Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

15

‘Francis.’ Johnny Fitzgerald had been inspecting the cupboards in and around Shatilov’s quarters and had collected a burglar’s haul of hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, jemmies and other tools. It looked as though he was expecting trouble.

‘There’s something you should know.’

‘What’s that, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt, his mind still focused on the late Martin.

‘We don’t have a coach any more,’ said Johnny.

‘We don’t have a coach any more?’ replied Powerscourt.

‘We don’t have a coach any more,’ Johnny Fitzgerald repeated. ‘Two of those bastard soldiers stole the horses. And we don’t know where they took them.’

Powerscourt started to laugh. ‘Sorry, I know it’s serious, but I was just thinking of the Ambassador, not the most popular man in the Embassy, having to tell Mrs Ambassador that the coach which used to take her round fashionable Petersburg has disappeared. Is the actual carriage worth keeping?’

‘We’ve hidden it in an outhouse for now,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘But the problem is this. These people we’ve just tied up, the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division, whatever they’re called, guard all the roads and all the railways round St Petersburg. If our friend Shatilov is found and released before we get back to the Embassy, we’ll be joining your man Martin as food for the fishes.’

‘What’s the fastest way to get back? Apart from the horses we don’t have?’ Powerscourt was beginning to grapple with this new problem.

It was Ricky Crabbe who provided a possible solution. ‘There’s a goods train coming through at eleven o’clock, my lord, going to St Petersburg. God knows where it ends up. The last passenger train is half an hour after that.’

‘I don’t like goods trains,’ said Powerscourt, who had been locked up in a goods carriage in India for an entire afternoon at the hottest time of year with a herd of incontinent cows for company, ‘but I’m happy to try again if people feel that would be better.’

‘Once you’re in one of those damned carriages,’ said Johnny, ‘you’re a sitting duck. If they lock the humans in like they lock the animals in, you can’t even jump off the bloody train.’

Shortly afterwards a small but determined group were lurking in the shadows at the end of the platform of Tsarskoe Selo station. Johnny Fitzgerald had been making small experiments with his new tools. He disappeared at one stage into a siding full of unwanted carriages. Various grunting and swearing noises announced that he was still of the party. Ricky Crabbe had appropriated a couple of stout bags which he was filling very methodically with large stones. Powerscourt was trying to learn and amplify a basic message in Russian: I am from the British Embassy, we all have diplomatic immunity. Mikhail was assuring him that if he set his mind to it he could be fluent in Russian in six months. The coach driver, saddened by the loss of his vehicle and possibly his livelihood, had taken delivery of a large number of roubles from Powerscourt and set off in search of the missing horses. He said he would be able to buy them back if only he could find the thieves. The sergeant from the Black Watch was looking out at the distant road, waiting to see if the enemy would appear.

The train was late. Local trains in Russia, Mikhail informed Powerscourt, were often late. Powerscourt practised saying I am from the British Embassy, we all have diplomatic immunity to Johnny Fitzgerald but it failed to have any impact.

‘You could be saying put all your money on Shatilov in the two thirty at Doncaster for all I know, Francis,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and I think you should sound a little more guttural, if you know what I mean. But carry on practising. It may turn out useful sooner than we think, if only the bloody Russians would understand what you’re saying to them.’

Maybe it was the mention of Shatilov that brought their problems. To their left they could hear, approaching at a good speed, their train, gusts of smoke almost matching the colour of the surrounding snow. To their right the night air was rent with whistles and the sounds of shouting men on the other side of the platform, hurrying to reach the station before the train could leave. Somehow or other Shatilov’s men must have been alerted to the flight of the English party. Maybe, Powerscourt shuddered as he thought of it, he was leading this revenge mission in person, whip conveniently stuffed into a coat pocket. Powerscourt did not rate his chances very high if he met Shatilov again. The train was drawing to a halt at the little station. There were half a dozen carriages with a guard’s van at the rear. There were more passengers than you might have expected. The sergeant was swearing viciously under his breath.

‘Do we take the train or not, Francis?’ asked Johnny.

‘We go,’ said Powerscourt, ‘last carriage before the guard’s van. If we stay here we’re marooned, miles from anywhere.’

The whistles were very close now. The train driver would have to be deaf not to hear them. The five men bent double so their heads would not protrude above the height of the carriages as they raced into the train. They could hear feet running up the platform. Powerscourt hung briefly out of the window in time to see a party of twelve men marching into the front carriage behind the driver. The last man aboard, his face wreathed in a series of bloodstained bandages, with a pistol in his left hand, was Major Shatilov, with a face, Powerscourt reported to his friends, like thunder.

‘Never mind, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, fiddling with some giant spanner in his stolen bag, ‘you can say to them as they come through the connecting door that you’re from the British Embassy and we all have diplomatic immunity. That should do the trick.’

Everybody laughed. Their compartment had a dozen wooden benches with a party of four middle-aged Russian women at the front. Mikhail placed himself on sentry duty at the connecting door where he would be able to see any soldiers coming on their way down the train. The sergeant kept him company, fingering one of the Russian guard’s pistols in his pocket as he stared up the carriage. ‘Can you get on to the tops of these coaches, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Did you have time to see as the train came in? And could you jump from one to another?’

‘The answer to both of these questions is Yes,’ said Johnny, returning the spanner to his bag, ‘particularly if you come from the British Embassy and have diplomatic immunity.’ Ricky Crabbe was fingering the stones in his David’s pouch, selecting the ones he liked best and putting them in his coat pocket. Powerscourt checked that he had the gun and the bullets from the Shatilov villa. Not for the first time that evening he regretted that they had not been able to bring any weapons with them but Powerscourt was certain that anybody trying to enter the Alexander Palace with a gun would have been in Siberia inside a fortnight if not trussed up and gagged in one of Derzhenov’s basement cells.

‘This is what I think we should do,’ Powerscourt said, looking anxiously at the four middle-aged women. ‘We can’t stay here in this carriage with the ladies. I don’t want to retreat into the guard’s van. Johnny, I think you and Mikhail and the sergeant should get on the roof now and move forward as far as you can, all the way into the first carriage. That way you’ll be behind these soldier people. If things get really rough, you could attack them from behind. Ricky and I are going to be Leonidas and the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae here for a while but I don’t think we’ll hold them very long. Then, unlike Leonidas, we’re going to bolt too. Mikhail,’ Powerscourt recalled the young man from his sentry duty, ‘can you get rid of these ladies here?’ As he pointed to them Mikhail paused briefly, then a look of great seriousness appeared to descend on his young features. He began speaking loudly to the women. After a while he pointed vigorously up towards the front of the train. One of the women appeared to ask a question. Mikhail shouted back and pointed again. Looking with horror at the three Englishmen, the four Russian ladies grabbed their belongings and shot out of the carriage.

‘What on earth did you say to them?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I told them, I’m afraid, my lord, that the three of you were just about to begin unnatural sexual acts right in the middle of their compartment. I said that these acts of depravity would continue until the end of the journey. I said it was their patriotic duty to go and tell the driver in person, whatever obstacles they might find in their way, that these Satanic practices were happening in his train. For myself, I said, I was going to keep an eye on the situation so I could make a full report to the authorities later on. Even when the four ladies were halfway down the next carriage, they could still be heard complaining of this insult to the Russian railways and their country’s honour.’

‘Well done,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Now then, you and your colleagues had better be off.’

Ricky was now the sentry. As he took up his position, he told Powerscourt that the best place in the carriage for the despatch of his weapons was behind one of the benches, about two thirds of the way down. Powerscourt tried to work out how long they would be able to hold out in this compartment. He worried about how exposed they would be making their way along the roof before the enemy showed up behind them. Gunfights on the roof would be fatal. A lot depended on how effective these soldiers were going to be. If they were well-trained killers, he and his little band were probably finished. But if they were recent recruits, mere rabble in uniform as a colonel in one of Powerscourt’s regiments had once described his opponents, they might lose heart after a few rocks from David’s sling and a couple of well-aimed pistol shots.

‘They’re coming, sir.’ Ricky Crabbe was grinning as he went into his first battle. ‘The women are holding them up. Looks like they’re getting a right lecture, sir.’ Ricky positioned himself behind his bench, eyes peering through the slats. Powerscourt, further back, almost at the door to the roof and the outside world, could hear footsteps overhead as Johnny and Mikhail and the sergeant made their way along the train. Powerscourt hoped the noise wouldn’t travel to the next carriage.

The young man who opened the connecting door couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He had joined the military as a better alternative to life in his peasant village. It was almost certain that he had never heard of the story of David and Goliath. Ricky’s missile caught him almost in the centre of his right eye. For a moment the Russian soldier blundered about thinking he was blind. Then he whimpered and collapsed on to a bench, holding his face. The soldier behind him gazed in astonishment at his colleague. He hadn’t seen the stone. Then he too received a present from Ricky Crabbe, smack in the centre of his teeth. He reeled backwards and blocked the doorway. ‘Now!’ said Powerscourt, and fled towards the open air. He knew that the next thing likely to come through the doorway was a stream of bullets. He had given his gun to Ricky to give himself one last burst of covering fire before he disappeared upwards. If Ricky was as good a shot with a pistol as he was with a stone or a rock, Powerscourt imagined he would hit the bull’s eye at two hundred yards with a gun in his hand. Now Powerscourt began to climb towards the roof. There were eight rungs to go. Still no sound from down below. Maybe the Russians were demoralized. Maybe the Major was giving them a pep talk.

Powerscourt was now walking uncertainly along the roof. The train was travelling at about twenty-five miles per hour. Light snow was beginning to fall. He saw that the gap between the two carriages was only four or five feet, not too hazardous a leap even for a person who was terrified of heights and regarded the roof of a Russian train as being about the same height as a skyscraper in Chicago. Then he heard it. There was a volley of shots down below, followed by a small cheer. Five seconds later there were four rounds from the pistol, followed by two screams and the sound of Ricky Crabbe coming up the steps and along the roof. Powerscourt thought there might be a pause down below while the wounded were attended to. Perhaps the other three were dead. As he jumped across to the top of the fourth carriage he saw that Ricky was now lying flat, waiting for the first Russian head to surface on to the roof of the carriage before he blew it away. Telegraph transmission seemed to be a good training ground for war. For the first time Powerscourt began to hope that they might survive this escapade. He had done what he was called on to do. He had fulfilled his mission. He dared not imagine what Lady Lucy would think of him cavorting about on top of a Russian train in the middle of the night, pursued by a gang of Russian soldiery. Lady Lucy, he realized bitterly, would be even less pleased with him now. For Nemesis had arrived at the other end of the third carriage. Johnny Fitzgerald and Mikhail must have descended back into the train before Nemesis began his climb.

Major Shatilov was looking at Powerscourt, delighted with his prey.

‘Good evening, Major.’ Powerscourt was trying to sound calmer than he felt. ‘A very good evening to you.’

The Major was standing right in the centre of the roof of the carriage. He took a gun from his pocket and shook his head. He shouted at Powerscourt in Russian. Then he pulled a whip from his other pocket and waved it vigorously towards his enemy. After a while he cracked it a couple of times. The thong seemed to Powerscourt to travel through the air at incredible speed. Then Shatilov pointed to his watch and his right hand went round many many times. It’s going to be a long-drawn-out affair, Powerscourt thought, death that might take a week or maybe two. Shatilov shouted some more. Powerscourt remembered the dreadful stories of Russian criminals sentenced to a thousand birch lashes in the terrible punishment known as running the gauntlet. When the victims collapsed after three hundred lashes or so they were carried off the parade ground. But when they had recovered they were merely restored to the gauntlet at the point where they had stopped on the previous occasion. Second time around most of the prisoners dropped dead long before they reached the thousand blows.

Powerscourt wondered if Ricky Crabbe could hear the crack of the whip or the sound of Shatilov’s voice. Maybe it was lost in the wind. He wondered if he should jump off the train and take his chance with a broken leg on the hard ground. He thought of his children and said a prayer for Lady Lucy. Maybe he should never have accepted this assignment and should have remained with the transepts and clerestories, the chantry chapels and the sarcophagi of England’s cathedrals. The Major was still fingering his whip, feasting his eyes on Powerscourt and his plight. Then Powerscourt saw hope. He saw more than hope. He saw Nemesis coming this time for Major Shatilov, as long as he didn’t look around. Powerscourt began talking to hold his attention. He pretended to plead for mercy. He sank to his knees, his hands raised in supplication. All the time his brain was calculating speed and distances and the time he would have to act unless he was to meet the same fate as the Major. On and on he went with his pleading. Already he had worked out what to do when the last moment came. It was nearly here. Shatilov was still looking at him. Now! Now! Powerscourt flung himself down and pressed his head and his body as tightly as he could into the roof of the carriage. The full force of the centre of the brick bridge hit Shatilov between the shoulder blades and broke his back. He was flung on to the roof of the carriage and his body scraped along the top of the bridge’s arch for a while before he toppled over the side. He was further mangled by the wheels of the train as they passed over him and rolled on into the night.

Ricky Crabbe crawled over to Powerscourt. ‘I had him covered, sir, but I didn’t want to shoot in case I only wounded him and he shot you. I’ve seen off one of those soldiers coming up to the roof. Don’t think the rest will be in any great hurry.’

A couple of minutes later they were dropping down into the first carriage, nearly stepping over Johnny Fitzgerald who was lying flat on the floor with a pair of enormous spanners in his hand. The sergeant was by his side, his tunic removed, his shirt sleeves rolled up, ready for some enormous feat of physical exertion.

‘Am I glad to see you, Francis. The peasants pretending to be soldiers are all down at the back of the train. We’re all here now, us and the four ladies.’

Powerscourt saw the women huddling together as if for warmth right in front of the door into the driver’s compartment. Mikhail stood between them and the door. God only knew what debauchery they expected now there were four of the foreigners to play together. Powerscourt told Johnny about the Major’s end. ‘I bet you were glad to see the end of him, Francis. Killed at the bridge eh? Like Horatius he asked, “Now who will stand on either hand And keep the bridge with me?” No answer in both cases. Now, if you’ll stand back, I’m going to try this. I’ve nearly finished but I had to wait till you showed up, Francis. All my life I’ve wanted to do this.’

Johnny took one of his enormous spanners and bent over the divide between the first and second carriages. There was an enormous grunt, then another, closely followed by a screech of metal. Then he and the Black Watch sergeant lent all their force into pushing the second carriage away from the first. As Powerscourt stared at the second carriage he saw a wounded soldier enter it at the far end. But as the man began to walk towards the front of the train, he seemed to be getting, not closer, but further and further away. They could see a look of astonishment on the man’s face as he realized he would never reach the front of the train, that he would not reach the doctors of St Petersburg on this journey. Johnny had decoupled the engine and the first carriage from the rest of the train. What remained of Shatilov’s pathetic army would soon be stranded in the middle of the countryside with no engine. They would probably block the line until they could be towed away. As Powerscourt looked round his little band, Johnny with grease on his hands and his arms, Ricky Crabbe, his clothes filthy from crawling along the roof, Mikhail with a great bruise on his forehead from bumping into the rungs up to a carriage roof, the sergeant trying to get the dirt off his arms, he felt very proud of them. Johnny was still staring out the back, rubbing his hands together in his delight, rejoicing in his severed train. It was Mikhail who spoke.

‘I’ve managed to convince the ladies, Lord Powerscourt, that you at least are a respectable person. I’ve told them you can reassure them in Russian. They’re going to ask you now.’

With that Mikhail had a brief conversation with the four women. One of them stared hard at Powerscourt and fired a rapid salvo at him in Russian.

‘I am from the British Embassy and we all have diplomatic immunity,’ Powerscourt replied in what he hoped was his best Russian and trying to remember where Mikhail had told him to put the emphasis. There was another blast from the four ladies. Powerscourt looked inquisitively at Mikhail.

‘What have we here?’ he asked.

‘They say,’ Mikhail laughed, ‘that you’re nothing better than a damned horse thief and they’re going to report you to the authorities the second this train reaches St Petersburg.’

Before he went to bed that night Powerscourt drafted a letter for the Ambassador to send in the morning. It was addressed to the Tsar and outlined in considerable detail what had happened to him and his colleagues, the theft of the horses, the beginnings of torture, the total lack of respect afforded to citizens of the United Kingdom and a man attached to its Foreign Office. How would the Russians feel, he asked rhetorically, if a member of their diplomatic staff on a mission to the King in Buckingham Palace was hijacked on his way out and taken to be stretched on the rack at the Tower of London? Powerscourt made no reference to their escape and the little battle on the train. Nor did he say anything about the substance of his conversation with Nicholas the Second. He doubted very much if the letter would reach the Tsar himself. Some court official would doubtless read it, but even that, he felt, should be sufficient to put a stop to the activities of Major Shatilov’s successors. In that assumption he could not have been more wrong.

For at eleven o’clock the following morning a distraught and tearful Mikhail presented himself at the British Embassy. Natasha, he told a weary Powerscourt and de Chassiron, resplendent in a new shirt from Paris, had disappeared. A friend of hers was in the city that morning. Natasha had told her, Mikhail reported, that she thought she was being followed by some of the soldiers of the guard. Perhaps they had taken her prisoner. Perhaps they were going to mistreat her.

‘She disappeared once before, didn’t she,’ asked Powerscourt as gently as he could, ‘and she came back again, didn’t she?’

‘That was because the little boy was ill, my lord,’ said Mikhail. ‘He’s not ill now, at least not for the present.’

De Chassiron saw how upset the young man was. Anybody might fall in love with Natasha. He himself could easily have fallen in love with her. Perhaps the entire squad of soldiers in the Alexander Palace had fallen in love with her.

‘You don’t suppose,’ Mikhail was tormenting himself now, ‘that they will take revenge on Natasha for what happened to the Major and the others last night?’

That thought had crossed Powerscourt’s mind some moments before. He looked at his watch. The engineless train should have been discovered by now. Perhaps Shatilov’s mutilated body had also been found. It would take some time, he thought, to work out how he had met his end. The presumption would be that he had been killed by one of the Englishmen rather than destroyed by a bridge. He stared hard at a print of King’s College Cambridge behind de Chassiron’s desk, the Chapel standing out like a bulwark or a beacon of man’s love of God in a sceptical and scientific city. He could see de Chassiron lounging about on the grass in his gown, arguing with the dons. Powerscourt wondered if the print followed him on all his postings, a travelling reminder of the glory of youth accompanying him into the shallows of middle age.

It must have been the print that made up his mind, he told Johnny later. For when he turned his gaze back to de Chassiron he knew exactly what he was going to do.

‘There’s only one thing for it,’ he said. ‘The Ambassador has, I hope, sent on the letter I drafted for him last night. That made no mention of the little battle on the train or the death of the ghastly Major. Any references to those events would, it seems to me, be likely to have the most unpleasant consequences. Who are these English people anyway? What is their business here? They are spies. Of course they are spies. And what happens to the heroic defenders of the person of the Tsar and the integrity of his realm when they apprehend these villains and try to extract information from them by traditional Russian methods? Why, the heroic Major is slain doing his duty. Powerscourt and the rest of his English rabble are murderers. To the cells with them! Death to the traitors! Long live the Tsar!’

‘You could have a point there, Powerscourt,’ drawled de Chassiron. ‘At the very least you could be locked up for years before any case came to trial. Last night you were up on the roof of a railway compartment. Maybe in view of the fact that these people guard the roads and the railways you’ll have to leave on another.’

‘I’m damned if I’m going to crawl out of this country like a criminal,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The important thing at the moment is to rescue Natasha. I’m going to rouse Johnny Fitzgerald and then he and I are going to pay a visit to General Derzhenov at the Okhrana headquarters on the Fontanka.’

‘And what are you going to do when you get there? Pop yourself into one of those nice cells they have in the basement?’ De Chassiron looked as if he thought his friend had gone mad.

‘Let me try to put it into diplomatic language for you, de Chassiron. I am going, on behalf of the British Government, to conduct a negotiation aimed at the speedy release of Miss Bobrinsky who has been a great friend to the British Foreign Office and the British Government.’

‘That makes her sound like a spy, an English spy,’ said de Chassiron. ‘That might not do her any good at all. I think you have to let events take their course. There’s nothing we can do. Talk of going to the Okhrana is so much pie in the sky. Why should they lift a finger to help us?’

‘I think you are wrong there. In fact I’m sure of it. Derzhenov has already asked to see me to discuss my conversation with the Tsar. I propose to tell him something, but not necessarily all of what was said, in exchange for the immediate release of Natasha.’

‘But he’s not going to interfere with another of Russia’s intelligence agencies.’ De Chassiron sounded very certain.

‘My dear man,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘this is one of the problems of having competing intelligence agencies. They usually hate their rivals far more than they hate their enemies. I bet you the Okhrana loathe the late Major Shatilov and his organization. Anything they can do to bring them into disrepute brings more power to the Okhrana.’

‘And how much do you propose to tell him? More than you propose telling our Ambassador here, or myself? That would be rather treacherous conduct.’

‘That’s unfair,’ said Powerscourt angrily. ‘You know perfectly well that I am specifically instructed to give the results of my investigation to the Prime Minister and to him alone. At present, however much I might want to fill you in, de Chassiron, I just can’t do it. Anyway, we shall see,’ said Powerscourt, rising from his chair. ‘Please come too, Mikhail, Derzhenov speaks very good English but I have no idea who else we might meet on the way.’

Derzhenov was alone in his office on the fourth floor. The villainous Colonel Kolchak, Powerscourt thought, must be kicking people to death in the basement cells.

‘How good of you to call, Lord Powerscourt!’ the head of the Okhrana purred. ‘And you must be the famous Johnny Fitzgerald. And Mikhail, of course, in case I forget my English. You come just as you said you would, Lord Powerscourt, the morning after your interview with the Tsar. How kind! How very kind!’

Powerscourt felt as though a month had elapsed since his interview with the Tsar. ‘Now then, my friend,’ Derzhenov went on, ‘I understand you have had some interesting adventures since your interview. Is that not so? Interesting adventures?’

‘I will tell you about those in a moment, if I may, General Derzhenov. But most of all I want to ask for your assistance.’

‘My assistance, Lord Powerscourt? How can the son of a humble schoolteacher possibly be of assistance to the representative of the greatest empire on earth?’

Powerscourt felt that American or German historians might take issue with the last statement but he did not think the time or the place were appropriate for a discussion on the rise and fall of empires. ‘It is a very simple matter, General. It concerns a young lady called Natasha Bobrinsky. She is a friend of Mikhail. She has been helping us in a general sort of way, in the inquiries about Mr Martin, for example. She has done nothing whatsoever to harm or betray her country. She is employed part-time as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. For the past few days she felt she was being followed by members of the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division. This morning she has disappeared.’

Derzhenov frowned deeply at the mention of the Imperial Guard. ‘And you would like my help to find her?’ he asked. ‘Is she one of the – how do I put it? – the Bobrinsky Bobrinskys?’

‘She is,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and with your help I am sure she would be released by lunchtime.’

Derzhenov laughed a rather alarming laugh. ‘I’m not sure about that, Lord Powerscourt. I think you are exaggerating my powers. But tell me,’ Derzhenov began running the tips of his fingers together, ‘what information do you bring me this morning, the morning after your interview with the Tsar?’

What was Natasha Bobrinsky worth? How much should he tell the head of the Okhrana? None of it? Some of it? All of it? Powerscourt had been running these questions through his mind on the way to the Okhrana headquarters. He still had no answers. He knew nothing that would endanger British national interests. In fact, some of what he knew damaged Russian national interests rather more than his own. Yet somehow he found the prospect of telling his secrets to the head of a foreign intelligence agency who was not allied to Great Britain very hard to take. It would have been different if it had been the urbane head of the French secret service, weaving elegant plots with his Watteau in the Place des Vosges.

‘If I tell you, General, will you secure the release of Miss Bobrinsky?’ said Powerscourt, hoping to be saved by the non-specific nature of his statement. But Derzhenov was too wily a bird to fall for that one.

‘I’m afraid, my friend, you will have to do better than that. I might promise to secure the release of the young lady – if I can – and you would tell me nothing. Why don’t you tell me what transpired and then I will tell you what I might be able to do to release the young lady.’

‘But then,’ now it was Powerscourt’s turn, ‘I could tell you all I know and get nothing in return. Assuming,’ he smiled at the General, ‘you were an unreasonable man. Which you’re not.’ Oddly enough, Powerscourt was certain that this man opposite, who whipped his prisoners for fun, who had the more unfortunate of them killed in ways that replicated classical paintings, would, nevertheless, keep his word.

‘We could go on like this all day,’ said Derzhenov. ‘I suspect that in our careers we often have. Lord Powerscourt, I ask you to trust me. If you tell me what happened and I think you are telling the truth we will see what can be done with this Natasha Bobrinsky. If you do not trust me, then I suggest you leave now. That way you will not compromise yourself or your mission. Your knowledge will remain with you. Miss Bobrinsky will remain locked up. But I hope you do not leave.’

There was a pause. Neither Johnny Fitzgerald nor Mikhail spoke. Then Powerscourt held out his hand. One part of his brain said, You’re shaking hands with a mass murderer. The other part said, ‘Very good, General. I accept what you say. Let me begin with the original nature of my mission to St Petersburg, the question of who killed Roderick Martin.’ Powerscourt saw that Derzhenov had begun taking copious notes. Perhaps he and his information were going to end up as dusty footnotes in the Okhrana files. Information supplied by the English investigator Powerscourt.

‘The last we knew of him was that he left the Tsar at about ten o’clock. The Tsar declined to say anything at all about the nature of their conversation. Martin appeared to vanish until the appearance of his corpse on the Nevskii three or four hours later.’

Powerscourt paused and poured himself a glass of water. Water shall wash away their tears, he said to himself. ‘I now know what happened to him. He was apprehended by members of the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division under the control of a Major Shatilov.’

‘This Major Shatilov, Lord Powerscourt, have you seen him lately? A little bird tells me he has gone missing.’

‘I’m not sure I have anything to add to that,’ said Powerscourt blandly. ‘As I say, Mr Martin was taken into custody by the Major in a house on the outskirts of Tsarskoe Selo.’

Derzhenov was still writing. Powerscourt waited patiently until he had finished before he went on. ‘Major Shatilov was most anxious to know the nature of Mr Martin’s conversation with the Tsar, almost as anxious as yourself, General. It’s strange how all the intelligence agencies should want the same piece of news, it really is.’

There was a cackle from Derzhenov. ‘Just get on with the story, Powerscourt. What did Martin tell him?’

‘He didn’t tell him anything.’

‘So what did Shatilov do then?’

‘He beat him to death with a knout, General.’

‘Is that so, Lord Powerscourt?’ Derzhenov looked up from his scribbling. ‘That’s very bad management,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘people shouldn’t die from a single session with the whip.’

‘Maybe he had a weak heart, General Derzhenov. Maybe it was because members of the British Foreign Office don’t live in a world where people are beaten to death with whips. They’re not used to it.’

‘You could have a point there, Lord Powerscourt.’ Derzhenov was back writing again. ‘And you are sure the man Martin said nothing before he died?’

‘Not a word, General.’

‘Not a word? I see. But tell me, what is your source for this information? Where does it come from?’

‘Why, General,’ said Powerscourt, trying to look as innocent as possible, ‘it came from Major Shatilov himself.’

‘Really?’ said Derzhenov with great emphasis. ‘Was this the last action of the Major before he disappeared? Do you expect him to turn up early one morning on the Nevskii, rather like Mr Martin before him?’

Powerscourt had decided some moments before precisely what he was going to tell the Okhrana man. He was going to tell him about Martin’s death as he had done. He was going to tell him about the last conversation Martin had with the Tsar in the sense that it now seemed that a flight to Norfolk was less likely. He would, if he had to, tell him about the death of Shatilov and the skirmish on the train. But he would not, out of a sense of loyalty to the Tsar, disclose anything about the haemophilia. He felt sure the Tsar would want that to remain private.

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Powerscourt, reluctant to be drawn into detailed discussion on the man’s death. Though it was the bridge that killed him, a hostile prosecutor could easily make out a case against Powerscourt and his men.

‘I see, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Derzhenov, temporarily chewing on the end of his pen and looking closely at the Englishman. ‘Maybe we shall come back to this later. But tell me, what of Martin’s conversation with the Tsar?’

So Powerscourt told him: the original approach from the Tsar to the English King asking if his wife and family would be welcome in England, the despatch of Martin, bearing the answer that they would be welcome in Norfolk, Powerscourt’s discovery of the place where they were to be accommodated, the final reluctance to take up the offer, for reasons as yet unexplained.

‘Did the Tsar tell you this himself, Lord Powerscourt? Were there just the two of you at the meeting?’

‘There were just the two of us, General,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and no, the Tsar did not tell me, I told him.’

‘You told him, Lord Powerscourt? But how did you know? You weren’t even there!’

‘Let me put it this way, General, I worked it out. I don’t want to say anything more about my methods, if you don’t mind. But the Tsar confirmed that it was more or less true.’ There’s no point, he said to himself, in rescuing Natasha Bobrinsky from the frying pans of Major Shatilov, heated to unbearable levels, no doubt, before being applied to stripped flesh, into the fires of the Okhrana, gridirons and reproductions of the martyrdom of St Lawrence a speciality.

Derzhenov suddenly seemed to make up his mind. He stopped writing and carefully screwed the top back on to his German fountain pen. ‘Lord Powerscourt, I think there is more that you are not yet telling me. I believe you know more than you let on about the death of Major Shatilov. Let me just ask you one question on that subject, if I may. If he were to be found dead, would you say – assuming you were a guessing man, you understand – that he was killed in a fight or by accident?’

‘Being completely ignorant of the facts, General, I would not like to make any comment at all,’ said Powerscourt, beginning to sweat slightly.

‘I forgive you,’ said Derzhenov, smiling at his visitor. ‘There is one piece of information you have, I believe, which you are not telling me about, but I know it already. Fear not. I respect you for not telling me. Now then. Miss Bobrinsky, how shall I put this? You could tell her friends to expect her back in St Petersburg this afternoon.’

And with that a beaming Derzhenov led them down the stairs and out into the fresh air. He shook them all warmly by the hand. For once there were no noxious smells or sounds of horror coming from the basement.

‘What on earth,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald when they were a good hundred yards clear of the building, ‘was that last bit about?’

‘The bit about I know what you’re not telling me but I don’t mind? He means, I think, that he knows about the haemophilia. Quite how he knows, I can’t imagine. I just hope his organization is quite secure or the whole bloody Russian Empire will know about it before the end of the year.’