The Third Section (27 page)

Tamara lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her lungs until the sensation of its presence had dimmed to nothing, then blew it out through her nostrils, watching the billowing fumes caught in the station lamps and quickly absorbed into the smoky atmosphere that hung over the station whenever a train was in.

‘You can’t do that here,’ said a voice. Tamara turned to see a blue-uniformed gendarme, performing the mundane duty of maintaining order on the railways which, by some quirk of bureaucracy, was tasked to the same organization that acted as the public face of the Third Section.

As Tamara turned the man’s face fell. His voice dropped to a mumble. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, and hurried off. Tamara hadn’t known him personally, but it seemed he had recognized her and feared what might happen to his career if she chose to take offence at his enforcement of petty rules.

‘It’s silly, isn’t it?’ said a voice close to her. She hadn’t even noticed the man standing there. ‘Here we are in this temple of Russian modernity, and we’re still beholden to an Oprichnik like that, telling us what to do.’

She tried not to react to the word ‘Oprichnik’. It was a common enough term of abuse for any police officer or government agent whose job it was to protect the nation’s interests – a reminder of the hated secret police force of Ivan the Terrible. It was a word from three centuries before, but under Tsar Nikolai the people’s resentment of the power of the state had risen, as had the use of the word. It was a term that had been directed at Tamara only occasionally in her career. But it was a sign of the times, of the weakening of imperial authority that was already taking place under Aleksandr II, that a man on a railway platform would use the word in front of a complete stranger, who could easily be – and in Tamara’s case was – a government informer.

She turned and looked at him. He was a short man – scarcely taller than herself – of about twenty-five, with a slightly wedge-shaped face. His moustache and sideburns revealed him to be a military man, though he was not in uniform. The spectacles perched on his nose gave him an air of intellectualism – which made his comment all the more predictable. He held between his fingers a cigarette, burned down to almost nothing.

‘He’s doing his job,’ said Tamara.

‘Ah! So you’re saying it’s not the fault of the man who enforces the law, but of the men who make it?’

Tamara paused, considering carefully what to say. Perhaps it was she who was about to be trapped into producing some innocent phrase that would be twisted and then reported to her superiors.

‘The law is made for the good of us all,’ she said.

He took one final draw from his cigarette and dropped it on to the platform, extinguishing it with the sole of an elegant, imported leather boot. ‘And what good does it do you or me to be told where and when we can smoke?’ he asked.

‘Some laws are meant to be honoured more in the breach than the observance,’ she replied.

‘Ah! Shakespeare!’

Tamara gave a smile of acknowledgement, but she had not known where the phrase came from. The man spoke a sentence in what sounded like English, and she guessed he was merely translating her words. ‘I prefer Gogol,’ she said.

He seemed enthused. ‘Really? Really?’ In truth she knew only a little of the author. She admired his skill with words, but sensed that, like all writers, he used them to hide views that did not make sense in a country such as Russia. ‘My father was a great admirer of
The Government Inspector
,’ the man continued, ‘which I suppose shows just how little he understood it.’ A look of distant remembrance came into his eyes. Tamara noted it, and his use of the past tense. He was young to have lost his father.

She smiled at him warmly and genuinely, liking his vivacity and deciding that his seditious comments were a result merely of stupidity, the stupidity to be found in many intelligent men, who simply could not believe that what they said could really have an impact on the world. It was a trait that was both likeable and dangerous. He smiled back and flushed very slightly.

‘I think I’m happier not to understand it,’ she said, discarding her own cigarette.

He tapped his nose and nodded his head towards the gendarme who had now moved well down the platform. ‘Very wise,’ he said. He slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a gold cigarette case, which he flipped open, offering it to her with the words, ‘These are French.’

She took one and thanked him. He selected another for himself and returned the case to his pocket, bringing out a small glass tube with a metal top. He held it up towards her and she realized it was some sort of device for lighting tobacco. She put the cigarette to her lips and he pressed a small switch in the metal top. The apparatus hissed, but no flame was evident. He tried again, and this time the hiss was quieter, and tailed off. Tamara reached into her reticule and produced a box of matches. She struck one and used it to light her cigarette, before offering it to him. His gloved hand took hers and guided it towards the tip, which soon began to glow orange.

‘Much more suited to this temple of Russian modernity,’ she said.

He laughed briefly but loudly. ‘I hear that
The Gamblers
is playing in Petersburg,’ he said. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

The sound of a train whistle cut through their conversation, causing him to look round. He threw his cigarette, barely started, to the ground. ‘You must join me in my box,’ he said. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Dussot’s Hotel,’ she said without even thinking.

‘Under what name?’

‘My own.’

‘Don’t tease me, mademoiselle.’

She didn’t correct him. ‘Tamara Valentinovna Komarova,’ she said.

‘I will call on you, Tamara Valentinovna,’ he said, and with that he ran across the platform – an ungainly activity for one so short – and jumped aboard the train. Tamara noticed a few of the people nearby staring, both at her and at him, but her eyes could only follow in the direction he had gone, as the train he had boarded began slowly to pull out of the station. There was no need for her to worry that she herself had missed it, for the young man had not been travelling on the same train as her. Its carriages were not the dark green of the passenger service, but a vibrant ultramarine. It was the imperial train.

The train began to move again, pulling out of the station. Yudin could not be sure which one, but his best guess was that it was Bologoye. It was night now, he could tell, even if he couldn’t see it. During the day he had slept and his journey had been comfortable, but once darkness had fallen, then a
voordalak
became restless. Even though he could go for many days without feeding, he still felt the urge to walk the earth at night.

It was approaching autumn now, and so the nights were getting longer, but still Yudin could not have travelled the whole journey from Moscow to Petersburg sitting in a carriage like any other passenger. He travelled as baggage, in a separate wagon at the end of the train, without even the comfort of a roof to give protection from the elements. That meant the wooden box enshrouding him had to be particularly well made. One ray of sunlight finding its
way
through a crack in the crate would mean the end for him. It was not a true coffin, and was not listed on the train’s inventory as such. There was no danger that any inquisitive employee of the railway would look inside – the stamp of the Third Section on the documentation saw to that. Once they arrived in Petersburg in the morning, the crate would be unloaded and left in the depot for collection. When night fell, the mechanism to open it from the inside was simple to use.

Yudin could easily release that catch now and, for the hours of darkness, sit like any other passenger in the first-class compartment. But what would be the point? A small but unnecessary risk in order to emulate the members of a species to which he no longer belonged. Both he and Raisa Styepanovna had made this journey many times before, and always they had remained in the safety of the baggage wagon. Now was not a time to change things.

For some months Yudin had desired to travel to Petersburg, but in summer it was a risk. At the sun’s zenith, the night was scarcely five hours long. At least in Moscow he could rely on six and a half hours – and there he had sufficient boltholes about the city that he was never in too much danger of being caught out.

But the journey had to be made, and time was not an inexhaustible commodity. Only two men still living knew – or had any chance of knowing – how the trickery over the death of Tsar Aleksandr I had been perpetrated and where Aleksandr had hidden himself for the last thirty years. And both of those men were old and might soon die.

And one of them lived in Saint Petersburg.

It was all very familiar. Tamara’s home, where she had lived with Vitya and Milenochka and Stasik and Luka, was not very far from here, but she had no desire to visit it. She continued along Nevsky Prospekt, the tower of the Admiralty far ahead acting as a beacon. She passed the Yeliseyev Brothers’ store and thought of all the times they had gone there to buy wine – the New Year of 1847 when Vitya had come back with two bottles of champagne because the manager remembered Vitya’s treating his wife’s cousin the previous summer. She passed the Armenian Church, which she had never been inside. She had once promised
to
take the children in there, if they were very good. They hadn’t been good and they hadn’t been taken on a visit and now Tamara dearly wished she’d not been so strict in sticking to her word.

She crossed the Kazansky Bridge, as indistinguishable as ever from the rest of the road – so wide that it might be mistaken more for a square than a bridge. Only the Yekaterininsky Canal, emerging from beneath it at either side, gave away its construction. Tamara began to look around her more alertly. She knew that the street she was after – Great Konyushennaya Street, the last address she had for the Danilovs – would be coming up soon on the right. She passed Little Konyushennaya Street, and the Lutheran Church, and then there it was.

It was typical of that district; the ground-floor properties were all shops, with apartments above them. Number 7 was only a little way down. She knocked, using the heavy iron ring that hung from the door. She waited. There was no response. She knocked again and listened, but there was no sound of anyone coming to answer the door. She tried a third time, but finally gave up. In her bag she had a letter that she had written for such a case as this, asking the present owners to get in touch with her. It seemed so little to achieve for so long a journey – but there were other options.

The shop beneath was a bookseller’s. By the look of the stock, it had been there for many years. There was every chance that they might know more than the residents of the apartment itself. Tamara went through the door. The interior was filled with books, some on shelves, some on tables, some in precarious piles that reached almost to the ceiling. The whole place smelt of old paper. Being on ground level, it would be liable to flooding. The books at the bottom of some of the piles would probably have been soaked and then dried a dozen times. It reminded her of the Kremlin archive. She expected to see Gribov’s bushy eyebrows poking from around a set of shelves at any moment.

When the proprietor did appear, he was nothing like Gribov. He was tall and gaunt, with a full head of white hair that had a slight curl to it. He spoke good Russian, but with a strong German accent, and seemed very aloof.

‘May I be of some help?’

‘I do hope so,’ said Tamara, looking up at him. He was behind a desk so that she could not see his feet, but he towered so far above her that she wondered whether he might be standing on a box. ‘I’m looking for information on Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov.’

The shopkeeper’s eyebrows rose together in the middle as he considered her question. ‘Danilov. Danilov.’ Then his eyes, and his mouth, widened. ‘We have, of course, the
Byliny
, compiled by Kirsha Danilov – at least so they say. Personally, I have my doubts.’ He frowned again. ‘But I don’t recall any Aleksei Ivanovich.’

‘He’s not a writer. He used to live in the apartments above you.’

‘When?’

‘Until 1825,’ said Tamara, hoping the date wouldn’t reveal too much of Aleksei’s history. ‘But his wife would have remained for some time after. And his son – Dmitry Alekseevich.’

‘Ah!’ said the man, somewhat theatrically. ‘I remember. I remember. I remember. It was she who was resident in the property when I first arrived here. M … M …’ He tried to produce a name from his memory, but could not. ‘She said she was a widow.’ A charming way to keep alive the memory of her exiled husband, thought Tamara, though she heartily approved of the shame the woman felt at her husband’s treason. ‘I was only here for a year before she died.’ He looked at her gravely over his spectacles. ‘1848, you know.’

‘I know,’ said Tamara quietly. ‘So who inherited the place?’

‘Well, no one really. I had very little dealings with her.’ His voice suddenly rose in excitement. ‘Marfa Mihailovna, that was it. Marfa Mihailovna Danilova.’

Tamara felt the tiniest thrill – just as when she had read Volkonsky’s letter mentioning the child he was paying for in Moscow. She realized that the exhilaration then was not purely down to its being a step closer to her parents – it was simply that, like today, it was a step forward. The thrill was in the chase as much as the prize. A moment later, the idea filled her with melancholy. In either pursuit, was the prize going to prove a disappointment?