Four men were standing at the end of the nearest row. From their clothes, it was clear that three of them were workers in the mill. They had careworn faces and were old before their time. The fourth man was wearing a suit and looked shabbily respectable. He was perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven, and his eyes burned with the fire of a true fanatic.
Tanya greeted them all, then pointed to Blackstone and gave a short speech. When she’d finished, the men all nodded sagely.
‘I’ve just told them you’re a comrade who’s part of the revolutionary struggle in England,’ she said. ‘For some reason, that seems to impress them.’
‘Maybe not everyone in Russia is quite as anti-British as you are,’ Blackstone suggested.
‘We are going to discuss our strategy,’ Tanya told him. ‘From time to time, I will translate what has been said. I don’t want to, but since you are supposed to be a fellow revolutionary, my comrades will expect it – so please try to act as if you are interested.’
‘I am interested,’ Blackstone said.
The strategy ‘discussion’ went on for half an hour. Most of the talking was done by the man in the shabby suit, and when one of the workers tried to interrupt him, he would wave his hands extravagantly in the air.
‘It has been decided that the strike will not end until the workers’ demands are met,’ Tanya told Blackstone at the end of it.
‘And what are their demands?’ Blackstone asked.
‘A fifty per cent increase in wages and a twenty per cent decrease in hours,’ Tanya said.
‘No, that’s not their demands – that’s what your mate in the suit wants them to ask for,’ Blackstone said. ‘What do they want for themselves?’
Tanya looked at him suspiciously. ‘Vladimir did not tell me you could speak Russian,’ she said.
‘Nor can I,’ Blackstone replied. ‘But I can read men, and I’ve been reading this lot for the last half-hour. So what is it they actually want?’
‘We will talk about it on the way to the factory, when my comrade is not reading you in the way that you appear to have read him,’ Tanya said.
‘I take that to mean that he’s not coming to the factory himself,’ Blackstone said.
‘No, he is far too valuable to the party – and to the workers’ movement in general – to be put at risk over such a minor skirmish.’
‘Or, to put it another way, it’ll all be left up to the poor bloody infantry, as it always is,’ Blackstone said.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand what you just said,’ Tanya told him.
But she did – he could see that she did.
The pub had been heaving when they’d walked in, ten minutes earlier, but now most of the men had drifted off for their Christmas dinners, and they virtually had the place to themselves.
Patterson looked down at the pint of best bitter he was holding in his big hand. Knowing, as he did, that the chances were he’d soon be back in prison, it was tempting to drink as much beer as he could force down himself. But there was still work to be done, and he needed a clear head to do it. So, with a sigh, he put the glass back on the table, untouched.
‘We’ve reached a dead end, haven’t we?’ Ellie Carr asked.
‘Were you expecting to find Max had gone back to his old lodgings?’ Patterson asked.
‘No, but …’
‘Then what were you expecting?’
Ellie shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting.’
‘Just by establishing that Max did live there once, we’ve taken a big step towards finding him,’ Patterson said.
‘Have we? I don’t see how.’
‘We started this investigation in the belief that what Hartington said about Max still being in London is true, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, we did, but now I’ve started asking myself why we should believe him. What does he know? He’s a posh solicitor. He’s probably never brushed shoulders with a criminal in his life.’
‘No, he probably hasn’t,’ Patterson agreed, ‘but he most likely got the information from whoever’s paying him.’
‘If the man who’s paying him knows that Max is still in London, why doesn’t he simply tell us where to find him?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Patterson admitted, ‘but if Hartington’s convinced that he’s still here, then so am I.’
‘And I suppose I am, too,’ Ellie conceded. ‘So what’s our next step?’
‘The next step is based on our knowledge that Max once lived in Hooper Street and that he was probably involved in some sort of criminal activity,’ Patterson said.
‘Go on.’
‘In some ways, criminals are a lot like animals – they’re never really comfortable away from the places they know. So if Max is in London, he won’t be too far from Hooper Street.’
‘Not too far?’ Ellie said quizzically.
‘That’s right,’ Patterson agreed. ‘He won’t have gone to ground anywhere he’s likely to run into Mrs Wilson, of course, but I’d be surprised if he’s more than half a mile away from Commercial Road. So that’s the area we’ll concentrate our search on.’
‘So we show Max’s photograph to people on the street and in the shops and pubs, and see if anyone recognizes him?’ Ellie asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s one of the most crowded areas of this very crowded city,’ Ellie said. ‘How many people do you think there are living there?’
‘Quite a lot,’ Patterson admitted.
‘The strike started when a group of mothers arrived half an hour late for work because their children were sick,’ Tanya said, as they walked towards the mill. ‘That was nothing unusual – children are always getting sick in that place, and once one comes down with something, it is not long before a lot of the others catch it. But what was different this time was that it was the older children who had caught the fever, and that made things especially difficult.’
‘Why?’ Blackstone asked.
Tanya snorted with contempt at his ignorance. ‘The older children can look after the babies when they are sick, but the babies cannot look after the older children,’ she said.
‘Of course – I should have seen that,’ Blackstone agreed humbly.
‘The mothers asked if one of them could go back to the dormitory in the middle of the morning, to check on the sick children,’ Tanya said. ‘The foreman told them they were employed as cotton spinners, not nurses. The women accepted that. They knew that perhaps one or more of the children would be dead by the time their shift was over, but there was no guarantee that a visit would save them – and if they lost their jobs by disobeying the foreman, they would have no money to feed any of their children, and they would all starve to death.’
‘I hope that sometime during this strike I meet that bastard,’ Blackstone growled. ‘I’ll teach him how to be compassionate, even if it kills him.’
‘There was worse yet to come,’ Tanya said. ‘The foreman told them that since they were half an hour late, they would be fined half a day’s pay. That was too much for even the downtrodden to take, and they walked out.’
‘So, at the start of their meeting with your mate …’
‘Josef. His name is Josef.’
‘At the start of their meeting with Josef, what were they demanding as a condition for returning to work?’ Blackstone asked.
‘They wanted the half-day’s pay that the women had been docked reinstated, and the right for at least one of them to go back to the dormitory when children were sick.’
‘They weren’t asking for a fifty per cent increase in wages and a twenty per cent decrease in hours?’
‘No.’
‘But your comrade talked them into it?’
‘Josef can be very persuasive – and the workers look up to him. They know nothing beyond the villages they came from and the mill in which they now work. But he is an educated man, wise to the ways of the world, and if he tells them something, they believe it to be correct.’
&nbs
p; ‘And what did he tell them?’
‘He said that we have the owners over a barrel and that they are bound to concede.’
‘Was he telling the truth?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘So why did he lie to them?’
‘It was unlikely that the employer would agree to their first demand – withdrawing the fines and allowing one woman to visit the dormitory – but there was always a slight possibility that he would.’
‘And wouldn’t that be a good thing?’
Tanya snorted again. ‘The important thing is not that matters are resolved, but that there is a strike. Real change does not come through gradualism; it comes through confrontation.’
‘And to hell with the mill workers?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Josef says that you cannot make an omelette without first breaking a few heads,’ Tanya said.
‘You mean “eggs”,’ Blackstone corrected her.
‘I mean heads,’ Tanya said firmly. ‘Or to put it another way, Josef believes that there can be no victory if there is not some suffering first. And he is not alone in this belief – Vladimir, who is his antithesis, believes exactly the same thing.’
There was a large square in front of the mill, and as they approached it, they could see that a crowd of several hundred people – men, women and children – had gathered in front of its gates.
‘They’re all worried that the owner will try to bring in new workers from the outside to replace them,’ Tanya explained.
‘Should the children be here, when there’s a chance of things turning violent?’ Blackstone asked.
‘The hope is that there will be no violence because the children are here,’ Tanya said. ‘It is a tactic that has often been used in the past.’
‘And does it always work?’
Tanya shrugged. ‘It usually works,’ she said cautiously.
The people in the crowd were cold – and probably hungry – but they were in the sort of good spirits that people often are when – after one humiliation too many – they have finally decided to take a stand.
Tanya walked up and down the line, shaking the men’s hands, kissing the women and rubbing the children’s heads.
She was a very different character from the one he was getting to know, Blackstone thought. This Tanya – or perhaps he should start thinking of her as Natasha – was both liked and respected by the people she was talking to.
She had to be convincing in this role, he realized – she would never be given important information to pass on to Vladimir if she wasn’t. Yet he still marvelled at the way she could compartmentalize her mind so completely.
Two days earlier, she had been the staunch defender of tsardom who had demanded that Rasputin be killed before he could tarnish the image of the monarchy any further. Yet here she was, encouraging people to take a stand against that same tsardom even if a few heads were broken in the process.
He wondered which side she was really on – and then wondered if she even knew that herself.
The crowd had been quite loud up until that moment, but now a sudden hush descended over it, and in the near distance, there was the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestones.
Clip-clop-clip. Clip-clop-clip.
It would have been impossible to distinguish the hooves over the noise, Blackstone thought, so the people hadn’t fallen silent because of what they’d heard; they’d done it because of what they felt.
The sound of the hooves grew louder – CLIP-CLOP-CLIP, CLIP-CLOP-CLIP – and then the horsemen appeared from around the corner.
There were twelve of them, and it was not horses they were riding on, but shaggy ponies.
Each man wore a fur hat and carried an evil-looking, short, weighted whip in his hand.
‘Cossacks,’ Tanya gasped. ‘They are Cossacks. We … we should have been expecting that.’
The horsemen had arrived in single file, but now they fanned out until they were in a straight line, facing the crowd.
It was a textbook manoeuvre that was both fluid and confident, Blackstone thought. Each rider seemed to understand his mount, and each mount seemed instinctively to know what its rider required of it. The Cossacks used neither stirrups nor spurs to guide their ponies, and the whips they carried had probably never been used on the animals.
But I think I know what they do use them on, Blackstone told himself, remembering Tanya’s scar.
One of the Cossacks – perhaps their captain – said a few words.
‘What was that?’ Blackstone asked Tanya.
‘He said this is an illegal meeting, and we should disperse immediately,’ Tanya replied.
‘Is it illegal?’
‘He seems to think so – and he is the one with the whip.’
Although no apparent order had been given, the ponies began to advance slowly towards the crowd.
Tanya shouted something, first to her left and then to her right, and all the people on the front line of the crowd linked arms.
The ponies drew ever closer. They did not seem to be in the least intimidated by the fact that there was a solid wall of people ahead of them.
Another few steps and they were so close to the front line of the crowd that Blackstone could smell the breath of the pony closest to him.
When the animals were perhaps a foot away, the people on the front line dropped their arms to their sides, and when the ponies pierced the line, they pushed their way either to the left or the right to create a passage for them.
The progress continued, the Cossacks bobbing up and down amongst the sea of humanity like the masts on sailing boats. The horsemen did not speak or look around them. It was almost possible to believe they did not even know that the crowd was there.
When they reached the factory gates, the Cossacks executed a turn, and since this required more space than simply going forwards, there was a great deal of scrambling among the strikers.
Once they had turned, they retraced their steps, and when they were finally clear of the crowd, they formed a single file again and trotted off.
Several of the strikers cheered, but when they realized that most of their comrades were not joining in, they fell silent again.
‘That was a warning,’ Tanya told Blackstone. ‘They wanted to show us how helpless we are and how pointless our struggle is. If the strikers are here again tomorrow, they will not treat them quite so gently.’
‘And will the strikers be here again tomorrow?’
‘Yes, if the strike committee – if Josef – can breathe the necessary fire into them.’
‘And if they are here, will we be here?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Oh yes, we will be here,’ Tanya replied.
FIFTEEN
Vladimir had been morose – perhaps even troubled – ever since the night that Tanya had visited the apartment, but when he arrived home that evening, he seemed to be altogether in much better spirits.
‘There is no problem that can’t be overcome by the clever manipulation of circumstances, Sam,’ he said, as he handed his cloak to the waiting Yuri. ‘And there is no belief – however deeply held – that cannot be preserved once you have learned to navigate events around it.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Blackstone admitted, as they walked towards Vladimir’s study.
‘No, I don’t suppose you have,’ Vladimir replied cheerfully, going straight to his desk and reaching for the panel that controlled his railway. ‘Did you have a good day, Sam?’
‘Not as good as the one you’ve obviously had,’ Blackstone replied. ‘Tanya took me down to the Narva cotton mill.’
‘Ah yes,’ Vladimir said, as if he’d forgotten that small detail – though Blackstone suspected he never forgot anything.
‘The owner sent in a dozen Cossacks to intimidate the strikers,’ Blackstone said.
‘Then he must think that the strike has a firm foundation and that starving the workers back to the mill – which is usually the preferred option – will
not work this time,’ Vladimir said. ‘Who is running the strike?’
‘A man called Josef,’ Blackstone said.
‘Ah, then the owner has the right to be worried,’ Vladimir said. ‘Josef is a splendid chap.’
‘A splendid chap?’ Blackstone repeated incredulously. ‘He’s your enemy, isn’t he?’
‘Indeed he is,’ Vladimir agreed, ‘and at some point in the future, it might be necessary to have him killed – or, worse, horribly maimed, as an example to others – but that doesn’t mean I can’t admire his professionalism, does it?’
‘Tanya thinks it’s likely that the Cossacks will charge the crowd tomorrow,’ Blackstone said.
‘She’s a smart girl, so if she considers that probable, it’s more than likely to happen,’ Vladimir replied.
‘So wouldn’t it be wise of you to order her to stay away from the mill tomorrow?’
‘If she was not there, she would lose credibility, and months of painstaking work would be undone.’
‘Aren’t you worried she might get hurt – or even killed?’
Vladimir laughed. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘What harm could possibly come to her with Sam Blackstone as her bodyguard?’ He paused. ‘How are you and Tanya getting along with each other?’
‘She doesn’t like me,’ Blackstone said. ‘In fact, I’d go as far as to say she despises me.’
Vladimir frowned. ‘You must find a way to make her like you, Sam,’ he said. ‘It is vital to my plans that you both like and trust each other.’
‘And what plans might they be?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘You will know when the time is right,’ Vladimir said airily, his good humour starting to return. ‘I have decided that we’re spending far too many evenings in the apartment,’ he continued, ‘so tonight, Sam, my friend, we will go out and have a little fun.’
‘I didn’t know you allowed yourself to have fun,’ Blackstone said.
Vladimir grinned. ‘You’re right, of course. My pleasure comes from my achievements, not through surrendering to frivolity.’
‘So why are we going out?’
‘We are going out so that I can begin the process I spoke of earlier – the one that involves navigating events around my deeply held beliefs.’
Blackstone and the Endgame Page 14