Killigrew and the Sea Devil

by Jonathan Lunn

  About two hundred yards along the canal – halfway up the east side of the island – they came to a gap in the warehouses where a channel led from the canal into the centre of the island, giving them a fleeting glimpse of the interior – more red-brick buildings – but the pathways on either side of the channel were heavily guarded by soldiers armed with muskets, and under the circumstances Killigrew thought better of craning his neck to get a better view.

  At the north end of the Kryukoff Canal they came to the west end of Horse Guards’ Boulevard, which led to the Admiralty Gardens about half a mile to the east. Here the channel turned left, around the northeast corner of the island, and became the Admiralty Canal. The canal was just as wide on the north side as it had been on the east, and the row of warehouses was unbroken. Killigrew glanced at the buildings on his right, overlooking the embankment: they seemed to be tenement blocks for the most part, four storeys high, although he doubted he would be able to see over the roofs of the warehouses even from one of the dormer windows at the top. About halfway along, he noticed one tenement with a sign in the window next to the door: ‘Rooms to Let’, printed in neat Cyrillic script.

  At the north-west corner of the island, there was a bridge across the canal, and a gateway that led into a courtyard lying outside the enclosure created by the warehouses. Beyond, Killigrew could see what looked as if it might be an administrative block. Naturally, the gateway was guarded.

  Killigrew and Wojtkiewicz crossed the bridge over the Moika to follow the far embankment of the river along the island’s south-west side: the hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle. The river was nearly forty yards across, twice the width of the Kryukoff or the Admiralty Canal. About two-thirds of the way back to the Bridge of Kisses, they passed another water gate into the heart of the island, this one topped by an imposing red-brick arch, flanked on either side by a brace of Doric columns of granite and high enough to accommodate masted boats.

  They reached the graceful arc of the Red Bridge over the Kryukoff Canal at the south-eastern corner of the island, completing their circuit. All in all, the island of Novaya Gollandia resembled nothing so much as a castle: the two canals and the river forming its moat, the backs of the warehouses the curtain walls. Wojtkiewicz had not exaggerated the impregnability of the place.

  ‘What do you think?’ the Pole asked now, as they crossed the bridge.

  ‘Tricky,’ Killigrew admitted. ‘But not impossible.’

  ‘You actually think you can get inside?’ Wojtkiewicz demanded incredulously.

  ‘I think so, yes. The difficult part is going to be getting across the canal. It’s not even twenty yards across on the east and north sides: easy enough to swim. Except that assuming if I managed to swim across without catching my death of cold or cholera, I’d still have to worry about leaving a trail of wet footprints for any patrolling guards to find.’

  Wojtkiewicz nodded. ‘You could always wait for the canals to freeze over in winter,’ he suggested flippantly.

  ‘I don’t think I can afford to wait that long. If they’ve brought the Sea Devil here for testing, that means she’s all but ready.’

  ‘What about a boat?’

  Killigrew shook his head. ‘The guards would see me coming.’ He took out his notebook and began scrawling in it with a pencil stub. ‘I’ll need a few bits and pieces.’ He tore the page out and handed it to Wojtkiewicz, who goggled at it in disbelief.

  He pointed to the last item on the list. ‘Where do you expect me to find one of those? St Petersburg isn’t a whaling port, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure a man of your resources shouldn’t have too much difficulty tracking one down. Did you see the building with rooms to let on the north side?’

  ‘Yes, I noticed you noticed that.’

  ‘Do you think you could have one of your men rent the top-floor garret for me?’

  ‘Under an assumed name, of course?’

  ‘Of course. Naturally, I’ll reimburse you the first fortnight’s rent and deposit. One of your men can slip me the key inside a newspaper at the salon de thé in the Passage. You can deliver the items on that list to the apartment overlooking the canal this evening. Just leave them inside.’

  ‘Tonight!’

  ‘I can’t afford to wait.’

  ‘You realise, of course, that if you’re successful in breaking into Novaya Gollandia and destroy this underwater boat, it’s going to be a good deal more difficult to smuggle Mam’selle Orlova – or anyone – out of the country afterwards than it would have been before? The Third Section will be watching the roads and the ports like hawks.’

  ‘We’ll think of something.’

  The Pole nodded. ‘Yes. It shouldn’t be too much trouble for a man who can break in and out of Novaya Gollandia. The question is, are you that man?’

  Killigrew grimaced. ‘That remains to be seen. Oh, and I’ll need a fireworks display in this vicinity. Shall we say, about midnight? It doesn’t have to be a big one, just very noisy. Lasting about five minutes?’

  Wojtkiewicz sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  They went their separate ways, Killigrew returning to the Gostiny Dvor and windowshopping until Tweedledum and Tweedledee were able to pick up his trail. He let them spend the rest of the day following him so they would have plenty to put in their reports to their superiors: one p.m., subject dined alone at a traktir; ate seludka pod shuboi. Two p.m., subject walked to the Tauride Gardens and spent an hour strolling about aimlessly. Four p.m., subject drank two cups of coffee at the salon de thé in the Passage at No. 48, Nevsky Prospect…

  This time it was Wojtkiewicz’s coachman, Stanislas, who was at the salon de thé. Killigrew sat at his table. Neither of them exchanged a word, but when Stanislas got up, he left his newspaper behind. Killigrew drank another cup of coffee and took the paper, leaving a couple of kopecks on the table as a tip before hurrying back to his hotel. In the privacy of his room, he opened the paper and a couple of keys linked by a ring fell out. A tag was attached to them bearing two words: ‘Good luck.’

  Tweedledum was sitting on a chair in the entrance hall when Killigrew finally emerged from the dining room after a leisurely supper. Ignoring the Third Section agent, Killigrew made his way up to his room and lay on the bed, smoking a cheroot. When he had finished, he rumpled the bedclothes so it would look as if he had slept there overnight. Then he changed into a dark pair of trousers, a black cable-knit sweater and a pea jacket. He thrust his clasp knife in one pocket along with his miniature telescope and a box of matches, and checked his revolver was primed and loaded before tucking it in the other.

  It was half-past ten by the time he opened the door to his room and peered out. The corridor seemed deserted and he was about to step outside when a door opened further along. He quickly withdrew into the room, holding the door to, until a bickering couple had passed by.

  He waited a few moments, then eased the door open a crack. Seeing the coast was clear, he stepped outside and made his way to the servants’ stairs at the back of the building. On the ground floor, he could hear the staff clattering about in the kitchen. He tiptoed past the open door and made his way to the exit. The door opened into a yard at the back of the hotel. The sun had set an hour ago, but there was still plenty of light in the sky, and to make matters worse there was a full moon rising.

  Emerging from the yard, he headed north-west, sticking to the back streets until he came to the Yekaterinsky Canal, where he followed the embankment back to the Nevsky Prospect and crossed at the Kazan Bridge. From there Kazan Street took him to Voznesensky Prospect, which he followed as far as the Blue Bridge. Beyond St Isaac’s Cathedral, he turned left on to Horse Guards’ Boulevard, walking down its length until he emerged on to the embankment of the Admiralty Canal at the north side of Novaya Gollandia.

  The harsh glare of limelight lit up the air above the warehouses, and Killigrew could hear the hiss and clank of steam engines, the rattle of chains, and an occasional if incomprehensible
order shouted in Russian. His hope that the staff of Novaya Gollandia would not be working this late on a Wednesday night had been in vain.

  In the moonlight, he had no trouble relocating the house with the ‘Rooms to Let’ sign in the window. He tripped up the steps and tried one of the keys in the lock of the front door, but the lock would not turn. He tried the other key. That would not turn, either. Had he come to the wrong building? Worse still, had Wojtkiewicz’s man rented the wrong set of rooms? Fighting off a rising sense of panic, he jiggled the key in the lock, until at last the mechanism surrendered with a click. He let himself in and gratefully locked the door behind him, hurrying up four flights of stairs to let himself into the garret at the front of the building.

  He crossed to the window, drew the curtains, then struck a match and used its light to find an oil lamp standing on one of the tables. He lifted the glass flue long enough to apply the flame to the wick, and shook out the match, tossing it into the cold fireplace. As the dim yellow glow filled the room, he saw the place was clean if spartanly furnished. A large delivery crate dominated the room – someone must have had a devil of a job getting it up the stairs – and Killigrew was wondering how he was supposed to open it when he noticed that someone had thoughtfully left a pry-bar on the sideboard. He prised up the lid to reveal the bounties within: one satchel; two lengths of rope of Italian hemp, one 150-feet long, the other fifty feet; a grappling iron; a bull’s-eye lantern; a ten-foot coil of Bickford’s safety fuse; one snatch block; a roll of brown paper; a medium-sized paint brush; one small bottle of treacle; and a harpoon gun.

  The harpoon gun was a shoulder gun, made by Robert Brown of Connecticut. It looked much like an ordinary shotgun, except it was made entirely of gunmetal – stock and all – and it had an unusually large bore of 1^3^/~8~” to accommodate the harpoon. Wojtkiewicz had generously included half a dozen of these: they were nearly three feet long, with swivel barbs on the head that folded back against the iron shank to aid penetration, but swivelled outwards for additional holding power when any tension was applied to withdraw the harpoon.

  First he took the fifty-foot coil of rope and cut six feet off it, tying it into a harness that he fastened to the snatch block. He rove one end of the remaining forty-four feet through the eyelet in the shank of the grappling iron. Then he stuffed the bottle of treacle, paint brush and brown paper in the satchel, along with his revolver, cheroot case and miniature telescope: he did not want them falling out of his pockets in the course of the acrobatics he was about to attempt. The pry-bar did not fit in the satchel without sticking out from both ends, but by buckling the straps down tightly he hoped he could secure it against slipping out.

  Turning his attention to the harpoon gun, Killigrew rove one end of the 150-foot line through the hole at the butt-end of the iron, then ran it along the shank and passed it through the two holes at the head, securing it with an eye-splice. Standing the gun itself on its stock, he measured three drams of gunpowder into the muzzle; the recoil would kick like a mule, but he did not want the iron to fall short for lack of a sufficient charge. He added a wad, and inserted the iron into the barrel, using the knob at the butt-end of the shank to ram home the wad against the powder, so that when he was finished both iron and line protruded from the muzzle.

  A loud report outside startled him, followed by a crackling noise and the sheeting of sparks. Realising it was the fireworks display he had requested, Killigrew smiled; but he had to work fast now. He looked about the room until his eyes fell on the low beams overhead. There was so little headroom in the garret, he was able to make the other end of the line fast to one of the beams without having to stand on a chair. Then he placed a percussion cap on each of the two nipples at the gun’s breech, and laid it down by the foot of the wall just beside the door.

  He put out the oil lamp and crossed to the window in the darkness, drawing the curtains so he could gaze out. The rockets were shooting up from somewhere to the east of the island, exploding in showers of red, green and yellow sparks. Even when the fireworks were not bursting directly overhead, there was enough light from the full moon for him to see the warehouses on the other side of the Admiralty Canal clearly enough; if anything, it was a little too bright for his liking. He opened the window as wide as it would go.

  Crossing to the far wall, Killigrew picked up the harpoon gun and stood with his back braced against the wall behind him, so the recoil would not knock him down. Raising the stock of the gun to his shoulder, he sighted down at the barrel at the trunk of one of the birch trees on the far side of the canal. He glanced down at the coil of rope in the middle of the floor, making sure there was nothing for it to catch on as it ran out through the window.

  He sighted on the slender tree trunk once more, sliding his finger through the trigger guard. The range was about forty yards. He started to squeeze the trigger, then broke off to wipe sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Take your time, he told himself. You’ve only got one shot at this. True enough, he had five more irons, but only one line: if he missed, he would have to drag the iron back through the canal and across the street on the embankment below, and there was too great a chance the barbed head of the iron would snag on something. Besides, it was not as if he had all the time in the world. He had told Wojtkiewicz to make the fireworks display – which he hoped would cover the report of the harpoon gun – last five minutes. At least three minutes were past now.

  Killigrew sighted at the tree, but his hands were shaking. He was painfully conscious of what a rotten shot he was. He took deep breaths, willing his heartbeat to slow down. It doesn’t matter, he told himself. If you miss, you ’ll just have to find some other way of getting on to that island. Or better yet, you can abandon this insane mission and return to London to report your findings to Lord Palmerston, which was all they asked.

  He drew a bead on the trunk and exhaled slowly, squeezing the trigger.

  The report sounded deafening in the close confines of the garret, and the muzzle flash dazzled him as the stock slammed bruisingly into his shoulder. Had he not had his back braced against the wall, he would certainly have been bowled over by it. He was aware of the line whipping out through the window in the wake of the iron. Then the line ran straight from the beam to the window.

  He crossed to the window and looked out, half expecting to see someone on the street below pointing up at him, but the embankment was deserted. He followed the rope across the canal with his eyes to see the iron embedded in the tree trunk: not dead centre, but almost to one side, so there was little more than the bark holding it in place.

  Killigrew listened for a moment. Someone in the tenement block must have heard the report of the gun and realised it was much closer and louder than the fireworks that continued to pop and crackle in the sky overhead.

  The fireworks stopped. In the ensuing silence he could hear nothing: no shouts, no footfalls on the staircase outside the door as someone from one of the rooms below came up to investigate. Exhaling a sigh of relief, he braced one foot against the window-sill and hauled on the line with all his might to test the iron’s hold on the tree. The slender trunk bent a little, but the iron seemed secure enough. He crossed back to the beam, drawing in as much slack as he could before retying the line.

  He looped the satchel over his head so it dangled from one shoulder, then tied one end of the forty-four-foot length of rope about his waist, before looping the remainder of the coil over his head so it was suspended from the other shoulder. The harness belayed to the block went over his head and under his arms, and he hooked the block over the rope. He lowered the trailing end of the forty-four-foot rope out of the window so the grappling iron dangled a few feet below him, cocked one leg over the window-sill, and then the other, so that he was perched there. A final check to make sure the sheave of the block rested squarely on the line, a deep breath, and he swung himself out into space.

  The world seemed to spin around him as he twirled this way and that, the oscillation of the gra
ppling iron below him exacerbating his own swinging. The chill night air stung his face. As the birch tree bent under the strain, the line sagged, and gravity carried him to the middle of the line, so that he dangled nearly halfway across the canal, some forty feet below him. He felt horribly exposed in the moonlight. Off to his right he could see the two guards standing at the gate on the other side of the bridge leading over the canal. Either one of them had only to glance to his right, and he was bound to see the figure hanging over the canal scarcely a hundred yards away.

  Killigrew waited for the gyrations of the harness to die down, then reached up to grasp the line above his head. He began to haul himself along it, hand over hand, until he was over the island’s grassy embankment. When he reached the tree he wrapped his legs around the trunk to keep him in position and leave his hands free to work. Under his weight, the creaking birch swayed alarmingly. He was still twenty feet from the gable of the warehouse, and some twenty feet below its apex. Working the forty-four-foot coil of rope out from under the harness, he held it in one hand and played out about five feet through the other, letting the grappling iron dangle below him. He swung it back and forth, until the iron had enough centrifugal force for him to swing it in a circle, faster and faster, and then let fly. It arced up, landed on the roof of the warehouse and rolled down with a clatter into the gutter between two gables. He gathered it in, and hauled on it to test the hold. It came free, dropping down to land with a thud on the embankment at the foot of the wall.

  He gathered the rope in, coiling it in his left hand, and tried again. This time the iron did not even clear the roof, but clanged off the bricks to fall to the ground once more. He glanced at the guards off to his right. Both of them had cigarettes out now and one of them cupped his hands to accept a light from the other: they had not heard the sound.