘Near your left hand,’ she said, sadly. ‘There are matches and a lamp.’

Saskia sighed and removed the glasses. She turned to face the starfield in the doorway and considered the silence of space. Behind her, she heard Pasha strike a match. He gasped. The match went out. She heard the squeak of a lantern, another match striking, and then the light held. She watched her shadow yaw around the doorway.

A moment later, Pasha said, ‘You can turn around now.’

She did. She saw by the lantern light what her glasses had shown her. The Count was dead. He lay sideways, still tied to his chair. Much of his blood lay about him in an oily melt. The barrel of the brass telescope, which occupied the greater part of the observatory’s volume, had been dented and split open. Elsewhere, almanacs had been ripped from the shelves and scattered. The worktable had been upset and their tools spilled. Leather cases holding precision parts—screws, levers, tubing—were ripped and gutted. On one shelf, Saskia saw the glow of the radium pocket watch that the Countess had once owned. She took it.

Pasha crouched by his father and held the lantern near his face. As he sobbed, he removed the bearskin helmet and placed it on an unrolled chart.

‘What happened here?’ he said, without turning. ‘You claimed you’d been at the observatory this evening.’

Saskia worked through the possibilities. The Count looked as though he had died some hours before. It was likely that Kamo had tortured him while Soso looked on. The information they desired was, in all probability, the location of the monies from the Tiflis heist. But that made little sense if Saskia Beta had been present. Surely, she, too, had known its location.

‘I honestly don’t know.’

Pasha looked at her. His eyes streamed tears. But even as his body expressed its grief, Saskia could feel the mind coming to an assessment. This Pasha was more than worlds different from the Pasha who had died in her company.

‘What do you think , Ms Tucholsky?’ he said. His mouth was downturned and trembling.

‘This will not be easy to explain.’

The Hussar stared at her for a moment longer. His physiology showed signs that he was preparing to attack her. Instead, he looked down at the star maps, and then his forehead dropped to the shoulder of the dead Count and he wept.

Saskia watched him for a minute. In that time, she considered all those dead, all those in fear, and all those grey lives extended into a cold, waking hell beneath the amber eyes of Soso.

‘I can show you who killed him,’ she said, quietly, ‘and who broke into the Great Palace tonight.’

Pasha pressed his sleeve against his eyes.

‘Why would I believe you?’

‘You don’t need to believe me.’

Saskia blinked. She had made a mistake in her reasoning. Soso and Kamo had not tortured the Count to discover the whereabouts of the money. She already knew that because Saskia Beta knew. The Count had been killed for the secret of his contacts: the remaining participants in the game of double-cross he had been playing since his sojourn in Switzerland. To Soso, that would be equally valuable.

‘Pasha,’ she said, ‘you once told me that a man must voice his desires if he is to come to hold the object of them.’

‘If I did, I don’t remember. Speak plainly.’

‘What is your chief desire at this moment?’

‘To bury my father.’

‘And justice?’ she asked.

‘Yes, the true kind,’ he said. ‘The impersonal; the fair. I will not have revenge, if that’s what you want me to say.’

He truly is noble , she thought. Title or no title.

‘The murderers fly to Finland,’ she said, investing her voice with a passion it rarely contained. ‘Tonight. We can stop them.’

‘What revenge could you have?’ he said. ‘Why do this? Did you love my father? We all thought you laughed at him.’

‘Because …’ she began. There was no true end to that sentence. ‘Because I can.’

‘Enough,’ he said, standing. His sword remained against the wall. He did not reach for it, but his hands were loose by his sides. ‘You will come with me, and answer for your whereabouts tonight.’

Saskia stepped backwards into the night.

‘Good bye, Pasha.’

‘No,’ he said, leaping for the door.

Saskia watched from the wood while Pasha raged through the long grass around the observatory, his night vision stained by the lantern, swinging his sword and calling her name. He saddened her. He looked like the boy he was, perhaps dressed as a Hussar for a fancy dress ball, playing at soldier.