Jasper Kent - Thirteen Years Later

He had few possessions which he kept here; most were at the hotel in Zamoskvorechye, which he tried to visit at least once a day, if only to collect his mail. In the corner of the room lay a battered leather saddlebag – acquired even before Austerlitz – where he kept those things from which he dared not be parted. He lit the lamp and hauled the bag on to the desk. He knew that what he was after was in the small, left-hand pouch. Five thin sheets of paper folded into three: the list of members of the Northern Society he had stolen in Petersburg. He unfolded it and peered at the text. The writing was even smaller than Domnikiia’s. He could make nothing of it.

He reached into the bag again, and his fingers felt what he needed. He brought out the spectacles. They had been Maks’. Aleksei had taken them from his body before burying it, all those years before. One lens had been broken, but Aleksei had had no practical use for them, not then. It had been soon after Tamara’s birth that he first noticed he had trouble reading. He had tried the spectacles, but even the single lens that was intact did nothing to help – in fact it made matters worse. Aleksei had struggled to remember a long-forgotten conversation with Maks about them. Maks could not see at a distance, but he could see close up. Old people – that had been Maks’ term, and Aleksei knew that it now applied to him – found it hard to see to read. A different-shaped lens was needed to fix each of the two problems.

‘And what will you do when you’re old?’ Aleksei had asked. ‘Two pairs of lenses?’

‘I’ll turn to Benjamin Franklin,’ Maks had replied, with a smile.

‘A long way to America. And isn’t he a little… dead?’

‘A man’s ideas live after his death,’ Maks had explained. ‘And you’re right: Franklin’s invention was two pairs of lenses, bound together in a single frame. One for when you’re looking out in front of you, one when you’re looking down at a book. I know a man in Petersburg who can grind them for me – when the time comes.’

But for Maks, the time had never come, nor had any other of those signs of ageing that Aleksei had feared in his youth but embraced in his middle age as reminders of the fact that he had survived to grow old. He could still see at a distance, but he had gone, when reading had become too difficult, to that same optician in Petersburg, and had him make some lenses to fit Maks’ old frames. He avoided wearing them in front of Domnikiia – that was why he had struggled on in the bedroom reading her book. But now he slipped them on and looked at the names on the list.

Fortunately, they were alphabetical. He found what he was after about two thirds of the way down page two.

Grigoriev, V. F.

Gusev, I. B.

Danilov, A. I.

Danilov, D. A.

Demidov, E. B.

Dmitriev, P. P.

So Dmitry was more than just the piano player; Aleksei had never really thought otherwise. Dmitry would never have got into the club if he had not been trusted, and the look Aleksei had seen in his son’s eye had told him the truth. This was mere confirmation. But it left many questions unanswered. Simply being a supporter of the Northern Society did not mean being a supporter of all its methods – most, in fact, did not know the detailed plans. Only the inner circle into which Aleksei had insinuated himself was aware of the scheme, vague though it still was, to assassinate the tsar. That was, in part, why he had revealed the information to Obukhov, and intended to reveal it to others; in the hope that the realization of what was being planned would shock the Society into collapse from the roots upward. But Obukhov had not been shocked. Would Dmitry be, when he discovered the truth?

Another question that raised its head was why Aleksei had never heard a hint that he and his son were, ostensibly at least, working for the same cause. Of course, Dmitry himself would not have mentioned it, but why had there not been even a word of congratulation from Ryleev or Obolensky, who clearly knew? Perhaps they understood security better than they seemed to – that any unnecessary discussion of other members, even fathers and sons, was a potential risk. Perhaps they simply hadn’t thought the issue important enough to raise.

It did not matter. What did matter was the list Aleksei held in front of him. He opened the desk drawer and found some paper. It did not match the paper on which the list was written, nor would he be capable of seamlessly imitating the handwriting on it. It was unimportant – it simply meant a little more work. Instead of replacing one page, he would rewrite all five. He could disguise his hand, and even if he was caught out, he could say he had copied the list.

It took him only half an hour to complete the task – simply to copy names from one sheet of paper to another. He should have looked at the list in detail before. There were a few names that surprised him, but none that he cared to do anything about, except for that one on the second page. He glanced at his work once he had finished.

Grigoriev, V. F.

Gusev, I. B.

Danilov, A. I.

Demidov, E. B.

Dmitriev, P. P.

Of course, it would take more than that to remove suspicion from Dmitry completely, but Aleksei would have to work that out when the time came. His hope was still that the entire plot would collapse and that the list would never be needed. He pondered for a moment whether he should have removed his own name as well, but it would have been foolish. Whoever he handed the list to – if he chose to hand it over at all – would clearly be aware of his membership and of where his true loyalties lay. If they saw that his name was missing, they would know the list had been tampered with, and if they knew that, they might well infer that it was not only Aleksei’s name that had been removed. Better to keep the changes to a minimum.

Aleksei screwed the sheets of the original list together into a loose, crumpled ball, then lit them using the flame of the lamp. He dropped the burning papers into the grille of the fire and watched them writhe and curl. The flames quickly began to lessen, before all the paper was consumed. He poked it with the fire iron and it burst briefly into flame again. It went out a second time, with only a tiny patch of paper still unblackened. A glowing red line of flameless combustion worked its way slowly across the last few names, like an advancing army viewed from above, turning in on itself and forming a circle which shrank smaller and smaller before vanishing to nothing, finally exhausting its fuel supply. Even then, some of the paper, now as ashes, maintained the shape it had had before the flames reached it. The ink of the names was still visible, blacker on black. He stirred the remains with the fire iron, and the cinders collapsed to powder. Any information they might have carried was finally destroyed.

Aleksei turned back to the bedroom. He glanced in on Tamara as he passed. She was sleeping soundly. Today, Aleksei realized, she had a little more in common with her half-brother than she had had before. It was a strange world he inhabited that forced him now to make secrets of not one but both of his children.

KYESHA PICKED UP THE THREE BONES EASILY AND CAUGHT THE fourth on the back of his hand, even though it was quite unnecessary by the rules they had formulated. He was merely showing off. His first question of the evening had been a simple one:

‘What were their names?’

Aleksei happily answered. ‘Pyetr, Filipp, Andrei, Iakov, Varfolomei and Iuda. They’re aliases, of course. The three that weren’t there were Foma, Matfei and Ioann.’

‘How very pious,’ observed Kyesha.

‘What’s in a name?’ said Aleksei bitterly.

‘What happened to them? For three.’