Stephen Miller - A Game of Soldiers

Nodding that big head.

‘We are not alone, you’re not alone, Nestor. Indeed, you are surrounded by secret friends and believers. And we offer you the world. We offer you the chance to be the saviour of your nation. We do this because honour prevents us from doing otherwise. I am here, and I devote myself to you, brother, and to our cause. And as a brother, I pledge my life to you.’ He let himself laugh a little. ‘But, I don’t have to tell you, you know. You’re a soldier. One small life, one life is nothing, not really.’

‘No,’ Evdaev said. Trying to make his voice courageous. It only came out as a burbling sound of drunken assent. Andrianov reached into his jacket, pushed a new envelope across the table. Nestor reached out quickly to save it from the spilled wine.

‘There will be more expenses. Men will have to be compensated. We will have to entertain, persuade, blackmail. There will be blood. It will not be pretty…’

‘I know,’ Evdaev said, serious now. Sobering up.

‘It’s not treason, Nestor.’

And now the big face looked up at him. Stricken. A scared stupid boy waiting for the lash.

‘No…Is it treason to see? Is it treason to realize that we’re surrounded by enemies! We’ve been humiliated by the Japanese. Who’s next, the Turks? Meanwhile our brothers in Serbia are fighting and dying to stave off conquest by Hapsburg pigs and the Jews of Vienna! We watch and dither and sit on our hands. No one is doing anything about it except us. We are the true patriots!’

‘Does Nicholas ever listen to God?’ Evdaev suddenly blurted.

‘He listens to her.’

‘Yes…’

‘And she listens to that fucking monkey Rasputin, with his chants and his séances. We need to get rid of him, all of them…It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘But the boy…’

‘Yes, yes. It’s terrible. It’s unsavoury, I admit, but the boy will be dead before he reaches the age of twenty whatever we do.’

‘Yes, I know, Sergei…they must all go, they must die, I know that, but…’

‘Yes, all of them. But our hands are clean. We’re sitting on a powder keg primed and ready to blow. When this little revolution comes, well…what they do is not our fault. They might spill some blood, but they won’t last. They’re too fragmented. One cell believes this, another believes that. But by doing this, we will clean out the stables and leave them empty and waiting for us, Nestor…Then when you become Tsar, we will hold Russia for all time. But we need a little war, a little revolution. First create a crisis, Nestor. Then control it.

‘To the death of the Romanov dynasty,’ he said and Evdaev smiled more broadly. They drank. He looked around the room. Dark, draped with carpets and tapestries found in the most distant corners of the East, a Japanese flag and crossed axes Evdaev had brought back from Port Arthur, all of it ringed with stuffed heads of boars, panthers, stags, pheasants and fish – prize specimens that Evdaev or one of his ancestors had taken at the hunt. A pair of crossed spears above the fireplace, a sooty canvas of a sixteenth-century noble in full boyar costume posed in front of a sulphurous horizon of burning trees and defeated barbarians.

Andrianov had a happy moment. How far would these sanctimonious idiots go? He shook his head, gave a worried sigh.

‘What?’ Evdaev looked up, suddenly nervous all over again.

‘Well, I’ve been wondering who is paying for the vertika ’s funeral. Someone should. We can’t just let her be thrown into a pit. In a way, she’s part of the Plan after all…She’s our sister.’

‘Ah…yes, I suppose so.’ Evdaev looked suddenly sad. Almost as if someone had taken away his puppy.

‘She’s our first real casualty. I suppose that in a way she’s fallen in the service of our battle, yes?’

‘Oh, yes. Very true, very true, very true, she’s a heroine.’

‘I suppose the bindery might cover the costs, that would be appropriate.’

‘Yes, you’re right, Sergei. I’ll telephone. The company will take care of it. I’ll personally see to it.’ Suddenly Evdaev had gone all pious, a tragic note had crept into his voice like a bad actor.

‘Yes, by all means. Let’s be seen to do the decent thing,’ Andrianov said, marvelling at the gullibility of ‘patriotic’ men.

Barely awake, Pyotr Ryzhkov was the last one to climb out of the carriage that had drawn to a halt on the shady side of the Nevsky Prospekt. It was his team and he had the training, the seniority, the responsibility…and the list. Hokhodiev and Dudenko waited while he fished it out of his pocket, and then stepped back to look at the numbers on the building. Behind him a troop of cavalry passed noisily down the wide boulevard. It was only the beginning of what would probably be an excruciatingly long day – a series of extravagant military ceremonies designed to ennoble the Tsar’s dedication of a new dock on the Admiralty Quay, a break for tea, followed by a special performance at the opera – all of it more of the tercentenary celebrations.

‘This is it, right here,’ Ryzhkov told them. It was a storefront with ornate bars that protected the glass windows: Nevka Fine Sterling. There was a pair of golden double-eagle warrants painted on the glass to show that the shop served the households of the Tsar and Dowager Empress. He went over to the door and tried it. Locked. He tapped with one knuckle on the glass as he looked through the window.

Ryzhkov thought he saw a light inside. He tapped again, harder; held the list up to the window. The silversmith was a little man, maybe in his sixties, perhaps older. White wisps of hair that had come astray and a black apron protecting his white shirt.

‘We’ve closed for the celebrations, excellency.’ The old Jew was bowing and backing through the showroom as Ryzhkov pushed his way into the shop. An equally old woman peeked out from the back. The daughter came down the stairs. She was dressed in black and held a pair of binoculars in her hand.

‘You have to leave, Father,’ Ryzhkov said, smiling. ‘Sorry.’

‘But we’re closed, and…’

‘Hey!’ Hokhodiev said sharply from over in the corner where he was inspecting a display of silver samovars. The family had taken all of their merchandise out of the window for the day. There was an extra rack of bars that closed over the window from the inside of the shop. They probably had a safe in the back somewhere, Ryzhkov thought.

‘We’ve got you on our list. You have to clear out, eh?’ Ryzhkov held up the list so the old man could see it. As if the presence of the paper explained why a Jewish silversmith might be suspected of wanting to murder the Tsar.

‘We’re closed,’ the girl on the stairs said.

Dudenko walked over to the bottom of the stairs. ‘You have to close and lock the upstairs windows, too. Didn’t they tell you that?’ The mother came out from the back and scurried over to put herself between Dudenko and her daughter. ‘I’ll do it,’ the girl said to her mother.

‘Go up with them,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to the old man. ‘He’s from Kiev.’

‘We were going to watch from upstairs, where will we go?’

‘Go home, or watch down on the corner, what about that?’ Ryzhkov said, trying to help a little. There were a lot of things about his job that he didn’t like, things he couldn’t escape, things that were just part of the atmosphere.

‘Yes…’ the old man said, staring at Ryzhkov’s chest, his hands clutching his apron. Upstairs Ryzhkov could hear Dudenko and the women shutting up the windows.

‘How did a family of Jews wind up with a shopfront on the Nevsky?’ he finally said, to break the silence while they waited.