Kate Furnivall - The Jewel of St Petersburg

Abruptly Valentina turned and walked out.

JENS LED HER DOWN TO A BASEMENT. HER FEET FELT FOR each step in the dark. It had started to rain and the air here stank of factory waste that burned the eyes, but Valentina focused on the blackened house in front of her and let herself hope that Arkin could be here. Beside her Jens stood silently. Ever since they’d left Varenka’s old place, he had said little except, “I know someone else who might help.” She had tucked an arm through his and slid the flat of her hand under his coat so that she could gently rub his chest as they walked. He seemed to have withdrawn.

The door to the basement swung open. It was not what she had been expecting. One large room was crowded with beds and bodies and the wail of a hungry child, while a short squat dog with fighting scars sniffed her leg as though considering whether to taste it. Jens put an arm around her, keeping her close, kicked the dog away, and approached a thin woman with a golden-haired baby at her shoulder.

“I came here before,” he said to her. “Remember?”

“Of course I remember you.” She smiled and let her eyes linger on him with interest. But it was the baby that Valentina could not take her eyes off. She wanted to touch the gossamer curls on its head, to feel their softness. Exactly like Katya’s.

“Is Larisa Sergeyeva here?” Jens asked, his gaze probing the shadows of the room.

The woman laughed and rolled her eyes at him. “Gone off, that one has.”

“Gone where?”

“How should I know? A man came in very early in the morning a few days ago and they spent an hour with heads tight together, talking and arguing. But all smiles in the end. She just picked up her bag, tied the babe on her back, and we haven’t seen her since.”

“A man?” Valentina asked. “What did he look like?”

“Tall, I suppose.” She smiled at Jens again. “But not as tall as you. Brown hair, old clothes but neat.”

“A face that knows what it wants?”

“Yes, that’s true,” the woman nodded. “That’s him.”

“Chyort!” Valentina swore. “He’s ahead of us.”

Jens walked her out and up into the street where he curled an arm around her neck, warm and intimate. “There are other places,” he told her.

AT ANY TIME ARKIN COULD HAVE STEPPED OUT OF THE shadows and put a knife in her throat to make this hounding cease. But he didn’t. He knew he couldn’t. Any more than he could put a knife in her mother’s delicate white throat. He despised himself for his weakness. They were his enemy; they were the oppressors.

The engineer too was his enemy, a far more dangerous one. If Arkin killed Valentina Ivanova, he would have to kill the engineer as well because if he didn’t, one day Friis would find him. There was no question of that. And that day would be his last.

So for now, he let the girl live.

ARKIN WALKED ALONG THE HOTEL’S LONG CORRIDOR, aware of the risk he was taking. He didn’t for one moment think Elizaveta would be here in the Hotel de Russie. Instead Okhrana agents could be waiting for him in the room, but, even so, he didn’t turn back. He stood silently outside the door and listened for a long time, but there was no sound. That meant nothing. At his touch on the handle, the door opened and he entered the room.

Elizaveta Ivanova was sitting on the edge of the bed clothed in sepulchral black, with a veil under a hat of glossy black feathers. An expression of bleak misery lay on her face, and a large gun sprawled like a lapdog on her knees. One gloved hand was stroking it. At the sight of him she picked it up. For a moment they stared at each other without speaking.

“Dobriy vecher,” he said at last. “Good evening, Elizaveta.”

She rose to her feet and steadied the gun with both hands. No words.

He moved forward till he was close enough to touch it, but he kept his hands away from her. “I didn’t mean for Katya to die,” he said quietly.

She shook her head from side to side, a slow awkward movement, as though it were too heavy for her neck. “That’s not what Valentina says.”

He took a step toward her so that the muzzle of the gun was jammed into his chest. He could feel his heart beating against it. “Pull the trigger if it makes you happier.”

She closed her eyes behind the veil. He held his breath and counted to ten, but there was no blast of pain to rob him of life. Without comment he took the gun from her hands and tossed it onto the satin quilt, then gently removed her hatpin and let the hat fall to the floor. His arms encircled her trembling figure and he rested his cheek against her hair, her breath warm and quick against his neck. For ten minutes they stood locked together, the rigid frame of her body slowly melting into his.

“How can I not hate you?” she whispered. “How can I be such a bad mother?”

“I wish,” he said, “that you and I had met at a different time and in a different place.”

“There is only this time. There is only this place.”

He kissed her hair, inhaled its familiar scent, unclipped a pearl grip, and watched a golden tress tumble to her shoulder.

“How did you know I would come today?” he asked.

“I didn’t.”

The words swirled in his mind. He pictured her, day after day, a lonely figure seated on the edge of the hotel bed with a gun on her lap. Anger in her heart. Waiting for him. It was too much. His tears fell on her hair.

VALENTINA HUNTED HIM, SHE AND JENS TOGETHER, WEEK after week. The way hounds hunt a fox, from den to den. She wanted him to feel her hatred pursuing him as he shifted from place to place, abandoning one safe corner after another as they ventured into bars and slums, churches and meeting halls. Always with roubles in their hands.

Twice they came so close she could smell him in the air they breathed, but each time he disappeared through a window or over a rooftop. By day she worked once more in St. Isabella’s Hospital, but by night she and Jens stalked the backstreets. When her mother asked where she was going, she was honest with her. “I’m searching for Viktor Arkin.”

“The police are handling that. There’s no need for you to do so.”

“They have failed, Mama. I don’t intend to.”

But instead of forbidding her to leave the house, her mother stared at her solemnly and warned, “Tread carefully, Valentina. An eye for an eye may seem like justice to you, but he has a ruthless mind and is quick to anger.”

“What makes you say that, Mama?”

Her mother’s cheeks flushed. “He’s a revolutionary, isn’t he? They are all in a rage that eats their hearts out.”

“I know his mind, Mama. Don’t fear for me.”

JENS, WHAT IS IT?”

There was something wrong. Valentina could feel it in the room, an unease that set her pulse pounding. Jens was standing at the window of his apartment, looking down at the traffic and at the people hurrying to escape the chill autumn wind. Behind him in pride of place on a long table stood an elaborate wooden mouse palace with turrets for the white rodent to scurry up and bridges for its tiny feet to balance on. At this moment the animal was running inside its wheel, making a steady whirring noise that was oddly comforting.