Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

26

The rag-and-bone man did not seem to be stopping at very many houses in London’s East End that morning. Perhaps it was too early. Karl Lodost, Lenin’s man sent from Cracow to look after his business interests in London, had called on Arthur Cooper two days before and informed him that he would be coming to take the pamphlets away in this unusual fashion and at this unusual hour. As he stacked the bundles of revolutionary rhetoric onto the back of the cart, Cooper wondered if this would be his moment in the great hall of historical fame, a revolution or revolutions started somewhere in Europe, inspired by Lenin’s words that had been stacked for three whole days in the attic of his little house. The packets of pamphlets were all stamped ‘BALLETS RUSSES, CUSTOMS CLEARANCE, ONWARDS DESPATCH’.

As he watched them trundle quite slowly up his street, he also wondered by whom and where they would be opened. When the cart had turned the corner into Union Street, he went back into his house to prepare some breakfast. He had not waited to see the milk float that seemed to follow Karl Lodost’s rag-and-bone cart towards Covent Garden and the West End of London. The milkman didn’t seem to be stopping to make any deliveries either.

Powerscourt hadn’t time to wonder about kitchens or poison gas recipes as he set off down the passage. The stranger seemed to have vanished. The thump of his boots told Powerscourt he was moving up the corridor. A set of steps led down into a lower level of hell, beneath where he was now standing. There was a prominent sign at the top that nobody could have escaped: KEEP OUT! AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY! As he too turned the corner he saw his opponent making full speed towards a great set of double doors. Even at fifty yards, Powerscourt picked up the traces of a terrible smell and a dull noise that might have been machinery of some sort. Maybe, he thought, running towards the entrance, this was the Devil’s Kitchen, where Lucifer or the Devil himself prepared menus of death for their victims. Human rather than crème brûlée, Enemy Flambé a speciality of the house.

It was the sound that struck Powerscourt as he made his way warily through the double doors. It was the throb of many giants hissing in unison, with the odd extra gurgle coming in from the side. The room was circular, about fifty feet by fifty. Great grey vats or silos lined the walls.

Powerscourt thought he could count thirteen of them. A series of pipes of varying shapes and sizes led down from each vat to the central section, a large open pit, the oven of the place. Very steep slopes led down to it from the main body of the death chamber, in case anybody needed to give the monstrous stew a stir or throw extra ingredients into the inferno. This was where the noise came from as the devil’s brew marinated or stewed, surrounded by the waters of the Thames and the countryside of England. Powerscourt saw the advantages of the river setting — the Thames could carry away at full speed any amount of noxious leftovers, the debris of the kitchen that even the dogs and the local vermin wouldn’t touch.

The Russian was right on the edge of the cauldron, sketching as fast as he could.

‘Who are you?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘My real name is immaterial. I am a patriot. I love my country. On patriotic missions like this one, I go under the name of Andrei Rublev. When I have finished my work here, I am going to kill you.’

‘That’s very considerate of you,’ said Powerscourt, feeling his feet going on the slippery floor. ‘Might I have the honour of knowing which nationality is going to take me to the other side?’

‘You may, you may indeed,’ said the man, turning over another page of his notebook. He’s a cool customer, this one, Powerscourt thought, finishing his work before he moves in for the kill.

‘I come from Mother Russia, the land of Kievan Rus and the home of the holy monks.’ Powerscourt wondered if he went to top-up courses in fanaticism with Rasputin in the Tsar’s village after a session with the Delphic oracle.

‘And what are you doing here?’ asked Powerscourt, playing for time. Surely that bloody civil servant with the Cornish name could have sent some soldiers here by now?

‘You do not understand. Russia may be building factories faster than any other power in Europe. But we do not have the knowledge acquired by you people in the decadent West. We have to steal to learn how to make the weapons of our enemies. We always have and we always will. Then Russia can take her seat at the top tables of the world. We would have the same weapons, including gas, as our enemies — and Mother Russia would not go naked to any conference table.’

‘You can’t build a plant like this with a few drawings,’ said Powerscourt. His reply seemed to drive the Russian to fury. Powerscourt didn’t think the man would have a gun, but knives, whips, steel knuckledusters that could smash a man’s skull in?

‘Listen, you fool Englishman! I will tell you the truth and then I will kill you. We have been looking out for you a long time, Powerscourt, We have kept abreast of your movements through compatriots in that silly dancing place.’ The Russian had a heavy iron bar at his side to warn Powerscourt to keep his distance.

Powerscourt wondered what on earth Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes could have to do with this monstrous building on the Thames. Would Nijnsky and Karsavina dance a pas de deux in front of the devil’s kitchen?

‘The gas machines first,’ said the Russian, ‘you shall at least go to your well-deserved grave knowing the full extent of the power of Mother Russia. You think my work here,’ he was still drawing furiously as he spoke, and had just gone to another new page, ‘is the beginning. It is not. It is nearly the end. We have the formula for the gas from the French — there’s nothing French engineers and chemists like doing more than boasting how their labours will add to the greater glory of France. This — ’ he waved an arm round the terrible silos — ‘may be enough for our engineers, locked away in the interior where nobody could find them, a plan of this room and the disposition of the equipment may be all they need to complete the work.’

Where on earth were those bloody soldiers? There couldn’t be much left to say about the pipes and the terrible cauldron at the centre. Only one card left to play.

‘Why were your colleagues at the ballet reporting on my movements?’

‘That has to do with the Ballets Russes. I shall tell you a little as you have less than five minutes left to live. We thought everybody would assume that Bolm was meant to be the victim. Everyone except you, my about-to-be-dead friend. I congratulate you on that. The dead man was in fact who the dead man was meant to be, the understudy. He saw something he shouldn’t have in Bolm’s dressing room. He told Bolm he was going to report it to the English authorities. He told one of the girl dancers, Vera Belitsky I think she was called. She, in case you have forgotten, was the dancer I killed at Blenheim Palace. Taneyev may not have known much in the way of mathematics and chemical equations, but any fool can see the word “Goring” and the date. The other victim was also part of Taneyev’s conspiracy. The little fool told the dancer all he knew and what he proposed to do about it. She had to go before she could tell the English authorities. We have a saying in Russia, smert shpionem — death to spies and traitors of every sort. That was what happened to Taneyev and his friend, and good riddance too.’

‘So all of Bolm’s bad behaviour with women was a red herring, as we say in English?’

The man was checking his drawings now. The end could not be very far away. Would he throw a knife or attempt to close in on him with the deadly weapon in his hand? Powerscourt had been fiddling about with his left hand among the materials lined up against the wall behind him. There was a square steel plate about the size of a dustbin lid that might do service as a shield. And there was a very long pole, slightly longer than the pole used to propel punts up and down the waters of the Cam and the Isis — though Powerscourt, for the moment, could not imagine what to do with it.

The Russian put his notebook and his pencil in his pocket. Even as he started, Powerscourt guessed what was coming next. He just had time to drag his steel shield in front of his body, up to the chin. He gambled that the man wouldn’t try for his head, a smaller and more mobile target. The knife seemed to come simultaneously with the hand coming out of his pocket. It smashed into Powerscourt’s shield and fell on the floor. Another followed, then a third, all repelled by the dustbin lid. The man began swearing viciously in Russian and started fiddling about with his right boot. Powerscourt saw his chance. He grabbed the punt pole, which had a sort of paddle at the end, as if for stirring the monstrous brew in the Devil’s kitchen, and charged the thirty feet or so between him and the Russian. He felt, momentarily, that he was Sir Lancelot come to rescue the Lady of Shallot in some terrible jousting tournament. The paddle caught the Russian and pushed him backwards towards the pit. He staggered.

Powerscourt drew his weapon back and shoved again. He knew his strength was failing fast from inhaling these terrible vapours, but it was the best he could do. The man slipped and turned as he fell down the top of the slippery slope and began sliding down into the mouth of hell itself. Powerscourt moved in for the kill. Sliding down, the man made one last effort. He raised himself and sank his teeth into Powerscourt’s arm. Gravity and the weight of the Russian were pulling them both towards the final vision of Hieronymus Bosch. It just needed a few splotches of brilliant red and some dancing flames in front and it could be hanging as the pride of place in some leading German art gallery, Powerscourt thought. He felt his arm might be about to break. He knew the fumes could overcome him at any moment.

There was a shot from near the door. The soldiers, Powerscourt whispered to himself, they’ve come at last. Two burly Corporals used their bayonets to free Powerscourt’s arm — his left, he was glad to see. He was free. Everybody stood and watched in horror as the Russian began slipping down to hell. He was now out of human reach and nobody gave the order to throw him a lifeline. Four enormous steel plates appeared round the edges of the pit and began moving quite fast towards the centre. When they met, the Devil’s saucepan would have a lid that admitted nothing into the mixture within. Somebody must have pressed a lever or a button to start the process off.

They watched in horror as the Russian — now slowly, now quite quickly — began to fall into the pit. He was swearing violently to start with. Then he managed to cross himself and began saying his prayers in Russian. He was going to need them now. Powerscourt found himself shuddering as he thought of what would happen to the man if he wasn’t underwater by the time the square lids closed. He would be cut in half, or a quarter, or, maybe, God forbid, his head would be sliced clean off his body. One second the Russian would be winning the race towards total immersion. Then it would look as though the top of his face, maybe his hair, would be caught in the pincers of the steel plates.

Suddenly it was all over. Gravity won. The Russian was under the noxious mixture before the lid closed. But only by about ten seconds. Powerscourt thought a quick death by steel plate might have been the better option, but he was so glad he hadn’t met the same fate. He realized that blood was flowing fast out of his arm where the spy had held on.

‘We’ve sent for an ambulance, just breathe in the fresh air,’ Danvers Tresilian said as he led him to a veranda looking out over the river. ‘It’ll be here in a minute. I hope to God you’re going to recover fully. The doctors think that it would be impossible to survive in there for more than five minutes. You were in there for seven and a half. May the Lord bless you and keep you.’