Authors: Andrew Williams
‘Grigory?’ Reaching down to her bag, Evgenia removed the remains of a loaf and some sausage and slid them across the table to Goldenberg, who set about them with gusto.
‘Do you intend to make St Petersburg your home, Doctor?’ Goldenberg asked between mouthfuls.
‘I think of it as home already. I was born here.’
‘Dr Hadfield was a close friend of my sisters in Switzerland,’ said Evgenia.
‘Lydia?’ Goldenberg gave a little shake of the head, showering wet crumbs on the table. ‘Poor Lydia.’
‘I must go,’ Hadfield replied and he swung his legs over the bench to rise.
‘So soon? Have a little more tea,’ said Evgenia.
‘My medical bag is in the treatment room.’
‘I’ll fetch it,’ said Anna.
‘No, no, that’s perfectly all right, I know my way.’
The battered old Gladstone was just where Hadfield had left it on a shelf above the dispensary. He picked it up and made his way back along the dim corridor towards the refectory. The door was ajar and as he approached it he could hear Goldenberg’s high-pitched voice.
‘I’ve been following him all week – to and from his office . . .’
On an impulse Hadfield did something he would have condemned as ungentlemanly in others: he waited and listened and watched at the door.
‘It would be foolish to attempt it from a moving cab –
not after the last time,’ Goldenberg continued. The women exchanged a worried glance.
‘I don’t think we should speak of it now,’ said Anna.
‘He’s guarded, of course: four gendarmes and the driver.’ Goldenberg ignored her. ‘But it would be possible from the pavement outside Fontanka 16 or close to his home.’
‘Let’s wait until Alexander’s here,’ he heard Anna say with steel in her voice.
‘What – oh, the doctor . . .’ Goldenberg tailed off.
Taking this as his cue, Hadfield pushed open the door and stepped inside. For a few seconds there was an embarrassed silence in which they were careful not to make eye contact with each other. It was Anna who eventually broke it: ‘Let me take you to the church, Doctor. You can pick up a cab there.’
‘Thank you, but I can find my own way.’
Anna was insistent, rising to her feet: ‘The streets are badly lit and it would be easy to lose your way.’
Snatching her coat from the table, she made for the door, plainly anxious to guide him from the building as quickly as possible.
Walking beside her in the dark street, Hadfield was deeply troubled by what he had heard, and he knew from the charged silence that she was conscious of it.
‘Are you involved in this?’ he asked at last.
She flinched, startled by his directness: ‘What did you hear?’
‘Enough.’
They were at the corner of a street immediately opposite a small church, a cluster of golden domes, the patriarchal cross silhouetted against the faint gaslight of the city. From a lane a little further on, angry drunken voices drifted closer.
‘I’ve known Grigory a long time, Doctor,’ she said, and even in shadow he could see the furrow between her dark eyebrows.
‘He has a wild imagination. Yes, we talk of the need for action to bring about the revolution, but . . .’
Her words tailed away as the drunken argument spilled from the lane on to the street. They waited, looking everywhere but at each other, while three peasants, to judge from their clothes, staggered past and into a yard.
‘It’s idle talk – that’s all. Who would trust Grigory to carry out such a . . .’ she hesitated, ‘delicate, such a delicate task?’
‘Murder?’
‘No. No,’ and she recoiled a little, hurt by the suggestion, ‘an attack on the system of oppression.’
‘Ah. Yes.’
‘Grigory is a talker, that’s all. Please believe me. There are no plans for any sort of . . .’ she hesitated again, ‘political action. I will talk to Grigory, warn him he must be careful what he says.’
She took a step forward, her head at his shoulder, her white face tilted up to him, and his heart beat so fast he was sure she would hear it pounding.
‘You won’t speak of this to anyone, will you?’
‘No.’
‘Please forget it. Foolishness, that’s all.’ She paused and retreated a step, satisfied. ‘I’m glad we’re going to be friends.’
It was only five minutes more to the square in front of St Boris and St Gleb. There was not a soul to be seen and little prospect of a cab. She offered to wait with him and he wanted to accept for the pleasure of her company, but he brushed the thought aside as ungallant. ‘I know my way from here. I’ll take a cab on the embankment. But how will you get back to the school? You can’t walk alone.’
She was capable of looking after herself and knew the district well, she said, but thanked him for his concern with a summer smile that set his heart fluttering like the wings of a butterfly.
‘And will you help us again?’
‘Yes. I will help you.’
Yes, he would visit the clinic the following Sunday and perhaps the Sunday after that. But not for the poor of Peski or from the same woolly operatic urge to ‘do something’ that had led him to agree in the first place. No. It was curiosity, the shadow of her smile, the scent of her hair as she bent close over the treatment table, and the effortless grace with which she moved.
Not for a moment, for a second, was he taken in by the gossamer thin veil she had attempted to weave about Goldenberg’s words. Yes, he was vain and boastful and insecure, so much was obvious, but he was dangerous too. There was a certain self-righteous vanity in all who felt they had a right to kill in cold blood in the furtherance of their cause. Hadfield had met men and women who for all the talk of freedom were motivated by something more prosaic – self-regard or money or sexual desire, or by a simple need to belong – and they would play their part in the revolution too – if it came.
‘Ah, Anna, you’re back. And how is the good doctor? I was just telling our comrades the story of St Boris and St Gleb Church.’
Alexander Mikhailov had a soft, cultivated voice and a good-humoured if slippery smile. He was perched at the edge of a long refectory table, Goldenberg and Evgenia sitting on the bench at his feet, and a young man with bad skin and lank greasy hair – a student, to judge from his shabby uniform coat – was standing behind him.
‘The city’s bakers are paying for the church as a thanks offering for the miraculous deliverance of the tsar from the hands of the revolutionary who took a shot at him twenty years ago,’ said Mikhailov, shaking his head in a show of incredulity. ‘They would have looked pretty silly if poor Alexander Soloviev had aimed a little straighter.’
‘You should have let me do it,’ said Goldenberg, petulantly. ‘I can shoot straight.’
Mikhailov turned lazily to him, his face empty of expression: ‘Well, it’s taken the bakers ten years to get this far with the church. Perhaps someone will make a decent fist of it before they finish and disappoint them yet.’
Slipping from the bench, he smoothed the tails of his frock coat and turned to Anna: ‘We must speak.’
From the refectory, he led her down the corridor and out into the courtyard at the rear. The carriage gates were closed and looked as if they had been for years. On the other three sides, the windows of the building were roughly boarded like a derelict prison. But for a thin shaft of light spilling from the open door across the cracked and weedy flags, the yard was dark, oppressively so. Mikhailov stood at the door with the light at his back, his shadow falling theatrically across her. A showman with a love of conspiracy and the shade, but in the months Anna had worked alongside him she had learnt to recognise that he was the sharpest, the best informed and most security conscious member of their little band. Ruthless, a truly dedicated and energetic revolutionary, he was cut from Bakunin’s classic mould: everything that promoted the success of the movement was moral, everything that hindered it immoral.
‘The English doctor, can he be trusted?’
‘Vera Figner says so.’
‘And you?’
‘I think so too.’
‘Is it worth the risk?’
Anna paused to collect her thoughts, sweeping a loose strand of hair back in a single graceful movement. ‘Yes, it is worth the risk. He can be useful.’
‘But our work is more important than the patients at the clinic.’
‘Of course, yes, I know. I’m not a fool. I mean he is very well connected. His uncle is General Glen . . .’
‘The financial controller?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that is a different matter, yes.’ Mikhailov was impressed. ‘But is he with us?’
‘He’s not against us. I think he can be persuaded . . .’ She paused, as if in two minds whether to say more.
‘Well?’
‘He likes me.’
Mikhailov chuckled and took a step forward to place a hot plump hand on her upper arm. ‘We all like you, Anna.’
She shook it free at once, grateful that the darkness was covering the colour she could feel in her face. ‘He may be useful, that’s all.’
‘Yes, he may.’ There was nothing in Mikhailov’s voice to suggest he felt any embarrassment. ‘Just be careful.’
‘Of course. It’s not me you need to speak to.’
‘Oh?’
And she told him of Goldenberg’s plan to kill the head of the Third Section. ‘The doctor must have overheard him. I tried to convince him it was just silliness, but he isn’t an idiot.’
Mikhailov turned away from her and stepped back to the open door, his head bent, pulling distractedly at his thick beard.
‘All the more reason to be careful,’ he said at last. ‘I will speak to Grigory. The time isn’t right for another attempt.’
They made their way back along the corridor but at the refectory door Anna stopped and, without turning to look at him, said, ‘Did you hear of Alexander?’ Her voice shook a little with emotion.
‘He showed great courage on the scaffold.’
‘You were there?’
‘No. But Popov was there.’
‘Popov?’
‘The student I brought with me tonight.’
Turning the handle sharply, she pushed the door open and walked purposefully into the refectory. They all knew the risk
they were taking. Time mourning her friend was time that should be spent fighting for the revolution he gave his life for. What was it Mikhailov had said to them all on the eve of the attempt? ‘We can do anything if we are not afraid of death.’ Alexander Soloviev had not been afraid.
Goldenberg and Evgenia Figner had been joined at the table by Morozov and Kviatkovsky, Presnyakov and other familiar faces.
‘Thank you for coming, comrades,’ said Mikhailov, pouring himself a glass of tea. ‘We are running a risk, meeting so soon after Alexander’s death, but I have some important news. A conference has been called to discuss our ideas for a new party.’
It would be held at a city in the south-west, he told them, invitations delivered by hand to socialist groups all over Russia. ‘This is our chance to argue the case for our campaign. The people want us to lead them and they need something to fight for.’ To prepare for the conference, they must visit supporters and raise money. It would have to be done in complete secrecy.
‘And that brings me to the spy, Bronstein.’ Mikhailov placed his glass on the table and clasped his hands together like a priest in prayer. ‘Madame Volkonsky’s house is being watched. No one should go there or try to contact her. Our friend Popov,’ and he nodded towards the unprepossessing figure lurking at the fringe of the circle, ‘has been making contacts with the workers at the Baird Foundry but he is being watched by another informer. You seem to attract them like flies to dung, don’t you, Popov? Tomorrow he will leave the city. And you, Grigory,’ he said, turning to Goldenberg, ‘you must leave too.’
Goldenberg’s face fell. ‘Why me? How can you be sure they’re looking for me? I don’t . . .’
Mikhailov cut him short. ‘You know better than to ask.’ No one in the group doubted that Mikhailov knew of what he spoke. Time and again he had presented them with startling intelligence, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. His
sources were jealously guarded, and the group was obliged to take what he told them on trust. Knowledge is power, he had told them, when speaking of their struggle, and his unique access to it placed him first among equals.
The conversation turned to the formation of workers’ groups, new cells in the army and navy, and of Mikhailov’s plans for a printing press. At a little before ten o’clock the meeting broke up and they began to slip into the night in ones and twos.
‘Did you instruct Popov to – to deal with Bronstein?’ Anna asked when she was alone again with Mikhailov. They were standing at the front door waiting for the yard keeper to return and lock the school.
‘Why do you ask?’
She paused to consider her words carefully. ‘Is it right that one person can take the decision to kill in the name of the group?’ she said at last.
‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘That isn’t the point.’
‘Anna. Think.’ And for once his soft at-your-service voice was sharp with impatience. ‘You know perfectly well that in such cases there isn’t time for a motion and a vote.’
Mikhailov was right, she knew that, and yet she felt uneasy. It must – as always – have been written in her face.
‘Is there more?’ he asked, his small brown eyes hunting for hers. ‘Is there something you aren’t telling me? Perhaps this English doctor?’
‘Don’t be foolish.’
But the clever little smile had returned to Mikhailov’s face. ‘Let’s hope he is a servant to the movement. We’ll know soon enough, won’t we?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was a little husky, barely more than a whisper: ‘Yes, we will.’
I
t was clear from his restless movement that the yard keeper did not relish the opportunity he had been presented with to serve his tsar.
‘Calm down, man, for God’s sake.’
Major Barclay had no time for his squeamishness. What was his name? Barclay had forgotten. These smelly gatekeepers all looked the same with their padded jackets and shaggy beards. They were side by side beneath the carriage arch of a large terracotta-coloured mansion block, the soft early sun blinking over the roof of the building opposite. Five minutes to the signal. His men were in place. Both ends of the 3rd Izmailovsky Regiment Street and the open courtyards in the district sealed. Two entrances to the apartment block. The front covered from the building on the opposite side of the street, and the back by a dozen gendarmes in the doorways and shadows of an especially gloomy little yard. If he had any sense, Popov would have reconnoitred a number of escape routes, but Barclay was confident he had covered all the possibilities. He glanced at his pocket watch: ‘All right, it’s five, let’s get him.’