The Third Section Part 13

'"For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer."'

'So it's about Papa?' Dmitry had suspected something from the moment Tyeplov had shown such interest in Aleksei. 'He's too far away for you to take your vengeance on him, so you plan to take it out on me?'

'Quite the opposite. It was the three-fingered man who saved us. His son will be the instrument of our vengeance.'

'Papa saved you?'

'We were imprisoned tortured by a man called Cain. Your father freed us or at least attempted to.'

'Where?'

'Near here a place known as Chufut Kalye.'

'When?'

'In 1825.'

As with any deceit, it was founded upon truth. In 1825 Aleksei had travelled to the Crimea, in pursuit of a vampire, Kyesha. On his return, he had told little of what had happened, and the death of Aleksandr I had begun a sequence of events that seemed far more pressing. But before then, Dmitry had heard his father speak of vampires with nothing but loathing; that he would side with them, and against a human, was absurd.

'And only now you seek your revenge?'

'Cain tricked us we were entombed. We were freed only recently.'

'He must be getting on a bit now,' said Dmitry. 'He may be dead.'

'He has become like us.'

'A voordalak?'

Tyeplov nodded, his face scarcely visible in the darkness. 'Will you help us?'

It was absurd. Dmitry was being asked to take sides in a battle, not between Russian and Frenchman, or even between man and monster, but between voordalak and voordalak. Even if it were true that Aleksei had sided with them in the past, it did not mean that Dmitry should do so now. Fundamentally, all of these creatures merited but one fate death. But Dmitry's concerns were far more immediate.

'I thought I was your friend,' he said.

'You are,' Tyeplov insisted. 'To the extent that I can have a friend.'

'You made me your friend, to get what you wanted.'

'I sensed what you wanted,' said Tyeplov.

Dmitry could not deny the truth of what Tyeplov said, but it only went to show that Tyeplov had been accurate in detecting Dmitry's weakness. It had all been a matter of seduction, though it seemed he had guessed wrongly again as to the ultimate goal. If Tyeplov had wanted his body in any sense he could have taken it. Dmitry would have succ.u.mbed willingly to one expression of his l.u.s.t, and was in no position to resist the other. But Tyeplov had found a third way to exploit him.

'I won't help you,' Dmitry said quietly.

'What?'

'You're a vampire,' said Dmitry. He meant it figuratively as well as literally. 'If you want revenge on another vampire, what should I care? How can one of you be right and one of you be wrong, when you're both sp.a.w.ned from h.e.l.l? I hope you all die and if I see you again, it will be me that kills you.' The calm of his voice belied a strength of pa.s.sion that surprised him, but he knew that it came not from his hatred of all vampires. That existed, though it was of little relevance. At that moment it was the depth of his emotions towards one voordalak in particular that drove him.

Tyeplov stood. Dmitry could see his body, dimly silhouetted against the curtains. 'Your father thought differently,' he said.

'Then my father was a fool.' Dmitry believed his own words and, for some reason, believed Tyeplov's too. The whole story about Aleksei could be a fantasy, but it fitted with the fact that Tyeplov had come to him. Over his life, his view of his father had fluctuated through every conceivable sentiment, but at that moment Dmitry hated him hated him for his weakness in once siding with this creature, and for his short-sightedness in not seeing that one day that weakness would come to haunt his child.

'You should talk to your father,' said Tyeplov. 'Write to him.'

'When I get round to it, I'll be sure to mention your name.'

Tyeplov paused. His head tilted to one side. 'He won't know me by this name,' he said. Perhaps it was the nature of the vampire, or perhaps it was just him, not to recognize sarcasm.

'What did he call you then?' Dmitry's voice was laden with disdain, but still Tyeplov failed to recognize it.

'We never spoke, but there is a name by which he might know me.'

'And what's that?'

'Prometheus.'

CHAPTER XI.

TYEPLOV WAS GONE. He had walked out of Dmitry's room and Dmitry had not seen him again, neither had anyone he spoke to. Neither had anyone seen anything of Ignatyev or Mihailov. Neither had he heard stories of any more dead found with their throats ripped out though there had certainly been many more dead. It was over two months since he had spoken to Tyeplov Prometheus in his room. He had not said any more and had not attempted to harm Dmitry in any way and Dmitry had not attempted to harm him. He possessed no weapon with which he might achieve it, but even if he had done, he would not have tried.

He thought of writing to his father, but what would be the point? He could not conceive of how to discuss matters in a way that would not alert the suspicions of the censor. And if Aleksei had not deigned to reply to him before, then why now?

Over the intervening weeks the sound of the roaring guns had stopped, recommenced and stopped again. Today the guns had once more begun to fire. Official reports back to Petersburg described this as the sixth bombardment, but Dmitry could find few in Sevastopol, other than the most senior officers, who had wasted a moment on counting. The sh.e.l.ls of the latest bombardment were very much the same as those of the first except that at least for Dmitry they were louder.

Yet still the city had not fallen. Things had quietened down a little in the summer, when cholera and dysentery had taken their toll on the men of every nation's army, reducing both their ability and their need to kill one another. But Generals Juillet and Aout were less partisan than their hibernal brothers, and their departure would leave both sides equally weakened. And since the enemy had begun the summer stronger than Russia, they would leave it stronger. Dmitry doubted that the siege would hold beyond September. September? They still had to survive another week of August.

He was out in the third bastion now, as he had been, when on duty, for the last few weeks. As the supply of able-bodied men dwindled postings became fluid, with officers a.s.signed to tasks purely on the basis of numerical necessity, without any regard to their background or skills. It was the cavalry that tended to be moved around the most a joke at the expense of their renowned manoeuvrability. At least they got to withdraw back to the city when off duty.

The third bastion wasn't getting the worst of it. To the left, the French were concentrating their fire on the Malakhov Tower. Since the fall of the Kamchatka Lunette and the White Works, this was the main defensive position in the east. Each night, Russian soldiers would work furiously to repair the damage that had been done by day, but would not quite have time to do enough, and at dawn the barrage would begin again. And so the decline of the Malakhov, like every other defence around the city, was slow enough that it could be watched day by day.

To the right, the British were attacking the fourth bastion. It was holding out better than the tower, but even so it was decrepit compared with earlier in the year. If it did not eventually fall, it would only be because the defences elsewhere failed sooner. Thoughts of the fourth bastion brought Tyeplov to Dmitry's mind once again. Had he really left the city, intent on taking his revenge on this man Cain without Dmitry's help, or had he merely gone into hiding, forgetting his personal vendetta and realizing that the day would soon come when the city fell and there would be fresh livestock French, British, Turkish and Sardinian swarming in, on which he and his kind could feed?

The guns boomed and the sh.e.l.ls exploded and Dmitry gazed out over the enemy lines to the south, and he knew that that day would not be long in coming.

It was over six months since Tamara had been in Petersburg. When she left she had made no vows never to return, but she had not antic.i.p.ated that she would be travelling back quite so soon, or that her purpose would be to carry out research. She thought she had exhausted the capital of all the information it could give her concerning her parentage. But now she was interested in a new topic. She had only one clue regarding the murders in Moscow the name Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. And with regard to Danilov she had only one useful fact an address in Petersburg. Yudin had not returned the file on the Decembrist exile, and there might be far more there to be discovered.

But Gribov's library was, to say the least, imperfectly sorted. Although the vast majority of the papers regarding Danilov might have been collated into that one file that Yudin held, a few had slipped through the net. Tamara had found a report from the Manege the riding school in Moscow dating back to 1827 and describing the success of a cadet named Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov. Yudin had already revealed that Aleksei's son was named Dmitry, and now this doc.u.ment provided an address for him and his mother in Petersburg. They might have moved on years ago, but it was still somewhere to start.

The train whistle sounded three times, signalling the conductors in each carriage to apply the brakes, and they began to slow. The stop at one of the many intermediate stations along the route was not primarily for the sake of pa.s.sengers, but because the locomotive itself needed to be replenished, taking on wood and water. Over a journey of twenty-two hours, it was not possible for the engine to carry all its provisions.

They were coming into Bologoye, close to the halfway mark of the journey and one of the three big stations between Moscow and Petersburg. Tamara looked at her husband's watch. It was almost ten o'clock at night. The wait here would be around half an hour and many of the pa.s.sengers would alight to get something to eat, but Tamara didn't feel hungry.

She felt the train lurch to the left and the station buildings began to skip past, splitting the two tracks apart like the prow of a boat. The train came to a halt, then moved forward a little then forward again. Finally it seemed to have come to a position where the driver was happy. Once they got going again Tamara, like most pa.s.sengers, would try to sleep, but since that wouldn't be for a while yet, she decided to get out and stretch her legs. The line of bodies moved slowly down the second-cla.s.s carriage towards the exit. Ahead of her, as people emerged from the carriage and stepped on to the platform, Tamara sensed a certain buzz among the crowd, as each of them encountered something that she could not yet see.

Once outside she understood. The imperial train was already in the station, on the other side of the platform. She looked along its length and saw that the locomotive was at the northern end, so it too was heading to Petersburg. It was allowed to travel much faster than the regular pa.s.senger services. It would leave first and would be in the capital hours before her own train.

The crowds headed somewhat reluctantly for the Kartsov Restaurant, situated at the opposite end of the platform from the exclusive royal quarters. Stomachs conflicted with the desire to catch the slightest glimpse of some grand duke, grand d.u.c.h.ess or perhaps even His Majesty, and for the most part the more visceral hunger won out. A few, like Tamara, remained in the middle of the platform, but soon became discomforted by the cool night air and either went to the restaurant or got back on the train.

Tamara lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her lungs until the sensation of its presence had dimmed to nothing, then blew it out through her nostrils, watching the billowing fumes caught in the station lamps and quickly absorbed into the smoky atmosphere that hung over the station whenever a train was in.

'You can't do that here,' said a voice. Tamara turned to see a blue-uniformed gendarme, performing the mundane duty of maintaining order on the railways which, by some quirk of bureaucracy, was tasked to the same organization that acted as the public face of the Third Section.

As Tamara turned the man's face fell. His voice dropped to a mumble. 'Oh, I'm sorry,' he said, and hurried off. Tamara hadn't known him personally, but it seemed he had recognized her and feared what might happen to his career if she chose to take offence at his enforcement of petty rules.

'It's silly, isn't it?' said a voice close to her. She hadn't even noticed the man standing there. 'Here we are in this temple of Russian modernity, and we're still beholden to an Oprichnik like that, telling us what to do.'

She tried not to react to the word 'Oprichnik'. It was a common enough term of abuse for any police officer or government agent whose job it was to protect the nation's interests a reminder of the hated secret police force of Ivan the Terrible. It was a word from three centuries before, but under Tsar Nikolai the people's resentment of the power of the state had risen, as had the use of the word. It was a term that had been directed at Tamara only occasionally in her career. But it was a sign of the times, of the weakening of imperial authority that was already taking place under Aleksandr II, that a man on a railway platform would use the word in front of a complete stranger, who could easily be and in Tamara's case was a government informer.

She turned and looked at him. He was a short man scarcely taller than herself of about twenty-five, with a slightly wedge-shaped face. His moustache and sideburns revealed him to be a military man, though he was not in uniform. The spectacles perched on his nose gave him an air of intellectualism which made his comment all the more predictable. He held between his fingers a cigarette, burned down to almost nothing.

'He's doing his job,' said Tamara.

'Ah! So you're saying it's not the fault of the man who enforces the law, but of the men who make it?'

Tamara paused, considering carefully what to say. Perhaps it was she who was about to be trapped into producing some innocent phrase that would be twisted and then reported to her superiors.

'The law is made for the good of us all,' she said.

He took one final draw from his cigarette and dropped it on to the platform, extinguis.h.i.+ng it with the sole of an elegant, imported leather boot. 'And what good does it do you or me to be told where and when we can smoke?' he asked.

'Some laws are meant to be honoured more in the breach than the observance,' she replied.

'Ah! Shakespeare!'

Tamara gave a smile of acknowledgement, but she had not known where the phrase came from. The man spoke a sentence in what sounded like English, and she guessed he was merely translating her words. 'I prefer Gogol,' she said.

He seemed enthused. 'Really? Really?' In truth she knew only a little of the author. She admired his skill with words, but sensed that, like all writers, he used them to hide views that did not make sense in a country such as Russia. 'My father was a great admirer of The Government Inspector,' the man continued, 'which I suppose shows just how little he understood it.' A look of distant remembrance came into his eyes. Tamara noted it, and his use of the past tense. He was young to have lost his father.

She smiled at him warmly and genuinely, liking his vivacity and deciding that his seditious comments were a result merely of stupidity, the stupidity to be found in many intelligent men, who simply could not believe that what they said could really have an impact on the world. It was a trait that was both likeable and dangerous. He smiled back and flushed very slightly.

'I think I'm happier not to understand it,' she said, discarding her own cigarette.

He tapped his nose and nodded his head towards the gendarme who had now moved well down the platform. 'Very wise,' he said. He slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a gold cigarette case, which he flipped open, offering it to her with the words, 'These are French.'

She took one and thanked him. He selected another for himself and returned the case to his pocket, bringing out a small gla.s.s tube with a metal top. He held it up towards her and she realized it was some sort of device for lighting tobacco. She put the cigarette to her lips and he pressed a small switch in the metal top. The apparatus hissed, but no flame was evident. He tried again, and this time the hiss was quieter, and tailed off. Tamara reached into her reticule and produced a box of matches. She struck one and used it to light her cigarette, before offering it to him. His gloved hand took hers and guided it towards the tip, which soon began to glow orange.

'Much more suited to this temple of Russian modernity,' she said.

He laughed briefly but loudly. 'I hear that The Gamblers is playing in Petersburg,' he said. 'Have you seen it?'

'I'm afraid not.'

The sound of a train whistle cut through their conversation, causing him to look round. He threw his cigarette, barely started, to the ground. 'You must join me in my box,' he said. 'Where are you staying?'

'Dussot's Hotel,' she said without even thinking.

'Under what name?'

'My own.'

'Don't tease me, mademoiselle.'

She didn't correct him. 'Tamara Valentinovna Komarova,' she said.

'I will call on you, Tamara Valentinovna,' he said, and with that he ran across the platform an ungainly activity for one so short and jumped aboard the train. Tamara noticed a few of the people nearby staring, both at her and at him, but her eyes could only follow in the direction he had gone, as the train he had boarded began slowly to pull out of the station. There was no need for her to worry that she herself had missed it, for the young man had not been travelling on the same train as her. Its carriages were not the dark green of the pa.s.senger service, but a vibrant ultramarine. It was the imperial train.

The train began to move again, pulling out of the station. Yudin could not be sure which one, but his best guess was that it was Bologoye. It was night now, he could tell, even if he couldn't see it. During the day he had slept and his journey had been comfortable, but once darkness had fallen, then a voordalak became restless. Even though he could go for many days without feeding, he still felt the urge to walk the earth at night.

It was approaching autumn now, and so the nights were getting longer, but still Yudin could not have travelled the whole journey from Moscow to Petersburg sitting in a carriage like any other pa.s.senger. He travelled as baggage, in a separate wagon at the end of the train, without even the comfort of a roof to give protection from the elements. That meant the wooden box enshrouding him had to be particularly well made. One ray of sunlight finding its way through a crack in the crate would mean the end for him. It was not a true coffin, and was not listed on the train's inventory as such. There was no danger that any inquisitive employee of the railway would look inside the stamp of the Third Section on the doc.u.mentation saw to that. Once they arrived in Petersburg in the morning, the crate would be unloaded and left in the depot for collection. When night fell, the mechanism to open it from the inside was simple to use.

Yudin could easily release that catch now and, for the hours of darkness, sit like any other pa.s.senger in the first-cla.s.s compartment. But what would be the point? A small but unnecessary risk in order to emulate the members of a species to which he no longer belonged. Both he and Raisa Styepanovna had made this journey many times before, and always they had remained in the safety of the baggage wagon. Now was not a time to change things.

For some months Yudin had desired to travel to Petersburg, but in summer it was a risk. At the sun's zenith, the night was scarcely five hours long. At least in Moscow he could rely on six and a half hours and there he had sufficient boltholes about the city that he was never in too much danger of being caught out.

But the journey had to be made, and time was not an inexhaustible commodity. Only two men still living knew or had any chance of knowing how the trickery over the death of Tsar Aleksandr I had been perpetrated and where Aleksandr had hidden himself for the last thirty years. And both of those men were old and might soon die.

And one of them lived in Saint Petersburg.

It was all very familiar. Tamara's home, where she had lived with Vitya and Milenochka and Stasik and Luka, was not very far from here, but she had no desire to visit it. She continued along Nevsky Prospekt, the tower of the Admiralty far ahead acting as a beacon. She pa.s.sed the Yeliseyev Brothers' store and thought of all the times they had gone there to buy wine the New Year of 1847 when Vitya had come back with two bottles of champagne because the manager remembered Vitya's treating his wife's cousin the previous summer. She pa.s.sed the Armenian Church, which she had never been inside. She had once promised to take the children in there, if they were very good. They hadn't been good and they hadn't been taken on a visit and now Tamara dearly wished she'd not been so strict in sticking to her word.

She crossed the Kazansky Bridge, as indistinguishable as ever from the rest of the road so wide that it might be mistaken more for a square than a bridge. Only the Yekaterininsky Ca.n.a.l, emerging from beneath it at either side, gave away its construction. Tamara began to look around her more alertly. She knew that the street she was after Great Konyushennaya Street, the last address she had for the Danilovs would be coming up soon on the right. She pa.s.sed Little Konyushennaya Street, and the Lutheran Church, and then there it was.

It was typical of that district; the ground-floor properties were all shops, with apartments above them. Number 7 was only a little way down. She knocked, using the heavy iron ring that hung from the door. She waited. There was no response. She knocked again and listened, but there was no sound of anyone coming to answer the door. She tried a third time, but finally gave up. In her bag she had a letter that she had written for such a case as this, asking the present owners to get in touch with her. It seemed so little to achieve for so long a journey but there were other options.

The shop beneath was a bookseller's. By the look of the stock, it had been there for many years. There was every chance that they might know more than the residents of the apartment itself. Tamara went through the door. The interior was filled with books, some on shelves, some on tables, some in precarious piles that reached almost to the ceiling. The whole place smelt of old paper. Being on ground level, it would be liable to flooding. The books at the bottom of some of the piles would probably have been soaked and then dried a dozen times. It reminded her of the Kremlin archive. She expected to see Gribov's bushy eyebrows poking from around a set of shelves at any moment.

When the proprietor did appear, he was nothing like Gribov. He was tall and gaunt, with a full head of white hair that had a slight curl to it. He spoke good Russian, but with a strong German accent, and seemed very aloof.

'May I be of some help?'

'I do hope so,' said Tamara, looking up at him. He was behind a desk so that she could not see his feet, but he towered so far above her that she wondered whether he might be standing on a box. 'I'm looking for information on Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov.'

The shopkeeper's eyebrows rose together in the middle as he considered her question. 'Danilov. Danilov.' Then his eyes, and his mouth, widened. 'We have, of course, the Byliny, compiled by Kirsha Danilov at least so they say. Personally, I have my doubts.' He frowned again. 'But I don't recall any Aleksei Ivanovich.'

'He's not a writer. He used to live in the apartments above you.'

'When?'