To Kill A Tsar Part 5

Mikhailov turned lazily to him, his face empty of expression: 'Well, it's taken the bakers ten years to get this far with the church. Perhaps someone will make a decent fist of it before they finish and disappoint them yet.'

Slipping from the bench, he smoothed the tails of his frock coat and turned to Anna: 'We must speak.'

From the refectory, he led her down the corridor and out into the courtyard at the rear. The carriage gates were closed and looked as if they had been for years. On the other three sides, the windows of the building were roughly boarded like a derelict prison. But for a thin shaft of light spilling from the open door across the cracked and weedy flags, the yard was dark, oppressively so. Mikhailov stood at the door with the light at his back, his shadow falling theatrically across her. A showman with a love of conspiracy and the shade, but in the months Anna had worked alongside him she had learnt to recognise that he was the sharpest, the best informed and most security conscious member of their little band. Ruthless, a truly dedicated and energetic revolutionary, he was cut from Bakunin's cla.s.sic mould: everything that promoted the success of the movement was moral, everything that hindered it immoral.

'The English doctor, can he be trusted?'

'Vera Figner says so.'

'And you?'

'I think so too.'

'Is it worth the risk?'

Anna paused to collect her thoughts, sweeping a loose strand of hair back in a single graceful movement. 'Yes, it is worth the risk. He can be useful.'

'But our work is more important than the patients at the clinic.'

'Of course, yes, I know. I'm not a fool. I mean he is very well connected. His uncle is General Glen . . .'

'The financial controller?'

'Yes.'

'Well, that is a different matter, yes.' Mikhailov was impressed. 'But is he with us?'

'He's not against us. I think he can be persuaded . . .' She paused, as if in two minds whether to say more.

'Well?'

'He likes me.'

Mikhailov chuckled and took a step forward to place a hot plump hand on her upper arm. 'We all like you, Anna.'

She shook it free at once, grateful that the darkness was covering the colour she could feel in her face. 'He may be useful, that's all.'

'Yes, he may.' There was nothing in Mikhailov's voice to suggest he felt any embarra.s.sment. 'Just be careful.'

'Of course. It's not me you need to speak to.'

'Oh?'

And she told him of Goldenberg's plan to kill the head of the Third Section. 'The doctor must have overheard him. I tried to convince him it was just silliness, but he isn't an idiot.'

Mikhailov turned away from her and stepped back to the open door, his head bent, pulling distractedly at his thick beard.

'All the more reason to be careful,' he said at last. 'I will speak to Grigory. The time isn't right for another attempt.'

They made their way back along the corridor but at the refectory door Anna stopped and, without turning to look at him, said, 'Did you hear of Alexander?' Her voice shook a little with emotion.

'He showed great courage on the scaffold.'

'You were there?'

'No. But Popov was there.'

'Popov?'

'The student I brought with me tonight.'

Turning the handle sharply, she pushed the door open and walked purposefully into the refectory. They all knew the risk they were taking. Time mourning her friend was time that should be spent fighting for the revolution he gave his life for. What was it Mikhailov had said to them all on the eve of the attempt? 'We can do anything if we are not afraid of death.' Alexander Soloviev had not been afraid.

Goldenberg and Evgenia Figner had been joined at the table by Morozov and Kviatkovsky, Presnyakov and other familiar faces.

'Thank you for coming, comrades,' said Mikhailov, pouring himself a gla.s.s of tea. 'We are running a risk, meeting so soon after Alexander's death, but I have some important news. A conference has been called to discuss our ideas for a new party.'

It would be held at a city in the south-west, he told them, invitations delivered by hand to socialist groups all over Russia. 'This is our chance to argue the case for our campaign. The people want us to lead them and they need something to fight for.' To prepare for the conference, they must visit supporters and raise money. It would have to be done in complete secrecy.

'And that brings me to the spy, Bronstein.' Mikhailov placed his gla.s.s on the table and clasped his hands together like a priest in prayer. 'Madame Volkonsky's house is being watched. No one should go there or try to contact her. Our friend Popov,' and he nodded towards the unprepossessing figure lurking at the fringe of the circle, 'has been making contacts with the workers at the Baird Foundry but he is being watched by another informer. You seem to attract them like flies to dung, don't you, Popov? Tomorrow he will leave the city. And you, Grigory,' he said, turning to Goldenberg, 'you must leave too.'

Goldenberg's face fell. 'Why me? How can you be sure they're looking for me? I don't . . .'

Mikhailov cut him short. 'You know better than to ask.' No one in the group doubted that Mikhailov knew of what he spoke. Time and again he had presented them with startling intelligence, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. His sources were jealously guarded, and the group was obliged to take what he told them on trust. Knowledge is power, he had told them, when speaking of their struggle, and his unique access to it placed him first among equals.

The conversation turned to the formation of workers' groups, new cells in the army and navy, and of Mikhailov's plans for a printing press. At a little before ten o'clock the meeting broke up and they began to slip into the night in ones and twos.

'Did you instruct Popov to to deal with Bronstein?' Anna asked when she was alone again with Mikhailov. They were standing at the front door waiting for the yard keeper to return and lock the school.

'Why do you ask?'

She paused to consider her words carefully. 'Is it right that one person can take the decision to kill in the name of the group?' she said at last.

'Don't you trust me?'

'That isn't the point.'

'Anna. Think.' And for once his soft at-your-service voice was sharp with impatience. 'You know perfectly well that in such cases there isn't time for a motion and a vote.'

Mikhailov was right, she knew that, and yet she felt uneasy. It must as always have been written in her face.

'Is there more?' he asked, his small brown eyes hunting for hers. 'Is there something you aren't telling me? Perhaps this English doctor?'

'Don't be foolish.'

But the clever little smile had returned to Mikhailov's face. 'Let's hope he is a servant to the movement. We'll know soon enough, won't we?'

'Yes.' Her voice was a little husky, barely more than a whisper: 'Yes, we will.'

8.

It was clear from his restless movement that the yard keeper did not relish the opportunity he had been presented with to serve his tsar.

'Calm down, man, for G.o.d's sake.'

Major Barclay had no time for his squeamishness. What was his name? Barclay had forgotten. These smelly gatekeepers all looked the same with their padded jackets and s.h.a.ggy beards. They were side by side beneath the carriage arch of a large terracotta-coloured mansion block, the soft early sun blinking over the roof of the building opposite. Five minutes to the signal. His men were in place. Both ends of the 3rd Izmailovsky Regiment Street and the open courtyards in the district sealed. Two entrances to the apartment block. The front covered from the building on the opposite side of the street, and the back by a dozen gendarmes in the doorways and shadows of an especially gloomy little yard. If he had any sense, Popov would have reconnoitred a number of escape routes, but Barclay was confident he had covered all the possibilities. He glanced at his pocket watch: 'All right, it's five, let's get him.'

Grasping the dvornik's upper arm, he led him none too gently into the street then almost immediately right through the open doorway of the mansion block. He knocked lightly at the first apartment he came to and Kletochnikov opened the door. In the room behind him another agent Postnikov dressed as a labourer in a peaked cap and short woollen coat.

'Check your weapons again,' said Barclay, drawing his own Smith and Wesson: six good .44 Russian cartridges in the cylinder. Then turning to the dvornik: 'It's up to you now.' The man was shaking like a leaf. 'Come on, you were in the army, weren't you?' Barclay placed a firm hand on his shoulder. 'He isn't expecting us. Remember, stand aside as soon as he opens the door. Have you got the letter?'

Rummaging inside his padded jacket, the yard keeper pulled out an envelope and offered it in a trembling hand to Barclay.

'No, no. Dmitry, isn't it? Dmitry, you give it to Popov.' He tried to keep the frustration from his voice.

Anxious to get the business over with, the silly Ivan began thundering up to the first landing at a pace unknown to his breed.

'Wait!' Barclay hissed. 'Wait there.' He turned to Kletochnikov. 'You first.' He nodded to the stairs. 'I'll follow in thirty seconds. Go.'

He watched the two men make their way as quietly as policemen can up the broad stone steps to the second landing. Then, leaning close to the dvornik's ear, he whispered fiercely: 'Try again. And don't let me down.'

Shoulders hunched, the yard keeper set off up the dark stairs with Barclay at his back. There were six heavy green doors on the third landing. Barclay's men were on either side of the one at the top of the stairs. Kletochnikov wiped his arm across his forehead nervously and his revolver thumped against the door frame. Barclay shot him a withering look. Was the fool deliberately trying to alert the student?

'Call him,' he whispered, pus.h.i.+ng the dvornik towards the door. For what seemed an age, he stood there blinking on the step. Barclay was about to step forward when the man finally raised his fist and hammered on the door. The echo bounced up and down the stairs. Barclay pressed himself to the wall behind Kletochnikov.

'Call him,' he mouthed.

'Your Honour. A letter.'

Barclay waved his fist at the wall to indicate he should knock again. But before the dvornik could do so, they heard the turning of the lock on the inner door.

'What is it, Dmitry?' There was no mistaking the wariness in Popov's voice.

'A letter. An urgent letter.'

Just the degree of obsequiousness one expected from a yard keeper: Dmitry was warming to his role.

The reply came from the thickness of a door away: 'Push the letter under.'

'I can't.'

'Is there anyone with you?'

'No.'

'I don't believe you.'

'Suit yourself,' the dvornik grumbled. For sure, he was earning his rouble now. 'I'll take it away then, shall I?'

No reply.

'Well?' Dmitry asked.

'Leave it there,' came the m.u.f.fled response.

'As you wish.'

The yard keeper bent to place the letter at the foot of the door, then, rising, turned with pleading eyes to Barclay who nodded approvingly and gestured to the staircase. The relief was transparent in the dvornik's face, even beneath his thick beard. But cleverer than he looks, Barclay thought, as he listened to his steady tread at least he had remembered to take his time.

The echo of his footsteps began to die away and Barclay could sense the revolutionary a few feet from him, his ear pressed to the door. He was acutely conscious of the sound of his own short shaky breaths and of Kletochnikov's beside him. Was Popov a patient man? It was only a matter of time before one of the other tenants caught them there or a careless movement gave them away. Pressed against the wall like an animal waiting to pounce, his heart thumping in his chest, Barclay had no sense of how long they had been standing there but his arm was aching with the strain of holding the heavy revolver up in readiness. On the opposite side of the door, little Postnikov was squatting with his head against the wall, his gun beneath his chin, the letter at his feet.

Barclay could hear the groaning of the floorboards behind the door as the student s.h.i.+fted his weight in the hall. Then the rattle of a key pushed into the lock. Kletochnikov raised his weapon. The door swung open and Popov was standing there with a terrified expression on his face, in his right hand a revolver. For a fraction of a second he was caught between fight and flight, pus.h.i.+ng at the door and at the same time raising his weapon to fire. But Postnikov's shoulder was against it: 'Drop it!'

Then the deafening crash of a shot fired at close range. Kletochnikov lunged at the student's outstretched arm but missed and struck his head against the edge of the door.

'I'll shoot!' Popov shouted, stepping back into the apartment.

Another shot rang out, reverberating up and down the staircase. A woman in an apartment on the landing below began to scream. At the foot of the door, Agent Postnikov was groaning pathetically, plucking at the right leg of his trousers as blood flowed across the stone in a widening circle. Barclay could hear the boots of the gendarmes racing up the stairs towards them.

'Come out with your hands above your head,' he shouted through the half open door. 'Don't be foolish. Come out and we can talk.'

There were half a dozen men shoulder to shoulder on the landing now, rifles at the ready.

'See to him,' he said, pointing to the prostrate agent. Fat lot of use the rifles would be in a small apartment.

Barclay was angry. A bad plan. An agent wounded. d.a.m.n it, he was not going to let Popov get away with destroying evidence too. There was nowhere for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to go. He pushed at the outer door and it swung open a little further. Beyond it, a small dark hall and beyond this, three doors off a corridor, the nearest the student's bed-sitting room.

'Follow me,' he hissed to Kletochnikov. The agent was pressing a b.l.o.o.d.y handkerchief to the cut on his brow. 'Come on, man, he's a student, not a Leshy.'

He pushed at the inner door. Its stiff hinges squeaked noisily. The corridor was no bigger than the width of a man's outstretched arms and a bullet fired blind through a door might very well find a mark somewhere. Barclay pressed the flat of his hand against the wall to warn Kletochnikov he should step away from the firing line. Then, taking a position to the left of the first door, he squatted on his haunches and reached for the handle.

'I'll shoot anyone who comes through that door!' Popov shouted, fear ringing in his voice, but determination too. A second later, a shot rang out, deafening in the narrow corridor. Splinters flew from the edge of the door as the bullet ricocheted against it and out on to the landing. Behind Barclay, Kletochnikov was breathing very hard, blood from the wound on his brow trickling unchecked down both cheeks. Barclay clicked his fingers sharply to capture his attention, then shook his revolver angrily at the agent: concentrate, stand ready. Popov's careless shot had helped clear his mind and in the time it took for the echo to die away he knew what he must do.

'Lay down your weapon. I'm coming in,' he shouted and, bending low, he turned the handle of the door. It was neither locked nor bolted. Shards of wood splintered above his arm as another shot rang round the little hall. Go now as Popov's arm is shaking, his ears still ringing. Go while he is surprised and afraid of the sound of his own weapon. Go. And Barclay launched himself at the door, stumbling low into the room, dazzlingly bright with sunlight. Confused, he cracked his knee on a piece of furniture and fell heavily on to his shoulder. Where was Kletochnikov?

He could see the silhouette of Popov against the window, only four or five feet from him, his weapon at arm's length. The shot would be almost point blank.

'Drop it,' Barclay shouted. 'Drop it.'

The gun was trembling in Popov's hand, the low sun kicking off the barrel. Barclay could not distinguish the expression on his face but he could see the student's finger curled about the trigger.