The White Russian

33

T hroughout the journey, Ruzsky had watched the excitement building in Maria’s eyes, but as they crossed the Crimean isthmus under a clear blue sky, she seemed more than ever like a little girl on the final leg of a long journey home. Her bag was packed and she gazed endlessly out of the open train window, the warm breeze of Russia ’s subtropical paradise on both their faces.

The night had transported them to another world. The previous evening, they had pulled down the blinds on sleeting rain and mile upon mile of bare brown fields, fringed by straggling birch trees. This morning, they had opened them to a flood of sunshine, fruit trees in full blossom, and a bay as blue as fallen aquamarine.

Below, the town of Sevastopol stood perched on a barren rock, narrow streets leading down to a wide harbor. Overhead, black and white gulls circled. Out in the still waters of the bay, two gray battleships lay at anchor, the Russian national flag twisting lazily from their sterns.

Ruzsky had his own memories of holidays here. They’d come twice to see an aunt who had a modest palace not far from the Tsar’s own in Yalta, but his recollections, though warm, were vague and misted by time.

The conductor knocked and poked his head around the door. “Everything all right, mademoiselle?” He looked at Ruzsky suspiciously, as he had throughout the journey.

“Yes.”

“A couple more minutes. You’ll arrange your own transportation on to Yalta?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The conductor eyed Ruzsky again. “You don’t wish me to arrange it for you?”

“No. Thank you.”

The conductor retreated.

The train wound slowly down the last hill. Ruzsky glanced at Maria, but she did not respond. If her excitement had grown as the journey had progressed, so too had the distance between them. Her manner was still warm, but the farther south they had traveled, the more she’d retreated into herself.

He told himself it was the natural melancholy of a return to her own past.

“You will go straight to the sanatorium?” Ruzsky asked.

She continued to stare out of the window.

“What is it called?”

Maria looked at him. The distance between them was solidifying, but he could not tell why. Once again, he suppressed a momentary sense of alarm. “The Tatyana Committee Convalescent Home.” She turned back to the window.

The train jerked twice as the brakes were suddenly applied and then pulled very slowly into the station, the porters waiting on the platform disappearing in a huge cloud of steam. Maria was instantly on her feet, her small leather case in her hand until Ruzsky wrested it from her.

He followed her down onto the platform, a warm breeze on their faces. She disappeared into the cloud of steam too, and he hurried after her.

The platform was busier and bigger than he remembered. A large group swarmed forward in front of him to greet a friend or relative disembarking from the train and Ruzsky lost sight of her again.

He halted. He could not see her ahead, so he looked back and, just for a second, as the steam floated down the length of the platform, he saw a man standing at the far end whom he could have sworn was Ivan Prokopiev. Ruzsky took a step toward him, but the man appeared to realize that he had been seen and slipped from view, into the crowd. Ruzsky looked about him once more and saw Maria emerging into the sunlight by the exit.

When he caught up with her, she looked startled and, for a split second, examined him strangely, as if she had no idea who he was, just as she had done outside the theater in Petersburg. “Sandro,” she said.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

He shook his head. “Can you wait a moment?”

Maria was squinting.

“There is something I need to check,” he said.

She didn’t respond.

Ruzsky retraced his steps back to the platform. It was still crowded with passengers and porters, escaping steam and the hubbub of voices.

Ruzsky wove his way through the crowd. An elderly man selling lemonade in old bottles sat next to a group of conductors talking in a small circle. There were a couple of soldiers, but the atmosphere was different from that in the big cities farther north. The air was warm, sunlight filtering through the glass roof onto the platform. Some people around him were in shirtsleeves.

Ruzsky reached the point at which he thought he’d seen Prokopiev, but there was no sign of anyone. He walked through the exit, squinting too as he stepped out into the sunshine. A fly landed on his cheek and he waved it away. A group of small boys leaned against the station wall, playing a game with what looked like primitive musket balls instead of marbles. He asked them if they had seen a tall man with short hair leaving the station by this exit, but they looked at him uncomprehendingly. Perhaps it was his accent.

Ruzsky went back onto the platform and returned to the relative shade of its central section. Shafts of sunlight illuminated the dust in the hazy air. Ruzsky gave a brief description of Prokopiev, but although the men at least appeared to understand him, they all shook their heads.

Ruzsky gave up. He scoured the platform as he returned to where he’d left Maria.

But when he reached the road, she wasn’t there. He waited for a few minutes and concluded she had probably gone to excuse herself.

Ruzsky took out his cigarette case, then returned it to his pocket. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feel of sunlight upon his face.

Time stretched out. He waited ten minutes or more, then checked his pocket watch. Confusion gave way to very mild irritation.

Ruzsky returned to survey the platform once more and then came back out into the sunshine. Almost all of the passengers had gone.

He tried to relax, but a tiny kernel of doubt had entered his mind.

On the far side of the road, a lone troika driver was still waiting for his passengers. Ruzsky wandered slowly over and asked him whether he had seen a tall and beautiful dark-haired woman carrying a simple leather case. Although the man’s accent was thick, Ruzsky understood from his answer that he was certain he had. She’d climbed onto a car with two men and driven up the hill, in the direction of Yalta.

Ruzsky argued with him, but the man was emphatic and then curtly dismissive. Ruzsky turned around. There were two more automobiles waiting in a rank outside the station-no doubt to ferry rich bankers from Moscow to their homes on the coast. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of money, and began to count it.

The driver said the journey would take three hours in a car-much quicker than the last time Ruzsky was here-and the first hour consisted, as he recalled, of a comfortable journey across the dusty plain past occasional monuments to ancient battlefields.

After that, they wound up through valleys and golden hills to the gray gateway of Aie Petri miles above the sea. As they passed it, Ruzsky began to feel sick and grew tired of the interminable twists of the descent, past crowded Tartar villages and great white villas with stone-walled gardens and baby cypress trees.

Their journey was slowed by the many simple Tartar pony-trap carriages, but eventually Ruzsky caught sight of the bay of Ghurzuf and the white town huddled untidily along the shore, brilliant in the midday sunshine.

He pulled himself upright as the cab wound slowly down toward the bay. It was just as he remembered it: an azure sea beneath cloudless skies. In more than just a geographical sense, this elegant town was a long way from the Empire’s frozen capital. A two-day journey transported one to a different world.

Ruzsky asked to be dropped off at the top of the hill and, with his bag on his shoulder, he strolled briskly down narrow alleys, past colorful Tartar houses, to the seafront.

The Oreanda Hotel, with its giant blue awning, faced the promenade and Ruzsky had fondly imagined that they would be able to claim they were on police business and insist on staying here for nothing, but the hotel was smarter than he recalled and he doubted the wisdom of this plan as he walked through its cool, airy hallway to the reception desk.

In front of him, a swarthy man in a dark red and gold uniform was talking to a colleague next to a tall palm tree. A fan turned on the desk. The man ambled forward, smiling. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m here to check in. Chief Investigator Ruzsky from Petrograd.”

“Yes, sir.” Ruzsky had wanted the attendant to be impressed, but he wasn’t. “Your colleague told us you would be arriving.”

“Is he here?”

“I do not believe so. I have not seen him this morning.” The man turned and examined the rack behind him for Pavel’s key. “He must have taken his key with him, sir.”

“Is there a message?”

The attendant shook his head.

“Which room is he in?”

“Number eleven. Next to your own.”

Ruzsky filled out the form he was given and took possession of his key. He waved away the offer of assistance from the porter and climbed the wide stone steps to the first floor. He knocked on the door of number eleven, but there was no answer, so he slipped into his own room. It was large and airy with a small balcony overlooking the sea. It had dark wooden floors and a large, four-poster bed. Ruzsky stepped onto the balcony. Even though it was only one floor up, the breeze seemed stronger here.

Ruzsky put his hands in his pockets and gazed out over the shimmering water. Above him, craggy mountains rose majestically toward the sky. It was the most romantic place in the world, and the thought left a dull ache in the pit of his stomach.

Ruzsky slipped back inside and tried to turn his mind to the job he had come here to do. He shut the windows, then sat at the desk and wrote Pavel a note on the headed paper the hotel provided, the sun streaming onto his face.

Outside, he knocked once more on Pavel’s door to be sure he was not there and then slipped the note beneath it.