The Third Section Part 4

'It's a madness in you,' said Yelena. 'An obsession.'

'A serpent's tooth,' muttered Valentin.

'All that you've done for me counts for even more if I'm not your flesh and blood.' Now Tamara felt she was pleading.

'Exactly,' said Yelena, coming to a halt in front of Tamara. 'How could we why would we if you're not our daughter?'

'Because you're good people.'

'Ha!' said Valentin, louder than before. 'It's too late for flattery now.'

'What about Volkonsky's money?'

'He is not your father.' Valentin's voice was firm.

'I know that now he was paying on behalf of someone else.'

'I've explained,' he replied with forced calm. 'He knew your grandfather. They fought together in the war. He wanted to do something for you.'

'For me and not for Rodion?'

'A man can make his own way in life,' Valentin persisted. 'Volkonsky even wrote to you, telling you just the same.'

'And how would you know that?' asked Tamara. Valentin looked fl.u.s.tered. The fact that he was such a poor liar was another reason to suspect he was not her father. 'Anyway I've seen Volkonsky's papers, and they tell a very different story.'

'I think you'd better go,' he said stiffly.

Tamara was taken aback. It was an unusual reaction from him, but perhaps it was all he could think of now she had pushed him into a corner. She looked across the room, but Yelena's eyes were glued to the floor, daring to look neither at her husband nor Tamara.

'Very well then,' she said, standing. 'Perhaps it's for the best. Mama. Papa.' Her looks to both of them were returned by averted gazes. It was a moment before she saw the irony of the words she had used to address them; they seemed so natural on her lips. She turned and left. She was almost at the front door when she heard Yelena's footsteps catching up with her.

'Why do you keep bringing it up?' her mother asked. She was calm now determinedly rational.

'Because you keep denying it,' said Tamara simply.

'And why would that ever change?' Her eyes flicked across Tamara's face, studying it, but also trying to communicate something unspoken. 'If Prince Volkonsky went to his grave without telling you what you seem so keen to hear, then why do you think we'll do any different?'

It was the closest thing to an admission that Tamara had ever heard from either of them, but still she wanted more. 'But how can you both pretend all the time?'

'We're not pretending. But if you think we're capable of it, why can't you be?'

Tamara nodded. Yelena pulled her close and kissed her on each cheek. Tamara turned and opened the door.

'You will come again, soon, won't you?' said Yelena.

Tamara nodded.

'And when you do, pretend, for all our sakes.'

'I'll try.'

She left, closing the door behind her. She stood there on the stone steps, thinking for a moment or two, and then set off, marching through the snow with a deliberate air of determination and pride that she hoped would fool anyone who saw her. She needed a safe place to run to, somewhere she would feel accepted. Every child should have such a place, even a child of thirty-three. Only an orphan could not run to her parents and ask them to take away all the troubles of the world and to make it stop whatever 'it' might be. And at least an orphan could be consoled by the knowledge that she was a victim of circ.u.mstance. For Tamara, it was all down to her own stupidity.

Her cheeks tingled as her tears froze against them.

CHAPTER IV.

DMITRY THREW HIMSELF to the ground as a sh.e.l.l exploded not far in front of him. The huge earthworks, so recently and hastily erected, protected him and those nearby from the blast, but he felt the ground shake. He waited only a moment and then pulled himself back to his feet. He peeped through a small hole in the earth towards the enemy beyond. They were French, all of them as far as he could tell, but it wasn't surprising the British lines were further to the south. The French had advanced a little way, but were now close enough to be in range of the Russian musket fire. They were making the best use of what little cover there was while their artillery once again attempted to soften up the Russian defences. But despite the twilight their dark blue uniforms stood out unmistakably against the snow, so that even the inaccurate Russian musketeers eventually got lucky. Dmitry watched as first one, then another and then another distant figure collapsed to the ground. It was some consolation to be fighting a mortal foe. He tried to push the thought from his mind, but he could not. It lurked there, waiting to taunt him, that simple, inescapable fact.

There were vampires in Sevastopol.

It was a preposterous idea, but his urge was more to scream than to laugh at it. The thought of it made him feel like a child, desperate to run to his father and be a.s.sured that everything was safe. It was more than a regression to a childhood need for security. Dmitry's father was truly the only person on the planet who would not, quite rationally, laugh at his fears. Even Yudin, whom Dmitry loved almost as a father, would scoff at the very idea of the existence of the voordalak. But Aleksei would not have laughed. He had met vampires before: once in 1812 and again in 1825. That second occasion was when Dmitry too had encountered them, and when Aleksei had told him the horrible truth of it all. For thirty years, Dmitry had hoped such monsters could be forgotten.

There was no way Dmitry could have told anyone here his suspicions as to how the two engineers beneath the Star Fort had really died. Even in his own mind, in the day since the bodies had been found he had fluctuated between the rational conviction that some lunatic had torn out the throats of those two men, and the heartfelt certainty that he had once again seen the sc.r.a.ps of humanity that remained once a voordalak had satisfied its hunger. Dmitry had no doubt that such creatures existed, but existence was not the same as presence. It had been a long time, just as it had been a long time since Russia had warred with France. But after forty years, the French were back. Perhaps they had brought the voordalak le vampire with them.

He and Captain Shulgin had quickly agreed that the killings were the work of a madman. For Dmitry the distinction was moot. A vampire was in many ways just a man with his own particular kind of madness. But at least a madman could die die by a bullet or a blade. A vampire required more specialist methods. But if Dmitry started suggesting any of those then it would be he who was deemed mad. Instead he prepared, quietly and alone, just as his father had done. All the officers were warned that there was a killer on the loose, and a few chuckled at the thought that one more way of dying would make any difference. Dmitry bit his tongue and did not suggest what a difference it really could make. At least there had been only two deaths. Perhaps the creature had been merely ... pa.s.sing through.

For the moment, Dmitry's worries concerned a more tangible foe. Since the enemy's abortive attack across the Chernaya, the tide seemed to have turned a little in Russia's favour. They had taken the round hill to the south-east of the city just two days before, and it had already been fortified by the men of the Kamchatka Regiment hence the hill's newly a.s.sumed name of the Kamchatka Lunette. The French apparently called it Le Mamelon, observing immediately, as any Frenchman would, its resemblance to a nipple. New defences had been built close to the hill, the most northern of which was the White Works, and it had been while Dmitry was inspecting these simply to have some idea of their layout that the French had attacked. It was a bold move, and the right thing to do attempting to dislodge the Russians while their defences were still incomplete.

The attack had come two hours ago, and as darkness had fallen Dmitry had had ample opportunities to retire back to the city, but he had not taken them. There was much that he could learn by observing the French tactics not to mention the faulty tactics of his own side but that was merely an excuse. The truth was that Dmitry had spent the last half-decade waiting for something to happen, for something to change and make his life interesting. G.o.d knew it wouldn't be at headquarters. Being out here was a throw of the dice. If it ended in death hateful though it was to admit it he would not mind. He did not want to die, but it was a gamble he was prepared to take against the prospect of ... something new.

Another sh.e.l.l came in, closer, and this time Dmitry's descent on to the earth was involuntary. He lay there for a moment on his stomach, his face pressed close against the pale clay that had been exposed when the White Works' defences were dug, giving it its name. He was uninjured. He had escaped death. But still there was nothing new.

'You promised to tell me of Chopin.'

Dmitry turned his head and couldn't help but grin. Tyeplov stood over him, looking calm and in control despite the noise of battle around him. He was holding out his hand towards Dmitry. A sensation of embarra.s.sment ran through him, at being discovered in so vulnerable a position. It was hard to discern whether the feeling was better or worse for the fact that it was Tyeplov who towered above him.

'Now?' he asked, accepting the hand and letting Tyeplov effortlessly pull him to his feet.

Tyeplov tilted his head to one side. 'I could ask Prince Galtsin instead.'

Before Dmitry could respond, Tyeplov had begun to climb the rickety wooden stairway that led up to a platform just below the parapet of the earth defences. Dmitry followed him, feeling suddenly invigorated by his presence. At the top, Tyeplov hoisted his gun from his shoulder and positioned himself between two gabions the earth-filled wicker baskets that made up so much of Sevastopol's defensive front line. He fired a shot and then stepped back behind the gabion to reload. Within seconds he was ready to fire again.

'That's a shtutser!' exclaimed Dmitry.

'A Minie,' said Tyeplov, pulling back to reload once more, pouring both powder and bullet into the barrel in what seemed like a single action and then swiftly ramming them home.

'Where did you get it?'

'From a Frenchman,' Tyeplov explained. 'A dead one.'

Dmitry laughed, more to please Tyeplov than because he found the idea amusing. 'Serves him right,' he said, without quite understanding what he meant by it. He looked through the next gap between gabions. The French were in full attack now, running forward towards the defences. Somewhere to his right, Dmitry could just make out a breach perhaps blown by their artillery, perhaps not yet fully built in the rush to defend the Kamchatka. That was where the infantrymen were heading. He heard the report of Tyeplov's gun, and saw one of them fall. Tyeplov ducked in again, but within seconds was once more taking aim. Another man tumbled to the ground.

'You want a go?' asked Tyeplov as he loaded.

Dmitry grinned and took the offered rifle. It reminded him of the first time his father let him hold a gun though then the target had been nothing more dangerous than a pheasant. He leaned out between the gabions and tracked the figure of a running Frenchman, scarcely visible through the gloom. He squeezed the trigger and felt the gun recoil, but the soldier carried on.

'You're aiming a little high,' said Tyeplov as he took the gun from Dmitry and reloaded it before handing it back.

Dmitry had never been a good shot it wasn't an essential skill for a horseman but with a weapon like this, shooting became the sort of skill any officer could aspire to. He tracked another of the enemy, taking Tyeplov's advice, and fired again. It seemed like the same instant that the man fell. Dmitry could see the blood draining from his neck and staining the snow as his arms flailed, as if trying to drag him onwards in his attack. Dmitry laughed and felt Tyeplov pat him on the back. He handed over the gun again and Tyeplov reloaded.

'Your father killed quite a few Frenchmen in his time, I hear,' said Tyeplov as Dmitry aimed once more. 'A true Russian hero.'

Dmitry let the barrel of the gun drop as he fired and his bullet implanted itself harmlessly in the snow. Realization came to him and with it disappointment. So that was what it was all about. Tyeplov was fis.h.i.+ng, most likely for the Third Section. Tsar Nikolai might claim that the families of Decembrists were guiltless of any offence, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try to trap them into revealing their sympathies. But none of that quite explained the depth of Dmitry's regret at discovering Tyeplov's true interest.

'He was for a while,' said Dmitry, 'but he ended up disgracing us all.' It was an absolute inversion of the truth. When Dmitry had thought Aleksei to be a soldier, and worse, a spy, just like Tyeplov, he had had little respect for him. Only when he had discovered that Aleksei was a member of a society dedicated to bringing Russia the government it deserved had he seen him as a hero. Tyeplov offered the gun back to Dmitry, who raised his hand in refusal. He felt sickened at his own actions, at the pleasure he had taken in killing a man in so impersonal a way. That wasn't Dmitry; he'd done it only to please Tyeplov to be with him and to be like him.

Tyeplov shrugged and aimed the gun himself. 'You don't believe that,' he said with quiet conviction, then fired again.

'I do.' Dmitry knew better than to attempt to play any games. These government agents were not subtle, so he'd heard, though he had never before met one. It was best to counter their suggestions with simple certainties.

The French were in retreat now. Evidently the breach had been successfully defended, and now they had no hope other than to flee the Russian guns. Tyeplov happily fired at their backs, his aim unerring.

'I have friends who say your father was the bravest man they ever met.'

'They knew him?' Dmitry could not hide his surprise, or his curiosity.

Tyeplov fired again, and another man fell. 'Oh, yes. Long time ago, of course.' The battle was over now. The French all but a few stragglers had gone back to their lines. Tyeplov fired again and there was one straggler fewer. 'Though he was never much use with a gun, was he your father?' Tyeplov stepped away from the gabions and made his way back down the steps, clearly deciding there was no more to be done.

'What do you mean?' Dmitry's voice sounded indignant, even though he knew that his father had always been more comfortable with a sword than with a musket.

'Because of his hand,' explained Tyeplov. He turned and aimed the rifle back up the steps at Dmitry. He waggled the muzzle up and down to highlight the odd way he was holding the forestock. The last two fingers of his left hand were curled into his palm, and he allowed the gun simply to rest on his index finger, with his thumb steadying at the side. It was just the way Aleksei held a gun, having lost the last two fingers of his left hand to a Turkish blade.

'That's what they used to call him,' said Tyeplov, still pointing the gun towards Dmitry, 'long before they knew his real name.'

'Call him?' Dmitry came down the steps, pus.h.i.+ng the barrel of the gun to one side. It was quiet all around now, and he wanted to get back to the city and away from Tyeplov, but he was fascinated to learn more.

'Because of his hand,' Tyeplov said again. 'That's where he got the nickname.'

'What nickname?' asked Dmitry.

Tyeplov glanced from side to side and spoke softly, almost reverently. 'The three-fingered man,' he replied.

To whom it may concern, Please grant the bearer, Tamara Valentinovna Komarova, full access to the information she requires regarding Prince Volkonsky.

L. V. Dubyelt Tamara held out her hand and Gribov returned the letter. She did not want him looking at it for too long, lest he notice it was undated. It had once borne a date 2 October 1852 but if she had left that on there it might have diluted the sense of urgency that was conveyed. The simple stroke of a knife had removed it from the top of the page. Questions over the date might also have led to questions as to precisely which source of information Dubyelt had been granting access. He had meant the archive in Petersburg, but Tamara could think of no reason why he might not also have meant the one in Moscow. She certainly wouldn't suggest anything to the contrary to Gribov. Nor would she point out the ambiguity over exactly which Prince Volkonsky was meant the Decembrist exile, Sergei Grigorovich, or the Minister of the Imperial Court, Pyetr Mihailovich a distinction she had not made clear even when Dubyelt had originally signed the authorization. Tamara was interested in both princes, and much more besides.

Gribov stood, picking up a lamp that had been glowing dimly on his desk, and went to the door. Tamara turned her head to follow his movements, but did not realize that he intended her to accompany him until his curling finger beckoned her. She rose and walked out of the office after him.

'I hope you don't mind my natural sense of discretion,' he said as they walked along the dim corridor.

'Not at all. It does you credit,' she told him. She had not been sure that it would work, but in the end he was like any official afraid of his superiors. At first she had asked him, and he had said no. Then she had shown him the letter. She had verified that Yudin was away from his office, otherwise Gribov would have gone straight to him, unwilling to let the decision rest on his shoulders. But in Yudin's absence, a letter from General Dubyelt, with the general himself too far distant for personal verification, had seemed certain to sway Gribov. In the end, he had reacted just as she had hoped. She understood men like Gribov she understood men.

'If it were down to me, I would allow anyone in,' he explained as they walked. 'Such a beautiful library should not be kept a secret.' They had come to the top of the dark stone stairway down to Yudin's lair, opposite which the door led out to the open air of the Kremlin. In front of them was a dead end, decorated with a hanging tapestry, a copy of something French and medieval a virginal woman attended by a unicorn and a lion. The red of the woman's hair reminded Tamara a little of herself, but the slight figure and diminutive bosom of the tapestry were more akin to Raisa than Tamara. The unicorn gazed vainly into a mirror held in the woman's hand, but Tamara had only a moment to study the reflection before Gribov pulled the curtain aside to reveal a door that Tamara had not known existed. He unlocked it with a heavy iron key.

Beyond lay a staircase, longer, narrower and far, far older than the one that would have taken them to visit Yudin. Gribov led the way and the path twisted and turned until the memory of daylight above was forgotten and all sense of direction was lost. The stairs ended in a long straight corridor that Tamara could only guess led beneath the Kremlin, since to lead out of it would be nonsensical. Other corridors connecting, presumably, to other entrances split off, but Gribov ignored them. At last they came to another door, which Gribov unlocked with another key. Now he allowed her to enter first. The room was too dark for her to make out any detail, but she sensed a vast s.p.a.ce in front of her. Then Gribov stood beside her and turned up his lamp, suddenly illuminating all that was around them.

Tamara clicked her tongue in a mixture of astonishment and admiration, but was able to form no articulate sound.

'Beautiful, isn't it?' said Gribov, after a considered pause.

Tamara could only nod. The chamber stretched out further than she could see. Brickwork pillars, from which sprouted the vaults of the roof, were regularly s.p.a.ced throughout, perhaps fifty or more of them, sharing between them the entire weight of whichever of the Kremlin's buildings stood above. Tamara guessed they must be as old as the citadel itself. But what was most enthralling was what lay between the pillars: doc.u.ments thousands of them, if not millions, piled on to tables and crammed into shelves. There were ten times as many as she'd seen in Petersburg.

'This was built to the instruction of Ivan the Fourth,' she heard Gribov say, correcting her estimate of the library's age. 'Built to hold the Liberia the collected knowledge of the whole of Byzantium.'

Tamara had heard tales of such a thing, but believed them to be myths. It was designed to bolster Moscow's claim to be after Byzantium and Rome itself the Third Rome, the newest heart of Christendom, wherein resided knowledge that could be trusted neither to the Turks nor, worse, to the Pope.

'This is it?' she whispered. 'Here?' Her own interest lay in far more recent doc.u.ments, but she could not help but be thrilled by the thought of what she might find. She thought of her adoptive father, Valentin Valentinovich, and realized how much his love of books had become a part of her. He would envy her presence here.

'No.' Gribov chuckled as he answered her, as if this were a routine he followed with everyone he brought down here. 'Perhaps once, but not for many centuries. The doc.u.ments from Byzantium have been removed. My guess is that there is another similar room, near here, perhaps just the thickness of a wall away from us' he reached out and caressed the brickwork as he spoke 'where they are housed, but I don't know how to get to it. Perhaps His Majesty does. Perhaps one of his ancestors once did, but forgot to hand the secret down.'

'But this has the records I want?' asked Tamara, her mind just able to focus on its purpose.

'It contains everything we've collected since the time of Pyotr the Great; everything that's not in Petersburg.'

'That's just what I need.'

'I'll leave you to it,' said Gribov. There was more than a hint of victory in his voice the knowledge that too much information was as unhelpful as too little. But Tamara was thrilled. Ever since she had been allowed the freedom to roam through her father's library she had loved books in an almost physical way: the smell of them, the feel of them, the antic.i.p.ation of what new worlds she might find within. This place was like a dream to her.

'Thank you,' she said, only slightly exaggerating the relish she felt at the idea with the intent of deflating Gribov's sense of victory. 'Where do I find Volkonsky?'

Gribov waved his hand in front of him. 'Who can say? Some of the material is sorted, some not. Most remains where it was placed when it arrived. Towards the back it's very ancient indeed.' From a table near to the door he picked up a candle and lit it from his lamp. 'I'd stay to help, but I'm sure you understand, this is not my only duty.'

She heard his footsteps receding behind her, and then the slamming of the door. He had taken the candle to guide him, but left her the lamp. She felt suddenly entombed, but looking around she saw that he had left the key on the table beside her. She took the lamp and ventured out into the chamber into the past. It was an overwhelming task, but she felt more hopeful than she had done in years. If the truth about her parents did not lie somewhere beneath that high, vaulted ceiling, then she could not imagine anywhere that it might be.

The sound of some gigantic bell resonated across Red Square, and was ignored by most. Climbing the hill from the Moskva Bridge past Saint Vasiliy's, Yudin reacted perhaps more than those around him; he hadn't realized it was so late. Time could be a vital matter for a voordalak. To return tardily to his coffin, or at least to some place of dark seclusion, and to be caught in the first rays of the dawning sun would be a foolish and unpleasant way to die. But he didn't need clocks to tell him the position of the sun. Around dusk and dawn, he could feel its presence, like a wolf, lurking below the horizon, hoping that the laws of physics might momentarily change so that it could pounce unexpectedly and take him. But Yudin trusted the laws of physics more than anything in the whole world more than his own instincts.

Currently those laws dictated that the sun was somewhere on the far side of the Earth and so although Yudin might be late, he had little to fear from it. He looked up at the clock on the Saviour's Tower, having to strain his neck since he was almost directly underneath it. It wasn't the hour, or even the quarter, and the single stroke of the bell sounded nothing like the distinctive, newly restored chimes of the clock. Most likely it was from a church one of the many inside the Kremlin.

He tightened his grip on the wooden box under his arm and strode through the gateway beneath the tower, eager to make use of its contents. It was his most treasured possession: his microscope one of the few things he had rescued when he had fled his laboratory in the caves deep beneath Chufut Kalye. Out there in the Crimea, the war had been going on for months, but he had heard of no action anywhere close to his old haunt. What would anyone find if they went there now, he wondered. He had fond memories of the place, but now he kept his scientific paraphernalia at his house. It was a place he rarely visited, to the south of the river in Zamoskvorechye, but it was useful. He stored most of his possessions there, and in the cellar was a coffin where he could lie during the day if unable to reach his more regular sleeping place beneath the Kremlin. It was not his only bolthole in the city.

It had been almost a week since Raisa had handed him the sample of the tsarevich's blood a sample which she had so expertly drawn from him without his even noticing. Perhaps afterwards he had felt the cut to his lip, and connected it to his stolen encounter with her. But even if he did, he would put it down to unbridled pa.s.sion overcoming her in the presence of so powerful a figure. But how much did he know about the Romanov Betrayal? His uncle and namesake, Aleksandr I, had understood it all. Surely that knowledge would have been pa.s.sed down to those most in danger. Would the younger Aleksandr have made the connection when he raised his hand and discovered the blood on his lips? It did not matter. Yudin had his sample, and in a moment he would be able to examine it.

Yudin had made most of his discoveries years before, when working in those caves. Zmyeevich possessed the Romanov blood blood which Pyotr the Great had willingly allowed to be drunk from him. With that came the risk for any Romanov that, merely by drinking a few drops of Zmyeevich's blood, they might become like him. With Yudin's help he had almost succeeded with Nikolai's brother, Tsar Aleksandr I. But Aleksandr's death had saved him.

And there lay the problem. Yudin had discovered that within each generation of Romanovs there was only one chance of success. Zmyeevich had attempted to exert his power over Aleksandr and had failed. That meant that he could not attempt it with Nikolai, or any of Aleksandr's other brothers. The chance had moved to the next generation: Aleksandr, Konstantin and the others.

Yudin smiled. Tsar Nikolai was a sentimental man. His father, Tsar Pavel, had had four sons and named them, in order, Aleksandr, Konstantin, Nikolai and Mihail. Nikolai had four sons and named them, in order, Aleksandr, Konstantin, Nikolai and Mihail. The first set of brothers bore the patronymic Pavlovich, the second Nikolayevich. It was to the Nikolayevichs that Zmyeevich would turn his attention but not yet. Not until one of them became tsar. It would most likely be Aleksandr, but who could tell? If Zmyeevich shot his bolt too soon, the young tsarevich might never live to be tsar, and the chance would be lost for another generation. Zmyeevich would wait until there was certainty.

And what would Yudin do? He and Zmyeevich were no longer allies far from it and Zmyeevich was not to be taken lightly as an enemy. For Yudin there seemed only two options: to win Zmyeevich's favour, by helping him, or to defeat him for ever.