A Portrait of Loyalty

by Roseanna M. White

  The woman’s face relaxed into a smile. “Of course, Captain. My apologies, Mr. . . .” She glanced down at the check again. “Mr. Marin.”

  How had he become mister again? He had been a kapitan in the Imperial Navy. He’d been at the very center of the intelligence community, second in command, friends all around him, respected by his every colleague. He’d dined with Czar Nicholas, who had promised to make him chief cryptographer when Popov retired at the end of the year—a position that would have come with the honorary title of Admiral-General. Admiral-General at thirty! A far cry from the humble beginnings of a schoolteacher’s son. A far cry from this.

  Well, Matushka had always warned him against the dangers of pride. Now he couldn’t even open a bank account without the mercy of strangers.

  But he was alive. He’d found a new home. He wouldn’t resent the demotion. He would thank God for it. Embrace it. Follow the advice of his Lord and take the lowest place at the table. He would work for his people instead of himself. Help end the war. Help restore order.

  For a moment, he was back on the train, imagining what he couldn’t remember—screeching and squealing and lurching. He was calling for his brother, reaching for him, grasping nothing. For a moment, the blackness was over him, a heavy blanket that whispered of death—at the hands of the war that had damaged the tracks, if not the Bolsheviks who despised him.

  Then he blinked, breathed, and saw the bank clerk again, bent over the paperwork, chattering to Captain Blackwell. To his ears it sounded like nothing but babble. The words on the paper she slid across to him could have been in cuneiform for all the sense they made.

  Another blink, another breath. Be still, and know that I am God. He counted the air in, counted it out, and the panic edged back just a bit. Their words became words, as did the ones on the page. English words.

  He picked through them until they began to make sense and then filled in the information they were requesting. His name. His address. His place of employment. Simple answers that felt far from simple.

  With Captain Blackwell signing something, too, as his reference, Zivon finally had his money safely in the hands of the bank. After indicating that he’d await his impromptu host outside, he exited back onto the busy street and drew in a deep breath.

  He leaned against the stone wall behind him, letting the world rush by for a moment. Let the patterns of speech and movement soothe him.

  It couldn’t soothe for long. Despite the command for stillness, his mind spun. He visualized the map he’d been studying that morning. Tracing out the path to the church he’d yet to visit, where fellow Russians and Greeks would meet together. He wanted to go. Needed to go. But couldn’t, not yet. He didn’t know which Russians were friends, which had ties to the Bolsheviks. And he couldn’t risk word reaching home that he was here. He didn’t think Lenin’s organization was ordered enough to have sent operatives after him . . . but they might if they realized who he was. What he’d done. That he knew their plans, knew their hopes.

  He had to guard himself. His identity. Take care with every introduction.

  But he needed help. Needed someone with friends in France to help him search for what he’d lost. His album. His papers.

  His brother.

  He’d considered asking Hall for that help today—but Hall didn’t yet trust Zivon. So could Zivon trust Hall? He’d nearly spoken of it, but the words wouldn’t come.

  No. First he would try his own people—a few, carefully chosen. He would go to the embassy, using the false papers Evgeni had gotten for him. A different name for his face. He knew well that the ambassador had no ties to the Bolsheviks—not with his ties to nobility, instead. Nabokov was an imperialist, through and through, outspoken in his admiration of how Britain ruled its empire. Vastly opposed to anything socialist. Nabokov could be trusted that far, at least. And Nabokov would know his counterparts in France. Perhaps they could help.

  Perhaps.

  At the sound of a door falling shut nearby, Zivon opened his eyes again and smiled over at Captain Blackwell. “Thank you,” he felt the necessity to say. “For your intervention in there.”

  The captain laughed and motioned him toward an auto parked along the curb. “Blinker—assuming it was he who referred you to this bank—ought to have remembered to provide a reference when he did so. Standard practice when one is opening a new account, I’m afraid.”

  “Had I known this, I would have asked explicitly for one.”

  Blackwell waved that away. “Not your fault.” He chuckled. “They ought to show you references—I say, you do have a point!”

  Zivon felt his lips pull up. He hadn’t had much cause to smile in the last few months, but it was good to know his mouth remembered how it was done. “Perhaps. Even so, had you not been there, I suspect my observation would have earned me an escort out the door.”

  “Well, we can be thankful I was. You got your account, and I got a story to tell.” Blackwell opened the passenger-side door and motioned for Zivon to slide in.

  A familiar fragrance, scarcely discernible, teased his nose. Lavender? No . . . lily of the valley. It must be a remnant from the captain’s wife. Once his host was settled behind the steering wheel, Zivon gave him the direction to his flat and then asked, “Will you tell me of your family, sir? I am afraid I know little.”

  Blackwell’s face creased into lines worn by smiling, smoothing out a few of the ones that must be from worry. “My wife is Euphemia Blackwell—a rather celebrated artist, I’m proud to say. You may not have heard of her work as far away as Russia, but she’s gained quite a lot of acclaim here in England, and into America and the Continent as well. Oils.”

  Though Zivon nodded, her name didn’t sound familiar. “I am afraid the world of art has never been one with which I am accustomed. Though if any of her work is in your home, I will be most honored to view it.”

  Blackwell laughed. “You won’t be able to help but to do so. She swears the best light is in the drawing room until noon and the dining room thereafter, so she has work areas set up in both chambers and forbids anyone to move them.”

  They pulled out into the road, and Zivon focused on the street ahead of them. “And on what is she working now?”

  “Oh, some classical scene from a myth, I believe. She’s using our younger daughter, Ivy, as her model.”

  He made note of the name. “And you have how many children?”

  “Two daughters.” Affection saturated the man’s voice. “Lilian—Lily, we call her—is the elder at three and twenty. She’s in the VAD—Voluntary Aid Detachment. They work in the hospitals. Ivy has just turned twenty-one and keeps busy as a teacher in her former school. Her mother required a bit of convincing for that, but with the war on, it was a way she could help. She hadn’t the stomach for nursing.”

  Zivon could well imagine Mrs. Blackwell needing to be convinced, though. Society ladies never sullied themselves with such things, in his experience. Though he had the utmost respect for it. “My mother was a teacher—a linguist. It is thanks to her that I knew four languages already when I went to university.”

  Blackwell glanced over at him before making a turn. “I’m afraid I know little of your family history. Did you leave anyone behind when you escaped?”

  Zivon’s throat closed. He had to count to five before he could convince his muscles to relax, his lungs to keep pumping air in and out of his chest. “No. Batya—my father—was killed in action during the Lake Naroch Offensive in 1916. Matushka in February last year, during the riots on International Women’s Day.”

  If only she’d come to stay with him in Moscow after Batya was killed, as he’d begged her to do. But St. Petersburg—he’d never been able to remember to call it Petrograd—had always been her home. Their home. She’d refused to leave. Her house, her students, her neighbors . . . the very people who had trampled her during the riots, when the police fired into the crowd.

  If only he’d been there. At her side, there to read the mob and ant
icipate their movements. He could have pulled her away. Warned her, as he’d done the woman in the path of the bicyclist. If only . . .

  Zivon cleared his throat. “I have a brother. Evgeni. He fled with me, but we were separated when our train derailed in France. We had set up a place to rendezvous in Paris, but he did not show up. Not yet.” Zivon hadn’t been able to wait there longer. With the loss of his bag, he’d had no money beyond the few bills in his pocket. And the French cryptography department had never responded. He’d had no choice but to continue to London, leaving a note for his brother at the bookshop they’d favored on their one European holiday when they were boys. It was the only place they’d known to set as a meeting spot. “He will find me when he is able. Of this I am certain.”

  The captain braked to a gradual halt in front of Zivon’s building. “I will be praying your brother finds you soon. That he is well.”

  Zivon curled his fingers tightly around the handle of his briefcase. Perhaps the captain’s prayers would have some effect his own hadn’t. “I thank you. And I will be but a few minutes. You are welcome to come up, of course, if you like.” He had nothing in his flat to allow for hospitality—no newspaper to offer him to read, no books collected with care, nothing to eat or drink aside from tap water and the few rations he’d been granted.

  Blackwell’s smile looked unconcerned. “If it’s all the same, I think I’ll take a stroll down the street while you’re tidying up, old boy. I could use a stretch of my legs, and I certainly won’t get it once I’m home.”

  With a bit of luck, his host wouldn’t see the relief in his nod.

  Zivon hurried inside, up the stairs, and to the spartan flat Admiral Hall had provided him. He barely spared it a glance as he let himself in. There was none of him here, not yet. Just borrowed furniture. Borrowed curtains. A borrowed life.

  He’d forge his own, as soon as he could. For now, though, it was a change into the closest thing he had to suitable dinner attire and a quick wash of his face, and he was positioning his spectacles on his nose again, pocketing his keys, and hurrying back down.

  The captain was strolling his way when he emerged. They both climbed into the car and were soon talking of normal, unimportant things for the ten-minute ride. The weather. The rations. The news.

  “Here we are.” Blackwell pointed to a proud-looking stone house near the end of Curzon Street. Not exactly the grandest home in Mayfair, but not exactly modest. Befitting this family’s standing, Zivon supposed. A generation or two removed from nobility, but still of good society. They would have noble connections. Titled cousins, or perhaps Blackwell even had a brother with a country estate or ancestral holdings to his name.

  Zivon drew in a breath as they drove a little farther, to the carriage house that would serve many of the homes on the street. This wasn’t the world he’d been born to. But it was the world he’d found himself a part of with his advancement in the czar’s codebreaking division. He knew how to get along in it.

  Blackwell checked his watch as they walked back up the street, nodding at whatever time it told him. “We’ll have arrived a bit before our other guests for the evening. Hall and his wife will be joining us, as will Lieutenant Clarke. Have you met him yet? He’s on my floor, one above you OB40 lads.”

  Zivon shook his head. “I do not believe I have. But I look forward to making his acquaintance.”

  “He’s a stand-up chap. I think you’ll like him.”

  A friend would be nice, but Zivon wouldn’t get his hopes up. He’d yet to make many solid connections with his new colleagues. They were all polite enough, but they no doubt held him in a bit of suspicion. He would, were he in their shoes.

  He would change that, though. He’d prove himself trustworthy. Gain their esteem.

  Zivon followed his host up the steps, through the door that opened for them, and into a lovely, bright entryway that carried the scent of turpentine and another whiff of lily of the valley.

  The servant who had opened the door—an older fellow with a kind-looking face—offered a smile to his employer. “Mrs. Blackwell hasn’t yet come down, sir. But your daughters are in the drawing room already.”

  Blackwell grinned. “Lily made it home in good time, then?”

  The servant chuckled. “Over an hour ago.”

  “Excellent. Thank you, Eaton. Come along, then, Mr. Marin. I’ll make the introductions to my daughters, and they can entertain you for a few minutes while I make myself presentable.”

  Zivon handed his hat and overcoat into Eaton’s waiting hands, thanked him, and followed Blackwell into the drawing room. If not for the empty easel and case of paints by the window, it would have looked as he’d expect—pastels, cream-colored walls, furniture and appointments that were all of good quality but showing their age.

  “There are my darlings, Ivy Green and Lily White. How were your days?”

  Zivon pulled his attention from the room itself and directed it instead toward where Blackwell had leaned down to greet the two young women who occupied the settee by the unlit fireplace. He couldn’t see much of them through their father, but their laughter and quick answers sounded cheerful. Innocent.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken with girls who were cheerful and innocent. A year? Two? Life in Russia had been so tense for so long. . . .

  “Allow me to make introductions.” Blackwell stepped back, revealing his daughters. Zivon couldn’t tell at a glance who was the elder, but both were pretty, in that Western European way. One with brown hair, the same shade as her father’s, and the other with red-gold. “Girls, this is Mr. Zivon Marin, formerly a kapitan in the czar’s Imperial Navy. After the Revolution, he was forced to flee and has found a home here in London, where he assists Admiral Hall in his endeavors.”

  Were he his brother, he could simply grin and have them as instant friends. But that had never been Zivon’s way. With his back as straight as a train’s rail ought to be, he bowed.

  “Marin, this is my elder daughter, Miss Lilian Blackwell. And my younger, Miss Ivy Blackwell.”

  They both smiled at him as he straightened. Easy, welcoming smiles.

  Or maybe not so easy. His gaze snagged on the crystal-blue eyes of the elder, Lily, and his breath snagged with it. Her eyes . . . they were much like her father’s. They carried within them a knowledge of the storms always rumbling and flashing on the horizon. An understanding of these times, the good and the bad. A . . . a seeing. He didn’t know what else to call it. Not a gathering of the facts, of the patterns that he sought. It was something different. Something he couldn’t name. But something that made him think she understood things he didn’t.

  3

  PETROGRAD, RUSSIA

  Nadya Sokolova kept her back straight and her hands clasped and wished she’d been a little more generous with her hairpins that morning. A blond curl had slipped free and was tickling her cheek, presenting a picture she knew very well didn’t make her look capable, much less intimidating.

  To compensate, she clenched her teeth and lifted her chin another notch. She still wore her uniform from the First Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. The battalion had disbanded recently, after most of them took the ill-advised stand against the Bolsheviks—defending the provisional government, true. But she hadn’t been so stupid, and these new superiors knew it. So she still wore the uniform, as it looked fiercer than everyday clothes would. And gained her fewer leering glances.

  She kept her back straight, but a finger twitched. How long did it really take to read a telegram?

  Comrade Volkov cleared his throat and finally looked up from the paper in his hands. “I trust you read it?”

  A brief nod. She didn’t need to defend the action—the telegram had been delivered to her, after all. Two weeks late, but relief greater than she was comfortable admitting had whooshed through her when it was placed in her hands. Evgeni was alive. Injured, but alive.

  Volkov took a long drag on his cigarette, staring at the words again. �
��This is not good news. This brother of his . . . we were told he was just a linguist.”

  Nadya curled her fingers into a tight fist behind her back. Of course that was what Evgeni claimed, what his brother claimed, what his whole department had claimed when the party had taken over their building in Moscow. But Nadya knew better. “He was Intelligence, Comrade. And I have reason to believe he knows about our Prussian.”

  Volkov studied the paper, as if those very words would appear on it. “How can you be sure?”

  She’d already reported this once, to someone in Moscow. But communication wasn’t yet what it needed to be. There was still far too much chaos in the party. Chaos that would only settle with time, time without outside interference. This was why they needed to know what that Prussian knew. Take action, if they could, to keep the war going in Europe. They must, at all costs, keep the White Army from getting aid.

  She cleared her throat and reported it again. “The day I was sent to apprehend the Tarasova woman, she was in his house, preparing him a meal. While I was there, I went through his locked drawers, as I’d been instructed, and I found a series of telegrams sent to us—to the Bolsheviks. He had somehow intercepted them.”

  Volkov frowned and leaned back in his chair. “Did you take these papers?”

  “No. I’d been told to leave his house looking untouched. I simply made note of which ones they were. My superiors in Moscow instructed me to go back for them the next day, but it was too late. Marin had fled, the papers with him. Along with . . .”

  The man’s steely brows lifted. “With?”

  She moistened her lips. “Something that looked like codes. Keys, perhaps. I did not understand them and had asked whether they might be important too. This was the first hint we had that the elder Marin brother was in fact a cryptographer, not just a linguist.”

  She had to admire the string of curses Volkov spat out as he sat forward—colorful and varied, both. “And we let him slip away? We aided him?”