David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘You know that part of the city?’

‘Not really. Only the Cathedral of the Trinity. On Sundays we had to go there from school to pray. It is where the remains of Alexander Nevsky are buried. They used to walk us from the Smolny along the Kalashnikovskaya embankment.’

‘Isn’t that a long walk?’

‘They did it on purpose so we’d be too tired to misbehave in church.’

At the Obvodni canal Sofya spoke to a muscular man in a leather jerkin working on one of the barges moored by the towpath. He was carrying coal, most of it from what Paul could see, on his face. He was heaving sacks from one side of the barge to the other as he listened to Sofya, redistributing the weight having made a delivery. He looked sideways at Paul then up and down the embankment before nodding his head.

They climbed down into the barge.

‘Give me the money back,’ Sofya said.

He dug into his pocket once more and Sofya counted out some roubles and handed them to the bargee. The boatman counted them again, smudging them with his coal-blackened fingers.

‘Sit back there,’ he said, showing a row of teeth stained with coal dust. ‘Under that awning. Keep out of sight.’

Paul clambered over the sacks of coal.

‘He told me they’ve been arresting people ever since Uritsky was murdered,’ Sofya said, joining him. ‘He heard it was an artillery cadet who killed Uritsky, but they’re not fussy about who they arrest.’

The bargee untied the ropes and spat a gobbet of black spittle into the canal. A rattle of gunfire echoed from a few streets away. Paul squatted down under the awning. The boatman started the barge’s engine, glanced briefly in the direction from which the shots had been fired and swung the barge into the canal. A moment later he called to someone on the bank, signalling with a hand for Paul and Sofya to keep low. There was a brief conversation. Paul could make little of it above the noise of the engine but saw the bargee pointing down the canal. As the barge floated past, Paul saw two men standing on the embankment. There was another shouted exchange and the boatman looked at Paul.

‘I told them you’re my son,’ he growled. ‘Wave to them.’

Paul wiped a hand, already black with coal, across his face and raised a hand to the men on the bank. One of them waved back and they turned away. The bargee spat into the canal again.

From the water Petersburg wore an air of serenity. Any scars left by the fighting in February were less apparent from the canal. Most of the houses they passed showed no sign that anything had happened at all. But as the canal took them south and east the buildings took on an aura of dereliction. They passed a group of men standing on the towpath with their heads together, and further along the street Paul glimpsed a flatbed lorry drive by, bristling with men and guns. A red flag fluttered from a pole over its cab.

To the east, passing beneath the railway bridge that carried the line into Nikolaevsky Station, the stone buildings gave way to smaller wooden houses. The barge stopped twice to unload coal before the Cathedral of the Trinity loomed up on their left and the boatman steered the barge into the bank. Ahead the canal flowed into the Neva where the river turned south, marking the eastern edge of the city. On their right a railway line ran along the embankment.

The bargee waved them forward. He kept the engine idling while they clambered onto the towpath. He gestured up the road.

‘That’s Gluckhozerskaya Street.’

‘Spaseeba,’ Paul muttered. The boatman grunted and pushed the engine into gear. The barge chugged off towards the river.

They found the house at the end of a narrow alley. It was a dilapidated one-storey wooden building sagging to one side as if its pilings had rotted away. The door and windows canted in sympathy, leaving the house looking as if it had a squint. Rats ran ahead of them as they walked down the alley, scattering from beneath heaps of decomposing rubbish.

‘How is it,’ Sofya asked, ‘that your people in London send you to a place like this?’

Standing in front of the door, Paul hesitated before knocking. Then he saw a tattered curtain twitch at a window and rapped his knuckles on the wood. A moment later he heard the sound of a bolt being shot. The door opened a few inches.

‘You weren’t followed, were you old man?’

For some reason, this time Paul was barely surprised as Valentine put his head around the door and peered past him into the alley.

‘You’ve heard there’s trouble, I suppose?’ Valentine said, opening the door for them.

‘I know,’ Paul replied. ‘Uritsky’s been shot.’

‘Uritsky? Never mind Uritsky. Someone assassinated Lenin yesterday.

‘Lenin’s been assassinated?’

Since Paul had last seen him, Valentine seemed to have gained a moustache and goatee beard and wore it, as if in emulation of Solokov, the Russian on the steamer, in a manner similar to Trotsky’s. What he had lost was his habitually polished demeanour. It appeared a little tarnished. He seemed less assured, almost rattled.

With the benefit of hindsight, Paul had been thinking for some time that the insouciance Valentine had displayed on the Hesperus might have been no more than a façade, one of the many disguises that had so impressed Colonel Browning. Paul had never been entirely convinced at the time; now the threads of Valentine’s persona had started to show through, like the weave on a badly worn carpet.

‘Who’s this?’ Valentine demanded, peering over Paul’s shoulder at Sofya, his eyes narrowing reproachfully.

Given how Sofya looked, Paul wondered if Valentine might suspect him of having compromised their security by engaging some Petersburg drudge to see to his material comforts.

‘My cousin,’ Paul told him. ‘Mikhail’s sister.’

Valentine threw one last look up the alley before ushering them into the house. He closed the door.

They had been speaking in English and Paul began making a formal introduction.

‘Sofya Ivanovna Rostova, this is—’ he stopped, realising he had no idea what Valentine’s Christian name was.

Sofya offered Valentine her hand. ‘How do you do?’ she said in perfect English.

Valentine glowered at her. Remembering the Cheka agent on the steamer, Paul couldn’t be sure whether Valentine would shake her hand or strangle her. In the event, Valentine bowed stiffly in the Russian aristocratic manner and said, ‘Honoured,’ without enthusiasm. ‘My name is Olyen. A nom - de - guerre , you understand. But if it’s all the same to you I think we had better converse in Russian. These days one never knows who’s listening.’

‘You said Lenin has been assassinated?’ Paul repeated once more, this time in Russian.

‘Well, as good as,’ Valentine said. ‘He was shot three times outside a factory in Moscow. They doubt he’ll live.’

‘Who did it?’

‘Some girl or other. They say her name’s Dora Kaplan and that she’s a Left Social-Revolutionary. Doesn’t deny doing it in the least. Maintains Lenin betrayed the revolution.’

‘Did she do it on her own or was it a plot of some sort?’

‘More trouble in the workers’ paradise, you mean? No, it doesn’t have anything to do with Uritsky’s assassination. It might be that Kaplan acted alone but it doesn’t mean the Bolsheviks won’t make the most of it. Relations between them and the SRs have been bad since the SRs tried the counter-coup at the All-Russian conference in Moscow last month.’

Cumming had said something about that to Paul in London while explaining the Allied reasoning for the intervention. The attempted coup had followed the SR assassination of the German ambassador, Count Mirbach.