A Game of Soldiers

Andrianov tipped the envelope and extracted a sheaf of photographic prints. The paper was thick and textured, the kind of thing you would use if you were giving your mother a sentimental portrait.

All of them were abstract shapes. He could make out the slash of a door, the spill of light from a window, the line of someone’s back and shoulder. He was drawn immediately to Smyrba’s own face, blurred yet recognizable, as he stood in the doorway, his hands on the shoulders of a child. Another photograph showed the hallway in the background, prostitutes running out of the rooms, what looked like a man’s raised arm.

He shuffled through the photographs, but the only one that showed Gosling with clarity was a shot taken over his shoulder; the man’s white hair and side whiskers showed clearly. There was a wild expression on the face. Terror? Ecstasy?

Smyrba fumbled in his jacket for his cigar case, offered Andrianov one. Together the two men lit up. ‘You see what I mean, Sergei. I’m sorry but I’m not sure they are any good, eh?’

One by one Andrianov slid the photographs back into their envelope. ‘But still, Ivo, if we showed just one of these to him, let’s say this one where you can see his face…he wouldn’t know about the quality of the others, yes?’

For a moment Smyrba looked up at him with confusion, then he understood. ‘Yes, of course. I see. No. And we could perhaps add something…perhaps there is a police photograph, something of the dead girl that might be added –’ Smyrba giggled and sucked on his cigar ‘– for spice.’

‘Yes, Ivo. That’s very good. Let’s look on the bright side. Gosling won’t put up a fight once he thinks we’ve got photographs of him strangling a child. You will approach him, and it’s simple, either he cooperates entirely, or that photograph is all over the press. And we have the police to threaten him with.’

‘Yes…’ Smyrba was smiling now. Relaxing.

‘Good. So, now we have to clean up the mess. Did anyone see him do it?’

‘No,’ Smyrba said quickly. Maybe too quickly. ‘No, excellency. No one.’

‘Fine. What’s his condition? Is he composed, is he falling apart? What?’

‘I saw him only yesterday. Naturally, he’s nervous. He tried to get away from me. It is as if he blames me for everything that happened, you know? I think he is sinning and sinning, and now it is time to repent, and I am the one reminding him of his sin.’

‘Well…we’ll perhaps send someone around to question him, or put a little scare into him, you know?’

‘A policeman?’

‘A policeman. I don’t know. Perhaps…just something so that he doesn’t think he is off the hook. Perhaps we can organize it so it happens just when you are passing by, or visiting…’

‘He may not wish to see me.’

Andrianov smiled. ‘Oh, he’ll see you, Ivo. And when it’s all over a day or two later, you return and tell him not to worry, that he has friends, eh? Tell him that you’ll take care of him. Tell him that. Tell him that he’s in great danger but you know people who can help.’

‘I know someone who can help.’

‘That’s right, Ivo. If he plays along you can make it all go away. No one will ever know.’

‘Yes. Yes. Go away. Absolutely,’ Smyrba nodded.

Andrianov pointed to the last photograph, the one where Gosling was shown in a sweating profile, used his finger to etch a box around Gosling’s face. ‘Have this one made larger.’ He smiled. ‘So he can get a good look at himself.’

His last meeting was with Prince Evdaev and it took place at Evdaev’s mansion, an older building on Kronyerkskaya just above the Aquarium, not that distant from his own house. He was less anxious now, after seeing Gulka and Smyrba. It appeared that the crisis had been managed. They would continue with the Plan.

‘An event like this, Sergei, I don’t mind telling you, it makes you worry,’ Evdaev said quietly. At heart the man was a coward.

‘It’s been taken care of, Nestor.’

‘Yes, but…weren’t you saying that he, ah…Gosling, that he was the key? The key to the whole thing, yes?’

‘One of the keys, Nestor. One of the keys.’ They had been drinking. It was the only time to meet with Nestor. After the marches and inspections. After the parades and the endless war games were over. He wanted to leave and see Mina, but she would be asleep by now.

‘What about the detectives?’ Evdaev seemed nervous.

‘There were no detectives. She’s been delivered to the morgue.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Yes, Nestor. Not to worry.’

‘No witnesses, no names?’

‘You were there, did you see anything?’

‘I was downstairs. I stayed away.’ Evdaev was squirming in his seat. If he hadn’t been holding a glass of schnapps, he would have been wringing his hands.

‘Good. You did the right thing, and I didn’t want you anywhere near Gosling.’

‘Yes. I have no idea.’

‘That’s not your role. And you shouldn’t concern yourself further.’

‘Yes, thank you. I don’t mind telling you, this whole business…’ Evdaev sighed, wiped his hand across his brow.

Andrianov smiled. The man was an utter coward, a baby. The whole day had been like that. All through his conversations he had become less and less impressed with his recruits into the scheme. Yes, they were all important men, necessary parts of the conspiracy; yes, they had all screwed up their courage to commit treason. Yes, they all had the necessary sentiments and ideological underpinnings to carry them through the storm, but underneath they were weak, ineffectual. They loved the romance of the code names, the secret rendezvous, and, of course, the payments. But for anything difficult, anything that might involve a little dirt or blood, all of them were play-actors. He even had his doubts about how Gulka would react in a crisis. Evdaev was fit to sit on a throne and take orders, fool enough to charge into battle, but for anything dangerous he had no will whatsoever. It was one more symptom of the dry rot that had disabled the whole of Russian society.

‘We have nothing to fear, Nestor. There are no names and no witnesses. Certainly no one reliable. It’s only a whorehouse, after all.’ Andrianov laughed and after a glance at him Evdaev did too, a little self-consciously. They touched glasses.

Andrianov smiled. On the night of the consummation, he had pushed the first envelope across the surface of Evdaev’s table. Eagle, the great warrior, had been afraid to take it, recoiled from the thing as if it were a viper. By rights the prince should have reached for the telephone, called for the gendarmes. But he hadn’t. Instead he had listened, he had let Andrianov’s words draw him in, subduing his reason like the narcotic smoke of a genie’s lamp. Hardly believing as the logic coiled around him, overwhelmed him, seduced him.

‘I know what you love, Nestor,’ he said, and waited. ‘But me? I love my businesses. I have love for Mina, of course. My father’s house is one of my greatest treasures. But more than all of those…it’s Russia that I truly love.’

Evdaev was nodding at him, staring into his glass and bobbing his head. Tears starting to form in his eyes.

‘And, yes, sometimes, when we love something, and it means everything to us, and it’s been hurt or broken, well…we have to repair it, restore it. So it is with Russia…we have to sweep out the cobwebs, break out the rot, and glue things back together. Is this not true, Nestor?’

Nodding that big head.

‘We are not alone, you’re not alone, Nestor. Indeed, you are surrounded by secret friends and believers. And we offer you the world. We offer you the chance to be the saviour of your nation. We do this because honour prevents us from doing otherwise. I am here, and I devote myself to you, brother, and to our cause. And as a brother, I pledge my life to you.’ He let himself laugh a little. ‘But, I don’t have to tell you, you know. You’re a soldier. One small life, one life is nothing, not really.’

‘No,’ Evdaev said. Trying to make his voice courageous. It only came out as a burbling sound of drunken assent. Andrianov reached into his jacket, pushed a new envelope across the table. Nestor reached out quickly to save it from the spilled wine.

‘There will be more expenses. Men will have to be compensated. We will have to entertain, persuade, blackmail. There will be blood. It will not be pretty…’

‘I know,’ Evdaev said, serious now. Sobering up.

‘It’s not treason, Nestor.’

And now the big face looked up at him. Stricken. A scared stupid boy waiting for the lash.

‘No…Is it treason to see? Is it treason to realize that we’re surrounded by enemies! We’ve been humiliated by the Japanese. Who’s next, the Turks? Meanwhile our brothers in Serbia are fighting and dying to stave off conquest by Hapsburg pigs and the Jews of Vienna! We watch and dither and sit on our hands. No one is doing anything about it except us. We are the true patriots!’

‘Does Nicholas ever listen to God?’ Evdaev suddenly blurted.

‘He listens to her.’

‘Yes…’

‘And she listens to that fucking monkey Rasputin, with his chants and his séances. We need to get rid of him, all of them…It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘But the boy…’

‘Yes, yes. It’s terrible. It’s unsavoury, I admit, but the boy will be dead before he reaches the age of twenty whatever we do.’

‘Yes, I know, Sergei…they must all go, they must die, I know that, but…’

‘Yes, all of them. But our hands are clean. We’re sitting on a powder keg primed and ready to blow. When this little revolution comes, well…what they do is not our fault. They might spill some blood, but they won’t last. They’re too fragmented. One cell believes this, another believes that. But by doing this, we will clean out the stables and leave them empty and waiting for us, Nestor…Then when you become Tsar, we will hold Russia for all time. But we need a little war, a little revolution. First create a crisis, Nestor. Then control it.

‘To the death of the Romanov dynasty,’ he said and Evdaev smiled more broadly. They drank. He looked around the room. Dark, draped with carpets and tapestries found in the most distant corners of the East, a Japanese flag and crossed axes Evdaev had brought back from Port Arthur, all of it ringed with stuffed heads of boars, panthers, stags, pheasants and fish – prize specimens that Evdaev or one of his ancestors had taken at the hunt. A pair of crossed spears above the fireplace, a sooty canvas of a sixteenth-century noble in full boyar costume posed in front of a sulphurous horizon of burning trees and defeated barbarians.

Andrianov had a happy moment. How far would these sanctimonious idiots go? He shook his head, gave a worried sigh.

‘What?’ Evdaev looked up, suddenly nervous all over again.

‘Well, I’ve been wondering who is paying for the vertika’s funeral. Someone should. We can’t just let her be thrown into a pit. In a way, she’s part of the Plan after all…She’s our sister.’

‘Ah…yes, I suppose so.’ Evdaev looked suddenly sad. Almost as if someone had taken away his puppy.

‘She’s our first real casualty. I suppose that in a way she’s fallen in the service of our battle, yes?’

‘Oh, yes. Very true, very true, very true, she’s a heroine.’

‘I suppose the bindery might cover the costs, that would be appropriate.’

‘Yes, you’re right, Sergei. I’ll telephone. The company will take care of it. I’ll personally see to it.’ Suddenly Evdaev had gone all pious, a tragic note had crept into his voice like a bad actor.

‘Yes, by all means. Let’s be seen to do the decent thing,’ Andrianov said, marvelling at the gullibility of ‘patriotic’ men.

FOUR

Barely awake, Pyotr Ryzhkov was the last one to climb out of the carriage that had drawn to a halt on the shady side of the Nevsky Prospekt. It was his team and he had the training, the seniority, the responsibility…and the list. Hokhodiev and Dudenko waited while he fished it out of his pocket, and then stepped back to look at the numbers on the building. Behind him a troop of cavalry passed noisily down the wide boulevard. It was only the beginning of what would probably be an excruciatingly long day – a series of extravagant military ceremonies designed to ennoble the Tsar’s dedication of a new dock on the Admiralty Quay, a break for tea, followed by a special performance at the opera – all of it more of the tercentenary celebrations.

‘This is it, right here,’ Ryzhkov told them. It was a storefront with ornate bars that protected the glass windows: Nevka Fine Sterling. There was a pair of golden double-eagle warrants painted on the glass to show that the shop served the households of the Tsar and Dowager Empress. He went over to the door and tried it. Locked. He tapped with one knuckle on the glass as he looked through the window.

Ryzhkov thought he saw a light inside. He tapped again, harder; held the list up to the window. The silversmith was a little man, maybe in his sixties, perhaps older. White wisps of hair that had come astray and a black apron protecting his white shirt.

‘We’ve closed for the celebrations, excellency.’ The old Jew was bowing and backing through the showroom as Ryzhkov pushed his way into the shop. An equally old woman peeked out from the back. The daughter came down the stairs. She was dressed in black and held a pair of binoculars in her hand.

‘You have to leave, Father,’ Ryzhkov said, smiling. ‘Sorry.’

‘But we’re closed, and…’

‘Hey!’ Hokhodiev said sharply from over in the corner where he was inspecting a display of silver samovars. The family had taken all of their merchandise out of the window for the day. There was an extra rack of bars that closed over the window from the inside of the shop. They probably had a safe in the back somewhere, Ryzhkov thought.

‘We’ve got you on our list. You have to clear out, eh?’ Ryzhkov held up the list so the old man could see it. As if the presence of the paper explained why a Jewish silversmith might be suspected of wanting to murder the Tsar.

‘We’re closed,’ the girl on the stairs said.

Dudenko walked over to the bottom of the stairs. ‘You have to close and lock the upstairs windows, too. Didn’t they tell you that?’ The mother came out from the back and scurried over to put herself between Dudenko and her daughter. ‘I’ll do it,’ the girl said to her mother.

‘Go up with them,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to the old man. ‘He’s from Kiev.’

‘We were going to watch from upstairs, where will we go?’

‘Go home, or watch down on the corner, what about that?’ Ryzhkov said, trying to help a little. There were a lot of things about his job that he didn’t like, things he couldn’t escape, things that were just part of the atmosphere.

‘Yes…’ the old man said, staring at Ryzhkov’s chest, his hands clutching his apron. Upstairs Ryzhkov could hear Dudenko and the women shutting up the windows.

‘How did a family of Jews wind up with a shopfront on the Nevsky?’ he finally said, to break the silence while they waited.

The old man looked up at him, a little confused. ‘We inherited from my wife’s uncle. We were very fortunate,’ the old man trailed off. Ryzhkov shook his head. Why they wanted to watch the Tsar ride by when an Imperial eye-blink could exile them all to the Pale mystified him. ‘Well, just go for a walk somewhere. Anything. But you can’t stay here.’

Hokhodiev had lifted the samovar and was checking the workmanship on the base. The old man was watching him with alarm, one hand floating out, too frightened to ask him to put it down. The girl had come back down.

‘How long is this going to take?’ she said. Her voice was sullen and her face was red.

‘Well, how can I say? It’s not up to me. You know these priests, they go on and on. No one knows. When the Tsar is ready to go home, I suppose. Come back around two, that ought to be long enough,’ Ryzhkov said, trying to smile a little so she’d go along with the dance.

‘Yes, yes, of course. Two.’ The old man had overcome his fear, slipped around Ryzhkov and was heading for Hokhodiev, who had turned his attention to the valves on the samovar, screwing them this way and that. ‘Are you interested in this item, excellency?’

‘What? Oh, no. Just looking. Nice stuff, some of this.’

‘Yes, thank you, thank you.’ The old silversmith settled the samovar back on its base.

‘They can’t pray for all that time,’ the girl was still complaining. She had put on a jacket.

‘Probably not, but just lock up, now. We’ll stick around to make sure, eh?’ Ryzhkov said, and headed for the door.

‘Everything’s closed upstairs,’ Dudenko said, looking the girl over as he passed behind her at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Look,’ the girl started, still not giving up. ‘This doesn’t make sense –’

‘Don’t,’ said Ryzhkov, tired of it all, tired of cajoling. The girl stopped when she heard the edge in his voice. All of the policemen were looking at her. Ryzhkov reached into his pocket and pulled out his disc. He held it up so the Jews could all see that they weren’t just ordinary cops. ‘We don’t want to make any trouble. It shouldn’t be that hard for you to find somewhere to spend the day. Go and sit in a restaurant, but hurry up. We have others. We have a whole list to do before the procession starts.’

He turned to the old man. ‘Tell her what’s what,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

They went outside and stood around watching the street start to fill up. Women, children, families all dressed up for the occasion. Little flags on sticks for the children to wave when the Imperial family passed by. Dudenko looked around and saw Ryzhkov’s sour expression and then looked away out into the street. Sometimes it was better to just leave Ryzhkov alone when he was looking like that.

‘What’s wrong?’ Hokhodiev asked, seeing Ryzhkov’s expression and watching him reach up and rub his jaw. ‘Are you sick? Toothache?’

‘I don’t know, maybe.’

‘Hmm. You’re not going to make a mess, are you?’ Hokhodiev asked, frowning.

‘No. It’s not like that,’ Ryzhkov muttered. The pain went away as fast as it had come.

Ryzhkov consulted the list and they moved further down the wide limestone pavements of the Nevsky. They followed the Jews to make sure they didn’t just come straight back. Dudenko still had his eyes on the girl. Hokhodiev looked over and nudged the young man out of his reverie. ‘You could convert, eh? I think she liked your dominating personality back there, you know? Having you visiting her bedroom, and all,’ he laughed.

‘Go screw yourself, Kostya,’ Dudenko said, but he still kept looking at the girl.

‘Here we are. This place here.’ Ryzhkov had found the next address. They ascended a narrow staircase that led to a set of offices used by three different suspect newspapers. The names of the publications had been painted on one of the glass doors, Beacon, Russian Alert! and Popular Knowledge. They banged on the main door that was marked as the entrance, and then went along the corridor banging on all the doors but no one answered. Ryzhkov got Dudenko to find the dvornik, a kind of combination caretaker, porter and concierge for the building, and extract him from his shack in the courtyard. Absurdly the dvornik had forgotten his pass keys, so Ryzhkov fished out his picks and in a few seconds they had broken into the offices.

Inside was a musty collection of desks, writing lamps, battered typewriting machines, and cluttered bookshelves. There were piles of paper on every surface. In one corner was a small hand press, something you could use to whip off a few hundred radical leaflets in half an hour and then wipe clean.

‘We ought to seal this place, eh?’ said Hokhodiev, but Ryzhkov shrugged. If the editors of the collection of newspapers had managed to pass the censors, who was he to shut them down? Maybe they were paying someone off. Whatever it was he didn’t want to fool with it.

There was only one more address on their side of the Nevsky, a café, supposedly a centre of wellheeled, intellectual, hot-blooded anarchism. When they got there the owners had already closed. Ryzhkov stepped down into the street so that he could see the topmost windows. Everything appeared to be shuttered.

‘Knock anyway,’ he told Dudenko. ‘Go around the back, Konstantin,’ he said to Hokhodiev. ‘See if they left anyone up there.’ He had started to fantasize that some assassin was waiting in an upstairs room for the Tsar’s carriage, a marksman with a hunting rifle and a lot of tangled ideas about starting a Slavic version of the French Revolution. He waited while they went about their tasks. Stood there and had a cigarette and watched the street.

The Nevsky: one of the great thoroughfares of Europe. Nearly two miles long, running arrow-straight from the golden spire of the Admiralty to Moscow Station where it turned, angling south towards the domes of the Alexander Nevsky monastery.

Ryzhkov loved the street at the sudden start of spring, when the pedestrians came out to promenade; all of them drawn to the bustle, the elegance, and the energy of the great boulevard. Along the sides of the street the cobbles had been replaced by hexagonal wooden blocks in an effort to dampen the noise of the carriages. Still, on a busy day it was the sheer cacophony that defined the prospekt – the shouts, the whistles, the clattering of the horses’ hooves, the carriages flying past, the splutterings of the motorcars, the yelping blasts of their horns, the ringing of the bells on the trams. The murmur of thousands of conversations, the buzzing of the throng as they moved from shop to shop; laughing, arguing, complaining, lecturing. Shop assistants mingled with soldiers, who mingled with priests, who mingled with tea-sellers and princesses. Some walked briskly, desperately about on some pressing business, faces grim. Others simply idled along, content to be part of the great stream of humanity with no place better to go, admiring their reflections in the shop windows. An endless promenade; a blend of the ultra-rich in silks and feathers, with newly-arrived peasants clutching their hats in their grimy hands, staring up at the fantastic buildings. That was life on the Nevsky; it was the spine, the vibrant centre of modern Russia.

But this morning all that vigour was restrained, forced off the balconies, and out of the windows, everything cordoned off to allow the Tsar free passage.

‘I got in up there. Nothing,’ said Hokhodiev from behind him. Dudenko was talking to a man on the corner. They were pointing to the café. The man was smoking, trying not to show his nervousness at being grilled by one of the Okhrana. Dudenko nodded and the man smiled with relief and ran back across the street. Coming back to them, Dudenko looked happy, almost blushing, Ryzhkov thought. Like a spring bride. Young, alive, and maybe even delighted to be pushing people around who were too scared to fight back. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he reported.

Hokhodiev looked over at Ryzhkov again. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling up to all this?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Fine for now anyway.’

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