To Kill A Tsar Part 10

'Murderers!' And she kicked out blindly at the first man rising to his feet. Angry, she was so angry, grinding her teeth with anger.

Then from somewhere a man's voice: 'Hey, what's happening there?'

She glanced up to see a lantern swinging towards them. 'Thieves!'

In desperation, one of them tugged at the sack, lifting it from the ground to hoist it on to his back. She threw herself on him with her fists, bending to sink her teeth deep into his hand. A cry of pain and the sack slipped from him. But someone had her by the hair and was dragging her down. Then she was struck hard in the face, knuckles jarring her cheekbone. She fell backwards, her head bursting with white light. She curled instinctively into a ball. The sack was close at hand, and she reached out to grasp it by the neck. But one of the men kicked out at her viciously, catching her just below the ribs, and she slipped into darkness, heaving for air, conscious of nothing but the pain in her face and side. Then anger and fear kindled inside her again.

'No, no!' And with a stubborn act of will, she opened her eyes and clutched the sack tighter and with both hands, tensing in readiness for the next blow. But it did not come. They had gone. She pulled the sack towards her and lay in the long gra.s.s beside it, trembling with shock, a film of cold perspiration p.r.i.c.kling her skin. Her cheek was throbbing and as she lifted her head, the shadowy world within her circ.u.mference began to spin.

'Hey, is anyone there? Where are you?' Someone was pushing quickly through the gra.s.s towards her.

'Here.' How pathetic her voice sounded. 'Here.'

The ring of light from a lantern and a bent silhouette above her. Her rescuer crossed himself, and she could tell from the two fingers he used to perform his blessing that he was an Old Believer.

'Are you all right?' he asked, sinking to his haunches and lifting the lantern close to her face.

It took another supreme act of will just to lift one foot in front of the other; every jarring step sent a frisson of pain through her body. She had no choice but to let him carry the sack. Her Good Samaritan was called Vladimir and his home was close to the railway track, a stone's throw from the newcomers' cottage. She did not need to tell him where she was going, he led her there without question.

It was a poor wooden place, like most of the others in the village, close enough to the track for the trains to rattle the windows. The party had paid a thousand roubles, and Lev Hartmann, whose parents were workers and who knew how to behave like one, had been chosen to live there with a comrade posing as his wife. And it was Sophia Perovskaya who opened the door to Anna and, after only a glance, threw her arms about her. 'What's happened to you, Annushka?'

Before Anna could speak, her guide stepped into the light from the door and dropped the sack at her feet.

'Thank you, Father,' Anna muttered. 'Thank you.' But Vladimir had vanished without a word.

'Does she have it?' A strange apparition of the man Anna knew to be Lev Hartmann had come to the door. He was caked from head to foot in mud. 'Is this it?' he asked, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the sack.

'For goodness sake, get back inside,' Sophia said, shooing him like a goose back into the house, 'someone could see you like that.' She led Anna by the hand into the living room and made her sit at the table. 'Was it the police?'

Anna gave a little shake of the head. She was exhausted, and now she was among friends the courage began to seep from her.

Sophia poured a little warm water from the samovar into a bowl and placed it on the table with a fine linen cloth and some soap. 'Let me.'

'Thank you,' Anna whispered, struggling with the tide of emotion welling inside. Sophia Perovskaya stroked her cheek lightly with the back of her hand then dabbed the corner of the cloth in the water and began gently, so gently, wiping the mud from her face. Anna was full of grat.i.tude for the warmth and tenderness in her friend's blue eyes and round innocent face. This woman is my family, she thought, and she reached for Sophia's free hand, a fellowship of people committed to the highest ideals: me the illegitimate daughter of a landlord and serf and Sophia Lvovna Perovskaya, from one of the n.o.blest families in the empire.

'Why are you smiling?' Sophia asked.

'I was thanking a G.o.d I don't believe in for your kindness, Sonechka, and for our comradeship.'

Sophia Perovskaya gave her hand a little squeeze: 'Yes. But now you must tell me what happened?'

Painfully, hesitantly, Anna gave a brief account of the attack and her rescue. And as she spoke her friend smoothed cool arnica ointment on her bruised cheek and hands. So delicate, so gentle, what a strange childlike creature she is, Anna thought. Diminutive, pet.i.te, with flaxen braids and fine features, Perovskaya was twenty-five but often taken for ten years younger. In her simple country smock she looked very like a peasant girl.

'The executive committee of the party owes you its thanks,' she said, bending forward to kiss Anna's cheek. 'It's a small miracle you weren't blown to pieces.'

'But there isn't very much, is there?' said Hartmann. He had lifted a box from the sack and placed it on the table near them. Prising it open with a chisel, he took from it a short brown cylinder of dynamite eight inches long and one and a half in diameter twirling it between his fingers.

'Alexander is looking for more dynamite,' Anna replied.

Hartmann nodded.

'How far is the tunnel?'

He gave a non-committal shrug and turned, his hand on the k.n.o.b of the door to the adjoining room: 'Grishka is in there with Aronchik. But it's my turn again, I think.'

'It's too slow,' said Sophia Perovskaya when he had gone. 'We're still twenty yards short.'

'Is Grigory Goldenberg with you?'

'He's in the fields spreading the earth from the tunnel. But men like Grigory are not used to this sort of work that's why we're behind.'

There had been one problem after another, Sophia explained. The party's intellectuals were breaking under the strain of real labour. First they had driven the tunnel up against the base of a telegraph pole, then heavy rain had brought the gallery roof down, leaving a crater in the ground close to the path used by the gendarme patrols. And when the tunnel finally reached the railway embankment they had been forced to use a drill to cut their way through stone. It was claustrophobic, back-breaking labour, the tunnel no wider than a man's shoulders. The digger wielding the spade at the face carried a dose of poison in case he was buried alive.

'But we've all taken a vow not to be taken alive.' On a bench beneath one of the windows there was a large bottle of nitroglycerine; on the table within easy reach, Sophia Perovskaya's pistol. 'If the gendarmes burst in upon us I'm to fire a bullet into the bottle,' she said. There would be enough explosive to blow the three-roomed house and all its occupants to kingdom come and some of the gendarmes too.

'But now you must sleep a while, Annushka. You can't go back tonight. You can sleep in my bed,' said Sophia, pouring vodka into a gla.s.s tumbler. 'Here, drink this.'

'I'm fine, Sonechka, really,' said Anna, getting slowly to her feet. She stood in front of her friend, swaying like a tipsy peasant, her right leg trembling in protest.

'Sit down!' said Sophia Perovskaya with the cool firmness of one used to being obeyed. For all her smallness of stature, her childlike face, she was an 'illegal' who had escaped from custody and was near the top of the police's wanted list, a dedicated and resourceful revolutionary, cut from the same fine cloth as Mikhailov. Anna took the gla.s.s she offered her. But when at last she was led to bed in the adjoining room, sleep was out of the question, her mind racing in spite of the crushing tiredness she felt.

In the three months since the birth of 'The People's Will' Anna had travelled thousands of miles on its behalf. Station waiting rooms, telegraph offices, a different house, a different bed almost every night, an agent and courier of its executive committee, for ever vigilant, for ever on the move. This was her new life. She had sworn an oath that bound her to the party, a pledge to reject family, love and friendship, to renounce personal hopes and desires for the people and, if necessary, to sacrifice her life for a revolution in Russia. She was glad of the certainty of knowing this was her future. Freedom and the love of comrades fired with the same revolutionary spirit were worth dying for. She had already turned her back on the prison of a loveless marriage with a good-for-nothing husband old enough to be her father, a drunkard who treated her like one of his chattels. The promises they had made to each other in the new party were profounder than her wedding vows, for in them lived the shared ideal of liberty.

And yet, and yet . . . as the days and miles slipped by rattling down a seemingly endless piece of track with her thoughts she could not entirely bury the memory of an English doctor who had looked at her with warmth and longing. She rolled their last words over and over in her mind and was sorry for the way they parted, sorry too that she had made no effort to explain that her father had given her away in marriage when she was only seventeen, like one of his serfs. And there were times when she let her imagination wander with pleasure to take comfort in the knowledge that she was desired as a woman should be.

As she lay there in Sophia Perovskaya's narrow bed, she could hear the murmur of voices in the room next door. They must have closed the tunnel for the night. Most of the Moscow cell was living in the nearby city, travelling to and from the cottage as discreetly as possible at dawn and dusk. Anna had taken a room in a cheap guesthouse close to Kursk Station under an a.s.sumed name and with papers that had been prepared for her by the party.

The door opened and Sophia crept in with a candle. 'Are you sleeping?' she whispered softly.

'No. I can't.'

'I will fetch you some soup.'

'I will get up, Sonechka. I want to be with friends.'

There were five men round the table. Hartmann and two other comrades were bent over bowls of steaming broth, their clothes and hair stiff with mud. Goldenberg was sipping a gla.s.s of tea, and there, with his back to the door, was Alexander Mikhailov. He turned to look at her as she entered. 'Anna, please,' he said, and, half rising to his feet, offered her his chair. But Sophia Perovskaya had already pulled one to the table.

'Are you all right? Sophia has told us what happened to you.' Mikhailov's voice was businesslike. 'That's a nasty bruise.'

Anna blushed a little and lifted a hand to her cheek. 'I'm fine.'

'I've been telling the others: our comrades in Alexandrovsk are almost ready. The explosive cylinders are in place and they have all they need to detonate them. But we can take dynamite from Odessa. The attempt there is off. The tsar's train will leave from Simferopol instead.'

Anna felt Sophia Perovskaya's tiny hand on her shoulder as she placed the bowl of vegetable broth in front of her.

'We still have two chances to catch him but we need to work quickly now,' said Mikhailov coolly. 'We don't have much time three weeks at the most. The tsar will return to Petersburg before the end of the month. We'll receive word when his train leaves the Crimea.'

For a few seconds there was silence at the table. After weeks of toiling in a tunnel no wider than a coffin, the day, the hour, was approaching when they would make their attempt on the emperor's life. It was the party's first objective. They had pa.s.sed a formal death sentence: the tsar must be killed to free the nation. Only then would it be possible to hand supreme power to the people.

'But we need more dynamite . . .' Mikhailov said at last. He was looking pointedly at Goldenberg. 'You must visit Vera Figner in Odessa and bring back all you can.'

'But I'm needed here!' Goldenberg insisted.

'This is more important,' said Sophia Perovskaya. 'You must go first thing tomorrow.'

'Why can't Annushka go?' he asked.

'Of course she can't!' snapped Sophia.

'I can,' said Anna, putting down her spoon. 'I'll go.'

'No!' The bowls and gla.s.ses jumped as Sophia slammed her tiny fist on the table. 'Look at her. Alexander-'

Mikhailov shrugged. 'Perhaps two people would be better.'

How calculating he is, Anna thought. He had only suggested Goldenberg because she would offer to go too. Dearly though she cared for him, Grigory was not to be trusted with a task of this importance. She would make the arrangements and Grigory would carry the case of dynamite. They must leave at once leave before dawn.

13.

12 NOVEMBER 1879.

ODESSA.

There was a queue at the telegraph reception where an elderly Jew was struggling to make himself understood to the clerk. Vera Figner was losing her temper, her foot tapping impatiently on the tiled floor, click, click, click, and every few seconds her eyes turned to the large post office clock on the opposite wall of the hall. She edged her way to the counter at last and the clerk slipped a telegram beneath the grille. She turned away with the ribbon of paper between her fingers, concern and excitement written in the fine lines of her face.

'Well?' Anna asked.

'Here,' and Vera pressed the message into her outstretched hand. 'He's ready to leave the Crimea.'

The telegram was in simple code: 'PRICE OF FLOUR TWO ROUBLES. STOP. OUR PRICE FOUR. STOP.'

'Fourth coach of the second train,' whispered Vera, with a discreet shake of the head. 'Let's go now. It will be a miracle if we aren't arrested. Can you imagine a more obvious code? You know the telegraphers are under orders to look out for strangely worded messages.'

She led Anna from the Central Post Office on to the busy street and hailed a cab. 'There's a train in half an hour. You must go at once.'

Anna had arrived in Odessa the day before. Vera's cell had worked hard on its own plan for an attack, only to discover the tsar would not be travelling through the city after all. It had left them feeling flat and a little resentful that they had no further part to play, but it had been agreed that Goldenberg would leave with their supply of dynamite on an earlier train and meet Anna when she received word from the Crimea.

As the cab began to turn before the station, Vera leant closer: 'Good luck, Annushka, good luck.' Her voice shook with emotion. 'Please be careful. The gendarmes have stepped up their patrols.'

'Do you think they know something?'

Vera Figner gave a little shrug: 'I don't know, but be careful.' And she bent to brush Anna's cheek lightly with her lips.

Vera was right. A squad of gendarmes was questioning travellers and checking papers on the concourse and Anna was obliged to show hers with the rest. A plume of steam and soot was rising from the mouth of the station and she had barely settled into her seat in third cla.s.s when, with a hiss and a jolt and a clanking of couplings, the train began to pull away from the platform. Her carriage was crowded with a rich slice of southern Russia: peasants with poultry; a Greek shopkeeper and his family, his small children screaming for the attention of their mother; Jews, Armenians, even a young Muslim man from the Crimea in a bright red Tatar cap. Anna found herself pressed against a middle-aged clerk in a stained and threadbare frock coat who fell asleep almost at once. Opposite her was an old soldier with a thick grey beard and small inquisitive eyes. He gave her a lascivious toothless grin when she caught him scrutinising her and he refused to look away. For a while she followed the comings and goings in the carriage the officious ticket collector and tipsy vodka seller, the children peeping cheekily through their fingers at strangers and she listened patiently to the everyday troubles of her neighbours. But the late sun glinting yellow in the gla.s.s made her blink and slowly she succ.u.mbed to the weariness of the pa.s.sive traveller, drifting away to the rattle of the train. It was an uneasy sleep, broken at each station along the line by the slamming of doors, the guard's whistle and the traffic of new pa.s.sengers up and down the carriage. For hours she floated in that restless demi-world between sleep and consciousness in which dreams are shaped by memories and the images that form and dissipate are familiar. In one, the tsar was waving from his carriage, his long fingers beautifully manicured, a gentle look in his eyes, and he was beckoning to her, 'Come, come,' offering her the seat beside him. But she knew he was going to die, that it was too late, that he must die and that if she sat with him she would die too. But would he be suspicious if she refused? Was it her duty to take the seat and die for the people? She wanted to live. What would the others say? No, she must die for them. And she could see the face of the English doctor gazing at her, his hazel eyes full of pain, and she wanted to kiss him and feel his arms wrapped tightly round her. But he turned his back on her and kept walking, and she was furious for showing she cared.

She woke with a start as the train juddered to a halt, her mouth dry, her neck stiff. It was dark and her neighbours were still dozing, blankets pulled up to their chins. She examined her dim reflection in the window, discreetly tidying loose strands of hair. She felt dirty and cold and would have given almost anything for a bath and a comfortable bed. Elizavetgrad was only a little further and it was there she had arranged to rendezvous with Goldenberg and a portmanteau of dynamite. With the bag on the rack above them, she would have to be on her mettle for the rest of the journey. The old soldier opposite was awake and eyeing her intently. She ignored him and gazed out into the November night as the train began to gather speed, wisps of steam whisking past the window like spirits at a witch's dance. And soon she could see the yellow twinkle of Elizavetgrad and the train began to slow. The plump clerk beside her, who had grunted and snuffled in his sleep for most of the journey, stirred as if an unseen hand was shaking him roughly to give notice the city was only minutes away. Placing his hands on his knees, he hoisted himself groggily to his feet and reached up for his trunk. Most of the pa.s.sengers were preparing to leave the carriage. It would make it easier for her to pa.s.s unnoticed on the platform.

From the edge of the platform, Captain Alexander Zabirov could hear the rails singing and knew the train was only minutes from the station. He glanced at the waiting-room door then a little way beyond it to where he knew his men were waiting in the darkness beneath the canopy for his signal.

'You're sure he's in there, Turchin?' he said, turning to the sergeant at his side.

'Quite sure, sir. He's not going far with that trunk.'

'Very good.'

It was Turchin who had noticed the Jew struggling along the platform with a heavy portmanteau. A small man with wispy red hair and a goatee beard, dressed in an old student coat, he had stepped off the Odessa train at a little before six o'clock that evening and taken refuge at once from the bitter chill. Ordinarily, Turchin would have presumed he was on his way to a university in Moscow or Kiev, but he had been briefed every day for a fortnight to be on the lookout for nihilist conspirators at the station. Names and descriptions and even a few photographs had been sent by the Third Section to every gendarmerie in the empire: almost at the top of the list was the man pressed into a corner of the waiting room. Turchin had not been able to remember his name but he knew he was wanted for murder and he was too long in the tooth to risk tackling him alone.

'Where is the next train to, Sergeant?' asked Captain Zabirov.

'Kiev, sir.'

'He may take this one. He's from Kiev.'

Word of the approaching train must have reached the waiting room because the door opened and people began drifting out and along the platform.

'He'll be armed,' Zabirov muttered to himself. Then to the sergeant: 'All right, let's take a look.'

They moved towards the waiting room, but after only a few steps they saw their man through the lighted window. He bent down and a moment later a battered leather trunk appeared in the half open doorway. He was pushing it with his foot. How fortunate that he is going to have his hands full carrying his luggage, the captain thought with a wry smile. He touched the sergeant's sleeve and whispered: 'Stop. We'll let him drag that thing to us.'

The end of the platform was almost lost in a hissing cloud as the train rumbled into the station. As the steam began to clear Anna leant closer to the window in the hope of catching a glimpse of Goldenberg's diminutive figure.

'You got someone meeting you?' It was the nosy veteran with his twinkling little eyes. His voice was husky with age and he spoke with a hard 'e' that suggested he had spent a good deal of time in the Caucasus.

'Yes.'

'A friend?'

'Yes. A friend.'

'You from these parts?'

'No.'