But like her parents, she was determined to make this a successful and enjoyable outing. She pushed all gloomy thoughts from her mind. They would have a good time no matter how much effort it required. It had already gotten off to a rocky start when Dmitri announced earlier in the day that he had other plans for the evening. Katrina had wanted this to be a special evening for all four of them. But she would not let even Dmitri’s absence spoil it!
She led her parents into the parlor, where refreshments had been set out. There proved to be precious little, even in the way of trivial banter, for them to talk about that did not strike some tender nerve. Dmitri’s scarcity around the place, or anything pertaining to their marriage, could not be mentioned for Katrina’s sake. Politics, current events, and the new tsar’s reign had to be avoided for Viktor’s sake. All three, by mutual avoidance, would not come within a furlong of alluding to the one unnamed member of their family not present with them that evening. That would have been more painful than all the other subjects put together.
They managed to chat innocuously about plans for the coming birth of the new Count Remizov, as Dmitri called the child. He was certain it would be a boy. But even this subject had to be approached cautiously, if for no other reason than for propriety’s sake. Social custom required that Viktor not appear to notice, much less refer to his daughter’s advancing condition.
The subject of names had come up before. Out of desperation they turned to it again as a relatively safe arena of discourse. But even that had its pitfalls.
“Well,” offered Natalia, “you may choose what pleases you, dear, but I suppose I shall always regret that I could not name a child for my mother—Mariana. It is such a lovely name.”
Katrina nodded and uttered a few pleasantries in response.
“But we named you for your father’s grandmother,” the princess went on, “and then there were no more children.” Natalia’s voice began to waver slightly as hidden emotions stirred.
Katrina jumped in quickly to rescue the precarious conversation. “It seems to me risky naming children after ancestors,” she said. “You’re always going to run out of children before relatives. Then someone is bound to get hurt. Besides, I want something unique—like Ekaterina, if it is a girl. And perhaps Mark, if we have a son.”
“Mark!” exclaimed Viktor, taking momentary leave from the refuge of his sherry to register his distaste for his daughter’s outlandish ideas. “Where in heaven’s name did you come up with a name like that?”
“Anna and I have been reading a delightful book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by an American named Mark Twain,” answered Katrina.
“Why not Tom, then,” rejoined Viktor with sour expression, “if you want an American name for your Russian son?”
“Hmmm . . . not a bad suggestion.” Katrina was trying to be playful, and had no idea what her little tease was stirring.
“I thought you had more respect than that for your heritage. As if I don’t already look bad enough. My reputation in this city is all but gone. You are starting to sound like your—”
Whether it was the startled looks of his wife and daughter, or his own realization that he had nearly blundered into forbidden conversational territory, Viktor stopped abruptly. The pause was awkward, but only lasted a moment or two.
“Oh, who cares about a silly name anyway!” he growled, grabbing up his glass and tossing back the remainder of his sherry with both relish and relief. He then lurched, rather unsteadily, to his feet and walked toward the sideboard in search of a decanter full of something stronger.
“Well,” said Natalia, with a trace of nervousness in her voice, “I suppose Dmitri will want some say in the matter . . . of names, you know.”
“I doubt he will concern himself with it much one way or another—” Katrina stopped suddenly. The bitter tone of her comment surprised her; she was about to flounder into an unpleasant discussion about her marriage, and she did not want to open that door.
This could go on no longer. Somebody was going to say something they would all regret if they didn’t put an end to it. “Well, I think we ought to be off,” Katrina said, abruptly changing the course of what she had been saying before. She set down her glass and wiggled to her feet. “We don’t want to miss the first act, do we?”
No one protested. The diversion of the imperial ballet would last the rest of the evening. They would not have to speak or even look at one another for several hours.
47
Viktor, Natalia, and their daughter, Katrina, all loved one another deeply. But all were inept at expressing those deep feelings of the heart. The art had not been learned, the skills of intimacy had not been practiced. All Katrina knew of open-hearted communication and affection had come since Anna’s entry into her life. And although the changes within her had opened deep wells out of which springs of living water flowed into her being, she still did not fully know how to let those streams pour into that man and that woman who had brought her into this world. The past was an overpowering obstacle to change between them. They needed one another, but the pain of being together was too overwhelming.
They walked from Katrina’s house to the droshky.
Viktor swayed on his feet a few times. Katrina tried not to show her embarrassment when the footman had to steady the prince. Natalia either pretended, or did not notice. Katrina groaned inwardly at the spectacle. It was going to be a splendid evening . . . if they survived.
They reached the carriage. The footman hastened ahead a few steps, and then stood at the ready to open the door and assist his charges in stepping up to board.
Katrina was hoisted in first. Though the man did his best, she felt as much like an unwieldy bundle as a woman nearly full-term advanced with child would naturally feel. When the young princess was reasonably settled, the footman turned and offered his hand to Princess Natalia.
The moment her foot touched the step, the carriage lurched unexpectedly. Something seemed to have spooked the horses, and Natalia was thrown off balance and backward. Had it not been for the swift intercession of the footman catching her with his strong arms, she would have sprawled flat on her back.
She gasped amid the clattering noises of the wheels and horseshoes on the cobbles. The fidgety horses, however, did not have a chance to settle down before Viktor’s voice rose above the confusion.
“What in blazes!” he cried, swinging around to aim his displeasure at the idiot of a driver sitting up on the box with the reins in his hands.
“I—I don’t know what happened, Your Excellency,” the man stammered. “Please accept my—”
“You incompetent fool!” interrupted Viktor. “Moskalev would never allow such a thing!”
“It was the horses. They—”
“Don’t give me excuses!” he yelled. Both alcohol and his rising blood pressure turned Viktor’s countenance bright red. A mere verbal tirade was not about to appease his fury.
Before the driver knew what was happening, Viktor had jumped unceremoniously up on the step, reached up and wrested the buggy whip out of his hand, thrashing him wildly.
“You fool . . . idiot!” he shrieked, now stepping back and venting his wrath with the full length of the wicked leather lash.
Holding his hands protectively over his face, the inexperienced coachman let loose the reins and desperately attempted to stumble off the box while warding off Viktor’s blows. But Viktor, caught up in the uncontrollable loosing of a legion of inner demons, did not relent. Nor did he realize that half his wild blows were falling dangerously close to the flesh of the already skittish horses.
“Viktor!” cried a frightened Natalia. “There has been no harm . . . I am safe. It was but an accident.” She had been standing next to the still-open door of the coach. As she spoke, she rushed around it and toward her husband at the front of the droshky where the coachman was struggling down and Viktor was beating him as one crazed. Katrina beheld it all from inside with horror.
“Viktor . . . V
iktor, please!” cried Natalia.
But Viktor heard nothing. He continued whipping the coachman as the symbolic embodiment of his every failure and frustration, as if he could exorcise the guilt from his own soul by castigating another into senseless oblivion. But as his victim at last stumbled to the ground, his hands fell against the harnesses to keep himself from tumbling over. At the same instant the wicked tip of the scourge snapped the rump of one of the animals. It let out a sharp whinny of pain and reared up dangerously.
The coachman jumped clear even as Viktor hesitated momentarily and took a step backward. The only one who did not react in time to the wildly rearing horses was Princess Natalia.
In one terrible moment of shrill frightened whinnies, Katrina’s screaming voice, the clattering of hooves, and terrified shouts of warning from the footman, Natalia was knocked to the ground with the first terrible jerks of the carriage against her.
“Mama!” screamed Katrina, half-leaning out of the carriage, heedless of her own danger should the carriage sway suddenly. She felt the heavy iron wheel bump once, then suddenly jerk back in the reverse direction.
The footman had by now gathered his wits about him enough to grab the front harnesses, but the horses continued to rear, their great powerful hooves crashing down frantically.
Within seconds the man had the horses standing again, though quivering with fright, and the carriage still.
No more than thirty or forty seconds had passed since Viktor had grabbed the fatal whip into his hand. Everything had happened in a blur of drunken passion. Only now did his benumbed senses begin to take in the awful sight of his wife lying pale and motionless on the granite cobblestones under the harnesses between the skittish horses and the droshky.
The whip fell from his hand as he made his way forward. Oddly, he first noticed the lovely flounces of peach satin, soiled and torn, on the stones.
Pale from the shock, and fearful of the result, Katrina slowly emerged from the carriage and with great effort stepped to the ground. In mute anguish she moved slowly around to the front of the carriage, a sickening dread seizing her as she beheld the poignant scene before her.
“I’ve ruined your lovely new dress, my dear,” said Viktor, kneeling down beside the motionless form. His voice was soft, childlike, pathetic. “I will buy you two new ones . . . I will go to every ballet, and you shall have a new dress for every one, with all the Paris colors.”
His hand reached down and tenderly stroked the warm, white cheek. “Natalia,” he said, even more softly now. “Natalia . . . open your eyes . . . please tell me you forgive me . . . Natalia . . .”
Only Katrina, as she drew nearer, saw the bright red from under her mother’s head staining the fashionable gown she had been so proud of.
When her eyes fell again upon her father, something of the truth seemed beginning to dawn on him. He too had grown silent as he bent over and laid his proud soldier’s head upon his wife’s breast.
From behind, Katrina could not see his face but only his shoulders, heaving with wretched, silent sobs of bitterest anguish.
48
In another dark corner of still one more grimy St. Petersburg tavern, three conspirators at one of the back tables far from the window were thankful there were so many such disreputable places in the Russian capital for them to carry on their diabolic business away from curious and prying eyes.
“Fools!” rasped Basil Anickin in a voice no less menacing for all that it was a whisper.
“How was I to know that maniac would attack me?” came the defensive reply from one of the men opposite him.
“Do you know what I went through to get you hired on at the Fedorcenko estate?” shot back Anickin. “And you couldn’t even carry out the simple assignment of driving a carriage!”
“I tell you it was an accident!”
“That was not the ‘accident’ I had planned!”
“It was not my fault.”
“And if you were going to kill one of the women, why couldn’t it have been the other one?”
“Other one . . . what in the—”
“No, of course . . . we could not have that, could we?” Basil went on as if talking to himself. “What am I thinking—not some freak accident . . . not for her.”
“What are you talking about?”
With effort Basil forced his attention back to his comrades. “She must know,” he said, answering both the question and his own evil thoughts with the same words. “She must be fully cognizant . . . at the moment she realizes she is about to die . . . she must know why.”
“What do you mean she? I thought we were after the prince.”
“I want the whole family. I thought I made that clear.”
The other, who had not yet spoken, grinned, showing rotting teeth and malicious intent. “Well, we got one, then—what’s the problem?”
“You imbecile—moron! I don’t want to pick them off like ducks on a pond.”
“As I see it, dead is dead.”
“Ah . . . spoken like the fool you are! And if they begin to suspect and raise their guard?”
“They will suspect nothing,” argued the first man. “Nothing will arouse suspicion. It was an accident, I tell you.” He was beginning to regret signing on with this Anickin. He’d heard the man was crazy. At the time he had been willing to join anyone still brave enough to strike against the government. But he was having doubts now, especially since the other fellow had joined them. Anickin and he had been inmates together—they said in prison, but there were rumors of a mental hospital. And now he had begun to believe the latter. He was glad he had been fired by the prince after the accident. It provided him with a convenient excuse for quitting the operation.
“He’s right there,” said the other. “Why, I hear the prince blames himself for—”
“As well he should,” put in the ex-coachman. “He attacked me like a wild man. “Look—” He pulled down his collar, revealing raw lash marks on his bare neck. “We are free men, yet they still treat us like chattel!”
“So, Anickin,” said the other cohort coolly, ignoring the erstwhile coachman’s outburst, “what do you want us to do next? You can be certain it will be more difficult to get at them now that the family is in seclusion.”
“Yes,” mumbled Anickin, rubbing at the unkempt stubble on his chin. For all its lurking insanity, his mind was still as sharp as when he had served on the bar. And he used the ensuing moments, while a serving girl refilled their glasses with cheap brew, to analyze the possibilities before him. He wasn’t going to be able to get another man inside either house—he had been lucky enough to be able to contrive it in the first place.
So the avenue of inside staff help was no doubt closed. The seclusion of the family was another problem. If they were not going to come out, he would somehow have to get in.
If only I had been able to get some competent help in the first place! he thought, taking a sip from his glass and looking over its rim at his two bungling associates. Nothing from his eyes or expression gave evidence to his thoughts. These two were numbskulls. What made him think he was ever going to get the thing accomplished to his satisfaction with the likes of them? But most of the good men had either been arrested or fled the city. It had been a boon to find that Pavlikov fellow still around. But with his sudden arrest, Basil had grown impatient and had been forced to accept the aid of an inept fool and a lunatic more bloodthirsty than himself.
It had all been a mistake. He should not have lost his patience. It would have been better to wait a while and just see to everything himself if need be.
The more he turned the situation over in his mind, the more clearly he began to see that perhaps all these setbacks were but the interceding hand of fate. Forces beyond his control seemed propelling him inexorably toward the one scheme mere logic had caused him to avoid. Yet it was the one scenario that his evil heart cherished.
Katrina Remizov could not die by the hand of hirelings. Nor could the deed be accomplished
by means of some impersonal happenstance or device, such as a bomb or tiny bullet of lead.
No. It was only right that she die by his own hand. He had been a fool to think it could be carried out otherwise.
Somehow he had to get to her. He himself—get to her alone. The fact that she was in mourning might even work to his advantage. She would be vulnerable and weak. He would use her vulnerability as she had used his. He would kill her, then—at the proper time—kill the count also.
But Katrina must be the first to die. She must look into his very eyes . . . and know who . . . and why.
This time nothing would be left to chance. Nor to the incompetence of others. The success of his mission—his holy mission—would rest entirely upon his own shoulders.
Again Basil took a sip from his glass, but this time let a smile part his lips as he swallowed. He felt confident of his success!
And also in the surety that he would survive to fully relish the moment of his triumph.
49
Summer would make as abrupt an exit from the wastes of southeastern Siberia as its appearance only a short time before. September would not depart before the wind would again moan cold and stiff. But for now, for a blessed few weeks, the days were long and almost warm.
Not a cloud was to be seen in the sky on most days. Even though a quarter of Siberia lay within the Arctic circle, in these regions farther to the south, for all their bitter cold, not much snow, or even rain, fell throughout the year. Pity the poor travelers whose route took them north where nothing but white was to be seen year-round. At least down here, greenery covered much of the frigid landscape.
This was an arid region, despite the fact that through it flowed some of the largest rivers in the world. Dense taiga forests covered the unrelenting land, giving way only to empty high-desert plains where the forests ended. Without a wall, without span of barbed wire, without so much as a single watchtower, it formed the most perfect prison in existence. Where was an escapee to go? How could he survive alone, when the very soil under his feet remained mostly frozen eleven months of the year?
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