Killigrew and the Sea Devil

by Jonathan Lunn

  Once they were in midstream, heading up-river, Killigrew brought the tiller back amidships. ‘Told you we’d make it,’ he shouted to Aurélie, who was busy pushing the unconscious man over the side.

  ‘But there’s no way out this way!’ she wailed.

  ‘There’s no way out whichever way we go,’ he called back mildly. ‘The best we can hope to do is put enough distance between them and us to give them the slip.’

  ‘The bridge!’ she yelled.

  They rounded the south-east corner of Novaya Gollandia, and the graceful arc of the Bridge of Kisses loomed up ahead.

  ‘Plenty of clearance,’ Killigrew assured her.

  ‘Even for that?’ She indicated the slim funnel that rose above the engine amidships.

  ‘Ah, that. Yes, I’m afraid we’re going to have to lose that.’ Killigrew took out his clasp knife and tossed it to her. ‘Cut through the stays supporting it, or it’ll pull us over when it goes by the board!’

  She opened the knife and sliced through the stays. Already the pinnace’s prow was under the bridge. ‘That’s good!’ Killigrew called to her. ‘Now get as far for’ard as you can!’

  As she scrambled to the bow, Killigrew jinked the tiller to port, slewing the pinnace’s stern around to starboard. He wanted to hit the bridge at a slight angle: what he did not want was for it to fall back and land on his head.

  The funnel hit the side of the bridge with a resounding clang and the whole vessel shuddered and yawed in the water, threatening to capsize. There was an eldritch sound of rending metal, and the funnel toppled like a felled tree, smashing down on the port gunwale and bouncing into the river where it landed in the water with a terrific splash. The pinnace rolled sickeningly, but Killigrew pushed the tiller to starboard, straightening her out. A sooty downdraught of smoke from the truncated funnel blinded him as they passed under the bridge, but then they were through and steaming down the river on the other side. Killigrew whooped in exultation.

  Beyond the Bridge of Kisses, the Moika ran more or less straight as far as he could see in the half-light of the summer’s night. As a getaway vehicle, he might have wished for something slightly less conspicuous, but they were clipping along at a good seven knots, the small boats moored at the embankments on either side dancing in their wake.

  Aurélie had stopped shovelling. ‘How’s the pressure?’ called Killigrew.

  ‘Nearly in the red!’

  ‘All right, that should give us enough steam to get us away from here.’

  ‘They’ll be coming after us,’ she warned him. ‘We should turn off: try to lose them.’

  ‘If you see any turnings, be sure to point them out to me!’ he retorted. From his recollection of the map of St Petersburg, the Moika ran all the way to the Fontanka Canal, a mile and a half away. The only turn off was the Winter Canal, and that was on the other side of the Nevsky Prospect; and he intended to ditch the pinnace long before they reached the busy intersection at the Police Bridge.

  The next bridge loomed up at them out of the darkness, a narrow suspension bridge for pedestrians. The truncated funnel scraped sparks from the underside, but otherwise they passed beneath it without a hitch. Half a minute later, Killigrew saw a bend in the river about fifty yards ahead. He was getting ready to make the turn – the clumsy pinnace was a swine to handle in the narrow canal – when Aurélie glanced astern.

  ‘We’ve got company!’

  Killigrew looked over his shoulder to see a troop of horsemen cantering past the suspension bridge on the embankment, just over a hundred yards behind them.

  ‘Well, I certainly didn’t invite them!’ he retorted with mock petulance.

  The appearance of that many horsemen could be no coincidence. From the way they rode in formation they had to be soldiers, although it was difficult to make out more than that in the half-light. Killigrew turned the pinnace around the bend, and they lost sight of the horsemen, but for less than half a minute. They were scarcely ninety yards astern, and gaining on the pinnace, when they reappeared.

  ‘Can’t you make this thing go any faster?’ demanded Aurélie.

  Killigrew shook his head. ‘We’re flat out as it is.’

  Another bridge loomed out of the darkness, less than a hundred yards ahead. They would reach it ahead of the horsemen, but then what? Sooner or later the cavalrymen were going to pass them on the embankment, and then they would take up position on the next bridge and shoot down into the pinnace as it passed beneath; and at that range, even Russian soldiers would not be able to miss. Yet to jump ashore would only leave them on foot, to be ridden down by the horsemen. Killigrew looked for some kind of transport on the embankment – horses, a drozhky, anything – but in vain.

  ‘How far to the Blue Bridge?’ Aurélie asked suddenly.

  ‘About two hundred and forty yards beyond the next bridge,’ Killigrew told her.

  ‘We’ll lose them there,’ she decided, and started to fiddle with one of the infernal machines stowed in the bow.

  ‘What the devil are you playing at?’ he demanded. ‘I shouldn’t monkey about with one of those if I were you: it’s liable to blow up in your face!’

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ she retorted.

  ‘That’s what Rear Admiral Seymour said!’ Killigrew muttered under his breath.

  He heard the crack of a carbine, and glanced over his shoulder to see the horsemen were less than sixty yards astern now, their muzzles flashing in the gloom as they shot from the saddle. The received wisdom was that a man could not shoot straight from the saddle, but someone had forgotten to tell these troopers. The bullets soughed through the air about the pinnace, kicking up spurts of water from the river up ahead, and one bullet splintered the gunwale alarmingly close to where Killigrew stood. He crouched beside the tiller.

  ‘Better keep your head down!’ he called to Aurélie.

  ‘Thanks for the advice!’ her voice came from somewhere forward of the engine.

  Then they had passed under the next bridge, which hid them from the view of the horsemen for the next few seconds. They had covered less than fifty yards, however, when more shots sounded. Killigrew glanced astern to see the horsemen – dragoons, judging from their brass helmets – had passed the bridge and were continuing to gain on them. There was still no sign of the Blue Bridge up ahead.

  Killigrew winced as a bullet ricocheted off the casing of the boiler: if the metal ruptured, the whole thing would burst and the Russians would kill two birds with one stone.

  At last the Blue Bridge – where Killigrew had seen the serf-market four days earlier – appeared less than a hundred yards ahead. But the dragoons were barely two dozen yards behind the pinnace, and making more and more of their shots tell. The gunwale to Killigrew’s left was starting to look like a piece of Swiss cheese. Judging from their relative speeds, pinnace and dragoons would reach the bridge at about the same time, but it was going to be a close-run thing.

  The Blue Bridge was getting closer. It was so wide, it looked more like they were about to enter a tunnel than pass under a bridge. The dragoons would not have time to dismount and take up position at the near railing, so they would ride across to line the far railing, waiting for the pinnace to emerge at the other side. If Killigrew and Aurélie were going to give them the slip, it would have to be before then. Fortunately, nothing could have given them better cover than the Blue Bridge.

  Killigrew looked around for a coil of rope so he could tie off the tiller. Beyond the bridge, he knew, the Moika continued straight for another five hundred yards or so before curving around to the left. If the dragoons saw the pinnace emerge on the other side, they might not realise the two saboteurs had abandoned ship and continue to pursue it upstream, giving Killigrew and Aurélie a chance to slip down one of the side streets leading off the embankment. He tweaked the tiller, edging them over to the right-hand embankment where there was less clearance between the truncated funnel and the underside of the bridge.

  ‘Aurélie!’ he
called.

  There was no reply at first, and for a moment he feared she had been struck by a bullet – a moment in which he ran the whole gamut of emotions from horror to self-recrimination – but then she called back.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need some rope! Can you see a coil lying around up there, hanging from one of the pinrails perhaps?’

  ‘One moment!’

  The bridge was only fifty yards ahead, and the dragoons had almost drawn level. Killigrew ducked as more shots splintered the gunwale.

  ‘We haven’t got a moment!’ he shouted back tersely.

  Forty yards, thirty… what the hell was she playing at?

  She crawled astern, keeping the engine between herself and the dragoons on the embankment. Fortunately the dragoons had left off shooting – saving their ammunition for a fusillade when the pinnace emerged from under the far side of the bridge – and they spurred their horses into a gallop.

  Aurélie handed Killigrew the coil of rope. ‘Get the anchor,’ he told her, cutting the rope in two. He made a final adjustment to the tiller before tying it off with the smaller length, then Aurélie returned with the small, four-fluked anchor from the bow and handed it to him.

  The dragoons had reached the bridge seconds ahead of them and disappeared from view as they galloped across to the far railing. Killigrew rove the longer length of rope to the anchor and dangled it over the starboard gunwale. ‘Stand on my left!’ he told Aurélie.

  He began to swing the anchor, forwards and back, parallel with the side of the pinnace. The prow had already passed under the bridge. Killigrew twirled the anchor in a circle, like a leadsman preparing to swing the lead. When the bridge was only a few yards away, he released one end of the rope, and the anchor snaked up over the blue-painted railing above. He hauled in the slack until the flukes caught against the railings, making it fast around his torso. He could only hope the dragoons on the bridge would be engrossed in reloading their carbines and waiting for the pinnace to emerge below them.

  ‘Put your arms around my neck!’

  She complied, and he lifted her up in his arms, stepping on to the transom and swinging from the stern as the pinnace moved out from beneath them. In the shadows below the bridge, he could just make out a faint glow of light at the far side, silhouetting the pinnace as it chugged on, leaving the two of them swinging over the water.

  Pleasant though it was to have Aurélie’s arms around his neck, her body pressed against his and her face inches from his own, Killigrew now faced the prospect of hauling both his own weight and hers up to the railings above. Without any prompting from him, however, she climbed up him, grabbing the rope above him and stepping on his head to boost herself up. When she was level with the surface of the bridge, she raised her head slowly and peered through the railings; the coast must have been relatively clear, for she scrambled over the railing and turned back to reach for him.

  He hauled himself up. Through the railings, he could see the dragoons a hundred yards away. They had dismounted from their horses, leaving a few of their number to hold the bridles while the rest crowded at the far rail, their carbines levelled at the water below. Aurélie clasped Killigrew’s hand and helped him up over the railing.

  He had barely got his feet back on solid ground when one of the dragoons holding the horses glanced across the bridge and saw them. He shouted a warning to his comrades, and several of them whirled, levelling their carbines. Aurélie was already dashing across the embankment to the corner of the Mariinsky Palace, but Killigrew felt like a rabbit caught in the gig-lamps of a pony-chaise speeding down a country lane. At that range, there was a chance that in the poor light most of them would miss with their carbines…

  Smoke billowed up from under the bridge as the pinnace emerged, and the dragoons froze, torn between shooting at the man frozen against the far railing or pouring a hail of lead down into the boat. In the event they did not get the chance to do either, for a terrific explosion tore the night apart, hurling up flames that silhouetted the dragoons and tossed the ones standing at the rail to the cobbles, while the horses reared in terror.

  The blast snapped Killigrew out of his daze, and he turned and sprinted after Aurélie. He reached the side of the Mariinsky Palace and found himself gazing down the Vosnesensky Prospect, but Aurélie was nowhere to be seen. He cursed. A bullet chipped the masonry a few inches from his hand and, hearing booted feet clatter across the cobbles behind him, he did not bother to waste time glancing over his shoulder, but stumbled headlong down the boulevard.

  He had scarcely covered more than fifty yards when a handful of the dragoons rounded the corner of the palace and sent more bullets buzzing past his head. Cursing Aurélie for leaving him high and dry, he threw himself back and forth across the empty street in a series of zigzags to throw the dragoons’ aim off, at the same time well aware he was only putting off the inevitable moment when one of them mounted his horse and rode him down. He dashed for the mouth of the Officers’ Street, only to see a drozhky rattling towards him. He started to veer away, looking for another bolt-hole, when the driver of the drozhky called out to him.

  It was Aurélie: she reined in across his path, the wheels of the drozhky skidding on the dew-slick cobbles. ‘Get on!’

  Killigrew needed no second bidding; he had not really needed the first. He climbed on to the back of the drozhky, she flicked her whip across the horse’s back, and they clattered off. The dragoons continued to shoot after them until she made a sharp left on to Kazansky Street, followed by a right at the next junction. There was no sign of their pursuers by the time they reached the embankment of the Yekaterinsky Canal 350 yards further on. Aurélie turned the drozhky left, and at the next bridge they crossed the canal to reach Sennaya Square, where she parked the drozhky behind one of the stacks of covered hay bales in the market place.

  The two of them slipped down an alleyway, hurrying through the shadows until they came to a courtyard where they could pause for breath. Abruptly, Aurélie pushed him against a wall and kissed him passionately. He was so caught off guard, by the time he had relaxed sufficiently to enjoy it and give her his full attention, the two patrolling gendarmes were past them and she broke off the kiss. Killigrew gazed after them in disappointment.

  Aurélie was already hurrying on. Killigrew made to follow her, and had almost caught up with her when a shadowy figure burst out of the doorway of one of the ramshackle apartment blocks and crashed into her. The two of them staggered, and Killigrew interposed himself, but the shadowy figure – a wild-eyed, pale-faced student clutching an axe – seemed even more frightened than they did. He backed off, muttering to himself, then turned and dashed into the night.

  ‘Clumsy idiot!’ Aurélie shouted after him in gutter-Russian. ‘Look where you’re going!’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Killigrew asked her in a low voice.

  ‘Of course! You?’

  ‘I’ll be glad of a chance to change out of these wet clothes.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘You know, we make rather a good team, you and I.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed drily. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t find the Sea Devil.’

  ‘Perhaps if we worked together…’

  ‘Team up, you mean?’

  ‘Worked cheek by jowl…’

  She grinned impishly. ‘Sorry; I work alone. And you’d best get back to your hotel. I’ve a feeling the Third Section will be on their way now to find out whether or not you’re tucked up in bed.’ She turned on her heel, skipped away from him, and then the darkness swallowed her up and she was gone.

  He sighed, and headed off in a direction he hoped would take him back to the Nevsky Prospect.

  Chapter 16

  From Russia With Love

  The sound of the first explosion echoed across the rooftops of St Petersburg. Working late in his office, Superintendent Voronin threw down his pen and stood up, moving around his desk to open the door to the annex outside his office.

 
‘What was that?’ he demanded of the clerk at the desk.

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Find out. And have Sergeant Astapchyonok bring my carriage around the front with two gendarmes standing by.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The clerk hurried out of the room and Voronin retreated to his office to put on his greatcoat and a wideawake. He made his way through a maze of corridors until he came to a door that most people in the building walked straight past, thinking it was nothing more than a closet. In fact, it opened into a stairway leading up to the roof, and Voronin was one of the few people who had the key. He made his way up on to the roof, where there was a walkway behind the balustrade.

  Voronin liked to come up here when he needed to think and the hubbub of the office was too distracting. It was nice and quiet up there, and even during the day the sounds of the streets below were little more than a droning in the background. He looked around, scanning the horizon in all directions until he saw the pall of smoke off to the southwest: over Novaya Gollandia, by the look of it. The navy was working on some kind of top secret experiment there; he wondered if it had gone wrong.

  The second explosion that shattered the stillness of the night was closer, about halfway between Novaya Gollandia and the roof where Voronin stood, but even so there seemed to be a delay between the blossoming of yellow flame that rose over the Moika Canal and the crack of thunder that followed. Voronin gripped the balustrade and stared as a second cloud of smoke mushroomed up.

  He snapped out of it and ran back downstairs. Sergeant Astapchyonok was waiting for him outside where two gendarmes – Evdokinchik and Chorny – sat on the driving board of a carriage.

  ‘Did you hear the second one, sir?’ the sergeant asked him, wide-eyed.

  Voronin nodded. ‘Between St Isaac’s Cathedral and Mariinsky Palace.’

  ‘Should we go there now?’

  Voronin shook his head. ‘Whatever happened, whoever was responsible will be long gone by the time we get there. In fact, it would not surprise me if he was long gone already. Take me to Dussot’s: with luck we’ll get there in time to catch him sneaking in the back door.’