City of Silence (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  Which is why he had decided that attention must be deflected to Konstantin Antonovich at once.

  There were those, he knew, who liked to gossip that Filip’s pretty little bird had flown. He had heard the guffaws behind his back, the suggestions that his wife and the dance master waltzed below the bedsheets as well as above. But Filip knew these whispers were not true. There were few certainties in life, but he was sure that Tatiana would never betray him. She was too grateful. Too aware of what awaited her if he should ever decide to send her home in disgrace. She had married him in a gown with its hem stained a dark rust color, for when a woman is the daughter of a butcher, even her best dress has absorbed the blood of the slaughterhouse floor. No, his Tatiana had seen no end of dreadful things before she turned ten years old. A woman who goes to the altar in a blood-soaked dress is, if nothing else, a realist. She would do nothing to risk his wrath or to jeopardize her hard-won position within the palace.

  Most people would have found it surprising that a man like Filip should have ever joined the Volya in the first place, much less remained loyal for enough years to rise in their ranks. He was not typical of their membership. Older than most, as broad as a wall, and from some hopelessly obscure little town in the countryside. But appearances can be deceiving, so they say, and Filip knew that his lumbering form and graceless lack of manners gave off the impression he was stupid. He was not. When he had first entered the tsar’s guard he had learned the three additional languages of the court with a rapidity that he knew was not typical of his fellows. This is what had inspired him to go to the university, where those in service to the imperial family were allowed to sit spectator to the classes, an advantage few within the Romanov court pressed. What act of fate had carried him into the classroom of Professor Tomasovich and first brought him into contact with the words of Karl Marx? Filip could not say, but his mind absorbed the logic of the revolution just as a dry sponge expands with water. Filip Orlov was that rarity: a man who came to politics by way of his head rather than his heart.

  When he had offered his services to the Volya, they had initially laughed, which didn’t surprise him. The Marxists were as snobbish as the Romanovs in their way and Filip knew he didn’t look like the others. Didn’t have their middle class background or university polish. Only one boy had seen through this to his potential and asked “But must we all be cut from a cloth, comrades?” Sasha Ulyanov had shown him respect, Sasha alone had opened the door to admit him, and Filip had never forgotten this. Perhaps that was why, even now, he tolerated Vlad, as a gesture of respect to his dead brother.

  The first time Filip had killed, it was to protect the cause. The second time, it was to save his own skin. And so again it would be with the third, but the one thing he was discovering, as his career as an assassin progressed with dizzying speed, is that murder is much simpler if you kill people who don’t matter. After an initial flare of interest, the deaths of the ballet dancers were almost forgotten and it appeared to go even better yet if you killed people who were not well liked. No one, not even her own countrymen, seemed particularly distressed by the absence of Mrs. Kirby.

  And so it would be with Konstantin Antonovich. Filip knew he was not the only one who had noticed the man’s arrogance, his extraordinary sense of entitlement, the sheen of his red trousers and dark hair. The way he put his hands on other men’s women as if they were his own. The women by all appearances liked these presumptions. They seemed to become whatever their dance master commanded them to be. They seemed to transform within his arms and move for him in ways they did not move with their husbands, and thus he was ideally suited as a suspect. One might even say he had practically stepped forward and volunteered to take the blame.

  For no matter what his nationality, rank, or political persuasion, there would not be a single man within the Winter Palace who would be sorry to see the Siberian fall.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Winter Palace - The Breakfast Room in the Imperial Suites

  June 23, 1889

  10:45 AM

  “They are all preoccupied with plans for that silly ball,” Nicky whispered, his eyes darting around the sparsely filled room. “This could be our last opportunity to meet.”

  Alix knew he was right. The halls around the imperial suites had been unusually empty all morning and she could only assume that the area around the theater was correspondingly abuzz with activity. Tonight was the rehearsal, tomorrow was the ball, and her grandmother had informed her that they sailed for home the next day.

  “It is a chance,” she conceded.

  “And one worth taking,” he responded. “No one ever goes to the graveyard. We will be alone.”

  Alone. The word sounded in her head like an oriental gong. Alix had been alone very few times in her life and never alone with a man.

  “You will find the chapel out across the lawn,” he said, slightly inclining his head in the general direction of the windows, and thus the river. “It stands in the center of the graveyard where the servants are laid to rest.”

  “A chapel?” she repeated. She had only been in the enormous chapel within the palace with its golden altar and columns of cobalt and jade. She had found it, in fact, quite difficult to pray amid such a cacophony of earthly splendor.

  “And I have something for you,” he went on in a low voice as he pressed an object in her hand. It was hard and flat and she recoiled when a sharp edge jabbed into her palm. “It stands proof of the seriousness of my intentions.”

  She looked down and found a diamond brooch in the shape of a single flower, large and bursting with brilliants. A simple gift, no doubt, by the standards of the Romanovs, but it was the grandest piece of jewelry she had ever held. Fifth-born princesses from minor German districts did not customarily wear such items about the house.

  “Granny will never let me accept it,” she whispered, glancing about. They were the only two seated at their end of the enormous table. Her grandmother had already departed the breakfast room but quite a few members of the imperial family remained, dawdling over their sausages and soft boiled eggs. From the corner Ella was watching them like a hawk, but Alix knew her older sister would completely approve if she chose to accept the brooch from Nicky. In all likelihood, Ella had been the one to pick it out.

  “You don’t have to wear it publically or at least not when she is present,” Nicky said. “Just keep it and know…” He trailed off here, as if this was the one part of the speech he had not rehearsed. “It is a gift,” he finished weakly. “Nothing more.”

  But gifts have meaning, Alix thought, closing her fingers around the diamond and noting that the brooch was entirely too large to be concealed in her hand. Sometimes the things a woman accepted from a man marked her even more clearly than the things she gave to him.

  Nicky smiled, as if the very fact she held onto the brooch rather than letting it clang to the floor like a wayward fork, was somehow proof of her answer.

  “Meet me in the graveyard at five,” he whispered. “No one will look for us there.”

  The Winter Palace - The Guest Quarters

  10:50 AM

  At another breakfast table, down another hall, Davy was finishing up his story along with his eggs.

  “I feel like a fool,” Rayley said. “I sat talking with the man for hours in the smoking room and not once did it occur to me he was some sort of turncoat.” He took his glasses off and wiped the lenses in a somewhat compulsive manner. “We must inform the authorities of course, but which ones? How can we be sure that Filip is the only revolutionary within the guard? It seems that we could easily tell the wrong person and thus turn him in to his own comrades.”

  “For once I am glad that the imperial guard and the palace police are separate units,” Trevor said. “Since he is with the guard, our best option, I suppose, is to take this news to the police.”

  “They plan to do something at the Tchaikovsky ball, don’t they?” Emma asked. “The Volya, I mean.”

 
Davy wiped his mouth. “No one has said it quite so plain as all that. But Vlad did ask me if I was going to be there, and the Queen, and I can’t think of any other reason he would have made such an inquiry. Or known there was to be a ball at all, for that matter.”

  “True, true, all true enough,” Trevor said. “The very fact that a self-proclaimed revolutionary knows the schedule of entertainments within the Winter Palace is alarming and we can only assume that this information came to him courtesy of either Yulian Krupin or Filip Orlov.”

  “We shall have to be on high alert,” Rayley said. “Starting tonight, for this evening is the dress rehearsal, is it not, Emma?”

  “High alert?” Trevor shook his head just as Emma was nodding hers. “When this news is revealed, the ball will be canceled. I’ll see to that much at least.”

  “You’ll see to it? I understand your sentiments completely, Welles, but this isn’t London.” Rayley replaced his glasses and studied Trevor with sympathy. “We can certainly suggest that Her Majesty and Alix send regrets and perhaps even Ella, if it comes to that. But we hardly have the authority to cancel a ball within the Winter Palace.”

  “Nor are the palace police likely to do so,” Tom said. “Such threats are apparently such a common occurrence that everyone is quite blasé in the face of them. I suppose that if the imperial family avoided every public event with the potential for violence, none of them would ever leave their rooms.”

  “Besides, when you think of it, the situation bears as much opportunity as crisis,” Rayley said briskly. “The ball is our chance to flush the traitors out, to see what other Volya members may reside unsuspected within these walls.”

  “I agree,” said Tom. “They’ve had, what…less than two weeks to adapt to the sudden absence of Yulian, whom they were evidently relying on a great deal if for nothing more than a diversion. Any plan they’ve created since then would have to be rather slapdash, would it not? Besides, if we’re to catch them, our own clock is ticking at the same speed. Forty eight hours from now the Romanovs will be packing for the coast and we shall be sailing for London.”

  “Very well,” Trevor said with a sigh. “Draw the traitors out we shall, but I refuse to use Her Majesty as bait. I shall advise her not to attend the ball and to keep Alix away from the theater a well. And in the meantime I suppose I must consult with that bald man, what’s the name? That Viktor Prakov who appears to be head of the palace police. I doubt he will welcome my visit.”

  “I shall come with you,” Rayley said. “For I’ve met him just a bit, you see. He was one of the fellows in the sauna that day.”

  “Good god,” said Trevor. “Who wasn’t in that ghastly room? Next you’ll be telling me that the tsesarevich himself was in attendance.”

  “Most certainly not,” Rayley said with a quick grin. “I don’t have the feeling Nicky Romanov is that sort at all. He sticks to his room, does he not? And prays for the strength to be a better man.”

  “Poor Alix,” Emma said. But she said it softly, and none of the men heard her.

  The Café of the Revolutionaries

  11:20 AM

  “I cannot imagine why you felt the need to introduce me to that little British pip,” Filip was saying in irritation as he finished his beer. His first beer of the morning, but certainly not the last. The day ahead would likely prove challenging, the evening even more so. “It was not as if we were at some sort of dinner party.”

  “If I did not introduce you, he would have been far more suspicious,” Vlad said, his face flushed.

  “So why did you not make something up?” Gregor snapped. He had not made such steady progress on his own beer and Vlad’s, he noticed, sat completely untouched. No man in Russia could outdrink Filip Orlov, especially when he began before noon, so there was probably no reason to try and keep pace with him in a show of solidarity. “Just say the first name that came to your mind?”

  “I am not good at making things up,” Vlad said, refusing to meet either of the older men’s eyes. “But why is it forbidden for me to confer with Mabrey just because he is English? Cooper vouched for him and neither of you thought anything of it two or three days ago. Meanwhile Filip here is in consort with British policemen, inviting the Queen’s private guard to sweat with him in the saunas.”

  “An entirely different matter,” Gregor said with a wave of his hand.

  “Yes,” said Filip. “For I am, you see, quite good at making things up.”

  If possible, Vlad’s flush grew even deeper, mottling his pale skin and, to his horror, even his eyes were beginning to water. Gregor and Filip had never been so openly displeased with him, and his disgrace could not have come at a worse time. Not now, on the day they had decided they must make their move. He had been the one to point out that the dress rehearsal would be the perfect time to snatch Xenia. For while she - and indeed everyone else involved with the presentations for the ball- would be in their appointed places, the absence of an audience would mean that the theater would be relatively unguarded.

  “Davy is a nothing, a mere messenger boy,” Vlad said, when he had regained his composure enough to trust his voice. “The odds are that he does not even know the detective you met in the gentlemen’s enclave.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Gregor said. “They all came over on the same boat.”

  “Here is the first rule of revolution,” Filip said, seemingly either unaware or uncaring about the slight crust of foam that was forming within his mustache. “Assume that everyone knows everyone. Assume that the woman on the bench is the sister of the man stepping off the train. Assume the grocer is the lover of the woman in his shop and while you are at it, assume that he is also the lover of the man getting off the train because the world is full of its surprises. This I know, comrades.”

  Gregor grimaced and turned to Vlad. “If this messenger boy of yours happens to see Filip within the palace –“

  “He won’t. He said he won’t be anywhere near the ball and I believe him.”

  “Then let’s hope he’s not one of the ones who are good at making things up,” Filip said, shaking his empty beer mug in the general direction of the serving girl. “For his sake and for yours.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Streets of St. Petersburg

  1:50 PM

  It was bad luck to question good luck. He knew this and yet he could not help but wonder why she had agreed to meet him here, in the center of town, far beyond the palace gates. St. Petersburg was a large city, as he had reminded her many times before, and size afforded anonymity. The chances they would be observed strolling the parks or drinking wine in some café were slim, and in fact one could quite reasonably argue that it was safer to tryst in the crowded streets than within the walls of the palace. And yet she had always hesitated, as if the very act of seeing him in the full light of day would force her to recognize that their affair was real.

  But this morning a note had come. A suggestion they should take luncheon together, in a most public place, Senate Square. And she had further surprised him by announcing – announcing it abruptly, before the menus had even been brought to their table – that she was prepared to leave Filip and run away with him to Paris. He must go at once, she said. In fact, he must leave this very day. He could get a job in a French dancing school and she would follow in a few months, after enough time had passed that no one would draw any correlation between his absence and her own. Money was no longer the problem they had always assumed it to be, nor were the tickets, or travel papers or even the letters of introduction. The Grand Duchess Ella Feodorovna had seen to all that.

  His initial reaction was disbelief. He had been dancing with Ella for some time and had never noticed her heart to be within the clutches of any particular altruistic impulse. He knew that he and Tatiana had been far from discreet, but the last person he would have worried might guess their secret was the notoriously self-obsessed Grand Duchess, who was so disinterested in the stories of others that she had never inquired abo
ut the village of his birth, the source of his training, or whether his parents still lived.

  She certainly had never asked if he would like to go to Paris.

  Tatiana slid a piece of paper across the table. A brief glance revealed it to be a train ticket. He placed his wine glass over it, so that the paper - so that his very freedom – would not blow away in a passing gust of wind. Of course Ella had chosen Tatiana for her court. Tatiana’s beauty made her a jewel and the Romanovs, even those who had entered the family by marriage, collected jewels compulsively, amassing too many to count. But it was certainly strange that the Grand Duchess would be willing to forfeit both her dance master and her lady in waiting in one swoop, even if she knew the depth of their shared desperation.

  “Why would she help us?” he asked, not noticing that the base of his wine glass had leaked a perfectly-formed red circle onto the railway ticket.

  She is willing to help because we have, quite by accident, created something she is unable to create for herself, Tatiana thought. She is helping us because I am giving her the most precious thing I have in exchange for your safely. Because I am willing to trade my child for this ticket you treat so carelessly, this piece of paper you slosh wine upon, as if it were a rag. But Tatiana understood that Konstantin’s pride, as vast and cold as Siberia itself, was forcing him to feign this nonchalance and she bit the words back. Instead she merely said, “The Grand Duchess can be very kind when she chooses…and is this not the most glorious day that has ever existed?”

  “The most glorious,” he agreed, looking around them. The café where they sat was small, but prettily situated. There was a flower market across from it, and petals wafted through the air. A cat, too sleek to be a stray and evidently the pet of the owner, had insinuated his way around their legs as they sipped their wine. Tatiana had been the one to choose the bottle. It was French, and undoubtedly more expensive than any he had ever tasted. It was velvet to the tongue, just as everything Tatiana was saying was velvet to his mind.