“So, you are going to rail against him!”
“Forget Basil Anickin!” he shouted back at her, jumping up from his seat. “What I have to say has nothing to do with that lunatic—”
“There you go—”
“Stop it, Katrina! Listen to me for one moment. I may not have Sergei’s sensitivity, or his way with words. But I do have feelings . . . I care about people. I can love!”
“As you love Alice Nicolayevna?”
“This has nothing to do with her, either.”
“Nothing to do with Basil, nothing to do with Alice . . . who does it have to do with then?”
A strange look passed across Dmitri’s face, but he did not answer. Instead he went on with what he had said previously, walking slowly about the room.
“I don’t love Alice,” he said. “I never have. I engaged myself to her solely for her money.”
Katrina sat silent, without words for the first time during the entire interview.
“Do you hear what I am saying?” Dmitri continued. “Only a cad, a scoundrel would do such a thing. Half the things I have done in my life no doubt proceeded from such worthless motives.”
“I . . . I do not understand why you are telling me all this,” said Katrina at last, bewildered.
“A moment ago, I told you that your involvement with Basil Anickin caused me to think about some things I had not thought about before.”
This time Katrina did not interrupt him, and he continued.
“But it did not stop with Basil and you. That only began the process. Before long I was thinking a great deal about myself, about Alice, about what I just told you—that I have never loved her—and I found myself thinking about . . .”
He paused. Several seconds of silence passed before he went on.
“I would be lying to you, Katrina,” he said, “if I did not tell you that my initial reason for wanting to come to see you was to attempt one last time to dissuade you from becoming more involved with Basil Anickin. He is a dangerous man, Katrina—please, hear me out! And when I am through you can toss me out of this house and out of your life forever if you wish. All I ask is that you listen to me one time more.”
Katrina nodded gravely and waved a hand for him to continue.
“As I reflected, I came to see that I was more involved in your life than I thought at first. This caused me to look at myself, and before long my own involvement with Alice came under scrutiny. The long and the short of it, Katrina, was that I found myself thinking more about you than about either Basil or Alice.”
Katrina looked down, keeping her eyes on her lap. This time the silence lasted longer, but still she did not speak.
“Do you remember when I went with your family to the Crimea that summer before Sergei and I entered the Cadet Academy?”
His voice took on a gentler quality as the pleasant memory returned to him, but he continued to pace about the room with agitation.
“You were twelve; I was almost seventeen. My father had died three months before, and your parents literally took me under their wing because my mother was quite out of sorts. For years I had been like a brother to Sergei anyway, so it seemed quite natural. They treated me like one of your own family, and I needed that just then.
“And then there was you, Katrina . . .”
At last she looked up and let her eyes rest upon him. He was standing still now, and she could only stare blankly at him as he paused for breath.
“You stirred something in me that summer that I had never felt before. You were such a child in so many ways, laughing, scampering playfully on the beach. Yet you were not altogether a child, and the woman you are today was emerging, even then. I recall catching momentary glimpses of it every now and then, and feeling sensations within me that . . . well, that seemed wrong. I remember one day you were playing with a favorite doll. You said to me that she needed a father, and you asked me to play the part. ‘That means you’ll have to be my husband, too, Dmitri,’ you said. I did it, for your sake. But something didn’t seem right about it. You were too young, and your family was like my own. You were too much like a sister. And so I found myself wondering what was wrong with me, denying those feelings that would flit through me. And I’ve been afraid to look at it ever since.”
Desperately Katrina’s mind tried to sort through all the implications of Dmitri’s astonishing speech. She also recalled that summer on the Crimean Sea, when her childish admiration for her older brother’s best friend had turned into the beginnings of love.
“In the years after,” Dmitri went on, “many more barriers grew to separate us. I enjoyed my wild lifestyle, and I knew that your father would disapprove even more than your brother did. I simply never allowed myself to think about you . . . until now. I could not do anything that might displease your family. As the years went by I gradually squandered my inheritance. That is why I proposed to Alice—my mother delivered me an ultimatum: Marry someone with money quickly, or lose what little I had left.”
He stopped, then turned his eyes toward her purposefully. “Do you know what I am trying to say, Katrina?” he asked.
“I . . . I’m not sure, Dmitri,” she replied, suddenly feeling like a tentative, fearful young girl again.
Dmitri sighed deeply. “I’m asking you not to rush into anything with Basil,” he said, “ . . . for my sake.”
“For your sake?”
“I need . . . some more time, Katrina. There are still so many things I must try to figure out. Please . . . I’m asking you—stop seeing Basil.”
“And Alice?” The words were out of Katrina’s mouth even before she realized it.
Dmitri’s face showed a sign of his customary humor for the first time that morning.
“My one salvation is that her parents were none too overjoyed at the match,” he said. “They consented mainly for the sake of the title I would bring to their family.” His lips curved in a wry smile. “I am no prize, Katrina. My purse is as empty as my unsavory reputation is full.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“I stopped at the Nabatov home on my way here,” Dmitri replied. “My engagement with Alice has been broken off.”
Her eyes sought his once more, this time deeply. In them she read more than he allowed his words to say. But it was enough, and her heart was quiet.
26
The imperial train, marked by the brilliant golden crest of the double-headed eagle stamped on its sides, journeyed along through the upper Dnieper Plain. The half dozen luxurious cars behind the steam locomotive could have gone faster than the leisurely pace of twenty kilometers an hour, but Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, found himself in no particular hurry.
He had just concluded several weeks of relaxing bliss at Livadia, his imperial residence in Yalta on the northern coast of the Black Sea, with his love Catherine Dolgoruky and their illegitimate family. Now he returned to resume the unrelenting stress and hardship of rule. And he was not looking forward to it.
He sighed as he gazed out upon the final stretches of the flat Ukrainian steppes. If only Catherine could have come with him now. But she and the children were so happy in the Crimea. The pleasant seashore and comforting breezes and sunshine kept them far removed from the intrigue of the capital—and the court gossip that was always cruelly directed at Catherine. Besides, Yalta lay only three days from St. Petersburg by swift train if he needed to call her.
He would restrain himself as long as possible, however—for many reasons. St. Petersburg was not the most desirable place to be just now. The dangerous activity of the militants was bad enough. Besides this, the empress was seriously ill, perhaps in the final stages of the consumption she had battled for years. Alexander did not want to expose his dear Catherine to the biting gossip of those who resented the displacement of the empress from the tsar’s heart.
But it would not be long before they would have no choice but to accept Catherine as his wife, perhaps even as empress. True, she was a native Russian, a fact
that would further prejudice the people and the Senate against her. Long-standing tradition held that all Russian monarchs must marry into the royal families of Europe to the west. But he had defied his father to marry Marie. And he would no less defy the Senate to have his Catherine.
A smile flickered over his lips. Compared to standing up to Nicholas I, challenging the Senate would be as easy as eating a sweet piece of kulich Easter cake.
He had done the one . . . and he would do the other. He was the tsar, and he would have the woman he wanted.
Alexander silently rebuked himself for even thinking of his wife’s death that way. He did not really wish her dead. He still cared for her, after a fashion—at least in the sense that he had once loved her. And she had borne him six sons, after all. Although he doubted he would feel more than a perfunctory grief upon her death, he did not wish her dead. But if she must die, it might just as well be sooner as . . .
He shook the evil thought from his mind.
He also shook aside the notion that perhaps all his present troubles were somehow God’s retribution for his adultery. Many at court whispered the idea among themselves. But except for his own annoying son, no one dared voice it within his hearing unless they had a special fondness for extremely cold climates. Before God Alexander believed himself guiltless. There was a different standard for a monarch with the weight of a nation pressing upon his shoulders. Tsars could not be judged like other men.
No, Russia’s present woes were not his fault, at least not morally. Politically, he had made mistakes. But what did anyone expect? He was only human. And as far as he was able, he had given his best for Russia, always doing what he felt was right—for the nation, for its leadership, and for its people.
A man could do no more. That he chanced to be ruler of this passel of wild, unmanageable, unpredictable peoples called “Russians” was not his fault. He had not asked for the assignment; it had been thrust upon him. How he sometimes envied his Germanic forebears their rule over the practical, efficient, disciplined German states!
The awful sense of rejection he felt from his subjects had made Alexander all the more prone to depression after the war. But there would be no self-abnegation. He did not deserve their bombs, their bullets, or their hatred.
He glanced out the window again.
Dusk was beginning to color the horizon. By morning they would be in Moscow. And then on to St. Petersburg.
27
The work had taken all night under the light of a full moon, whose illumination was a mixed blessing at best.
Secrecy had been imperative, for there had already been too many foul-ups. Lanterns would have been cumbersome, and keeping them burning was time-consuming. Zhelyabov had thus accepted the moonlight with practical graciousness; he could not do anything about it, anyway. And as preparations turned out well, he cared not to complain.
He stood back and surveyed his work with satisfied pleasure.
It had been a job, to be sure. Climbing up the steep grade where the track passed along the edge of the rocky ravine, then maintaining precarious footing while digging into the stubborn ground had been no easy task. The surface dirt was dry and crumbly and fell away before a hole sufficiently deep could be carved out.
Once the crevice was large enough to hold the charges of dynamite, the next challenge was to string out the wires leading to the detonator, and cover everything so it could not be detected. There had already been one discouraging failure resulting from lack of such care. The attempt to bomb the imperial yacht would have proved a masterful coup if only the water hadn’t washed away the adhesive holding the wires in place, thus exposing them to the view of a prying police guard.
That would not happen this time. In the darkness of a lonely stretch of mountainous train track, Zhelyabov could lay the wires above the ground and they would never be seen! But he decided to take every precaution nevertheless, and he carefully smoothed the dirt over the last length of wire. Everything was covered, from the sticks of explosive buried in the embankment underneath, all the way to the detonator.
Zhelyabov prided himself in his work. He had a fascination for this modern blasting technology, and had become rather adept with electrical tinkering. Several months ago he had convinced other leaders in The People’s Will to give up the outmoded and inefficient use of handguns and hand-tossed bombs. Electricity represented the wave of the future. And if they were striving for the future of Russia, they might as well do so with the help of every modern convenience available.
He surveyed the slope over which the imperial train would soon travel. An eagle would never have been able to spot his work—not even a double-headed eagle!
He wondered how Sophia was doing at her demolition site.
The imperial train from the Crimea could take two possible routes along separate lines of track. The Third Section did not like to make it easy for people like Zhelyabov by announcing which pass the tsar’s entourage would take. They took every precaution, often running identical trains simultaneously along each track to further confuse enterprising insurrectionists.
Zhelyabov was determined to outwit the Romanov oppressor, however. He had conceived the plan to mine both routes. And they would set still a third charge, for good measure, at the juncture of the two lines near Moscow. He had himself taken the main railway route, which his instincts told him the tsar’s train would probably use. Sophia Perovskaya was in charge of planting the mines at the other two locations, for they were relatively close together and more accessible. The fact that they lay closer to Moscow presented additional risks. But Sophia was a capable girl.
He smiled as he thought of the pretty little firebrand.
Ah yes, she would manage just fine. And tonight they would celebrate—oh, how they would celebrate! Just the two of them, alone, with a bottle of wine and their passion for each other . . . and the sweet, sweet savor of vengeance.
“It looks good, Andrei,” said a voice behind him, interrupting his thoughts.
“Yes,” said Zhelyabov to his assistant. “This time I believe we’ve got him. Nothing can go wrong!”
From their secluded hiding place in the thick brush about a hundred meters from the mined section of track, Zhelyabov and his assistant sat back to wait. Their suspense did not last long. About twenty minutes later they heard the first distant sounds of the locomotive, then at last the long-awaited puffs of white smoke became visible in the pale moonlight.
They crouched down and watched the approach of the imperial train. The mighty engine chugged up the grade, followed by the rattling of the cars behind it. With every pulse of steam from the powerful iron wheels, the young seditionary’s feverish anticipation mounted. He saw the Cossack guards standing watch at the fore and aft entrances of the third car.
That would be the tsar’s imperial coach! He would blow the train at the precise moment to blast that car and everything in it to the moon itself!
The Cossacks were alert and vigilant, their probing eyes scanning the countryside. If Zhelyabov believed some Being from above listened to the entreaties of humankind below, which he didn’t, he might have uttered a prayer that his work of concealment would stand the test.
But as he expected, no prayers were needed. His own skill and talent proved to be all that was necessary. The Cossack guards saw nothing.
Still Zhelyabov waited.
The passing seconds as the train came over the mined track seemed like several long Siberian winters. His mouth went dry as he moved his hands to the detonator. He glanced at his assistant, who was looking instead at the train, which was only moments from annihilation.
The locomotive passed, then the first car. The imperial coach drew closer. In his mind Zhelyabov began a silent countdown. Five . . . four . . . three . . .
The anticipation was almost more tantalizing than being with Sophia. In moments Russia would be leaderless! Yes, there was the tsarevich. But he would count for little when the masses saw the power of The People’s Will and rallied
behind them. The man who tried to become Alexander III would have a very short life.
Two . . . one!
Zhelyabov threw his body weight on the detonator, covering his ears with his hands against the deafening explosion.
The only sound to be heard was that of the engine still laboring up the grade, the cars still clacking rhythmically behind it.
Zhelyabov scrambled back onto his knees. He glanced toward his assistant, who had thrown himself onto the ground for safety. They looked in disbelief toward the track. At the site of the charge they saw only a thin, ineffectual stream of smoke rising from the grass and brush they had placed over the hole as camouflage. The effect was so small that the passing Cossacks did not even notice it as they clattered by.
The train should have been tumbling in flames down the embankment, but it chugged placidly on. The tsar should have been bloodied and dismembered, fallen at last in the violent death justified by his evil disregard for the downtrodden, oppressed masses—yet he lived! He sat in the plush velvet and mahogany coach, probably sipping his brandy before retiring, as oblivious to his peril as he had always been to the misery around him.
Zhelyabov stood and kicked at the ground, then sent the detonator flying with his booted toe, cursing bitterly.
When the train sped out of sight, he walked over to the detonator, stooped down and picked it up, then began to gather the rest of the equipment. The stuff was too precious to be left behind. Besides, there would be further use of it later . . . unless his compatriots met with more success than he.
28
Sophia Perovskaya and her assistants crouched under the dense cover of a clump of trees and brush.
Their view of the track from that vantage point was less than perfect. But they had purloined at a good price, from a sympathetic railroad worker, the expected time when the imperial train would pass this way. There was always uncertainty; the Third Section’s attempts at trickery grew more and more canny every month. But she had a gut feeling that their information was sound and that this would be the day of her—the day of their, she should say—ultimate success. She would proceed on that instinct, and not be confused by governmental chicanery.
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