‘All right, do you know a place where we can kill some time without drawing attention to ourselves?’
The young man thought for a moment. ‘There’s a glade in the forests just outside the city. It’s hidden from the road, so no one will see us there.’
‘Sounds good!’
It took them ten minutes to reach the spot, an idyllic hollow surrounded by pine trees. The only sound in the gathering twilight was the twittering of birds. Killigrew and Aurélie got out to stretch their legs. Nordenskjöld made himself comfortable on the driving board of the carriage and took out a small, well-thumbed book to read.
‘We’ll wait here for half an hour, then head back into town,’ Killigrew decided, striking a match against the side of the carriage to relight Ögren’s cigar, and then puffing away contentedly. ‘What are you reading?’ he asked Nordenskjöld.
The student held up the book so he could see the spine.
‘Principles of Mineralogy?’
‘It’s what I studied for my Ph.D.’
‘You’re a Ph.D.?’
‘Newly qualified.’
‘What are you going to do now? Become a mining engineer?’
‘A mineralogist, like my father.’
‘Interesting work?’
He smiled. ‘It is if you’re interested in mineralogy. And you get to travel. I love travelling. What I’d really like to do is become an Arctic explorer like you.’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘Take my advice, my lad: stick to being a revolutionary in a tyrannical empire. It’s much safer!’
They waited until the sun had kissed the horizon, and then climbed back into the carriage. Nordenskjöld drove them back into Helsingfors through the dusk and they crossed the bridge into Skatudden. It was easy to find the naval base: the island was not large, and most of the buildings were the wooden shacks of the shanty town there, so the three-storey brick buildings of the naval barracks were visible all over the island.
Nordenskjöld opened the hatch in the ceiling. ‘There’s a queue of carriages trying to get into the yard,’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. ‘The guards are checking inside each one.’
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Killigrew told him. ‘No more than we expected. How fast are they going through?’
‘They’re keeping the carriages moving.’
Killigrew nodded, reassured. With scarcely ten hours before the bombardment started, they could not afford to waste another hour by missing the nine o’clock ferry.
Nordenskjöld reined in the horses when they reached the back of the queue. They moved forwards in fits and starts as each carriage ahead of them was waved through, until finally they reached the gates and one of the guards – not one of the usual naval infantry in a dark green greatcoat, but a booted cuirassier in full dress, including brightly polished breastplate and helmet – came around to the window of the carriage. He saluted smartly and looked at Killigrew.
‘Inbjudningskort, min herre?’ he asked.
Killigrew’s heart was pounding as he handed over the invitation for the guard’s inspection: if the Ögrens had already escaped and informed the police of the theft of their invitations, this was the moment Killigrew, Aurélie and Nordenskjöld would find out about it.
The guard read the card out to a colleague. ‘Gospodin i Gospoda Ambrosius Ögren!'
There was a pause before the reply: one of the other guards no doubt checking the names against a guest list. The wait for the reply seemed inordinately long.
‘Da!'
The first guard handed the card back to Killigrew and stepped away from the carriage, waving it through. Nordenskjöld flicked the reins across the horses’ backs and they trundled through the gateway, rattling down the main thoroughfare of the naval base to the dockyard, which had been converted to a carriage park for the night. Nordenskjöld pulled up. Killigrew and Aurélie waited for him to jump down and open the doors for them: the immaculate cuirassiers on guard on the jetty would know enough of etiquette for their suspicions to be aroused if they had to open the doors for themselves.
But Nordenskjöld seemed to be in a world of his own. ‘Nils!’ hissed Killigrew. ‘Get the door!’
‘Oh! Sorry!’ He jumped down, opening the door to hand Aurélie down from the carriage. Killigrew climbed out after her, straightening his tailcoat.
‘You’d better take the carriage back to Ögren’s house and see if Hjorth needs any help,’ he told the student in a low voice.
‘What about you?’
‘We’ll be all right. This is where we go our separate ways, Nils. I wish I could thank you and your associates properly for all you’ve done to help us.’
‘If you can get Friherre Stålberg and Major Lindström free, that will be thanks enough.’
‘We’ll certainly try our best,’ Killigrew promised him; although he knew they could not be sure that Stålberg and Lindström had not already been executed, or spirited off to the cellars of the Kochubey Mansion; and destroying the Sea Devil had to be their top priority.
‘I wish I was coming with you,’ said Nordenskjöld.
Killigrew shook his head. ‘Not this time, Nils. Don’t worry: one day you’ll have some adventures of your own.’ He smiled. ‘As an Arctic explorer, perhaps.’
Nordenskjöld returned the smile. ‘Perhaps.’
Killigrew and Aurélie stood back as the young man climbed on to the driving board and flicked the reins across the horses’ backs. They watched him drive the carriage back up to the entrance to the naval yard, and then Killigrew proffered a crooked elbow to Aurélie. ‘Shall we?’
She took his arm and the two of them walked across to the jetty.
It was five to nine and the ferry – a small paddle-steamer – already waited. More cuirassiers checked their invitation before they were allowed up the gangplank. The ferry’s upper deck was crowded with men in tailcoats and sashes and women in ball gowns. The Russians had not thought to lay on any extra ferries tonight, as a result of which those not wishing to turn up only fifteen minutes after the ball had started (or, worse, forty-five minutes before) had been obliged to wait for this one.
The ferry’s steam whistle sounded on the dot of nine, startling some of the ladies present, and the gangplank was brought in board while a couple of crewmen unfastened the mooring ropes from their bollards and jumped nimbly for the rail. As they scrambled to safety, the paddle-wheels plashed at the water and the ferry reversed away from the jetty. Once clear, the helmsman spun the wheel and the boat turned to face the Kronbergsfjärden – as the wide bay behind Sveaborg was called – before the order was given to stop the engines, then turn ahead.
The other guests crowding the upper deck smiled and laughed gaily, not in the least bit bothered by the Allied fleet on their doorstep. Thus Nero fiddled while Rome burned, thought Killigrew. As the ferry gathered way and rounded the headland at the east end of Skatudden, he glanced off to port to the anchorage in the middle of the Kronbergsfjärden. He counted six Russian ships of the line, a frigate, a brig, a corvette, and three paddle-sloops. There was no indication that they were readying themselves to sally out against the Allied fleet: they were outnumbered and outgunned anyway. But the day-to-day running of a fleet needed to be carried out, and boats and lighters moved constantly between the anchored ships and the quayside, ferrying out men and supplies.
Turning away from the rail, he got a shock when he saw Lieutenant Kizheh standing on the other side of the deck.
Swearing under his breath, he turned his back immediately, but he had a feeling it was too late: he had caught Kizheh’s eye, and the lieutenant had had enough time to get a fleeting glimpse of his face.
‘D’you see that fellow standing on the other side of the deck, wearing a sky-blue uniform and leaning on a cane?’ he muttered to Aurélie out of the corner of his mouth.
‘No, but I see a fellow leaning on a cane and wearing a sky-blue uniform coming towards us.’
‘Damn. Leave this one to me.’ Le
aving Aurélie at the rail, he started to push his way through the crowds to the fore hatch. There was no need to glance over his shoulder to see if Kizheh followed: the tap-tap-tap of his cane against the deck told its own story. Reaching the hatch, Killigrew lifted it up and descended the companion ladder below, only to run straight into a matros on the lower deck.
‘I’m sorry, sir. Passengers aren’t permitted below decks. This area is for the crew only.’
‘Sorry, I was looking for the necessary.’
‘There isn’t one for passengers. We’ll be arriving at East Svarto in less than ten minutes. You can—’
‘Matros! Seize that man!’ called Kizheh, coming down the companion ladder.
Killigrew tried to drive his knee into the matros’s crotch, but the Russian was fast: he twisted on his ankles to receive the blow against his thigh. When Killigrew tried to punch him in the face, the matros deflected the blow with an upraised arm and caught him by the wrist. Twisting Killigrew’s arm up into the small of his back, he slammed him against a bulkhead and pinioned him there. An oil-lamp in a gimbal on the bulkhead inches from his face dazzled his eyes.
‘Good work!’ Kizheh came the rest of the way down the companion ladder and flashed his identification at the matros. ‘Lieutenant Kizheh, Third Section. This man is a dangerous British spy!’ Tucking his identification away, he produced a revolver and pressed the muzzle to Killigrew’s forehead. ‘What do you think, Commander? Should I take you to Sveaborg so Colonel Nekrasoff can put you in front of a firing squad? Or I should I just pull the trigger here and now, blow your brains out all over the bulwark? No… you don’t deserve a quick death.’ He lowered the revolver until it was pointed at Killigrew’s thigh. ‘Perhaps I should make you suffer first, as you made me suffer when you shot me in the foot—’
‘Er… excuse me?’ interrupted a woman’s voice as more footsteps sounded on the companion ladder. ‘Is there somewhere on board I can powder my nose?’
Kizheh half turned away from Killigrew to address her over his shoulder. ‘This is not a good time, Madame—’
Killigrew braced a foot against the bulkhead and threw himself backwards, slamming the matros against the bulkhead behind them and breaking free. He clasped Kizheh by the wrist, smashing his hand against the oil-lamp so that the broken glass lacerated his skin and the wick burned him. Kizheh cried out as his hand opened reflexively, allowing the revolver to fall to the deck. Killigrew seized the cane from his other hand, holding it against Kizheh’s throat and forcing him back against the bulkhead, throttling him. Behind him, he heard the matros’s body fall to the deck with a thud.
Kizheh’s struggles became weaker, until finally he became limp and the cane crushing his windpipe was the only thing holding him up. Killigrew gave the cane another push for good measure, and then let him drop to the deck. He backed away to see Aurélie kneeling over the matros’s corpse, wiping the blade of her throwing knife clean on his guernsey, taking fastidious care to make sure she did not get any of the blood on herself.
‘I thought I told you to leave this one to me,’ Killigrew said angrily.
‘Oh, yes, because you were making such a fine job of it when I came down the hatch just now!’
‘I could have handled them,’ he said surlily, wondering if it was true.
As he stared down at the corpse at his feet, he felt himself trembling, nauseated. No matter how many times he killed, there was always something slightly sickening about it. He supposed that was something to be grateful for. He had promised himself that the day he started to enjoy it would be the day he resigned his commission.
Aurélie hitched up her skirts and petticoats to slide the knife back into the sheath strapped to one of her ankles. ‘We’d better get them out of sight before someone else comes along,’ she prompted, snapping him out of his reverie.
Killigrew glanced around and saw the door in the bulkhead behind her. ‘Bow locker,’ he grunted, grabbing the matros by the ankles and dragging him across the deck.
Aurélie took Kizheh’s ankles. ‘How is it I had to deal with the big, burly sailor while you got the skinny cripple?’ she demanded.
‘The skinny cripple had a gun,’ Killigrew reminded her. ‘Besides, that one was personal. Anyhow, you’re the one who’s always boasting you can look after yourself.’
He opened the door to the bow locker and between them they tossed the two bodies in there. Killigrew threw Kizheh’s cane on top of them and dragged a tarpaulin over the corpses before closing the door once more.
As he stooped to pick up Kizheh’s revolver, Killigrew saw there were a few shards of glass on the floor below the broken lamp. There was no time to look for a dustpan and brush, so he swept them against the foot of the bulkhead with the side of a half-boot so they would not crunch underfoot when anyone came down the passage.
‘Is there any blood on me?’ he asked Aurélie.
She looked him up and down. ‘No. Plenty on the floor, though.’
He licked his fingertips and pinched out the still-burning flame of the oil-lamp, plunging the passageway into darkness. ‘No one will notice it now.’
‘A broken lamp, blood on the floor and two corpses in the bow locker… someone’s going to notice this mess sooner or later.’
‘Let’s just pray it’s later rather than sooner. We only need a couple of hours to rescue Stålberg and Lindström and destroy the Sea Devil.’
They went back up on deck. The scene was much the same as they left it – no one seemed to have any clue as to the drama that had been played out below – except that now it was almost dark, the night sky a rich shade of indigo, and the ferry was drawing close to Sveaborg.
The Kronbergsfjärden was undoubtedly a superb anchorage. Although shallow, the wide bay was sheltered from the gulf beyond by a chain of islands of which Sveaborg was only a part; yet the only channels deep enough to admit a ship of the line to the Kronbergsfjärden ran on either side of Sveaborg, right under the fortress’s batteries. As the ferry approached the fortified islands, Killigrew saw the two-decker anchored across the channel between Langhorn and Little Svarto as a floating battery, and in the distance he could make out the masts of an even larger ship anchored where he guessed the second channel must lie.
The ferry passed Little Svarto – as its name implied, the smallest of the five islands, and the only one not connected to any of the others by a bridge – which was dominated by a single large fort. The ferry tied up at a landing stage at the north side of East Svarto, the largest of the islands. Killigrew and Aurélie had to queue to get ashore as more cuirassiers checked their invitations against the guest list as they disembarked, so the arriving guests were strung out in a long line as they set off into the island.
A single-storey red-brick barracks masked the rest of the island, although the white, onion-domed tower of a church rose up behind it. Half as high as the church tower, a three-storey tower with a belvedere on top rose up from the middle of the barracks, with an archway below. A string of paper lanterns guided the guests through the arch, so Killigrew and Aurélie followed them. On the other side the lanterns led the way down the side of a parade ground; the church stood to the right while on their left was another row of barracks, again built in red brick but three storeys high this time. On the far side of the parade ground the lanterns led them to the right, past another three-storey barrack-block and a ‘C’-shaped red-brick building with the word ‘Arsenal’ on a sign above the door in Cyrillic script. Ahead and to their right, they could see a stretch of water – Artillery Bay, the channel between East Svarto and Vargon, narrowing to a width of about thirty yards where a wooden bridge spanned it up ahead.
‘Gunboat sheds, off to your right,’ muttered Aurélie.
Killigrew glanced that way and saw two sheds on the shore just over two hundred yards off, opening into Artillery Bay where it grew wider. Beyond there was a crossroad in the waterway where the channels between West Svarto, East Svarto, Little Svarto and Vargon met. If Kil
ligrew was looking for the Sea Devil, then the gunboat sheds – about a hundred feet long and fifty feet high – warranted closer inspection, but there were too many guards around for him or Aurélie to break away from the other guests following the line of paper lanterns.
Once they had crossed the wooden footbridge they could hear the sound of a band playing a mazurka coming from up ahead. They followed the lanterns between two more buildings and emerged on another parade ground to see the citadel ahead of them, a large, star-shaped, casemated fort with bastions and ravelins.
The guests had to queue at the gateway formed by an arched tunnel beneath a crenellated tower. Here their invitations were taken to be checked against the guest list once again. In addition to the usual immaculate cuirassiers, Killigrew spotted a burly fellow with a lumpy face standing in the shadows of a corner. He wore a black leather greatcoat and a fur hat. Killigrew was tempted to mutter ‘Third Section’ under his breath to warn Aurélie, but saw no point in worrying her unnecessarily: it was not as if she would not already be on her guard.
As each couple went through, their names were passed to a magnificently dressed flunkey in a powdered wig and knee breeches, who announced their names to the gathering beyond.
‘Herre and Fru Ambrosius Ögren!’
Killigrew was aware of all eyes turning to stare at them: there were plenty of grafs and grafinas, friherres and friherrinas, and even a couple of dukes and duchesses; but very few herres and frus. This was the real moment of danger, when someone was going to shout out: ‘That’s not Herre Ögren and his wife!’ As he braced himself, he instinctively looked for a way out, but the place was a disaster if it was a quick exit you were after.
Their host for the night, Governor-General Friedrich von Berg, had decided to hold the ball in the compound of the citadel. It was certainly large enough – nearly two hundred and fifty yards across – and, with fairy lights hung from the granite walls or strung from lines stretched overhead, it looked lovely; and it was a suitably mild night for an open-air entertainment. But it was still a fortress, which meant there was only one way in or out – the heavily guarded gateway they had just come through – and there were more guards patrolling the battlements above the fairy lights.
Killigrew and the Sea Devil Page 40