“Sir Roderick must have told you,” the Count said, off-handedly.
Blackstone laughed as heartily as the Count had earlier, though he had to force himself.
“Sir Roderick?” he said. “Do you really think my government would have trusted that idiot with such valuable information?”
“It must have done.”
“You’ve had plenty of chances to speak to — and observe — Sir Roderick. Can you honestly say that you think he knew what we were searching for?”
“No,” the Count admitted. “He would have had to be the finest actor in the world to play the fool so convincingly.” He frowned. “But if your government wouldn’t tell him, it certainly wouldn’t have told you.”
“Exactly,” Blackstone agreed. “So what’s the only other place I could have got the information from?”
“The Okhrana?”
“Do they know about all this?” Blackstone asked, feigning surprise. “I must say, you amaze me. I would have thought that if the Okhrana had had anything to do with it, I’d have been bumping into them all over the place.”
“You’re right,” the Count admitted. “The government was involved in what went on here, as was the military, but the Okhrana have not been made privy to any of it.”
“So if I didn’t learn about it from my government or the Okhrana, then who did I learn it from?” Blackstone asked.
“The Tsar’s court!” the Count said, astounded. “You’re claiming that you have a protector somewhere in the Tsar’s court.”
“It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“You’re bluffing,” the Count said contemptuously.
“And are you prepared to call that bluff?” Blackstone wondered. “Are you prepared to kill me now and worry about the consequences later?”
“Don’t threaten me!” the Count warned him.
“I’m not,” Blackstone replied. “In fact, I’m willing to offer you a deal from which you’ll gain a great deal more than you ever would from killing me. Would you like to hear it?”
“Go on,” the Count said suspiciously.
“If you do kill me, there’ll always be the suspicion in many people’s minds that it was the dead policeman, rather than the live Count, who actually recovered the document. If you let me live, I’ll take the document to London and hand it over to my government — which was what the Tsar always wanted to happen. And in my report I’ll say that you were the one who actually recovered it, and I was no more than your messenger boy. And who’s going to doubt the word of the only other man who could claim the credit?”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Why shouldn’t you trust me? I’m a simple policeman, who just wants to be left alone to do his job. I don’t lust after power and influence, because I’ve seen what it does to other people.”
“What other people?”
“People like you! You have a beautiful house, a wife, children, and all the money you could ever want. You should be deliriously happy. But you’re not. And why? Because it’s eating you up inside that the Tsar is displeased with you. That he might not show you his usual favour — or listen to your advice — ever again. I don’t want to be weighed down by those kinds of chains.”
“You insult me!” the Count said.
“I didn’t mean to,” Blackstone told him. “I thought that I was just being a realist.”
The Count paced back and forth across the floor for well over a minute before he came to a halt again.
“I have your word that you’ll do what you said?” he asked. “You have my word,” Blackstone promised.
“What will happen to Agnes? Will she be going back to England with you?”
“Yes, that’s what she wants to do.”
“And she will keep quiet about this?”
“What is there for her to keep quiet about? I told her that what the Duc was trying to steal was the title deed to some land you own in France and, being a mere woman, she believed me.”
The Count nodded. “Yes, women will believe most things that men tell them,” he said. “Well, now that the last matter has been resolved, there is no more to be said. I will make the arrangements for your departure immediately. A detachment of soldiers will first escort you to the railway station, and then accompany you to St Petersburg.”
“I’d appreciate the escort to the station, but I won’t need any protection once I’m on the train.”
“How can you be so sure of that?”
Blackstone tapped his nose knowingly with his index finger. “Friends in court, remember,” he said, playing the lie for all it was worth.
The Count nodded, then walked over to the door. “I trust you are not expecting me to shake your hand,” he said.
“No, I’m not,” Blackstone agreed. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think either of us would enjoy the experience very much.”
Besides, he added mentally, if you shook my hand you’d see just how much it was trembling.
Chapter Thirty-One
Agnes was luxuriating in one of the railway carriage armchairs and drinking the sweet Russian tea that the waiter had just brought her. Blackstone sat looking out of the carriage window, taking in the view of the vast, unrelenting Russian steppe as if he suspected that he would never see it again — and wanted to commit it to memory.
“This is wonderful,” Agnes said. “I’ve never travelled in anything like this much comfort before.”
“Haven’t you?” Blackstone asked, still half-absorbed by the scenery. “You surprise me.”
Agnes laughed. “I surprise you? What could ever have given you the impression that I’m used to being pampered?”
“I thought perhaps, that when you travelled with the Count, you did so by private coach.”
“We travelled in a private compartment,” Agnes said. “That’s not the same thing by a long chalk. This carriage is so opulent that it could almost belong to the Tsar himself.”
“I think it does belong to him,” Blackstone said. “Or at least, to someone very close to him.”
“A Grand Duke?”
“No.”
“A courtier, then?”
“No, not a courtier, either. Courtiers only flatter him, and tell him how God has placed him on the throne of Russia. The people I’m talking about are the ones who keep him on the throne.”
Agnes frowned. “You seem rather strange tonight, Sam — rather distant,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
Nearly everything was wrong, Blackstone thought.
But all he said was, “Don’t concern yourself. I’m just thinking.”
“What about?”
“About many things.”
The train groaned and wheezed its way into one of the rundown stations which appeared at the side of the track every thirty miles or so. There were no soldiers in evidence, but the fact that there were no passengers waiting on the platform, either, made it clear that the army was somewhere close at hand.
The only person who did seem to be awaiting the arrival of the train was a well-built, though thoroughly nondescript man who was wearing a suit which just fell short of being described as shabby. Blackstone was not surprised to see him. In fact, he’d been expecting him ever since the journey began.
The private carriage came to a halt just in front of the waiting man. It was not by chance it had stopped there, Blackstone thought. Nothing that happens to this man ever happens by chance.
The man hesitated for a second, as if considering other options, then opened the door and stepped inside.
“This carriage is not available to ordinary members of the travelling public,” Agnes said severely.
Blackstone laughed, though there was not much humour in it.
“How easy it is to get used to the idea of being grand,” he said. “But you’ve made a mistake, Agnes. This gentleman here isn’t an ordinary anything.”
“He isn’t?”
“Of course not. Don’t you recognize your old friend from
the village, Peter the Revolutionary?”
Agnes’s mouth fell open. “But he can’t be Peter,” she spluttered. “Peter’s a peasant, and this man is a... is a...”
“A minor provincial official of some kind?” Vladimir supplied. “A petty bureaucrat, so over-impressed with his own importance that he has the temerity to attempt to ride in a grand coach like this one?”
“Well, yes,” Agnes agreed uncertainly.
“I’m flattered that you’re so taken in by my disguise,” Vladimir told her, “but let me assure you that what you see before you is no more the real me than was the me you saw in my peasant costume.”
“I... I don’t understand,” Agnes said.
“You’re not meant to,” Blackstone said. “Our friend here takes a kind of malicious pleasure from confounding other people. It could almost be called his hobby.”
“But what’s he doing on this train?”
“I think he wants to talk to me. And I rather imagine he would like to keep the conversation private. So if you’d be so kind as to withdraw to the sleeping compartment...”
“You want me to leave you alone with him?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
“And what if I do mind?”
“I’m afraid I’d still have to insist.”
Agnes stood up, and smoothed down her dress with her hand. “I’ll go, but I shall expect an explanation after he’s left,” she said huffily.
“And you’ll get one,” Blackstone promised her.
Vladimir followed Agnes’s progress to the sleeping compartment with an appreciative eye, but it was not until she had closed the door behind her that he finally sat down opposite Blackstone.
“A spirited woman indeed!” he said. “Are you taking her back to England with you?”
“That seems to be the general assumption,” Blackstone replied, noncommittally.
Vladimir nodded. “It is probably for the best. There’s no future for her as part of the Count’s establishment. With the recovery of the document, his star hangs high in the sky once more. But soon, the people who matter will start to reflect that he should not have allowed it to be lost in the first place. And then that same star will be become a shooting star, and rapidly plummet to earth.”
“Why are you here?” Blackstone asked.
Vladimir produced a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and took his time in lighting it.
“I am here because I always felt I owed you an explanation for what has gone on, and now I am finally in a position to give you one.”
“You are here to learn how much I know for a fact, and how much I have been able to conjecture,” Blackstone corrected him. “Once you have that information, you will assess what I am likely to do with what I know. If you reach an unfavourable conclusion, then Agnes may well still be on the train when it reaches St Petersburg, but I most certainly will not.”
Vladimir blew a smoke ring into the air. “What you say is quite true, of course,” he agreed. “Shall we make a start?”
“Why not?”
“I suppose the first thing I should ask you is whether or not you read the document after you had recovered it.”
“Would you believe me if I said I hadn’t?”
“Knowing you as I do, I do not think so.”
“Then there’s no point in my lying, is there?”
Vladimir blew another smoke ring, a larger one this time, and paused to admire the effect. ‘What did the document say?” he asked casually, when the smoke ring had dissipated itself.
“It’s a secret treaty of mutual defence between Russia and Great Britain,” Blackstone said. “The Tsar has already signed it. He did so, I assume, in the Count’s house.”
“Indeed.”
“But no one was supposed to know that. The official explanation of his visit was to be that he’d made it on a whim — that he had heard his uncle, the Prince of Wales, was staying there, and simply decided to spend some time with him.”
“Just so.”
“That would explain why there were so many soldiers already in the area at the time of the robbery.”
“The Tsar is so deeply loved by all his people that he never travels anywhere without a huge number of body-guards,” Vladimir said laconically.
“But once the robbery had occurred, it became necessary to do two things. The first was to get the Tsar away as quickly as possible. The second was to deny he had ever even been a guest of the Count. He left in such a hurry that the black paint which had been used to mask the imperial eagle crest on his carriage door hadn’t even had time to dry.”
“Exactly.”
“What I don’t understand is why the meeting had to take place at all,” Blackstone said. “Couldn’t the treaty have been signed more safely — and more secretly — in some anonymous government building?”
“Yes, that is how it should have been done,” Vladimir admitted. “The two foreign ministers — mine and yours — would have found some other pretext for a meeting, and the deal would have been done without the world being any the wiser. Simple! But that scenario does not take into account the actions and desires of our glorious leader, His Imperial Majesty, Nicholas II.”
“I think I need a little more of an explanation,” Blackstone said.
“And I will be pleased to provide it. Our tsar is like a little boy who has been given a great many toys to play with — toys which are far too difficult for him to understand. But when older, wiser heads try to explain them to him, he becomes angry and frustrated. And there is nothing the older, wiser heads can do about it, because — when all is said and done — they are his toys.”
“He wants to be a statesman,” Blackstone said.
“He believes that he already is one,” Vladimir replied. “He likes most of his ministers, but he does not trust them. On the other hand, while he is not particularly fond of his uncle, the Prince of Wales, he does trust him. So when it comes to signing a treaty, he wants to do it himself, and he wants his uncle to receive it and take it back to England, where, he fondly imagines, that same uncle will hand it directly to the Queen.”
“And would he have done?”
“Of course not. Your queen is no tsar. It would have been handed over to your prime minister. And then the Queen would have been told about the treaty itself, but not about the circumstances under which it was signed.”
“Why did the Prince of Wales agree to go along with it?”
Vladimir smiled. “Who knows the way the minds of great ones work?” he asked.
“You do,” Blackstone said. “Or at least, you like to think that you do.”
“You are quite right, as always,” Vladimir agreed. “Your royal family does not have as large a part to play in government as ours has, but it does have some part. Yet the Prince of Wales has been kept out of government all his adult life. Unlike his father, he is not allowed to see important cabinet papers. Now why do you think that is?”
“Because the government does not trust him?”
“Wrong! Your government is well aware that when the frail old lady who sits on your throne finally dies, it will be the Prince of Wales who takes her place. Your government is eager to start working with him — to start training him — as soon as possible. They have wanted to do so for many years, but the old woman will not allow it.”
“So he jumped at the chance to do something significant at last?”
“He most certainly did.”
“If the meeting was so important, why was the Duc de Saint-Cast permitted to be at the house when it was being held?”
Vladimir looked suddenly sheepish. “That was my decision,” he admitted, “though, of course, since I was not even supposed to know that the meeting was taking place, you will find no written evidence to tie me in with it.”
“Of course not,” Blackstone agreed. “But you still haven’t told me why you arranged for him to be there.”
“The best way to keep a secret is to display it openly, as if no secret exis
ts,” Vladimir said. “I was afraid that the French government would find out about the meeting, and draw the correct conclusions. But say I had already placed a Frenchman in the house — a notorious roue interested in no more than his own pleasure. If the French government chose to question him — as it undoubtedly would — he could report that the Tsar had arrived at the Count’s house on a whim, and that there was nothing suspicious about it. He would report, in other words, not what had happened, but only what he had seen.”
“You underestimated him.”
“That is exactly what I did,” Vladimir agreed. “The Duc somehow learned the true purpose of the Tsar’s visit, and immediately saw a way to use it to his advantage. Or perhaps it was not his idea at all. Perhaps it was his lover, Henri Durant, who came up with the plan. He is, after all, the one with the criminal record.”
“What sort of criminal record?” Blackstone asked.
“He was a thief before he found his way to the Duc’s bed — a thief with a genius for picking locks.”
Which explained how the pair managed to get into the Prince’s bedroom, Blackstone thought.
“How long have you known about Durant?” he asked.
“Not long at all,” Vladimir admitted. “I had a background investigation carried out on all the Count’s guests, but the Duc has been very discreet about his little peccadilloes, and by the time I discovered that Mademoiselle Durant was, in fact, Monsieur Durant, you had already both unmasked him and dispatched him.”
“What would the Duc have done with the document?”
“I am not sure he had even made up his mind about that. But he had several tempting options open to him. He might, for example, have sold it to the French government.”
“And what would the French have done with it?”
“They would either have used it as a tool to put pressure on us or as an inducement to Germany to draw it into an alliance with them against the wicked Russians and British. He might have sold it to the Germans, who would have used it for much the same purpose. Or perhaps he would have kept it, and used the threat of its disclosure to blackmail my government or yours. When you have a golden egg in your hands, there are so many uses you can put it to.”
Blackstone and the House of Secrets (The Blackstone Detective series Book 3) Page 21