The Third Section Part 9

Dmitry heard a shout 'Mitka!' and realized Tyeplov had awoken. The urge to save his friend overwhelmed his concern for himself. He turned his head to look at Tyeplov, to beg him to take flight, and at the same moment Mihailov made his move. There was no conscious action from Dmitry to squeeze the trigger, but the pistol fired anyway. Its explosion drowned the yelp of fear that formed in Dmitry's throat. Mihailov's face vanished in the blast. He fell backwards towards Tyeplov and Dmitry saw Wieczorek's gaze follow him down.

Terror and hatred filled Dmitry, though which drove him more, he could not guess. The pistol fell from his hand as he stepped forward, grabbing Wieczorek's shoulder. His right hand thrust outwards and between the pull of his left and the push of his right, the sharp wooden point penetrated its target, and kept on going. Finally it came to a soft, uncertain halt as the guard came up against Wieczorek's belly. Dmitry felt warm blood oozing over his fingers and saw the vampire's eyes turn to meet his own. The blade had gone nowhere near the heart, and the wound was as a scratch would have been to Dmitry.

He withdrew and stabbed again, angling the blade upwards, but with little understanding of how precisely he would deliver the fatal blow. The shout of 'Die, d.a.m.n you!' on his lips must have sounded as feeble to the monster as it did to him. Wieczorek's hands grasped at Dmitry, one clutching at his sleeve, the other gouging its nails across his chest. The lips drew back to reveal sharp, glistening fangs and the neck strained so that they might reach for Dmitry's throat.

Panic took hold of Dmitry and he began to stab wildly at the creature, still gripping its shoulder so that it could not escape, even though escape seemed the furthest thing from its mind. Sometimes the wooden blade did nothing, simply missing the vampire altogether, or bouncing off a rib. At others, Dmitry felt the resistance of flesh being penetrated, but he had lost all intent of aiming for the creature's heart, his actions simply the last thras.h.i.+ngs of a man who knows that his life is close to its end. Again and again he thrust his arm forward, as though punching his opponent repeatedly in the stomach, but to no effect. Still Wieczorek's teeth descended towards him.

Then all was calm. Dmitry realized that the last few strokes of his sword, although they penetrated the vampire's torso, had been met with no sensation of resistance. He left the sword where it was, inside the creature's body, his hand grasping its hilt so tightly that his fingers felt numb. Wieczorek's arms fell to his sides and Dmitry's left hand, still clutching the shoulder, began to close as the resistance to his grip collapsed. It was as though a child were showing off his mighty strength by grabbing a handful of dried leaves and crus.h.i.+ng them to fragments. The arms that had begun to fall away never made it to their normal resting place. The right, once Dmitry had destroyed the shoulder that had held it in place, slipped out of the sleeve of Wieczorek's tunic and fell to the floor where it shattered silently. The left made its way to earth more gradually, the hand disintegrating first and then a dry, grey dust continuing to pour from the sleeve for several seconds as decay worked its way through the limb.

It was Wieczorek's face that was most fascinating. The animal snarl that had so recently menaced Dmitry collapsed into an expression of utter misery as the sides of his head began to fall away. The mask of comedy became the mask of tragedy. Those great teeth fell back into the mouth and then dropped through the crumbling tongue before falling out beneath the chin. The desiccated remains of Wieczorek's face cascaded down off his shoulders as raindrops would have done if he had been caught in a thunderstorm. It was a slow process, delectable to watch, but no less terminal than the destruction Dmitry had seen meted out to that young ryadovoy by a French cannonball.

After a few long moments, Dmitry was left clutching merely a dark green tunic, while from the tip of his wooden sword dangled the linen s.h.i.+rt which it had pierced. Below sat a pile of Wieczorek's remaining clothes, as a thin layer of grey dust spread itself across the parquet tiles, secreting itself within the cracks between them.

Dmitry attempted to breathe, but could only manage a mournful exhalation. His arms dropped to his sides, much as Wieczorek's had, and the wooden sword hit the floor with a clatter. He turned towards where Mihailov lay, cradled by Tyeplov, who, Dmitry could only guess, understood neither why Dmitry had attacked so brutally, nor how Mihailov could possibly remain alive. At last Dmitry's lungs were restored to function, and he took in a long, whooping breath. He began to breathe more normally, and walked over to examine Mihailov's face.

There was no face. The lower lip was there, but above it a hole which might at first be mistaken for a mouth stretched up and up across the front of where his skull once had been, terminating finally with what remained of his forehead, topped with dark, short hair that might seem like a moustache. Of nose and eyes, there was no trace. Inside the void was a mess of blood that Dmitry chose not to try to interpret. What concerned him more was that, even in the time since he had first looked, eyebrows were beginning to re-form. As he had seen so many years before, the creature was healing itself.

Dmitry stepped backwards, desperately looking on either side for where he had dropped his sword, but it was too late. Mihailov threw himself forward, his hands, unaided by sight, searching Dmitry's body for something to grip on to, but finding only bare flesh. His empty face was up close to Dmitry's and Dmitry shut his eyes, turning away rather than see so intimately what he knew dwelt within his own skull, but unable to banish the strange, foul smell of it. It was sufficient distraction to allow Mihailov's escape. Some memory of the layout of the casemate allowed him to find his way to the door. His hands padded against it, searching for the handle. There was still time. Dmitry grabbed his sword.

'No, Mitka! No!' Tyeplov's hand restrained him as he spoke. Dmitry hesitated, turning to look into Tyeplov's face, relieved to see the eyes and nose and mouth which one would expect.

It was time enough for Mihailov. The door slammed, and Dmitry and Tyeplov were alone.

CHAPTER VIII.

THEY CLUNG TO each other. Dmitry was s.h.i.+vering and the warmth of Tyeplov's body did nothing to alleviate it.

'Mitka. What have you done?' Tyeplov hissed.

'What did you see, Tolya?' asked Dmitry. It was an important question. The more that Tyeplov had observed for which there could be no sane explanation, the easier Dmitry would find it when unfolding his own, insane account of what had taken place.

'I saw you shoot Mihailov,' he stammered. 'I saw you stab Wieczorek. I saw ... Where is Wieczorek?'

Dmitry stood and offered his hand to Tyeplov. He felt suddenly aware of their nakedness. Tyeplov rose to his feet and Dmitry led him to where Wieczorek's clothes lay. Dmitry saw his own trousers where he had discarded them earlier, protruding from beneath the pile of garments. He grabbed them, shaking them to get rid of as much of the dust as he could.

'That's Wieczorek?' asked Tyeplov, a look of wild horror crossing his face.

'You saw what happened, Tolya. Only one of them made it out the door.'

Tyeplov nodded, and considered for a few moments. Then he turned to Dmitry, calmer. 'How though?'

'Voordalaki,' said Dmitry, simply. He waited for the word to sink in, for all of those stories that Tyeplov must have heard as a child to come to the forefront of his mind, so that Dmitry could pounce on them and convince him that they were no more stories than were the tales of the horrors perpetrated by the French at Borodino. It was a conversation Dmitry had had before, with his father, but on that occasion it was Dmitry who had been the doubting ingenu, his father the proficient and experienced slayer of monsters. It was again a reversal of roles, though no longer Chopin with which he would delight and intrigue his companion. It wasn't a position he relished, not least because, unlike his father, Dmitry was not an experienced slayer of monsters. In his whole life he had disposed of just one voordalak the creature over whose remains they now stood.

'You're mad,' Tyeplov gasped.

Dmitry began to dress, scouting around the casemate for his various items of clothing. It had occurred to him that if the two vampires had made their way through the trench then before long so might mortal men. They would not be so much of a threat to Tyeplov and Dmitry's lives, but they would still react to finding the two men together like this. Tyeplov followed Dmitry's lead.

'So what's your explanation?' asked Dmitry, pulling on his s.h.i.+rt.

'I ... I don't have one.'

'But mine is mad?'

'It must be,' Tyeplov shouted, more to convince himself than to persuade Dmitry.

'Why do you think they came here?'

'They're in command here. This is their casemate.'

'They came,' said Dmitry, 'to feed.'

'To feed?'

'Tolya, listen to me.' Dmitry squatted down to be on a level with Tyeplov, who was pulling on his socks. 'At the beginning of this month, in the Severnaya, I was shown two bodies. Their throats had been ripped out. It was those two that must have done it. That's what they had in store for us.'

'You can't be sure.'

'You think I should have waited?'

'No, but ...'

'You saw how Wieczorek died. You saw how Mihailov failed to die, for G.o.d's sake. What do you need them to do?'

Tyeplov seemed to accept Dmitry's argument. His next question was on a different tack. 'How do you know? I mean, I'm not questioning it, but how do you know so much?'

'I've met them before,' said Dmitry. 'Thirty years ago. And my father fought them a decade before that.' Dmitry felt a sudden new pride as he spoke the phrase 'my father'.

'Those creatures?'

'Not Wieczorek and Mihailov, but creatures like them.' Just one creature like them in Dmitry's case, but it would do no good to admit it.

'So what do we do?' asked Tyeplov.

'We find Mihailov and we kill him.' Again, Dmitry reminded himself of his father. Yudin would never have seen things in such simple black and white. In many situations it made him the better man, but not here.

'But he's mortally wounded. He'll be dead soon anyway.'

'He'll recover,' said Dmitry.

'And so you'll kill him, just like you killed Wieczorek?' Tyeplov's voice wavered with rising panic.

'There are other ways.' Tyeplov gave a look of naive enquiry which left Dmitry uncomfortable about being specific. 'Remember your folk tales,' he said. He watched Tyeplov's face as his mind wandered through each myth and legend that he had ever heard about the voordalak. Fear turned to horror when, as far as Dmitry could guess, he came to the various ways that the creatures could be dispatched: a wooden blade through the heart, decapitation, fire, exposure to sunlight.

'No!' shouted Tyeplov, with sudden vehemence.

For a moment, Dmitry despised him, but it was in Tyeplov's nature in anyone's to feel sympathy. Only someone like Dmitry or his father knew enough to be able to expunge such doubts. But it would do no good to attempt to persuade Tyeplov, not at that moment. Dmitry turned on his heel and marched out of the casemate, hoping that Mihailov hadn't gained too much of a head start.

It was nearly dawn. The sky was a deep, heavy blue in the east, but still black away from the sun. But there was enough light to see by. The bastion was half gone. The fortification bore a huge breach down the middle through which Dmitry glimpsed the enemy guns. An infantry captain stood alone among the scattered gabions, bewildered. Around him men worked haphazardly on rebuilding the defences, stepping through the bodies of dead and wounded comrades.

However much Dmitry might have wanted to pursue Mihailov, needs here were more pressing. He felt suddenly invigorated by the prospect of dealing with a human battle.

'Captain!' he barked. The officer snapped to attention. 'What's the situation?'

'G.o.d knows how many dead, sir. The wall's breached in three places. This one's the worst. I've sent for engineers.'

'Any sign of them advancing?'

'No, sir.'

Dmitry moved on down the line, scrambling over the tattered remains of the bastion, making sure that sharpshooters were in their places in case the French did attack, organizing the repair of the earthworks and seeing that injured men were carried to the field hospital, back in the city. As for the dead, there was nowhere for them to be buried. He didn't have to order it, but the men knew the procedure; most of the bodies were hauled over the side of the defences, for the French to crawl through when they eventually decided to advance.

It was several hours before Dmitry returned to the casemate. By then, Tyeplov was gone.

The old woman must have been mad. Tamara had told herself that again and again. It was over a week since they had spoken, but still Tamara could not dismiss the conversation from her mind. It was a bright, sunny day now not yet summer, but definitely spring and it seemed a shame to be hiding from it among the gloomy records of the Kremlin's secret library, deep beneath the ground, but it was her first opportunity for several weeks to do any research.

Gribov still appeared to revel in the futility of her task. The only reason that he was prepared, grudgingly, to bring her down here was to crow over her failure.

'Any progress with Prince Volkonsky?' he asked.

'Not a lot.'

'Do you even know what it is you're looking for?'

Until recently, Tamara's answer would have been simple, if unspoken her parents but for the moment at least she had been distracted by a new quest.

'Do you keep police records down here?' she asked.

'We have records for the Third Section and the Gendarmerie, of course. As for the Ministry of the Interior ... you might be lucky. As with everything else, it is sorted by the order in which it arrived.'

'Whereabouts are the records for 1812?' she asked, knowing full well the stupidity of her quest.

'1812?' There was an edge of sarcasm to his voice. 'You might find something.' He glanced at one of the shelves and then turned abruptly left. Tamara followed. They came to a table piled high with papers, some tied with ribbon, some with string; others were loose. He picked up one at random and looked at it. 'That's 1811,' he said. He went over to a shelf and pulled down a bound volume, examining its spine. 'And that's 1814. So it's all somewhere around here.'

'Thank you,' she said curtly. She pulled up a chair and sat at the table, clearing a s.p.a.ce in front of her.

'Of course, you'll find nothing on the Volkonskys neither of them. They were both fighting in the war.'

'I know,' said Tamara.

Gribov placed the lamp on the table beside her and walked away into the darkness. She began looking at the doc.u.ments, quickly rejecting each one as she saw its date or got some idea of its contents. In the distance, she heard a pause in Gribov's footsteps. She looked and saw his silhouette in the doorway, before it disappeared. The sound of the door slamming shut reached her a fraction of a second later. She returned to her work.

Natalia had said it had happened just after the French had gone, and the victim's name had been Margarita. She searched her memory for more detail. Margarita Kirillovna that had been it a patronymic, but no surname. The date was helpful though. The French had left Moscow in October 1812. It was an unimaginable time. The idea of French soldiers of any foreign power marching through the streets of the city seemed like something from a fairy tale. Today Russia was again at war with France, but there was no sense of any risk to the homeland. That was why it was so easy to send the country's young men out to fight. War was an unreal thing foreign. Those diminis.h.i.+ng few who remembered 1812 would see things differently.

She leaned back in her chair and asked herself why she was doing this. Natalia was an old woman; she could have dreamed the whole thing up, or at the very least been confused over the dates. And even if she was right, what possible connection could the two murders have? Tamara was wasting her time. She should be down here looking for her parents, not chasing murderers, especially when Yudin seemed pretty keen that the murderer remained undiscovered.

Then she thought of Irina's face, and her stillness and her horrible wounds. That deserved some investigation, surely. And if neither Yudin nor the gendarmes were prepared to do it, then it was left to her. And Yudin could hardly object; he might want to play down the murder of Irina Karlovna, but Tamara was not investigating that. He could not censure her for looking into the death of Margarita Kirillovna.

She grabbed the paper nearest to her, a letter, and began to read.

'Why did you kill Irina Karlovna?'

Raisa stiffened as Yudin spoke the words. She continued to gaze into her unreflected face in the mirror against the wall of his office, but she was not stupid. She would know he had observed her reaction, would know that he had chosen the precise moment of his question so that he was best placed to evaluate her response.

'How did you know?' she asked. She did not attempt a denial.

He continued to watch her, and she continued to avoid looking back at him. 'I believe in simplicity,' he explained. 'A woman is killed, quite obviously by a vampire. A vampire is the occupant of the adjacent room, with a connecting door. One hardly has to be Dupin.'

'We're not the only ones.' She turned to him at last. 'Perhaps not the only ones in Moscow.'

'Have you heard something?' He tried, successfully, to sound uninterested.

'No. And even if I had, you're right. The simple explanation fits.'

'You still haven't explained why.'

'She found out heard me going down to the cellar. She didn't know what, but she suspected something. Then she got me into her room. The mirrors told her everything.'

'You should have been more careful,' said Yudin.

'Where would be the fun in that?'

He could hardly fault her. They had survived together, on and off, for three decades. She knew how to be circ.u.mspect. 'You should have told me,' he muttered, grudgingly.

'I knew you'd work it out.'

'Is your grave there still safe?'

Raisa nodded. 'She didn't have time to tell anyone.'

Yudin looked at her. Her face had a yellow tinge to it and the skin around her eyes was lined. 'Are you hungry now?' he asked.

'Just tired.'

Picking up a lamp, he went to the door opposite the mirror and unlocked it. The stairs went down a little way and then split into two flights. 'To the left if you are hungry; to the right if you want to sleep,' he said. She hesitated, then turned right. Further down was another door. He unlocked it and they went through.

They were directly underneath his office now. The room was almost bare too deeply buried to be lit by windows. On the far side there was another door, much like the one they had come in through. The smell of the river was stronger here, but it was of no concern to either of them. In the middle lay two coffins, expensive ones ageing now. Quite unaccountably they had been built to last.

Raisa went over and climbed into the smaller of them, on the left. Even to one of Yudin's vast experience, it was a strange sight perhaps even a little unnerving. No human would comfortably lie down inside a construction whose design so obviously indicated that they would never rise from it again. But it did not concern Raisa for a moment. She lay back and closed her eyes, not bothering to make use of the heavy lid that lay beside her. Yudin walked over and looked down at her. She was unconscious, not even breathing. He knew that if he were to place his hand to her chest he would feel no heartbeat.

He turned and left, locking the door behind him. It was a clever mechanism, of his own devising, which would allow her to leave when she awoke, but would prevent anyone else from entering. It meant that they could sleep in safety, but need never fear being entombed.