The Third Section Part 16

It was late November now almost three months since Sevastopol had been evacuated. Dmitry had been in the water only moments, unable to hear the shouts of the men above him but still perceiving the low rumble of explosions. Then his sergeant on the bridge and the two ryadovye in the water had managed to heave him out. The remainder of his short journey north had been on foot on one foot rather than lying in a makes.h.i.+ft stretcher, but his brief immersion had invigorated him. He had recuperated for a few days in the Severnaya, where the great surgeon Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov himself had treated him. He'd told Dmitry to sniff a liquid called ether, which made him light-headed, and had then stretched his ankle back into something like its correct shape. The effect of the ether had been to dim the agony, and also to make Dmitry care less about the not insubstantial degree of pain that remained. It hurt more to recall it than it had to experience it. Then Pirogov wrapped Dmitry's foot, ankle and calf in wet bandages, which after a few hours miraculously stiffened and became hard as stone, allowing Dmitry no movement of his foot.

After that he was moved north, to Simferopol, away from the heart of the action, and after several weeks the hardened bandages had been cut away. Beneath them, his leg was withered, and the skin was dry and scaly, but he was able to move his foot very slightly and even put a little weight on it, though not without pain. They said that that would improve and had given him the stick. Then had begun his slow journey home. He'd travelled only short distances each day, at least at first, which resulted in many of the hostelries he slept in being of the lowest order he had ever experienced. But who was he to complain? He'd cheated death he could suffer a few flea bites. He spent over a week in Kharkov, the largest city en route, and after that had felt sufficiently well to travel faster.

He'd finally arrived in Moscow late the previous afternoon. He slept in his hotel for almost twelve hours and the following morning his first port of call was the office of his oldest friend the man he must nowadays remember to call Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin.

The sleigh had dropped him right beside the Armoury. He had never seen the building completed, though they had been constructing it when he was last in Moscow. That was over five years ago longer than he would have guessed.

He was about to knock on the door when it opened and a small, bespectacled, balding man with bushy grey eyebrows appeared from behind it.

'Major Danilov?'

'Yes.'

'I'm t.i.tular Councillor Gribov. Actual State Councillor Yudin is expecting you.'

Gribov led him down a flight of stone steps which Dmitry found difficult to navigate. There was no banister rail and little room for Dmitry to place the tip of his cane. Gribov seemed concerned at Dmitry's injury, but hesitated to offer any direct a.s.sistance, guessing perhaps how much Dmitry would have loathed it if he had. Dmitry lost his footing only once, but slipped down just one step and easily took his weight on his left leg. Soon he was in Yudin's office.

It was a grim place, but much like the rooms which had served Yudin the last time Dmitry had seen him. That had been in 1849, still in the Kremlin but further to the south. Yudin was on his feet the moment Dmitry entered and walked swiftly over to embrace him.

'Mitka!' he said, warmly.

'Vasya! It's good to see you.'

Yudin stepped away. 'You're doing better than I had dared hope,' he said. 'You'll soon be throwing that cane away.'

'I'm not sure. I think it's beginning to suit me,' said Dmitry. 'But you're looking wonderful. You never seem to age.' It was a lie, and they both knew it. Dmitry had never been sure just how old Yudin actually was. They had first met in 1812 when Aleksei had been away fighting the French and Yudin had introduced himself to Dmitry's mother as a friend of Aleksei's. Dmitry had been only five at the time, so it was hard for him to recall how old Yudin was, but he must have been a young man. Generally, Yudin was vain about his appearance. His obviously dyed hair was testimony to that. Dmitry remembered how in younger days he had possessed a striking blond mane. But Yudin's face his skin had always remained young. Today it did not seem so. Even the backs of his hands showed wrinkles. He must have been at least in his sixties, perhaps even his seventies. For the first time it showed.

Yudin pulled back a chair at his desk and Dmitry sat down. Yudin returned to his own seat, speaking as he went. 'I've heard all about what happened. Not just in your letters, but in dispatches too.'

'It's nothing heroic,' said Dmitry. He meant it. However necessary it might have been, burning down a Russian city was not a n.o.ble act.

'You were wounded in the service of the tsar that's what matters. Your mother would be very proud.' A slight pause. 'I'm sure your father is.'

'You've not heard from him?' Dmitry tried to disguise his eagerness.

Yudin shook his head. 'I'm afraid not.'

'You're sure he's alive?'

'I would have been informed,' explained Yudin. 'I've written to the governor of Irkutsk, to see if he can speak to Aleksei and explain his silence, but as yet I have heard nothing.'

'He's ashamed of me,' said Dmitry.

'It's not that. It couldn't be. But Lyosha can be a difficult man. He may just think it's for the best.'

'For the best?' said Dmitry angrily.

Yudin shrugged, but could explain no more. He changed the subject, if only slightly. 'As it happens, you're not the only person who's interested to know what's become of Aleksei.' Dmitry raised a questioning eyebrow and Yudin continued. 'A colleague of mine is very keen to hear about him.'

'Raking up dirt on the last few Decembrists?' Dmitry did not know exactly what Yudin's role within the government was, but doubted it was anything underhand. The same generosity could not be extended to his colleagues.

'No this goes back before the revolt. It's about murder; two sets of murders, here in Moscow one in 1812, the others in 1825.'

Dmitry stiffened. He knew a great deal about deaths in Moscow in those two years. His father had told him about the former, and to those of 1825 he had been a witness. 'So what does he want to know your colleague?'

'She.'

'She?'

'Her name's Tamara Valentinovna Komarova nee Lavrova.'

'Lavrova?' It was a name that Dmitry knew well.

Yudin nodded. 'The same family of Lavrovs that took in your father's mistress for a time.'

'Does she know?' asked Dmitry.

'That she's investigating her nanny's lover? I don't think so. And I wouldn't tell her. Be careful of her she's a shrewd woman.'

'Why don't I just refuse to speak to her?'

'Because I need to find out how much she knows.'

'About Papa?'

'No I'm sure that's nothing. But Tamara Valentinovna belongs to a strand of the civil service that is somewhat less in favour of the new regime than you and I. I need to find out how far they're prepared to go.'

Dmitry nodded. Yudin had never been as radical as him or Aleksei, but he had grown to share their distaste for despots, especially Nikolai. Yudin would never have conspired against the old tsar, but Dmitry guessed he would do anything to protect the new one.

'When shall I see her?' asked Dmitry.

'There's no rush. I'll arrange something. You still need to recover.'

'Lana is expecting me in Petersburg.' Yudin said nothing, and Dmitry was glad to put off his return home. 'But if I'm needed here, she'll understand.'

'Good. Good. Now, you be on your way, and enjoy the city. And make sure everyone knows you're a hero.' Yudin rose and indicated the stairs up to the Kremlin. Dmitry stood and slowly made his way across the room, the tapping of his stick sounding louder in the enclosed s.p.a.ce. 'And we must have dinner one evening,' Yudin added, 'so you can tell me all about Sevastopol.'

Ascent of the steps proved to be easier than coming down had been. At the top he looked down and saw Yudin staring back up at him. He waved, and his friend waved back, then Dmitry turned and walked outside, pausing only to glance into the office where he saw Gribov diligently working.

The sleigh was waiting for him, as instructed, but he dismissed it. Just to see Yudin's familiar face once again had made him feel stronger and he decided to walk. A hero of Sevastopol could not disdain a little snow on his boots.

'He lied,' said Raisa. 'You are looking old.'

She had emerged almost as soon as Dmitry left, from the door that led down to the dungeons.

'I know,' replied Yudin.

'How can you know? A mirror won't tell you, and everyone else will flatter you, just like he did.'

'I know I look old because I intended to look old,' he said. 'I don't need to see it to be sure.'

She held out her hand. 'Come with me. Let's drink. It will make you young again.' She smirked. 'As young as you can be.'

Yudin contemplated. He was thirsty more thirsty than he could ever recall. It had not yet affected his strength, or his mind, but the skin was always the thing that changed the soonest. He had seen it first in Zmyeevich. When they had met, the old vampire had appeared to be just that an old man, weak and decrepit. On the next occasion, Yudin had hardly recognized him. He was young or at least vibrantly middle-aged restored to the state he had been in when first he had become a voordalak, centuries before. It hadn't taken Yudin long to guess that the rejuvenation was the effect of feeding. A few experiments had proved it beyond doubt.

'I can't,' he said to Raisa. 'Dmitry has known me longer than anyone. He'd suspect.'

'So you starve yourself for him?'

'What did you make of him?'

'He's diffident a typical soldier but he can't hide his sadness. He can't hear his father's name without pausing to imagine what might have been.'

'He's his father's son,' said Yudin. 'That makes him as dangerous as he is useful. I'll have to deal with them both soon enough.'

'You sound disappointed.'

'It's taken me a long time,' Yudin sighed. He was always melancholy as the final moves of the game approached.

'So what will you do with him?'

'I don't know yet. It depends on Dmitry. I'd like you to be there when he meets Tamara.'

'Why?'

'To tell me what they say.'

'I thought the idea was that they would both relay it straight back to you.'

'They will,' said Yudin, 'and both will lie.'

'So you need me to tell you the truth?'

Yudin smiled. 'No, I just need there to be an odd number of partic.i.p.ants, so that I can take the majority view.' He doubted she would lie to him, but it was better to treat everyone with equal mistrust, and, certainly in the case of Raisa, to make her aware of how little faith he put in her.

'You really do look terrible,' she said.

'If you want to drink, go. Your beauty matters.'

Raisa did not wait to be told twice. She turned and set off down the stairs. Yudin's eyes followed her until she had gone. It was a difficult balance for him to maintain. To Dmitry, who had known him longest, he must appear old, but different people knew him at different ages, and he could not satisfy them all. He could not even know with any certainty how they perceived him.

He opened the drawer at the side of his desk and pulled out the heavy package, unwrapping the brown paper to reveal the block of polished crystal. Iceland Spar, they called it, and as the name suggested, it could only be found in one place on the planet. Having it s.h.i.+pped through the naval blockade in the Baltic had been tricky, but Yudin had friends among the British. He held up the crystal and inspected one of the doc.u.ments on his desk through it, smiling at what he saw.

There were two images; two sets of lettering separated by about the width of a single character. It was like the double vision of a drunk, but this was reality, not a failing of the senses. The phenomenon was well enough understood. An ordinary block of gla.s.s affected what was seen through it diffracted the light so that the image observed was slightly displaced. But light, it seemed, was made of two different types two polarities and travelling through Iceland Spar, each was diffracted to a differing degree; hence the two images.

But what, Yudin wondered, if the material could be used in place of the gla.s.s of a mirror? The light would be split as it entered the mirror and then those split images would be further separated as the light departed. Might one of those reflections make it through the defences of the observer's mind and reveal the voordalak's true self? Might Raisa at last be able to gaze upon her own beauty? All of his experiments suggested it, and now there was just a little more work to be done before he would know for sure.

He licked his lips at the prospect, and realized in an instant that Raisa had been right. He was thirsty. He only needed a little blood not enough to rejuvenate him, but sufficient to sustain him. He put the crystal lovingly back into the drawer and went over to the stairs that Raisa had descended, following the path down and closing the door behind him. At the junction that led to their coffins, he turned left and was soon in the short low corridor lined with six doors, leading to the cells he had shown Tamara.

The seventh door, at the end, was open, its heavy bolts drawn back. Raisa had already gone in. As he approached, he heard a voice. It was not Raisa's; this was weaker, older, and utterly terrified. And the words it spoke would not have come from Raisa's lips.

'No more. Please, G.o.d. No more.'

The cold did nothing to help the pain in Dmitry's ankle. He had soon given up walking and travelled everywhere in the city by sleigh. He had been in Moscow for over a week, and already it had lost its charm for him, though he knew that the city itself was unchanged. It could only be something in him that made this once vibrant town seem dull and mundane. If he had thought the fault lay in Moscow itself he wouldn't have bothered to stay, instead making straight for Petersburg, but he knew he would find it even worse there.

Was it war that had changed him? He doubted it. Sevastopol was not the only action he had been engaged in, though it was certainly the bloodiest. This was the first major wound he had received, but, to be honest, he was rather enjoying that side of things. The combination of a military uniform, a stick and a p.r.o.nounced limp had an effect on all those he encountered that was entirely favourable to him.

But the thing that had affected Dmitry's whole outlook on life was not that he had come through the war with a limp, but that he had come through it at all. He had survived. When he had arrived in the Crimea he had not been afraid to die but he had, he knew, been afraid to live. Tyeplov had changed all that. Thanks to him, Dmitry had done things he would never have dreamed himself capable of. He had slept with a man. He had slept with a vampire! He had little desire to repeat either experience, certainly not the latter, but the fact that he had dared to made him feel he might dare do anything. It was Tyeplov who had taught him that. His motivation? If Tyeplov was to be believed it was for the sake of Aleksei, but if Tyeplov thought that Dmitry would now feel somehow indebted to him, he was a fool. It didn't matter. Tyeplov was thousands of versts away, feeding on the invaders of Sevastopol, who little knew what awaited them within the city.

And there was someone else who wanted to know about Dmitry's father this Tamara Valentinovna. That was who he had now come to meet, at Yegorov's restaurant. Yudin had told him they would be joined by a friend of Tamara's, so he knew to look out for two women. He saw them as soon as he handed over his coat and hat at the door one with her back to him, the other facing.

Even if Dmitry had not been looking out for them, his eyes would have fixed on this woman as he entered the room more of a girl than a woman. She could not have been much over twenty. Her natural blonde hair was coiled into tight, artificial curls which bounced as she spoke. Her blue eyes blazed, and yet behind them Dmitry sensed there was very little or very little that she cared to give to the world. He stood still and watched her for a moment. He was sure she was aware of him, but she did not once look in his direction.

She was not Tamara. The woman she was speaking to, whose back was turned to Dmitry, was Tamara. She had been about five years old when he had last seen her, the child of Yelena and Valentin Lavrov, through the window of their house, but her red hair was unmistakable. It had perhaps darkened slightly, but that could easily be a trick of his memory. There was a lot of it, but it was tied back in a ponytail more a matter of practicality than aesthetics.

He walked over to the table, noticing that his limp had become more p.r.o.nounced, though not out of any conscious effort. The blonde girl looked up as he approached, as did the redhead a moment later.

'Tamara Valentinovna Komarova?' he asked.

'Indeed,' she said, rising and offering her hand. 'You must be Major Danilov. This is my friend, Raisa Styepanovna Tokoryeva.'

Dmitry sat at the end of the table so that he could easily see them both.

'You're recently returned from Sevastopol, I hear,' said Tamara.

'Yes. Stuck it out to the very last, but they got me in the end.' He lifted his cane briefly, to make it clear what he meant.

'What happened?' asked Raisa, bluntly. Tamara flashed her a look to say that she shouldn't ask such things, but Dmitry didn't mind.

The story he told was close to the truth, except that he didn't mention precisely why he had been in the city so long after the rest of the army had evacuated. But the attack by the redcoats was there, his men's brave battle, their loyal rescue of their commanding officer both from the enemy and from the water, and the final, sodden trudge across the harbour to safety.

It all sounded as though it had been such fun. In the past, Dmitry had despised the way that soldiers failed to describe the h.e.l.l that war really was. It seemed a greater cowardice than any displayed on the battlefield; to come and say to those back home that one would gladly go out and do it again instead of admitting that the sound of the guns just made you want to run away and hide and that there were times when you'd trample over the backs of your comrades just to make it to some dark, damp hole where you could press your hands over your ears and pretend it was all far away. The worst was when they told the stories to young men, knowing it would only encourage them. But he knew the ladies loved it, and he felt Raisa's eyes on his cheek as he spoke, almost as though she were touching him.

They were interrupted by a waiter, who delivered a bottle of vodka and took their orders. Blini were the speciality of Yegorov's and that was what each of them chose. When the waiter had gone, Tamara took the opportunity to turn the conversation on to the subject that interested her.

'I'm trying to find out about your father,' she said.

'So Vasiliy Innokyentievich tells me,' said Dmitry, pouring vodka into their gla.s.ses. He let the sound of his ramming the cork back into the bottle punctuate his final word. 'Why?'

'He was witness to at least two murders.'

'What makes you think that?'

'I've seen the police records. The first was in 1812, in a house just off Tverskaya Street.'

'I don't see how I can help. I was only five then.'

'Four or five,' said Tamara. Yudin had said she was shrewd. He should have asked her the precise date, or kept quiet. 'And you'd have turned eighteen in 1825. That's when the second one took place. Right outside the Maly Theatre.'