Jasper Kent - Thirteen Years Later

But to the middle-aged man who had, as far as Aleksei could tell, gone with Kyesha, it would make all the difference in the world. There would be no more lying to his wife and family now. His secret life – his life itself – would shortly be at an end.

That, of course, was only one possible outcome. Kyesha could kill him, relatively swiftly, relatively painlessly, and give him the chance of bliss eternal, or at least of eternal nothingness. Or Kyesha could offer him one final temptation, and give him the opportunity to spend eternity, or what might seem like it, as a pariah; an abomination to all mankind. Aleksei prayed that Kyesha would choose to be merciful.

‘WE LOST HIM?’

The voice was Dmitry’s, speaking in undertones close to Aleksei’s ear. Aleksei nodded.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Dmitry.

‘Let’s get a drink,’ said Aleksei. There were plenty of places to choose from, but they were not far from Lubyanka Square, and so went to that same club where Aleksei had first discovered his son’s true loyalties.

It was quiet at that time of the evening, but Aleksei acknowledged a few acquaintances, and noted his son doing the same. They found a quiet corner where they could talk. Aleksei drank vodka; his son, brandy.

‘So who were you following?’ asked Dmitry as soon as the waiter had left them with their drinks.

Aleksei considered. There was no question of him telling his son the truth. This terror should have ended thirteen years before, and Aleksei hoped it would end now, but above all he was not going to let it pass down to the next generation. Dmitry would die nobly on some battlefield, or better, old and in bed. But if it was within Aleksei’s powers, he would never have to face, or even hear of, the horrors that the voordalaki could bring to mankind. So the question was not whether he should tell the truth, but precisely what lies he should spin. There was no pain in this kind of lie. He took a deep breath.

‘I think it may be the murderer,’ he said in a low voice.

Dmitry looked around, making sure that no one had heard. Aleksei hid a smile, amused at the idea that his son should be mimicking the precautions that he himself, out of years of experience, found almost instinctive.

‘Really?’ whispered Dmitry.

Aleksei nodded. ‘I can place him at the scene of the murder in Red Square, and I think we can be sure that’s linked to the one in Tverskaya.’ Dmitry nodded. He seemed excited by the proximity to danger, which was another reason for Aleksei to keep him away from it. ‘I’d expected there to be another murder last night, but I’ve heard nothing.’

‘Me neither,’ said Dmitry.

‘Tonight’s victim is probably dead already.’ An image flashed before his eyes, an amalgam of all the deaths he had witnessed at the hands of a voordalak. What particular torture would it be that most whetted Kyesha’s appetite? Blood and sinew and clenched jaws and the sound of screams filled his mind. Somewhere in the city, probably not far away, that was happening to the licentious man whose face Aleksei could clearly remember, and whose evening would be ending with so different a climax from the one he had expected.

‘Who is he?’

‘That I’ve yet to find out.’

‘But it’s connected with the message – and the meeting in Desna.’

Aleksei nodded. ‘I can’t really say any more,’ he said.

‘But whose side is he on? Is he one of us, or one of them?’

It was very, very simple for Dmitry – ‘us’ and ‘them’; radicals and conservatives. But every ‘us’ and ‘them’ could eagerly form into a combined ‘us’ when faced by a new, dangerous, external ‘them’. Thus the whole of Russia had become a united ‘us’ when faced with the invading French. And if only the French and Russians had known, they could have joined together to see off the threat of the voordalak ‘them’ for good.

‘It’s not as straightforward as that, Mitka,’ he said. He realized he sounded condescending, particularly by using the diminutive, but it was how he felt. ‘The man’s an enemy of Russia – the whole of Russia, regardless of our petty squabbles.’ The whole of Russia and beyond.

‘So you’re still working for the tsar?’

‘For Russia,’ said Aleksei. ‘There’ll still be a government after the tsar is gone. There’ll still be criminals and spies, and they’ll still have to be dealt with.’

‘So you plan to keep your job?’ There was bitterness in Dmitry’s voice. Aleksei was tempted to ask whether he thought the overthrow of Aleksandr would leave him free to pursue his career as a musician, but he refrained. Instead he simply nodded.

‘You sound like Talleyrand,’ said Dmitry. ‘Friend of Napoleon, friend of Louis, friend of Charles. Friend of anyone who’s in power.’

‘Talleyrand is a friend of France. I’m a friend of Russia.’ He realized it was an odd way to put it. ‘I’m Russian,’ he added. ‘And any man who can say that should mean by it the same as I do.’

Dmitry looked expressionlessly at his father for a few moments, then changed the subject. ‘So, how are we going to catch him?’

‘You’re going to have nothing to do with it.’

‘But I can help you.’

‘Like you helped me tonight?’ asked Aleksei.

‘He’s a dangerous man. You can’t do this alone.’

‘That may well be the case, Mitka, but – and I don’t mean this to sound cruel – if I did want help, would you really be the best man for me to turn to? I’ve been in this business twenty years. If I need the help of someone to track down a man, there are hundreds of professionals I know to call on. If I need to kill a man, I know dozens who would help me.’

‘But Papa…’

‘It’s not about me being your papa or you being my son. Would you ask me to play a piano duet with you?’

‘I’d love you to, if that’s what you wanted.’

‘If our lives depended on my ability? If that piano had killed three, maybe four people in Moscow over the past week?’

Aleksei’s lip quivered at the absurdity of his own analogy. He could not hide it from Dmitry, and both broke into laughter.

‘My point is,’ said Aleksei after a few moments, ‘that certain tasks require expertise. Passion and loyalty aren’t always enough.’

‘After a few years in the army then?’

‘If that’s the path you want to go down. Is it?’

Dmitry considered for a few seconds. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last.

His father hoped to God it wasn’t.

Aleksei climbed the steps to the door of the Lavrovs’ house and raised his hand to knock, but he tensed the muscles of his forearm, and his knuckles never reached the door. He had been kicking so many ideas around in his mind as he walked home – concerning Dmitry, Kyesha, the Northern Society and more – that it was only now that his most immediate problem came to his attention.

Dmitry had been following him.

From that simple fact followed two vital questions. When had he started his pursuit, and when had he stopped? The second question could be posed more bluntly: had he stopped?

Aleksei glanced up and down the street, but saw no one. Dmitry had played a clumsy shadow earlier that evening, but that did not mean he could manage nothing better. Aleksei turned away from the door and carried on down the street, then to the right. He knew the layout of the area, had known it for over four years, though he could not specifically recall committing it to memory. Around the corner, there was only one house before a metal railing ran alongside the pavement, separating it from a private garden. Aleksei leapt over silently.

Of course, he had been visiting the area for several years. Yelena and Valentin had moved down from Petersburg in 1817. After Vadim’s death – and the general chaos the French invasion had provoked, even as far away as in the new capital – Yelena had become particularly close to her widowed mother. But she had died, brokenhearted, less than four years after her husband. Others of her children had remained in their home town, but Yelena and Valentin had moved away almost as soon as Yelena’s inheritance had made it possible. Valentin had, some thought recklessly, left his government post to set up as an importer of textiles. Aleksei was one of the few who knew the full story behind it. Yelena had been happy to follow her husband, even though it was her money that paid for their new life.