by Jasper Kent
He nodded. ‘We have to act, or we could lose power to them.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘We can’t waste time discussing things in full assembly,’ he said. ‘We’ve formed a group. We’re calling it the Interim Committee.’
I looked at him quizzically.
‘The Interim Committee of Members of the State Duma to Restore Order and Relations with Individuals and Institutions. We’re taking charge. Rodzianko’s the chairman, but Lvov’s on board, and Nekrasov and Kerensky.’
Any amusement I might have experienced at the preposterously longwinded title vanished with the mention of that last name. ‘Kerensky? I just heard he joined the Soviet.’
‘I know. He says he’s acting as a vital conduit between the two bodies. But I’m more concerned about you, Mihail Konstantinovich. I’ve been asked to see if you’ll join the Interim Committee.’
I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. It struck me too much as a grab for power. On the one hand I could see the necessity in present circumstances, but I found it hard to envisage them returning control to the full Duma when things got better. Admittedly Prince Lvov was a member, and I trusted him unquestioningly, but Kerensky was an opportunist, as today’s events had shown. And Milyukov himself had changed his position too often over the years for my liking. ‘That’s best left for men like you,’ I told him, hoping he would take it as a compliment.
‘Will you at least join the delegation then?’
‘Delegation?’
‘His Majesty may not be here to take charge, but his brother Grand Duke Mihail Aleksandrovich is. We’re going to ask him to become temporary dictator – of the capital, not the country, but it amounts to the same thing.’
‘How temporary?’
‘Long enough to calm things down, so that we can come to a decision without fear of being lynched in the streets.’
‘Why should the people obey the grand duke?’ I asked.
‘The army might. Mihail’s seen real action – got medals to prove it. He stands a better chance than we do. And you’re an old soldier – you might help convince him of that.’
This time I agreed. It sounded like the best hope of bringing stability to the city that I’d heard in several days. ‘All right, I’ll go with them. Where are we meeting him? Isn’t he still in Gatchina?’
Milyukov shook his head, then slowed the movement to a furtive glance around him to ensure he would not be overheard. He lowered his voice. ‘His Imperial Highness arrived at the Warsaw Station at six o’clock this evening. You are to meet him at the Mariinskiy Palace as soon as possible. There’s a car waiting for you.’
‘Who else is coming?’
‘Rodzianko – a few others.’ He laughed. ‘Whoever makes it to the car before it sets off.’
I took the hint and headed outside. The corridors had quietened down, but I was unprepared for the sight that faced me at the front of the palace. There must have been five thousand there. It was then that I began to understand – and to fear – just how powerful this Soviet might be. There had never been such crowds when the Duma had been sitting. Our own guards were trying to hold them back, but were vastly outnumbered. So far things seemed good-humoured. I pushed my way through to the car. Rodzianko was standing up, looking for me. He shook my hand then pushed me inside. We set off.
The route we took was not the most direct, but the driver clearly had some idea of where the trouble spots were, or where they had been when he’d last come this way; the crowds were in constant turmoil. We went down to Znamenskaya Square where the car turned. I caught a brief glimpse of the hippopotamus and then we were driving up Nevsky Prospekt. We couldn’t move quickly. There were two cars in front of us, and they themselves were slowed down by the crowds that slowly parted to make way. On the corner of Liteiny Prospekt I saw a lorry that had crashed into a lamp post, bending it to 45 degrees. It could only have happened minutes before. The driver was still inside, turned round and kneeling on his seat to remonstrate with the dozen or so men loaded into the trailer behind him. He was obviously drunk. It wasn’t the only such accident I saw in the city. Inexperienced drivers enjoying the generous amounts of alcohol that had been liberated from shops and private cellars meant that collisions were inevitable.
At the Anichkov Bridge there was a heavy guard, but Rodzianko showed them his papers and we were allowed through. From there on things got worse. The strikers and protestors who’d made it through the cordon and into the city centre were inevitably the most determined and therefore the most radical. And now they were trapped, with no way to get out again. Groups of them hurled stones and ice and flaming bottles at the patrolling soldiers. Near the Kazan Cathedral I heard the sound of a rifle firing. A man in the crowd, both arms raised above his head ready to hurl a paving slab into a mounted brigade, fell as the bullet hit him.
I looked around, but could not see who had fired. Another shot rang out. This time I managed to follow the sound. It came from the top of the building opposite. There were snipers up there. The crowd scattered and our driver accelerated along the street. I looked back behind us. More shots were coming down from the offices. Those in the crowd who had guns fired back, but there would be no clear target for them.
As we approached the end of Nevsky Prospekt the car slowed to a halt. I looked out to see what the problem was, and found myself gazing straight down the barrel of not one but about a dozen machine guns. They were obviously intended to defend the Winter Palace and the Admiralty, but they did more than that. Nevsky Prospekt was the widest and busiest street in Petrograd. If the crowds decided to march down there, there’d be room for tens of thousands of them. And that machine gun nest had a clear view, all the way down. It could end the revolution with a single, bloody, brutal act. That was if the soldiers behind those guns were prepared to fire, but I doubted their superiors would have chosen anyone they didn’t trust for that particular duty.
We turned down Gogolya Street, but there were still crowds slowing our pace. At last the familiar bulk of Saint Isaac’s emerged from behind the buildings and we turned back across the Moika to pull up outside the Mariinskiy Palace. There were crowds here too, and soldiers, though more of the latter and fewer of the former than there had been at the Duma. The car quickly became engulfed by the mob, eager to discover who we were and what we were doing here. I made the mistake of getting out on the side away from the palace entrance. The others were wiser, but even so the guards had to drive a wedge into the people with the butts of their guns to allow a passage through.
Then I heard shots. I don’t know who fired first, but there was soon a gun battle going on. The crowd scattered, most to get away from danger, but some to find a better vantage point to fire from. I was carried with them, over to the Moika embankment. I looked back to see Rodzianko and the others make it safely into the building, though whether they would be safe inside, I couldn’t tell. I could have tried to join them, but my heart had never really been in the mission. From the moment I’d heard the location I’d had an ulterior motive not too far from the front of my mind. I needed to get into the centre of the city – to Senate Square. What better way to get past the sentry posts than as part of an official government delegation? I looked at my watch. It was after nine already. I didn’t have much further to go.
The shooting had subsided now, and people were beginning to come out of hiding, most of them again bravely gathering outside the palace. I went in the opposite direction, across Saint Isaac’s Square and towards the cathedral. I passed the statue of Nikolai I on horseback, but scarcely bothered to look up at it. I rounded the cathedral to the west then crossed Senate Square. Now that I was out of the car I was able to notice the smell in the air – the mixture of smells. It was repellent; a blend of every human excretion. Piss, vomit and shit – they were all there. The people had turned Petrograd into a giant cess pit. And underneath it all was the scent of the thing which helped to cause all the others: the scent of alcohol.
I arrived at the statue of Peter the Great – the Bronze Horseman, as Pushkin had christened it. It completed the trio of mounted tsars that, according to some, guarded Petrograd from its enemies. Pyotr here, Nikolai I in Saint Isaac’s Square and Aleksandr III in Znamenskaya Square. But they were too busy looking outwards – for foreign invaders – to have observed where the threat would really come from.
‘It’s quieter than I was expecting.’
I turned. It was Dmitry. Ilya was at his side, along with another of them. I looked around. The square wasn’t as busy as elsewhere in the city. But it was hardly abandoned. There were a couple of fires lit between us and the cathedral, where people were warming themselves, and along the quay there was traffic in both directions.
‘What were you expecting?’ I asked.
He walked towards me. The other two remained where they were. ‘I thought people might make a stand here; out of … nostalgia.’
‘This isn’t the same as 1825,’ I said. ‘Don’t be fooled into thinking it is.’
‘The tsar’s army is shooting his own people. That’s the same as before.’
I couldn’t argue with him. ‘What can you do to help?’
‘You tell me. That was the plan, I thought.’
I considered what I’d seen. There was the machine gun nest on Palace Square, but in truth it wasn’t doing much harm. The very sight of it kept people at bay, and so there was no need for it ever to fire. There was another threat, though, which had actually killed people, and which a vampire might be very well suited to deal with.
‘They’ve posted snipers,’ I told him. ‘I saw some on Nevsky Prospekt, on top of the Singer Sewing Machines offices, but I’ll bet there’re others elsewhere. They’re impossible to deal with from street level.’
‘Let’s go then.’ He seemed keen.
We walked back pretty much the way I had come in the car. Ilya and the other voordalak hung back, following a few paces behind. In my life, I had not encountered more than a handful of the creatures, and all of them had been of reasonable intelligence. But these two fitted better with the descriptions I had heard – albeit at third hand – of those original twelve oprichniki that my grandfather had first encountered. They were base and surly, scarcely more than animals. With the oprichniki I understood the reason for it. They had exchanged blood repeatedly with Zmyeevich and their free will had been consumed by him. But Dmitry insisted that he was not doing the same with these, and I was convinced that the idea revolted him. Perhaps these two were witless simply because they had been witless in life – and yet that did not describe the Ilya I’d known. Either way it didn’t sit well with the idea that they shared Dmitry’s higher goals. They were here simply to feed.
We kept away from the machine guns in Palace Square and soon found ourselves in the colonnade of the Kazan Cathedral. We weren’t the only ones there: a crowd of several hundred sat in fear. A few aimed rifles, but did not bother to fire. Beyond, Nevsky Prospekt was empty. I could guess the reason, but I asked one of the armed men. By his uniform he was a boatswain.
‘Snipers,’ he said. ‘Up on the roof. They’ve got us pinned down.’
‘How many?’ asked Dmitry.
‘Four maybe. Hard to say.’
Dmitry smiled at me. ‘I was hoping for more,’ he said.
He gestured to Ilya and his comrade, indicating that the three of them should separate. They went in opposite directions, staying in the shadows of the cathedral’s two curved arms. When they were almost at the street Dmitry began to move. He took a more direct route, across the square and out to the roadway. The other two shadowed him and all three arrived on Nevsky Prospekt at the same time. There were shouts from the crowd calling them fools, but nobody made a move to stop them.
The snipers above must have been at a loss as to what they were doing, and held their fire. But when Dmitry was about halfway across a shot rang out, followed by another. Dmitry turned back towards us, his arms spread as if to make a bigger target, and shouted. ‘Missed!’
That may have been true of the first bullet, but with the second I’d noticed the slight judder of his body as he absorbed its momentum, and the little puff of dust and fibre at his shoulder where it had entered. Another shot was fired and all three of them ran towards the building, more for show than out of any real fear. The other two went down the streets on either side, but Dmitry chose a frontal assault.
The building wasn’t a difficult one to climb – decorative ridges in the stonework made for convenient hand- and footholds – but Dmitry’s ascent was far swifter than any human could have managed. He held his body close to the wall, and moved upwards like a lizard on a rock. I could only assume his two comrades were making a similar assault at the sides of the building. Now the shouts from the crowd were of encouragement, not warning. At last one of the snipers realized what was happening and came forward to shoot straight down at Dmitry, but a hail of bullets from our own gunmen forced him to step back.
Soon Dmitry reached the top of the wall and disappeared over on to the roof. Then nothing, for about two minutes, save for occasional sounds that might be taken for a scuffle. At last a body fell. It hit the ground half on the pavement and half on the road, bouncing very slightly before lying still. As one the crowd rushed forward. Within seconds they were upon the corpse, kicking at it and pummelling it with the butts of rifles and whatever else came to hand. If it bore any of the tell-tale signs of a vampire’s bite, they would be lost amid the deluge. But there were, at the sailor’s guess, another three snipers up there, along with three hungry vampires. I didn’t suppose the remaining bodies would be thrown down for quite some time.
I headed home. Dmitry had done well. How many had those snipers already killed, and how many more would they have killed if they hadn’t been stopped? Compared with the losses in the war, it was nothing. And even though it was my own countrymen who had died here, this too was a war: a war for the freedom of a nation. Even so, I’d have preferred them to have died from a bullet wound than from … that.
I took a fairly direct route, sticking to the side streets and staying close to the cover of buildings, but there was no more trouble. The only guard post I had to get through was on the Fontanka, just opposite my house. I showed them my papers and they let me through. They were trying to keep people out of the city centre, not in it, and when they saw how close my address was, they accepted I had reason to be there.
I put my head round the kitchen door when I got in. Syeva was at the sink, washing some clothes, leaning forwards oddly to keep some of the weight off his bad leg. Polkan was asleep on a rug near by. It was odd of him to be down here and not at his mistress’s side.
‘Evening, sergeant,’ I said.
He turned to me. ‘Good evening, colonel. Would you like your supper now?’
‘When you’re ready.’
I went upstairs. In the excitement of the day, I’d forgotten the more domestic issue that I had to face – the fact that Nadya had taken in a lodger. There was no light from that room on the first floor tonight. I carried on up. In the living room there was a roaring fire. Nadya wasn’t sitting in her usual seat, but instead was facing the door. I could tell she was not alone. Over the back of the other seat I could just see the top of a head – a wisp of blonde hair.
Nadya looked up as I entered. ‘Misha …’
‘It’s all right,’ I replied, ‘I worked it out. We’ve got plenty of room; we shouldn’t keep it to ourselves.’
She smiled at me and I suspected that she was not merely pleased with my acquiescence, but happy to have manipulated me so effectively in getting her way. ‘In that case I’d like you to meet Anastasia.’ She stood and held out her hand towards the other chair.
I walked across the room as the figure in the chair began to stand too. It was a girl, young – fifteen at most. Her blonde hair shone in the dim light. It had been washed since I last saw her, as had her face. Even so, there was no mistaking her.
; It was the girl I’d seen in the courtyard, selling her body to Ilya.
CHAPTER VI
‘HOW DO YOU do, Anastasia?’ I said.
‘How do you do, sir?’
I looked in her eyes for any hint that she recognized me, but saw none. That meant little. She couldn’t have seen my face for more than a moment, and if she had, she might want to do everything to conceal the fact of where and how we had met – not least from Nadya.
‘Where did you find her?’ I asked Nadya. I realized after I’d spoken how rude it was of me not to ask the girl herself, but it was too late.
‘Just round the corner,’ Nadya replied, ‘on Gagarinskaya Street.’
‘Have you no family?’ I asked Anastasia herself this time.
She shook her head. ‘Papa went to fight the Germans, and then Mama died.’ Her simplistic way of speaking didn’t sit well with her age, or the obvious intelligence of her face. She was putting it on to rouse sympathy – but that didn’t mean what she said wasn’t true.
Any questions I chose to ask were only surrogates for the one foremost in my mind. Why was she here, and not lying dead beneath a blanket of snow as a result of her encounter with Ilya? Her name seemed entirely appropriate: Anastasia – it meant resurrection. One obvious answer could easily be dismissed. I knew from various sources, not least from Iuda’s notebooks, that the process of transformation from human into voordalak was not one of minutes or even hours. After the necessary exchange of blood in both directions, death would still come to the victim. Many of them would be buried, as would any corpse, and only weeks later claw their way out of their grave. There had not been sufficient time for Anastasia to have been transformed. Somehow, she had survived.
‘Colonel?’ Syeva’s voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked to see what he wanted, but rather than standing at the door, he walked across the room before speaking to me. He seemed to be attempting to conceal his limp, which only made his gait more unusual than ever. I wondered if he had something confidential to say to me, but once he was close his announcement was mundane.