The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  The carriage struck the water with a tremendous crash. Kamo, facing backwards, was in a good position to meet the impact, but the gendarme was thrown forward. He managed to twist before striking the partition behind Kamo, however, and this saved his neck. As the carriage righted, he fell into the well between the seats, dazed.

  Kamo felt water close on his hands. It was rising fast through the suspension holes. Soon it rushed across the floor, biting his wounded feet with cold. Then silver dribbles came through the cracks in the doorframe. The carriage tipped sideways and Kamo roared as his wrists accepted the weight of his body. Barrels of white, icy water burst upwards through the window. Kamo watched it swallow the gendarme. Then the water passed his head, blocking his eyes and pressing the air from his lungs as the carriage drifted down.

  A hand gripped his ankle. The gendarme, then, was thrashing his last. Kamo kicked him. But a unexpected sensation spread from his wrists: release. The gendarme had freed him.

  With a thump, the carriage settled on the river bed.

  Kamo floated upwards. His face emerged into a pocket of air that shrank to nothing as he took a breath. He twisted left and right. He felt certain that his rescue had failed, that he would die here with the gendarme. However, he would not panic at the foot of the tower of Death. He would kick open the door of the carriage. Make the lazy tyrant come down to Kamo.

  An elbow hooked his neck and he was drawn away from the bench. There was a perceptible change in the water around him. He was, now, outside the shell of the coach. He was in the river proper. The arm released him and Kamo kicked. He kicked at the darkness and rose through the black skins of filth until he roared onto the surface. Out of the silence, sounds returned: moving water, distant shouts, cheers, and clip-clop of traffic. The wild eye of a horse bore down, and Kamo had time to cover his head as its flank spun him aside. Only when the thrashing animal had passed did he think of riding it from the river.

  The horse had deadened his shoulder. He moaned, went under, and when he emerged a second time, he saw a lantern blinking in the darkness as its cowl was raised and lowered. Kamo swallowed water. His shoes gave little to his flailing legs and his arms were loaded with iron manacles. Yet he thrashed towards the blinking lodestone and swore at the river and damned his burning muscles.

  The lantern was extinguished moments before Kamo could reach for it. Arms took him from the darkness and hauled him across the stern of a small launch. Kamo collapsed with his head against the gunwale. Next him was a figure so wrapped in a blanket that only his red nose was visible. It was the gendarme. A second, red-haired man unshipped the oars of the launch and dug them into the black river. A third figure put a blanket around Kamo’s shoulders, who was too exhausted to raise his head. Instead, he lay looking at his manacles. How had he swum with these things? The calls and heckles of the shore grew dim as the launch pushed into the open estuary. The oarsman’s breaths grew fuller.

  Kamo turned to the person at the tiller. He noted the small rubberised slippers, the canvas trousers tied with thong at the ankle and the knee—a familiar style—and the boat cloak. He looked closely at the eye slits in the tiller’s mask, which was better suited to the masked ball than a rescue. The hair that rolled like a black flag in the wind, abeam the boat, off the Gulf of Finland.

  His eyes shrank.

  ‘Ahoy, comrade,’ Lynx said.

  ‘Why?’ he spat.

  ‘I need you to make me—us—invisible.’

  His head thickened with icy thoughts of her demise, until the cold reached his centre, and he slowed, asleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Robespierre had found them rooms above an orthopaedic clinic. The rooms belonged to the surgeon of the clinic, but as he had bought a house some streets away, the apartment was officially unoccupied. The doctor’s son, a medical student, had taken the key to it, telling the concierge he would use the place to study for his exams. That key had found its way, during a meeting of the debating society, to the watch pocket of Robespierre’s only waistcoat. Now, Saskia had the key. She liked the apartment for two reasons. First, callers were required to pass through the rooms of Madame Zaslavsky, the sister of the doctor, who discouraged visitors. Second, there were no servants.

  It was midnight when Saskia finished her exercises with the wooden man, an oriental training aid that the surgeon had commissioned from a drawing. She trained wearing a silk kimono with the belt tied at the front. It was the closest she could find to gym apparel. The head of the wooden man should have been bound by rope. It was not; it made a hollow sound when she punched it.

  Robespierre knocked.

  Saskia walked to the mirror and checked that the kimono was closed and tight.

  ‘Enter.’

  Robespierre’s coat swung heavy with food. He took bread from his left pocket and ham from his right. Silently, Saskia lit the oil in the samovar and cleared away her books from the carpet in the centre of the room. She reached for a towel and patted her forehead while Robespierre arranged their picnic.

  He nodded at the wooden man. ‘Why do you keep doing that?’

  ‘Precision. Stability. Speed. Power.’

  ‘Come and eat. It’s the other side of the coin.’

  Saskia attended the spirit lamp. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Strong.’

  ‘It would take a particularly incompetent government agent to mistake your bulges for a pregnancy.’

  ‘He certainly wouldn’t mistake them for food. This ham is a week gone.’

  Robespierre caught the delight in Saskia’s eyes, and they both chuckled.

  ~

  They lay opposite one another, their directions reversed. Saskia had her eyes closed. A fire burned in the hearth.

  Robespierre said, ‘Shall I take some food to him?’

  ‘He can eat tomorrow. I want him hungry.’

  ‘He’s dangerous.’

  Saskia practised untying and tying her belt of her kimono. ‘You don’t need to tell me how dangerous he is. I’ve seen him.’

  ‘I hope you can control him, whatever your plan is.’

  ‘That’s not what keeps me awake at night.’

  Robespierre turned to her. ‘What does?’

  ‘His boss. He is …’ Saskia stopped. She sighed.

  ‘Is he more dangerous?’

  ‘He is a poet. Another tea?’

  Robespierre belched. ‘Not now.’

  Saskia re-lit the spirit lamp and knelt before it. She warmed her hand. ‘Was your friend satisfied with his payment?’

  ‘Not quite. The role of gendarme comes naturally to him—being as he is employed as such—but the role of fish is a different matter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. He prefers the company of men. I lent him my company for the evening. We suffered an appalling operetta at the Passage.’

  Saskia smiled, watching the water. ‘You’re a good man, Robespierre.’

  He sat and ruffled through his red hair. ‘I’m very good, apparently, since he didn’t want to take the money.’

  ‘I would prefer to have him in our debt.’

  ‘There are debts and there are debts. My friend the gendarme has double-crossed the establishment and the Party so many times that the enterprise has transcended mere intrigue. His case officer believes him to be a double agent. I believe him to be a double agent. What he himself believes, I cannot say.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘What will your payment be?’

  He flapped a hand.

  ‘Tea’s up,’ Saskia said.

  Robespierre smiled. ‘Really, I would prefer not to.’

  ‘Not to what?’

  ‘Have tea.’

  She shook her head at the slip in her concentration. ‘Of course. I forgot that I asked you.’

  Robespierre embraced her from behind and kissed her neck. She laughed. The sound echoed between the cold surfaces of the apartment, touched the dust sheets, turned the ears o
f the mice, and sang in the crystal vessels of the closed, locked cabinets and even, she thought, entered the attention of the second most dangerous man she knew: the Georgian Ter-Petrossian, two rooms away. Her laughter faded and her senses shrank back to the reassuring pressure of Robespierre as he sighed into her hair.

  ‘Not now,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t say you prefer your wooden man to me. My heart could never stand it.’

  ‘Tell me your real name, Robespierre.’

  He sighed. Somewhere, a child was playing the cello.

  ‘How real?’

  ~

  The light of early morning found Saskia standing at the window to one of the balconies. She parted the panels of imperfect glass and stepped out. The apartment overlooked Nevsky Avenue, which ran almost four kilometres from the Admiralty to the Alexander Nevsky monastery. She looked at the sellers of the Petersburg Gazette, who congregated at dawn on the steps of the Passage Theatre, where Robespierre had entertained his informer the night before. Some blocks away, almost fogged to blankness, was the bauble that marked the top of the spire of the Singer building. Opposite, green-and-black taxis clattered into the rank beneath the arches of Gostiny Dvor, the scruffy oriental souk.

  Saskia stepped inside and then shut the windows. She stepped over the sleeping Robespierre and proceeded to the room of their guest, Kamo.

  The library was a small room crammed with couches, tables, low chandeliers, and books held in glass cabinets. Its fireplace was large. To its hearth had been tied Kamo, using the police-issue manacles. He did not move from his slump as Saskia entered. On her hip, she carried a bowl of hot water wrapped by a towel. She placed it on the table near the hearth and left the room. She returned with a leather pouch. This she put next to the hot water. Then she made the short walk to the curtains. She threw them open. Behind her, Kamo sighed. There was a clang as he tested his bonds.

  He watched as she adjusted the fire screen and hung a mirror from it. Then moved into the fireplace, behind him. She took a long, straight razor from the leather pouch and began to slide it up and down a leather strop, which she held taut between her bare foot and her teeth.

  ‘I know I’m on Nevsky Avenue,’ Kamo said. ‘I heard the bell of the Armenian church.’

  Saskia put the towel around his neck. Then she shook the badger-hair brush, wet it in the hot water, and worked the small cake in the shaving mug.

  ‘Do I get breakfast?’ he asked. ‘I want an omelette with chopped tomato, plenty of salt and pepper, and fresh bread.’

  Saskia tipped his head back. Their faces were close. His breath stank. She lathered his chin.

  Kamo said, ‘You think I’m afraid of him?’

  She took the razor and thumbed it open using the tang. Then, holding the blade at a reflex angle between her fingers, she placed the razor across the point of his trachea.

  ‘I am,’ said Kamo, his voice hoarse. ‘And you should be, too.’

  Saskia moved the razor. There was something like analogue static in the sound of the blade as it cut the bristles. Kamo’s breath quickened but he did not swallow. She could see that he had picked out a chandelier on which to concentrate his attention.

  ‘I’m sorry about the boy,’ said Kamo.

  Saskia paused.

  ‘Really,’ he continued. ‘I just wanted to get him out of the way.’

  She swept the razor upward. It scraped a note off the edge of his chin.

  ‘We are both agreed, my dear, that the money must be liberated?’

  Saskia paddled the blade in the hot water. Bristles and lather and the smallest hint of blood spiralled out.

  ‘Are we agreed?’ he pressed.

  She turned his head a second to the right and drew the blade over his left cheek. She saw the blemish in his rolling eye. The bomb fragment was still embedded, turning in the humours.

  ‘I can protect you,’ said Kamo. ‘And I won’t mention the boy.’

  A clump of his beard had gathered on the blade. She rinsed it once more.

  ‘Let me go alone,’ he said. ‘Just tell me where it is hidden. Is it the Amber Room? The Chinese Room? A couch, a settee? A painting?’

  The blade cut his cheek. He tutted.

  ‘Then come with me, witch. Bring your pleasure-boat friends. We can travel in convoy to Finland. Lenin will hear of our shared triumph. I will construct a story to explain your winter obrok. Why would I do this? Take it as a measure of my thanks for the rescue.’

  Saskia emptied his right cheek of hair.

  ‘Saskia?’

  Then his chin. Finally, his upper lip.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I will steal us both into the Summer Palace. Our disguises will render us invisible.’ He stopped as she towelled his face. ‘You need me, Saskia.’ With the shaving complete, a withheld anger began to harden his shoulders and twist his mouth. Saskia felt him coil. ‘If you didn’t need me, why are you still in this city? Why did you pull me from that carriage?’

  ‘What made you into this, Simon?’

  ‘Whore.’

  ‘I have your word?’

  Kamo shrugged. ‘Yes. How about some breakfast for your prisoner?’

  Using her foot, Saskia steadied the bar that held the two manacles. She unlocked both. Kamo groaned with relief and studied his hands. He turned to her. His eyes were half-closed, as though Saskia was an illusion whose defect he might discover by study. Then his hands—they were small, not thickened by work—drifted towards her throat. She let him encircle her neck and press. Throughout, Kamo’s eyes bulged as though it was him, not her, whose blood was gathering in the head, unable to drop. She maintained her look of scorn. After fifteen seconds, Kamo dropped his hands to her living, right hand and gathered it to his lips, lowering his head. He could not say sorry. Contrition was not a mode he had mastered, even as an actor.

  Saskia took a long breath. She looked into the darkness of the flue.

  ‘See? You need me, Kamo. You always did.’

  ‘I want to trust you.’

  ‘You told me that you were suspicious of Draganov, the agent on the train. You thought we were in league.’

  ‘Well, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘Because I’m going to kill him.’

  He raised his head. The grin had returned. He squeezed her left breast and pushed his clammy, rancid mouth onto hers, but there was sufficient elbow room in the fireplace for Saskia to punch him sharply behind the ear. She laid his unconscious body on the floor of the library and went to wake Robespierre.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, or Protection Department, is seen as the immovable object of the Tsarist government by the irresistible forces of discontent. It is from the words Okhrannoye otdelenie, Protection Department, that the contemptuous diminutive Okhranka is formed. Protection Department affairs are supervised, along with all police matters throughout the Empire, at the headquarters of the Department of Police on the Fontanka canal. The majority of Protection Department officials are not involved in secret police work; they work in non-political, non-secret Secretariats. Those charged with clandestine matters comprise a group known as the Special Section, which is so covert that one enters it by passing through a padded door in the fourth-floor office of the Police Chief. One must bow beneath its lintel because the door is stunted by an attic beam. The office is busiest at night, which is the preferred time for arrest, and thus work. The moustachioed case officers seldom attend the arrests because they cherish anonymity. They further protect themselves with assumed names. They rarely wear uniforms.

  Two Special Section Officer, Mr Alexei Draganov and Dr Naum Kaplan, are not at their desks because they are talking under circumstances of absolute insulation. They are seated in the tiled chamber of a nearby bathhouse, at 27 West 24th Street, an establishment owned by the Imperial Russian Bath Company.

  While ladies enter directly at the stoop
of the bath house, gentlemen use another entrance: steps that take them below the level of the street. Inside are twenty-six dressing rooms. Each is furnished with carpet, stools, couches and is valet served for assistance in disrobement.

  The baths are moderately busy this morning. In the vapour-bath room, which is spacious, tube-ventilated and fitted out with Italian marble, men recline, laugh, or slip into the central plunge pool. This is fed by a constant stream of filtered water through the heads of nickel-plated lions.

  In one private room can be found our secret policemen, Naum Kaplan and Alexei Draganov. Kaplan is from the Ukraine, though he has forgotten which village. He is handsome, five years from retirement, quite secular, and unpleasant to those he deems less capable than himself. Into this category he places the majority of the tobacco-addicted high-flyers at the Special Section, but not Alexei Draganov, who meets the monolithic arguments of Kaplan with the patience of a mountain climber considering an ascent. Draganov is around forty-five years old, taller than Peter the Great and equally broad-shouldered, and wears his red beard in the manner of the Tsar. He maintains his fitness through cricket, which he plays along with British expatriates in the Petersburg XI during the green winter.

  The two men are continuing a conversation that has occupied them since their cab ride from the Fontanka. It was sparked by a comment from Kaplan, who, as mentor to Draganov, wishes to instil in him the peculiar difficulties facing a secret police service in modern times. Given the traffic of valets, the conversation is conducted in Latin as an imperfect but basic obfuscator. It continues along the worn lines of an argument that Kaplan enjoyed with Draganov’s predecessor, Grossman, who was thrown from Trinity Bridge by politicals not two years before. Still, the valets come and go, carrying towels and shampoo in carafes and vodka at ten degrees centigrade. Draganov interrupts one of the men and asks him to collect some theatre tickets for this evening’s performance of Boris Godunov at the Mariinksy. Unnoticed, another valet collects an empty glass and carries it, alone on a tray, to the back rooms of the bath house.

  He opens a door onto a courtyard. There stands a nondescript gentleman dressed for an afternoon walk. The valet leans towards the gentleman, though he does not wish to get too close. There is something of the thug about this man.