The White Russian

39

F okine was onstage at the Mariinskiy, his voice echoing around the empty auditorium. Ruzsky and Pavel stood beneath the golden splendor of the royal box, the double-headed eagle of Imperial Russia looking down upon them.

Fokine pointedly ignored them for a few minutes. Ruzsky kept his temper.

“Yes,” Fokine said, at length.

“I need a word.”

“I’m busy.”

“So am I.”

“You’re the detective?” Fokine asked, knowing perfectly well who he was. The other dancers were looking at him with ill-disguised contempt.

Ruzsky breathed in silently.

“Can’t it wait?” Fokine asked, a hand upon his waist.

“No.”

“I know what it is about.”

“Then it will not take much of your time.”

Fokine turned around. “I’ll be down in a minute-”

“Get down here. Now,” Ruzsky snapped, and the tone of his voice made Fokine swing around sharply.

The choreographer hesitated for a moment, in shock, before moving across the stage swiftly. One of the younger dancers sniggered.

Ruzsky took hold of Fokine’s arm and moved him through a door beside the orchestra pit. Pavel, who had been standing behind him, followed quietly. The corridor was dark, the man’s ghostly face dimly lit by the lights from the stage. He had a big nose and red lips, which he pursed together when frightened. “Where is she?” Ruzsky asked.

“Where is who?”

Ruzsky stared into his eyes. “Do you want a spell in the Lithuanian Castle?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

Ruzsky gripped his arm tighter. “Do you have any idea what they would do to a man like you?”

“Let go of me.”

Ruzsky dug his thumb and forefinger into Fokine’s arm until he squeaked. Pavel took a step closer, as if preparing to intercede.

The choreographer wriggled, so Ruzsky released him, took out his heavy revolver, cocked it, and placed it against the bridge of Fokine ’s nose. “I’m afraid I don’t have time to be polite.”

“I have no idea where she is.”

“I think differently.”

“Why should I-”

“I think you know.”

Ruzsky pressed harder.

“All right.” Fokine raised his hand and pushed the gun away. He was shaking, a thin sheen of sweat clinging to his forehead. “You’ll find her at the Symnov factory today.”

“The Symnov factory?”

“Yes.” Fokine wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his velvet jacket. “There is a strike. That is where you will find her.”

The Symnov factory loomed like a giant in the half-darkness, its tall brick chimneys towering above them.

Ruzsky was jammed inside a tram, the air warm with the heat of bodies, despite the cold outside, steam gathering in the windows. Pavel was two feet away and they eyed each other warily.

The trolley bell rang and they joined the crowd getting off opposite the factory.

It was not yet five, but it was already dark, the moon bright as the crowd flowed toward the gates and the mass of people gathered beyond them. There appeared to be an equal number of men and women-solemn, unyielding faces staring at them as they pushed through.

Ruzsky and Pavel were shoulder to shoulder. “Why don’t you go home?” Ruzsky hissed into his ear, but the big detective ignored him.

A group of strike organizers stood at the gates, controlling the flow of people, and Ruzsky forged his way toward one. He was a tall man with short hair and round glasses-a student, Ruzsky thought, rather than a worker.

“Identification,” the man demanded.

Ruzsky shook his head. He was a couple of feet ahead of Pavel now.

“You’ve no papers?”

“I left them behind.”

The man assessed him. “Then you’d better make sure the Okhrana don’t get their hands on you.”

He was allowed through into the factory yard, where perhaps as many as a thousand people had gathered.

Ruzsky became acutely conscious of the police photographs and revolver digging into his ribs. He cursed himself for not disposing of them.

Ruzsky surveyed the crowd, trying to get his bearings.

He looked back and saw Pavel showing some papers to the man at the gate. Perhaps he had got himself issued a set that did not list his occupation.

One group of men had gathered around a brazier. Ahead, light flickered on the stone steps leading to the factory entrance.

Pavel joined him and Ruzsky found his concern eased by his friend’s grim determination. They slipped through the crowd, trying to scrutinize faces in the distance, while avoiding those close by. Wherever they went, they appeared to attract hostile and suspicious glances.

After ten minutes or more, Ruzsky stopped in one corner of the yard. He took out and lit a cigarette, then offered one to Pavel. They smoked in silence, listening to the expectant murmur of conversation.

Ruzsky saw her emerge onto the steps. She looked around, then disappeared again. Ruzsky threw his cigarette to the ground and began to walk toward her. He looked back to check that Pavel had not followed him and saw the warning in his friend’s eyes.

The light on the steps came from flaming torches bolted to the walls. Ruzsky followed her into the half-darkness of the central hall.

A man stepped forward. His demeanor was much more aggressive than that of the guard at the gate. “Yes?”

Ruzsky pointed at the stairwell ahead of him. “I was with the woman who just came through.”

“Who?”

“The woman who just passed.”

“What is her name?”

Ruzsky frowned. “Maria. Maria Popova.”

The guard relaxed a little. He came forward and Ruzsky saw that he had a revolver in his right hand. “Papers.”

“I don’t have any. I just told the man at the gate.”

“You have no papers?”

“No.”

The man was confused.

“You’re with Popova?” he asked again.

“Yes.”

The guard nodded for him to continue and slipped back into the shadows.

Ruzsky walked up the staircase to the landing on the first floor. A small group stood in an alcove, gathered around a man who leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He was tall, good-looking, and well groomed, his dark hair short and his features neat, lean, and angular. Torchlight bathed his face as he listened to the woman beside him. Ruzsky was certain that this was the last member of the group in Yalta, Michael Borodin.

The man’s eyes flicked to the right. He stared at Ruzsky.

Maria swung slowly around. Her expression did not alter. She was a stranger to him.

“Yes?” Borodin asked.

Ruzsky took a step forward. Their eyes bored into him. He thought of the guard at the bottom of the stairs and the thousand hostile faces in the courtyard below.

“I…”

Maria stared at him, her look now every bit as hostile as the others’.

Ruzsky could feel the muscles in his face starting to twitch and a low pain gather in the pit of his stomach.

“Who are you?”

Borodin did not move, but he did not need to.

Maria offered no hope or acknowledgment. Ruzsky did not move. He could not think.

“Who are you?” Borodin asked again, with greater force.

“I am Alexander…” Ruzsky’s voice was weak. He could think of no believable explanation for his presence, nor any means of escape. He had told the guard he knew Maria Popova, but if he made the same mistake here, she would denounce him.

He took an involuntary step backward. The stares grew still more hostile. They could sense his confusion and taste his fear.

The hallway was silent but for the hissing of the torches.

Ruzsky watched, helpless, as Michael Borodin reached inside his coat.

“Alexander is a friend,” Maria interceded.

Borodin lowered his hand slowly.

Her eyes never leaving his, Maria approached Ruzsky, took his arm, and led him gently forward to the edge of the group.

Borodin stared at Ruzsky. He had a fierce, unblinking gaze. “Who is he?”

“He’s in the Ministry of War. Sandro. Sandro Khabarin.”

“What is he doing here?”

“I invited him.”

“Why did you invite him?”

“He wished to become one of us.”

“Why does he wish to become one of us?”

Maria looked at Ruzsky. Her eyes carried the most potent warning. Now they were bound together in danger and his heart swelled in gratitude. “We cannot wait any longer,” Ruzsky said. “Everyone must play their part.”

“We cannot wait any longer?” Borodin’s eyes flicked to the hallway and then back again. “Why can we wait no longer?”

“Things cannot go on as they are. Even the Tsar’s servants know it.”

“And you are a servant of the Tsar?”

“We all are.”

Borodin tilted his head fractionally, his scrutiny unbroken. He took his right hand from his pocket and slowly scratched his cheek. Ruzsky could see the bulge in his overcoat and was certain that he was armed. “What does the servant of the Tsar wish to do about it?”

“It is too late for anything but revolution.”

Borodin smiled. “But that has always been so.”

“Perhaps.”

“I question whether an official of the Tsar, with soft hands and a softer mind, is prepared to sacrifice himself for our cause. Why not join the liberals, with their many lunatic schemes?”

Ruzsky did not answer.

“Do you question that, Maria?”

“No.”

“No?” Borodin turned to face him again. “She is confident. We trust Maria, perhaps above all people. But should we trust you?” Borodin looked into his eyes. “Should we trust the man with soft hands? What would you do for the revolution, Khabarin?” He smiled. “Would you kill a man?”

“Of course.”

“Would you kill a friend at your Ministry of War, another enemy of the state?”

“Yes.”

Borodin turned to the others. “A man who will kill his own comrades?”

Ruzsky stared at him.

“But you wish to impress us. And not too much. I like that.” Borodin’s eyes searched Ruzsky’s own. “Very well. A friend of the ballerina is a friend to us all.”

Borodin turned back to the group. The man next to him was thin and, like the student at the gate, wore tiny round glasses. His teeth were poor and his hair dirty. The woman on the other side of him could have been his older sister; she, too, looked like she had seen neither soap nor water. Her lank hair hung down to her waist, a cloth cap in her hand. Once, she might have been almost pretty, but her face was lined and careworn, her teeth rotten. The pair were resentful, Ruzsky could see, not of him but of Maria and the way their leader instinctively responded to her.

There was a fifth member of the group and when he stepped forward into the light, Ruzsky could see that he was just a boy. Sixteen at most.

“As soon as Michael has finished speaking,” the older woman went on, “he will make the announcement. Then we will go.”

“Come,” Borodin said, with sudden urgency. He turned and marched away down the corridor, the torch above his head. They climbed another stone staircase and onto an iron gangway that ran the length of the factory. Borodin walked quickly, the torch splashing light onto the machines standing idle beneath them. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.

Ruzsky was at the rear of the group, Maria just ahead of him.

Borodin led them into a room on the far side of the building. There was a clock on the wall and four desks, all facing tall windows with views across the factory floor. A shelf in front of them was laden with boxes of tools of every description: wrenches, hammers, spanners.

It was cold in here, too.

Borodin swung around to face him.

“Let’s talk about your friend a little more, Maria.”

“He looks like a police agent,” the older woman said, her mouth tight.

Ruzsky tried to keep his breathing even, his face calm.

“An official inside the Ministry of War? It was too good an opportunity to miss.” Maria smiled at him. “I-”

“What is his name again?”

“Khabarin. Alexander Khabarin.”

“How senior is he?”

Maria turned.

“Grade seven,” he responded.

“How did you meet him?”

“I was given his name and address by a friend in Moscow. I was told he was loyal and decent and”-she looked at him significantly-“I have not been disappointed.”

“Why have you not mentioned him before?”

“He needed to be convinced.”

“No revolutionary should need to be convinced.”

Maria did not flinch. “He can provide details of the movements of soldiers and other information that might prove useful. He’s strong and brave.”

This last remark was directed at Borodin, in apparent admonishment of some other members of the group. Ruzsky understood that she was using her own personal standing with the leader to appeal over the heads of the others.

Borodin took a step forward. His face was dark and unyielding and his every movement suggested a violence barely suppressed. “Why now?” Borodin asked.

“I told you already,” Ruzsky responded.

“Where were you educated?”

“My parents were teachers at the Kirochnaya.”

Borodin nodded, understanding the significance of the name. It was an officers’ school and explained his aristocratic bearing.

“He still looks like a police agent,” the woman said.

“I found him, Olga, not the other way around,” Maria’s voice was still controlled. If she shared his fear, the way in which she contained it was extraordinary.

Borodin turned to the others. “Maria is right. We cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by mistrust, isn’t that so, Andrei?”

The boy looked startled. “Of course.”

“But it would be naive to imagine they don’t try to infiltrate us, wouldn’t it?”

Andrei realized he was required to respond. “Yes, Michael.”

“Do you think they have succeeded?”

“I don’t know. I mean, no, they have not.”

“And yet I wonder. This man Maria has brought… It appears she sought him out. The ones we have to watch most carefully are those who have sought us, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Factory workers could be unreliable, couldn’t they, those who approach us to be involved in our work?”

He hesitated. “Yes, they could be.”

“Or students.”

Borodin had returned his hands to his pockets, his black overcoat drawn back. He wore a smart suit beneath it, a silver watch chain strung across his waistcoat.

“Yes,” the boy said.

“Students worry me especially, Andrei.”

Ruzsky saw the boy’s Adam’s apple move violently as he swallowed.

“You’re a student, Andrei.”

Andrei didn’t answer.

“Tonight, for instance, we have plans. Plans that only people in this room know about. People in this room and, I’m told”-he looked Ruzsky straight in the eye-“the police.”

They were silent.

Olga glared at Maria. Ruzsky edged closer to her, but she betrayed no fear, her expression steady, her attention on Borodin. Andrei was farthest away from the torch and his breath was visible on the cold air.

“The police are expecting us.” Borodin took a step back toward the shelf full of tools. “Do you think it should stop us, Andrei?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“The Cossacks are waiting. Aren’t you frightened of them?”

Andrei did not answer, his face white in the half-light.

“Or are you more afraid of being discovered?”

The only sound was the rasp of the boy’s breathing.

“Just a few more days, Andrei.”

The boy swallowed violently.

“By Saturday, our task should be complete. Do you think they know about us?”

Andrei did not respond.

“Answer me!”

“I don’t know.” Andrei blinked rapidly.

“What about our friend the American? What about Ella? What about Borya? Who is killing them, Andrei?”

“I don’t know, Michael.” The boy was on the edge of tears.

“Did the police kill them? Are they picking us off one by one before we can reach our goal?”

As the boy shook his head, Ruzsky moved a fraction and felt the photographs pressing against his chest. He felt a bead of sweat gathering upon his forehead.

Borodin turned toward him, as if sensing his fear. “Perhaps the police are watching us, Khabarin. Perhaps they are trying to infiltrate us?”

Ruzsky did not answer.

“An official at the Ministry of War befriends a pretty girl. She vouches for his loyalty, perhaps in ignorance of his real purpose.”

Ruzsky could feel the sweat run down into the corner of his eye. He tried not to blink.

“They use an agent to try and get close to us. It would be their way, would it not?”

The question was directed at him. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Borodin shook his head. “Then you appear to be less of an expert on the workings of your own government than I think you are.”

They were silent again. Borodin’s eyes never left his. “An infiltrator,” he said softly. “What should we do with such an enemy in our midst?”

Borodin turned away, half shielding the torch. Ruzsky listened to the sound of the boy’s breathing, hoping it drowned out his own.

The eyes of the group flicked from Ruzsky to the boy and back again. Maria watched Borodin.

The torch hit the ground. The flame flared, casting nightmarish shadows as Borodin grabbed a wrench from one of the boxes and turned, his arm above his head. Ruzsky saw his eyes glint as he walked purposefully back toward him. He felt the ice crack beneath his feet, and knew that this time, no one would be able to save him.

Ruzsky saw the terror on Andrei’s face for a split second before the wrench struck the center of the boy’s forehead.

Blood spurted into the air.

Andrei fell, but Borodin was onto him even before he hit the ground, his arm rising and falling. They listened to the sound of the wrench pulverizing flesh and bone.

At last, Borodin straightened. The boy’s head was half lit, but unrecognizable, almost indistinguishable from the pool of blood and pulp that lay beneath it.

Borodin breathed heavily. He began wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand, but it only smeared it further. He bent to pick up the torch.

“Get me a cloth, some water,” Borodin snapped.

Nobody moved.

“Get it,” he snarled.

Maria moved first and broke the spell. Olga followed quickly after her.

Ruzsky stood opposite Borodin, whose breath still rasped from the exertion. He took out a white handkerchief and began to clean his face.

He tried to wipe small particles of Andrei’s skull from his shirt and coat.

Maria returned with a bowl of water and a cloth. She put the bowl down on the shelf and began to attend to Borodin like a maidservant, washing his face and hands, before trying to remove the stains from his clothes.

Ruzsky felt the blood pounding through his brain.

“You still want to be part of this, Khabarin?”

For a moment, Ruzsky did not respond to his assumed name, but he recovered. “Now more than ever,” he said.

“You can report the death to the police, if you wish.”

Ruzsky stared at the revolutionary. He thought that only a man with an intimate relationship with the police would dare to behave like this in front of a stranger, but he held his tongue. “Change has casualties. It could not be otherwise.”

Maria bent over and wiped the blood from the silver chain of Borodin’s pocket watch. Ruzsky felt the muscles twitching in his jaw as he tried to hide his revulsion at the way in which she was attending to him. He tightened his overcoat, the tip of his revolver pressing into his chest.

Could he have stopped the boy’s murder?

Was this the man who had repeatedly stabbed the American and almost severed Markov’s head at the Lion Bridge?

Borodin turned toward him. “You don’t flinch from the sight of blood?”

Ruzsky stared at Andrei’s corpse. Olga and the other man took an arm each and dragged it away to the far corner of the room. Ruzsky heard a thump as they rolled Andrei up against the wall.

“Why aren’t you at the front?” Borodin asked. Maria was concentrating again on his collar.

“I work in the War Ministry.”

“Don’t you want to do your patriotic duty?”

“I’d rather not die for the Tsar, if it is all the same to you.”

Borodin smiled. He took hold of Maria’s hand.

They followed Borodin out onto the steps, Olga holding the torch aloft beside him so that the crowd could see his face. For a moment, Ruzsky stood behind him, but he saw Maria slipping away and he followed her to a corner where they would be less conspicuous.

As she turned, Ruzsky expected to see some kind of recognition or warmth in her face, but all he received was a blank stare. The woman who had saved his life only moments before was again a stranger.

“Good evening, comrades,” Borodin’s voice boomed. His face shone. Ruzsky realized that Andrei’s death had not just been a performance for Alexander Khabarin’s benefit. Borodin had enjoyed every minute of it. He couldn’t dispel the image of Maria kneeling before the revolutionary, wiping the blood from his cloak.

“Which of us here is not hungry?” Borodin demanded of the now silent onlookers. Ruzsky noticed a soldier ahead of him on the far side of the steps, leaning against the wall of the factory.

“Which of us here hungers for enough bread to eat, to feed their families, enough fuel to warm their home, enough…” He was drowned out by the roar of the crowd.

“Bread,” he went on, when the crowd had quieted. “That’s what I promise you, comrades. Bread, and peace.”

There was another roar.

“How many have you lost in our great patriotic war? Papa’s war. Mama’s war, though who knows which enemy Mama is fighting…” The crowd began to shout its approval again, but he quieted them with a sharp cut of his hand. “We have all lost. Fathers, brothers, husbands. Each and every family has lost a soul, and for what have we been forced to make these terrible sacrifices? So that Papa and Mama could sit at the knee of their unmentionable priest?”

He scanned faces in the crowd, his head twisting one way and then the other.

“It is not men and women who go to the front, but a silent army of the damned, forced to their deaths like cattle. Without rifles, without purpose, without hope, while Mama is paid by the enemy to starve our families to death.

“We see train after train of the wounded arriving at the Warsaw Station day after day after day. We see the hungry eyes in the slums, we see the corrupt officials in their carriages and the parasitic merchants and aristocrats who wanted this war for the greater glory of the Empire, well I say enough. Enough!”

Borodin was silent.

“This is our country too. We want our land back. We want our people back. We want bread, we want peace!”

The crowd began to shout its approval, but Borodin once again demanded silence with a wave of the hand.

“Now, we can wait no longer. We the people, the workers, demand change. We demand a government that can deliver peace, that can give us bread so that our children do not starve while we slave to provide the armaments to protect their empire. Tonight we demand a new beginning. This is not simply a strike. This is a message we wish to send to the heart of the government of this country. To Papa, to Mama.”

Borodin smiled as he once again used these as terms of abuse.

He waited.

“Tonight we march to the palace. Like our brothers and sisters did before us. And we will send a message to the government and the world that we will take no more.” He paused once more and then leaned forward. “Do the police and soldiers dare stop us from passing, comrades?”

“No,” chanted hundreds of voices in unison.

“Comrades, it is better for us to die for our freedom than live as we have lived until now.”

“We will die!”

Ruzsky looked at Maria, but her face was stony, her lips tight, her eyes fixed on the man at the top of the steps.

Ruzsky glanced about him and took in for the first time the composition of the crowd. He saw railwaymen in uniform and workers from the tramcar depot in knee boots and leather jerkins, better-dressed civilians from white-collar jobs in long overcoats and groups of what he would have said were no more than children, pockets of schoolboys and girls. “Do you swear to die?” Borodin demanded.

“We swear!”

“Let the ones who swear raise their hands…”

Borodin swept down the steps and through the crowd, pushing forward toward the gates. Maria followed, Ruzsky half a step behind her.

He turned to see Pavel making his way toward him, his eyes wide with alarm. “Slowly,” he seemed to be saying, but as Ruzsky forged ahead through the factory gates, the big detective was swallowed by the crowd.

The moon was bright. Around him, in every face, Ruzsky saw determination and anger as the protesters cascaded out into streets. He walked by Maria’s side.

She still would not meet his eye.

Ruzsky brushed past a group of schoolchildren; would they not be siphoned off from the march?

And then Borodin was once again alongside them. He had put on a fur hat. He leaned toward Ruzsky. “Do you fear the police, Khabarin?” he asked quietly.

Ruzsky shook his head.

“Do you fear the Cossacks?”

He did not answer.

“If blood is shed, then it will be to the greater glory of our revolution, isn’t that so?”

Ruzsky still did not respond.

“People do not care anymore, do they? Desperation is the force we need.” Borodin touched his shoulder. “Can you fire a rifle?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will find a use for you.”

Borodin swung around the front of them, so that he was next to Maria. He whispered in her ear and then dropped back. Ruzsky wanted desperately to know what he had said.

As they passed the barracks of the Lithuanian Regiment, a group of soldiers hurried to the iron railings to cheer them on. “We’re with you,” one shouted. “Show the dogs,” another called. As they walked along, more soldiers came to the railings. A few started to sing the first bars of “ La Marseillaise ” and the song was taken up by the crowd.

There was a shot from inside the compound and a series of barked orders from the officers.

Ruzsky was swept on.

Half a minute later, there was another shot. Ruzsky began to wonder if this was the beginning of the end.

Was this revolution? What plans had Borodin sought to involve him in?

The strikers were silent as they marched over the bridge. Across the river, the city’s ornate and classical domes were swathed in moonlight.

Occasionally, one of their number would cough, but otherwise the only sound was of hundreds of feet crunching against the snow-covered ground.

Maria had been pushing forward, so that now they were once again nearing the front of the crowd. There was more space here and Ruzsky caught up with her. “What happened-”

She turned to him, her eyes blazing. “I never asked you to get involved,” she hissed.

Ruzsky took hold of her arm, but she shook it free. He looked around to be sure that others had not witnessed the gesture, but saw only grim concentration; they expected the worst.

As they came to the far side of the bridge, the protesters wheeled right. Ruzsky turned to see if Borodin was still watching them. He heard muffled cries.

The snow had shielded the sound of the horses’ hooves and the Cossacks were close, approaching fast, heads low and sabers raised.

For a brief moment, it was unreal and almost beautiful: the dark horses against white snow and moonlight glinting off swords held high above the soldiers’ heads.

They thundered silently toward the marchers, snow flying up around them.

The protesters were suddenly still. There was a single cry and then others. The crowd began to break up at the back. There was a high-pitched scream as the horses reached them and Ruzsky saw the first lightning flash of a saber striking down.

The panic spread in an instant, like wind on water, and Ruzsky was a prisoner of a chaotic, uncontrolled mass. He was almost knocked down, but he used his strength to hold himself upright against the swell. He took hold of Maria and moved forward, pushing through the chaos around him. She did not resist.

White, fearful faces flashed past his eyes as he focused on the broad expanse of Liteiny Prospekt, stretching away into the distance. Maria gripped him, her face wild. “You’re a fool,” she said.

Ruzsky turned and saw that a horse and rider were almost upon them.

In a split second, they would be dead.

Ruzsky could not move.

Then he was pushed violently. For a moment, as he was tumbling toward the flailing hooves, he knew that she had propelled him to his death.

But as he hit the snow, he rolled over in time to see Maria take the full force of the collision, her body like a rag doll. The rider was thrown forward, the horse whinnying as it skidded to its knees.

Ruzsky heard more gunfire, and screaming all around him. Ahead, a group of infantrymen were kneeling in the snow, firing volley after volley above the crowd.

Maria was lying flat on her back. He bent down and took her in his arms. Her eyes were open, but her face was as lifeless as a statue.

Ruzsky ran. He careered into the side of a horse and heard a curse, but kept charging down Liteiny Prospekt.

He heard another volley of shots and more screams. He ran faster, slipping and crashing onto his back as he reached the corner.

As he rolled over, Ruzsky saw a Cossack lash out with his whip against the head of the woman who had been running alongside him. She collapsed.

Ruzsky lay still. They were encircled by three horsemen who were eliminating moving figures one by one until they were just so many black stains upon the white earth. Ruzsky could hear people crying for help. He raised his head and looked back toward the bridge. There was no crowd now.

A young girl had climbed to her feet and was running toward where they lay. A Cossack circled her, shrieking like a banshee, the glint of steel above his head before he slashed down across the girl’s face, cutting it open from the eyes to the chin.

The Cossack yelled again, punching the air with his saber.

Ruzsky edged forward and touched Maria’s alabaster cheek. He heard the thunder of hooves and half turned, but the horse passed within inches of him, kicking snow into his face as its rider sought another figure fleeing for the cover of a nearby house.

Ruzsky stood again and scrabbled for Maria in the snow. She felt pitifully slight, her head lolling back against his arm.

In the distance up ahead he saw a private carriage still waiting outside one of the huge houses, a world away from the gunfire and screams.

Ruzsky ran toward it. He slipped, almost fell, but regained his footing and ran on, the sounds becoming distant echoes as he focused on his destination.

He heard the thunder of a horse’s hooves again and turned. The rider was close, bent for the strike, and Ruzsky stopped suddenly and swerved toward the iron railings of the houses alongside them.

The Cossack swung his whip down, but missed. He spun the horse around, turning on the smallest circle Ruzsky had ever seen, and charged toward them again, his long whip raised high above his head, his saber bouncing up and down at his side.

Ruzsky stood with his legs apart, Maria in his arms, offered up like a sacrifice. He breathed in deeply. “Police!” he yelled. “I’m a police officer!”

He saw the shock in the rider’s eyes and the sudden uncertainty as he lowered the whip and veered away, almost crashing into the railings.

“City police!”

“You shouldn’t be here!” the Cossack shouted. “You shouldn’t be here!” He waved his hand and then wheeled away.

For a moment, Ruzsky stood with his eyes closed, swaying with relief. He tipped himself forward and stumbled into a run, focusing on the carriage ahead once again. When he reached it, he almost threw Maria onto its floor. “The Hospital of St. George,” he shouted.

The startled driver snapped the reins. “Quick,” Ruzsky shouted. “She’s badly hurt.” He knelt over Maria. He checked her pulse and then bent his face low over her own to check that she was breathing.

He couldn’t see any blood, but looked carefully around her scalp, her ears, and her neck. He bent down. “Don’t go,” he whispered. “I’ve only just found you. Please don’t go.”

She didn’t move. Her face was still and cold to the touch.