The White Russian

by Tom Bradby

  By a process of elimination, he whittled down the possibilities until there was only one that made sense.

  If the first numbers-4692-meant page forty-six, line nine, letter two, then what he found was “K.” If he applied the same process to the numbers on the first seven notes, what he got was:

  Kresty. If he went on in the same vein for the second seven, he got Crossing.

  Kresty Crossing. He had never heard of it.

  Ruzsky closed the book. If she had packed for a departure and this was the code book-as seemed certain-why had she not planned to take it with her?

  He turned to face her. The Kresty Crossing. It sounded like a railway junction, or bridge.

  He watched the firelight flicker across her beautiful, peaceful face, her chest rising and falling evenly.

  “What have you begun?” he whispered.

  “It’s late,” she said.

  She was looking at him and Ruzsky realized he had nodded off.

  He glanced at the clock. It was four in the morning. He sat up straight, but the expression on her face made his heart sink. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice was tired and weak, but it carried a hint of impatience.

  “Do you still feel dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re in pain?”

  She did not answer.

  The silence dragged.

  “I’d like you to leave,” she said.

  Ruzsky did not reply. He continued to stare into the fire.

  “I thank you for what you have done, but I ask you to leave and not trouble me again.”

  Ruzsky did not move. He felt a tightness in his chest. “You’d like me to leave?”

  She rested her head again with an almost inaudible sigh.

  “Did you know the boy?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Why did-”

  “Not now,” she said.

  “Your name is not Popova.”

  Maria closed her eyes.

  “Your sister does not acknowledge that she has a family. Who are you?”

  Maria’s face was still.

  “Does my brother know about your past?”

  “No.”

  “He’s an officer in the Life Guards.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “What is it that you have planned, Maria?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t-”

  “It is not your affair.”

  Ruzsky leaned forward. The stony glare in her eyes unnerved him. “All those years ago in Yalta, Vasilyev had an agent reporting on your meetings.”

  She did not answer.

  “Three other members of your group have been murdered. The American was stabbed seventeen times. Markov’s head was nearly severed…”

  “Please go.”

  “Why does your sister carry a different family name?”

  “What do you want of me?” she asked.

  Ruzsky was stung by her hostility. “I could ask the same of you. What purpose have I served? What part of your plan was I needed for?”

  Maria did not respond immediately. He listened to the sound of her breathing. “I never asked you to get involved.”

  “Tell me about the Kresty Crossing.”

  Maria slowly pushed herself upright, her face distorted by pain and fatigue. “If you’re even half the man I once imagined, then you will leave now and never trouble me again.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Then do so for your own sake.”

  She lay back, exhausted. Ruzsky was on his feet. “Borodin thinks someone is closing in on you, doesn’t he? Three of your number have been killed.”

  “I should imagine more die every second in the Tsar’s army.”

  “You’re not in the Tsar’s army.”

  “Nor am I dead. Yet.”

  Ruzsky stared at her.

  “What can I tell you that will make a difference, Sandro? What do you want to know? That Michael Borodin has been my lover, too? That he still is when the fancy takes him?”

  She looked at Ruzsky. “Does that disgust you? Perhaps you would like to imagine the hands of the man who beat that boy to pulp tonight, all over my body. Would that convince you?”

  “I don’t believe a word.”

  “Oh, yes you do. I saw the look in your eyes when I was trying to clean him up. He’s violent to me, too. Do you know what he does when we are alone together? Do you want to know what he does to me when I am naked?”

  “Why are you saying this?”

  “You shouldn’t have been greedy. You should have taken what was offered and left it at that.”

  “I don’t believe you. This isn’t the woman I know.”

  “Perhaps that woman is a figment of your imagination.”

  “No.”

  She was silent again, for so long that Ruzsky thought she had drifted off to sleep. He stood and walked to the window. It was snowing, thick flakes swirling out of the darkness, into the pools of light cast by the gas lamps.

  “I’d like you to leave now,” she said quietly.

  Ruzsky waited. “A boy was murdered tonight.”

  “Then come back in the morning with your constables and arrest me.”

  “I think you may be the next victim, and I believe that you think that too.”

  Maria was still staring up at the ceiling. “Please leave, Sandro. We will not be seeing each other again.” She looked at him. “If you’re a gentleman, you won’t make me repeat myself.”

  41

  R uzsky let himself out into the bitter night, the hurt bewildering in its itensity. On her doorstep, he almost walked into a bulky figure huddled against the railings. He began to mumble an apology when he realized that it was Pavel.

  His partner wore a thick sheepskin cap, but still looked white with cold. Ice crystals had formed in his beard and he was shuffling from one foot to the other.

  “What in the-”

  “I tried the hospitals. You weren’t there, or at your apartment.”

  “Christ, man,” Ruzsky said. He gripped Pavel’s shoulders and began to try to warm him, then pushed the door back and forced him inside. “Why didn’t you wait in here?”

  “I’m all right.”

  Ruzsky glanced toward the hall porter’s little box beneath the stairs. The man was eyeing them warily.

  “Is she alive?” Pavel asked. “I saw her go under the horse.”

  “She’s alive, yes.”

  Pavel took off his gloves and began to blow onto his hands.

  “You need to get warm,” Ruzsky said.

  “No, I’m all right.”

  Pavel knocked the remaining snow from his boots. The hall porter shouted something incomprehensible at them.

  “What happened at the factory?” Pavel asked.

  Ruzsky glanced up the curved stairwell at the floors above, ignoring the question. “Are you tired?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I would like to go back to the factory. I’ll explain on the way.”

  There were no trams running at this time in the morning, so they had to walk down to the Mariinskiy before they found a droshky.

  The vanka was a monosyllabic Tartar who barely even bothered to haggle over the fare. He was wrapped in at least a dozen layers of clothing and as they crossed the Alexandrovsky Bridge, Ruzsky could see why. The sky was clear, a bright moon sparkling off golden spires, but it was viciously cold, a north wind sweeping across the ice and biting through their overcoats. They huddled together in the back for warmth, Ruzsky attempting to bury his leather boots beneath the straw by his feet.

  He tried to explain some of what had happened in the factory to his colleague, but the howling wind made it difficult.

  Pavel paid the driver outside the tall black gates and tried to persuade the man to stay for the return journey, but he shook his head, turned his sledge around, and disappeared back toward the south side of the river.

  Ruz
sky led the way into the courtyard. It was deserted now and bathed in moonlight. The braziers that had been burning earlier had been knocked aside.

  Ruzsky marched toward the darkened entrance to the vast, redbrick building, the wind roaring in his ears.

  It was quieter within, and their footsteps echoed. Pavel put a hand on his arm and drew him to a halt. His eyes questioned the wisdom of continuing. Ruzsky held up two fingers. “Two minutes,” he mouthed.

  He began to mount the stairs. It was dark but for fingers of moonlight feeling their way through tiny slit windows.

  They reached the landing where Ruzsky had first seen Borodin, but the corridor disappeared into darkness in both directions.

  Ruzsky followed the route he had taken earlier, mounting the steps and turning toward the gangway over the factory floor.

  They saw light ahead and Pavel pulled him roughly back into a stairwell.

  They heard voices.

  The conversation grew louder for a moment and then quieter as the torchlight faded.

  They waited. The factory was silent.

  Ruzsky led the way down to the floor below, groping in the darkness, past giant black machines that smelled of grease and oil.

  They stopped again. Above them they could see light from a series of flame torches flickering across the ceiling of the supervisor’s office where Andrei had been murdered.

  The voices were suddenly louder again. Two men stood in the doorway. They began to walk, their voices booming confidently across the factory floor. One of them whispered something and the other laughed.

  Ruzsky edged forward, skirting one of the machines, and looked up. One of the men was Ivan Prokopiev, his closely cropped bullet head instantly recognizable, and the other was Michael Borodin.

  Ruzsky stepped back, colliding with Pavel, who began to gesticulate, mouthing that they should leave immediately. Ruzsky shrugged. “How?” he mouthed back. Some of Prokopiev’s men were still in the foreman’s office at the end and Prokopiev and Borodin were now behind them.

  Their answer presented itself when the two men returned, still in animated conversation. Ruzsky heard Prokopiev say, “Hurry up,” to his officers at the far end of the walkway, and he and Pavel took this as their cue.

  They moved silently up the stairs and then retraced their steps down to the courtyard. They kept moving and did not stop until they had reached the high iron fence surrounding the barracks of the Lithuanian Regiment.

  “There is your answer,” Pavel said, trying to recover his breath.

  Ruzsky did not respond. His heart was pounding and his palms and forehead were clammy.

  “It’s as you suspected. Borodin and Vasilyev are allies. They must have been since Yalta. That’s what lies behind our murders. Vasilyev must be eliminating everyone who is aware of that association.”

  “It’s a neat theory,” Ruzsky conceded.

  “Don’t tell me you’re surprised?”

  “Whatever one might think of Vasilyev-or his associate-I can’t picture either of them following in someone’s footsteps like a misguided amateur and then slashing him seventeen times for the fun of it.”

  “Perhaps the other one does the killing. Borodin…”

  Ruzsky hesitated. The way in which the boy had been bludgeoned to death made some sense of this, but he still couldn’t accept it. “No,” he said. “I think Borodin and his allies are angered by these killings. If anything, they have disrupted their plans.”

  They glanced back down the street to check that they had not been followed. “What are their plans?” Pavel asked.

  Ruzsky did not answer. He turned his back so that he was shielded from the wind.

  “At that meeting,” Pavel went on, “Vasilyev was giving Shulgin and your father the impression that these men were dangerous. Why was he doing that?”

  “I don’t know.” Ruzsky looked at his colleague. He needed time to think. “Go home and get some sleep. We’ll talk later.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t do anything foolish. Remember what happened in Yalta.”

  Ruzsky shook his head. “I will see you in the office at one.”

  “What-”

  “We have something we need to do.”

  Ruzsky tapped his colleague’s shoulder affectionately and then started walking. After twenty yards, he stopped and turned back to watch Pavel melting into the night.

  He and Tonya lived over in Palyustrovo, beyond the Finland Station. It was a walk almost as long as his own, but at least a warm bed awaited him.

  Ruzsky turned into the wind and began the journey back to Vasilevsky Island. He didn’t encounter a droshky, so had to keep walking, crossing the Birzhevoy Bridge to the Strelka alongside a peddler pushing his cart laboriously up the incline. Ruzsky helped the man for twenty yards or so-until the downhill section of the bridge-earning himself a toothless grin.

  He pulled his cap down farther and narrowed his eyes against the wind as he slipped through the austere buildings that dominated this end of Vasilevsky Island. He thought of the summer days when he and Dmitri had stood with the servants close to where University and Nicholas Quays merged, listening to the whistling of the winches and the shouts of crewmen from all over the world.

  The memory of such innocent pleasures troubled him. Would that world ever return? He was worried not for himself, but for Michael.

  He would see his boy tomorrow, come what may.

  Ruzsky was so lost in thought that he almost walked straight into them. Only the presence of a dark automobile in the region of Line Fourteen-an unusual sight-alerted him.

  He stopped and ducked into the shadows. There were two officers in the car. They were Prokopiev’s men, not the surveillance teams, who would have been much less conspicuous.

  Ruzsky edged back into the shadows and moved silently away. Ironically, he knew there was now only one place in the city he would be safe.

  At night, the servants locked and bolted the entrance to the yard at Millionnaya Street, but there was a gap above the doors that Ruzsky had slipped through many times as an adolescent.

  Inside, he climbed the stone steps to the kitchen door and glanced in. A light was on. He knew that Katya awoke early. He checked his watch. It was half past five in the morning.

  Ruzsky waited. Even out of the wind, it was still bitterly cold.

  Katya bustled into the kitchen and he watched her for a few moments before knocking gently on the window. She looked around, startled, then frowned as she examined him more closely. Ruzsky realized that she had not initially recognized him.

  She came to the back door, opening it a fraction, as if not wanting him to take his entry for granted. “Master Sandro,” she said, her face flushed.

  “Katya.”

  She did not move.

  “Might I come in?”

  “They’re all asleep, Master Sandro.”

  “I want to see my boy, before they wake.”

  Reluctantly, and only because she felt she had no choice, Katya eased the door back and allowed him entry. In the hallway within, she examined him cautiously. Ruzsky realized, through her reaction, what a mess he must look. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror for days and he doubted it would be a pretty sight. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  “Be careful, Master Sandro,” she said.

  Ruzsky smiled. He turned and walked up the stairs, drifting silently through the house.

  He climbed the last steps to the attic.

  In the darkness, Ruzsky walked forward until he stood over his son.

  Michael lay on his front, his head to the side, clutching his worn-out bear. He was breathing easily. A new train track had been assembled upon the floor, reaching right to the edge of the bed.

  Ruzsky studied him.

  He reached down and touched his son’s soft head, then leaned down and kissed his ear. “I love you, my boy.”

  Fatigue finally began to overwhelm him and, as he straighten
ed, he felt unsteady on his feet. He turned and, trying not to wake Michael, slipped back across the hallway.

  By the light of the moon, he saw Ilusha’s abandoned animals on the shelf above his bunk and found himself moving toward them. He looked at the photograph of his brother, with the two candles on either side of it.

  Ruzsky stopped. The bed was already occupied.

  Dmitri sat up, his hair tousled and his face full of sleep. “Sandro? What are you doing here?”

  Ruzsky did not answer. He listened to the sound of his own breathing.

  Dmitri lay down again, with his back to the door. He was in the full dress uniform of a colonel of the Guards. “There is room,” he said, shuffling to the side of the bunk.

  Ruzsky waited for a few seconds, then walked forward. He lay down beside his brother.

  The house was silent.

  He looked up at the tattered toy elephant on the shelf above and the painted wooden soldier at the end of the bed. He closed his eyes.

  Dmitri reached out for his hand and held it. Ruzsky gripped it tightly.

  They lay still, just as they had done in the days and weeks after Ilusha’s death.

  Ruzsky turned over and wrapped his arm around his brother’s chest.

  He relaxed his grip, but did not move. After a few moments, sleep overwhelmed him.

  He dreamed of her, but it was more memory than illusion. He watched the image of her crouched in front of Borodin, wiping the blood from his clothes.

  The others were not there. It was just Maria and the revolutionary.

  Maria ministered to him slowly, upon her knees, Borodin’s dark head tilted down, his eyes upon her.

  He touched her head and stilled her actions.

  Ruzsky waited, his heart thumping in his chest. He closed his eyes.

  He awoke, bathed in sweat-or at least, so it seemed. It took him a few moments to understand that it was his brother whose skin was clammy with perspiration. Dmitri turned and looked at him with startled eyes. “Sandro?” He stared at Ruzsky, apparently forgetting that his brother was sleeping alongside him. “Is it you?”

  “It’s me, Dmitri.”

  Dmitri slumped back down, once again turning away from him. “Thank God,” he whispered.