Simon Montefiore: Sashenka

“Your Excellency, we’ve arrested the terrorist revolutionaries. Found dynamite, chargers, Mauser pistols, leaflets. There’s a schoolgirl among them. The general says he wants you to start on her right away before her bigshot papa gets her out. I’ve a phaeton waiting outside.”

Captain Sagan got to his feet and sighed. “Fancy a drink, Ivanov, or a pinch of this?” He held out the silver box. “Dr. Gemp’s new tonic for fatigue and headaches.”

“The general said you should hurry.”

“I’m tired,” Sagan said, although his heart was racing. It was the third winter of the war, and he was overworked to the point of exhaustion. Not only was he a gendarme, he was also a senior officer in the Okhrana, the Tsar’s secret police. “German spies, Bolsheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, every sort of traitor. We can’t hang them fast enough. And then there’s Rasputin. At least sit for a moment.”

“All right. Cognac,” Ivanov said, a shade too reluctantly for Sagan’s liking.

“Cognac? Your tastes are becoming rather expensive, Ivanov.” Sagan tinkled a silver bell. A waiter, as long and thin as a flute, glided drunkenly through the door, as if on skis. “Two cognacs and make it quick,” Sagan ordered, savoring the aroma of cigars, cologne and shoe polish, the essence of officers’ messes and gentlemen’s clubs across the Empire. When the glasses arrived, the two men stood up, toasted the Tsar, downed their brandies and hurried into the lobby.

They pulled on their uniform greatcoats and shapkas and stepped out into a numbing cold. Disorderly, shapeless snowflakes danced around them. It was already midnight but a full moon made the fresh snow glow an eerie blue. Cocaine, Sagan decided, was the secret policeman’s ideal tonic in that it intensified his scrutiny, sharpening his vision. There stood his phaeton, a taxi-carriage with one horse snorting geysers of breath, its driver a snoring bundle of clothing. Ivanov gave him a shove and the driver’s bald head appeared out of his sheepskin, pink, shiny and bleary-eyed, like a grotesque baby born blind drunk.

Sagan, heart still palpitating, scanned the street. To the left, the golden dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral loomed ominously over the houses as if about to crush them. Down to the right, he could see the doorway of the Zeitlin residence. He checked his surveillance team. Yes, a mustachioed figure in a green coat and bowler hat lurked near the corner: that was Batko, ex–NCO Cossack, smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the apartments opposite. (Cossacks and ex–NCOs made the best “external agents,” those who worked on surveillance.) And there was a sleeping droshky driver a little farther down the street: Sagan hoped he was not really asleep.

A Rolls-Royce, with chains on its wheels and a Romanov crest on its doors, skidded past. Sagan knew that it belonged to Grand Duke Sergei, who would be going home with the ballerina mistress he shared with his cousin Grand Duke Andrei.

From the Blue Bridge over the Moika came the echo of shouts, the thud of punches and the crunch of boots and bodies on compacted snow. Some sailors from the Kronstadt base were fighting soldiers—dark blue versus khaki.

Then, just as Sagan had one foot on the phaeton’s step, a Benz limousine rumbled up. Its uniformed driver leaped out and opened the leather-lined door. Out of it stepped an overripe, ruddy-cheeked figure in a fur coat. Manuilov-Manesevich, spy, war profiteer, friend of Rasputin, born a Jew, converted to Orthodoxy, pushed past Sagan and hurried into the Imperial Yacht Club. Inside the limousine, Sagan glimpsed crushed scarlet satin and mink on a pale throat. A waft of sweat and cigar smoke disgusted him. He got into the carriage.

“This is what the Empire has come to,” he told Ivanov. “Yid spies and influence peddlers. A scandal every day!”

“Yaaaa!” the driver yelled, cracking his whip a little too close to Sagan’s nose. The phaeton lurched forward.

Sagan leaned back and let the lights of Peter the Great’s city flow past him. The brandy was a bullet of molten gold scouring his belly. Here was his life, in the capital of the world’s greatest empire, ruled by its stupidest people in the midst of the most terrible war the world had ever known. Sagan told himself that the Emperor was lucky that he and his colleagues still believed in him and his right to rule; lucky they were so vigilant; lucky that they would stop at nothing to save this fool Tsar and his hysterical wife, whoever her friends were…

“Y’wanna know what I think, barin ?” said the driver, sitting sideways to his passengers, his warthog nose illuminated by the phaeton’s swinging lantern. “Oats is going up again! One more price hike and we won’t be able to feed our horses. There was a time, I remember it well, when oats was only…”

Oats, oats, oats, that was all Sagan heard from the damn drivers of carriages and sleighs. He breathed deeply as the cocaine-charged blood gushed through his temples like a mountain stream.

“Where are you going tonight?” Zeitlin asked his wife.

“I don’t know,” sighed Ariadna Zeitlin dreamily. She was reclining on the divan in her flesh-colored boudoir, dressed only in stockings and a slip. She closed her eyes as her lady’s maid primped her hair with curling tongs. Her voice was low and husky, the words running together as if she were already a little high. “Want to come along for the ride?”

“It’s important, my dear.” He took a chair close to the divan.

“Well, maybe Baroness Rozen’s for cocktails, then a dinner at the Donan, some dancing at the Aquarium—I love that place, have you seen the beautiful fish all around the walls?—and then, well, I’m not sure…Ah Nyana, let’s see, I fancy something with brocade for tonight.”

Two maids came out of her dressing room, Nyana holding a jewelry box, the other girl with a heap of dresses over her arm.

“Come on, Ariadna. I need to know where you’re going,” snapped Zeitlin.

Ariadna sat up sharply. “What is it? You look quite upset. Has the Bourse crashed or…” and here she gave him a tender smile, flashing her white teeth, “or are you learning how to be jealous? It’s never too late, you know. A girl likes to be cherished.”

Zeitlin inhaled his cigar. Their marriage had diminished to these brief exchanges before each plunged, separately, into the St. Petersburg night, though they still attended balls and formal dinners together. He glanced at the unmade bed, where his wife spent so much time sleeping during the day. He looked at the dresses in batiste, chiffon and silk, at the bottles of potions and perfumes, at the half-smoked cigarettes, at the healing crystals, and all those other fads and luxuries, but he looked longest at Ariadna with her snow-white skin, her wide shoulders and her violet eyes. She was still beautiful, even if her eyes were bloodshot and the veins stood out in her temples.

She opened her hands and reached out to him, her tuberose perfume mixing deliciously with that of her skin, but he was too anxious to play their usual games.

“Sashenka’s been arrested by the gendarmes,” he told her. “Right at the school gates. She’s in the Kresty for the night. Can you imagine the cells there?”

Ariadna blinked. A tiny frown appeared on her pale face. “It must be a misunderstanding. She’s so bookish, it’s hard to imagine she’d do anything silly.” She looked at him. “Surely you can get her out tonight, Samuil? Call the Interior Minister. Doesn’t he owe you money?”

“I’ve just called Protopopov and he says it’s serious.”

“Nyana?” Ariadna beckoned to her lady’s maid. “I think I’ll wear the mauve brocade with the gold leaf and flounces from Madame Chanceau, and I’ll have the pearl choker and the sapphire brooch…”