To Kill A Tsar Part 15

'No. He left me. But I would never go back. Never.' Her eyes flickered open long enough for him to glimpse her pain. Pulling her hand free, she placed it palm up on the arm of the chair and settled her head on to it again.

'Do you still love him?'

'I never loved him.'

When Hadfield woke, there were only glowing embers in the fire and the chair was empty but for the red silk dressing gown. He called her name, but she did not reply. He searched the flat but she had gone. On the mantelpiece among the gracious printed invitations from gentlemen and ladies to dinners and parties and b.a.l.l.s was a note on a sc.r.a.p of paper: Meet me in the main reading room at the Imperial Library at 4.30. Anna.

The dynamite had been moved the day before but a drum of detonation wire was still sitting in the middle of the polished mahogany table. Collegiate Councillor Dobrshinsky ran his fingers across its top. There was a fresh scratch in the varnish that must have been made by a careless policeman.

'Where were his papers found?' he asked, turning to look at Agent Kletochnikov at the door.

'In the drawer of the desk by the window, Your Honour. They've been sent to your office.'

'And Kviatkovsky's companion?'

Kletochnikov took a step into the room to balance his file on the edge of a side table: 'Evgenia Figner. She's not an illegal, but her sister Vera is wanted by the police, and another sister Lydia Figner is serving a sentence in the east.'

Dobrshinsky nodded. 'And the three who escaped?'

'Liubatovich and Morozov were living together at 124 Nevsky Prospekt. They rented the place with stolen papers. The other woman's papers are in the name of Anna Kovalenko.'

'Kovalenko?' the special investigator asked sharply. 'Do you have a description?'

Kletochnikov lifted the file to peer at the page: 'Small, dark brown hair, heavy brow, blue eyes the police sergeant described them as light blue he said she was quite pretty . . .'

Dobrshinsky closed his eyes for a moment and sighed with exasperation.

'Your Honour?' Kletochnikov was blinking anxiously at the collegiate councillor, his right hand holding the rim of his gla.s.ses.

'I want you to telegraph all the details you have on this Kovalenko woman to Kharkov at once.'

'Kharkov?'

'Yes. Kharkov. And Kletochnikov . . .'

'Your Honour?'

'Circulate this description to the police stations in the city again, but this time describe her as Anna Petrovna Kovalenko, sometimes known as Romanko.'

When the agent had gone, Dobrshinsky began examining the revolutionary's books, pulling open drawers and cupboard doors in the desultory hope of finding something the police had overlooked or discarded as unimportant. Then, feeling a little dizzy, he stepped over to the window and sank into the chair before Kviatkovsky's open desk. The leaf of the bureau was down and covered in roughly printed propaganda sheets. Without thought, he leant forward and swept the leaflets to the floor with his forearm. Buried beneath them was a small soft leather sketchbook. He picked it up and began turning the pages. Someone perhaps Evgenia Figner had drawn a number of fine pencil portraits of serious young men and women. One of the sketches was of Alexander Mikhailov. On another page, the profile of a young woman with a high forehead and small girlish features who closely resembled the section's photograph of Sophia Perovskaya. He put the sketchbook down and, half rising, reached into the pigeon holes of the bureau. A pen, a pack of playing cards, some clips and in a manila envelope he found three seals. Lifting them to the light he could see they were engraved with the imperial eagle for official use.

He was still sitting at the desk a short time later, his fingers pressed to his lips in thought, when Major Vladimir Barclay knocked at the drawing-room door. Kletochnikov was standing at his shoulder.

'Have you heard?' Dobrshinsky turned to face him. 'They let three terrorists just waltz out of an apartment on Nevsky.'

Barclay nodded.

'See if any of the policemen who saw them can find a drawing of Kovalenko in this.' The special investigator held up the sketchbook. 'There are others in here too.'

'I thought the police had searched this apartment,' said Barclay, stepping forward to take it from him.

'So did I.'

He stared intently at Barclay for a moment then leant to his right so he could see beyond him to the door. 'Leave us, Kletochnikov, please,' he said.

The agent was taken aback. 'Your Honour?'

'Now.'

The door closed behind him and Dobrshinsky turned to pick up the seals.

'Recognise these?'

'They look like ours.'

'I think this one must have been particularly useful to them,' Dobrshinsky said, offering the gendarme officer the largest of the seals.

Barclay held it close to his eye. 'For authorising ident.i.ty papers. But how on earth did they manage to lay their hands . . .'

'I think we should keep this between ourselves for now, Vladimir Alexandrovich,' said Dobrshinsky, cutting across him. 'Tighten security, but say nothing. We don't want to frighten their informer. We want to catch him.'

19.

The Imperial Library on Nevsky was a peculiar choice for a rendezvous, but quite how much so was only apparent to Hadfield when he peered through the doors of the reading room for the first time. Beneath the vaulted ceiling, a sea of heads bent as if in prayer to the G.o.ddess of learning; venerable academics poring over leather-bound tomes and their acolytes students in the uniforms of the university, the engineering school and academies, and the populace too, many with no interest in study but grateful for the silence and the warmth. Once inside, he stood in front of an enormous gilt-framed picture of the tsar, casting about for a table that might offer a view of the traffic to and from the reading room. How could he possibly speak to Anna in here? The studious silence was broken only by shuffling feet, the flutter of pages and the occasional strangled cough.

He found a seat at the end of a row, opposite a man in his sixties with a full grey beard who smelt of pipe tobacco. He was huffing over the French language Journal de St Petersbourg, shaking his bald head in disgust, much to the undisguised irritation of his neighbours at the table. Taking his journal from his medical bag, Hadfield pushed it into the circle of light beneath the bra.s.s table lamp and settled back to wait. It was too cold to walk far but there was a pleasant confectioner's opposite the library that served hot chocolate and cake.

'They always blame the Jews.' The grey beard opposite had lowered his paper and was addressing Hadfield in a very audible whisper. 'Some ignorant muzhiks in Kiev are driving them from their homes. For G.o.d's sake, how can you blame Jews for the attack on the emperor?'

He was interrupted by his neighbour a well-to-do student, judging from his clothes and the silver pince-nez on a ribbon he was twirling foppishly in his hand who hissed at him and wagged a patronising forefinger.

'Don't shush me,' the old man replied indignantly, shaking his newspaper at the student. 'Show more respect!'

'This is a library.'

'I know that, you ignoramus. I come here every day.'

Heads turned and one of the library supervisors in the gallery above the main floor began to make his way to the stairs.

'Tell him to be quiet.'

'Tell me yourself!'

For some reason both men had begun appealing to Hadfield for support.

'Please, Your Honours.' The supervisor had scuttled over to restore order. 'Doctor Bloomberg, please.'

The exasperation in the supervisor's voice suggested the grey beard was well known to the library. The argument rumbled on until, with very ill grace, the student was persuaded to move to a seat some way from the old man. Annoyingly, the kerfuffle had drawn Hadfield's attention from the entrance long enough for Anna to have slipped into the reading room.

Pushing his chair away, he walked between the tables to the bookshelves that lined the walls beneath the gallery and, picking a book from the nearest Rousseau in French he stared over the top of it at the bent heads, confident he would recognise hers. To be certain, he shuffled along the bookcases to the far end of the hall: if Anna was there she would surely see him. She was a little late but perhaps she had missed the train from Alexandrovskaya or did not have money for a cab. He returned to the table with his copy of Rousseau, pulled back the chair and was easing himself into it when he noticed someone had pinned a small square of paper to the cloth cover of his journal. It had clearly been ripped from the flyleaf of a library book. A note was scribbled in a small hand he did not recognise: Anna is sorry but she cannot meet you.

His first thought was that it had been left there by his eccentric neighbour. He stared at Bloomberg for a few seconds but the old man was too engrossed in his newspaper to notice. No one else at the table made eye contact or seemed in the least bit interested in him.

Hadfield folded the paper slowly and slipped it into his pocket. How typically ungracious, a peremptory one line note, and he flinched as he remembered her brutal put-down at their first meeting. No social grace, he thought as he scooped up his journal and bag. And intent on committing rude sacrilege, he pushed his chair back roughly, the legs screeching on the polished floor in protest.

He was poor company that evening. Dobson ascribed his moodiness to fatigue and lectured him sternly about the hours he was keeping at the hospital. But the anger of the library did not last long, only the disappointment and a growing sense of anxiety for her safety. She had been too tired to answer questions, but a late night visit, mysterious notes, a rendezvous in a public library; it did not take much to imagine what it might mean in the wake of Goldenberg's arrest. Were the police looking for her? Lying awake in bed, his father's old dressing gown draped over a chair close by, he wondered if he was already entangled in a web he could not see. He had taken risks out of conviction, yes, but also from a spirit of adventure, and for . . . for love? What was it that he felt for her? It was more than the pull of her body. He recognised a certain insecurity in her, quick to anger and take offence, but purpose and energy too, and above all he felt a common feeling he could not explain. There was still time to row back. He need do nothing but forget. Forget. But how to treat a patient who will not accept a cure? There was his father's gown and he could see her in it now, a small frown on her brow even as she slept, her feet tucked beneath her, the steady rise and fall of her breast.

He caught the train from the Warsaw Station at nine o'clock the next morning and arrived in the village forty minutes later. It was a cold clear day and still, the yellow winter sun streaming through a pall of wood smoke. Some peasant women had set up simple plank tables in front of the station and were selling pickled vegetables, and candles and rabbit-skin gloves. Yes, of course they knew the schoolhouse left off the main street and immediately on your right. No, they had not seen Anna Petrovna that day nor did they know if she was at home. She had been away visiting her mother, perhaps she was still.

Smoke was spiralling from the chimney of the house and a shadow pa.s.sed across the window of the main room. Perhaps Anna had visitors, for there was more than one set of footprints in the snow before the front door. Hadfield stood at the gate for a moment and then knocked and waited stiffly on the step, hat in hand, rehearsing his first lines. To his surprise the door was opened not by Anna, but by a burly middle-aged man in a frock coat. Later, he would wonder at his own naivety.

'Excuse me isn't this Miss Kovalenko's house?'

'It is, yes. And who wishes to see her?'

It was a reasonable question and asked with an amiable smile but there was something in the timbre of the man's voice that put Hadfield on his mettle. His posture too, for although he was dressed like a bank clerk, he was slouching like a policeman. And he must have read something of the sort in Hadfield's expression because the smile fell from his face at once. 'Major Vladimir Barclay of the Gendarme Corps. Come inside, would you?' He stepped back to let Hadfield pa.s.s.

'Is something wrong, Major?'

'We'll see. Mister?'

'Doctor Hadfield.'

'You're a foreigner?'

'No more than you, I think, Major Barclay.'

The policeman coloured a little: 'I am a Russian.'

What foul luck, Hadfield thought, as he stepped into the little living room. The gendarmes could only have arrived a few hours before him, for they were still busy searching the place. Two of them were ferreting through drawers, turning over pots and pans, dragging blankets from the bed, and a velvet couch the only comfortable piece of furniture in the room had been slashed, spilling horsehair on to the floor.

'Sit down,' said Barclay, pointing to a corner of the couch. 'As you can see, we're as anxious to speak to Miss Kovalenko as you.'

The major righted a kitchen chair and dragged it closer. 'Papers, Doctor, please.'

'I don't have my pa.s.sport with me. What would you like to know?'

'You can begin by telling me who you are and where you live.'

Hadfield gave his address and spoke of his work, conscious that the policeman was following him intently, the tone of his voice, his expression, every small gesture. How peculiar then that he felt none of the anxiety he had felt waiting for Anna on the step.

'How long have you known Miss Kovalenko?'

'A few months only. She used to help at a clinic I run in Peski. That's why I'm here,' he said.

'Oh?'

'Yes. She's been away. But she's a very capable nurse and I was hoping to persuade her to come back to us.'

'Ah. I see.' The policeman scrutinised his face carefully, his bushy eyebrows meeting in a frown. 'You're smiling, Doctor.'

'Am I?'

'Please, share the joke.'

'Oh, just that it occurred to me you may have missed your calling, Major. You have an excellent bedside manner.'

'I haven't missed my calling, Doctor,' said Barclay coolly. 'I am an excellent policeman.'

'I don't doubt it,' Hadfield replied. 'But I would be grateful if you would have the courtesy to explain what on earth is going on here.'

'When did you last see Miss Kovalenko?'

'Three months ago. But I refuse to say another word until you tell me why you're in her house.'

'Then I will arrest you and take you to a station for questioning.'

It was quite apparent from the steel in the policeman's voice that he was in earnest. Hadfield could feel the colour rising in his face. Once inside it would be impossible to disguise his involvement with the sort of people his family and patients considered undesirable and dangerous.

'Well?' Barclay asked.

'Well, I will explain to my friend, the chief prosecutor, when he visits me in your cells that I was happy to answer your questions but you were unwilling to offer me the common courtesy of an explanation.'

'You know the Count von Plehve?'

'Yes. He's a friend of my uncle's.'

'And your uncle is . . . ?'

'General Glen.'

Barclay pursed his lips thoughtfully. There was a cool intelligence in his manner that suggested he would not be intimidated by names. But no policeman in Russia would be foolish enough to ignore rank or connections entirely.

'Of course you're right, Doctor,' he said at last. 'Would you like some tea?' Turning, he shouted over his shoulder to one of the gendarmes.

Coat pulled tightly about him, a gla.s.s of tea burning his fingers, Hadfield sat on the torn couch and listened to the major speak of the woman he had knelt beside and whose hand he had kissed only a short time before. Anna Petrovna Kovalenko, also known by her married name of Romanko, a member of the terrorist organisation The People's Will, suspected of involvement in an attempt on the emperor's life, a dedicated revolutionary who had only recently escaped from house arrest. The policeman's eyes never left his face.

'Believe me Major, I had no idea,' he said. 'She seemed a good-hearted woman . . .'

There were more questions. Hadfield answered them without difficulty. Yes, he promised to inform the police if Anna Petrovna visited the clinic or tried to make contact with him, and yes, of course he would be happy to identify her. No, he had not met her friends, nor had she spoken of them, but the major could be sure he would do anything he could to help bring a terrorist to justice.