The Third Section (40 page)

But whatever reasons Dmitry might personally have to embrace the future with excited anticipation, he was not alone in his optimism. It was mid-March now and spring was here – not just as a season of the year, but for the whole of Europe; the whole of the world.

The war was over. Many – himself included – had said it was over on that terrible day in August when the French had taken the Malakhov, but it had gone on a little longer in the eyes of the leaders of Russia, Britain and France. The last major action, an attempt by the Russians to retake southern Sevastopol, had failed in January. February had seen an armistice and a peace conference opening in Paris. The latest news was that a treaty would be signed within days. The terms were intended more to humiliate Russia than to enfeeble her. The loss of southern Bessarabia was a petty territorial adjustment. The destruction of the Black Sea fleet was an unprecedented act of vindictiveness. But neither of them justified a war so long, so bloody and so brutal. At least the French emperor had what he wanted: revenge for Russia’s humiliation of his uncle, four decades before. But in the end, for all sides, peace was a greater booty than any
territorial
gain. Peace was what Russia needed; what Europe needed.

But in that regard, there was one new cloud on the horizon. Napoleon III, warmonger and self-appointed emperor of the French, now had a son to continue his dynasty. He had, of course, been named Napoleon. One day, just like his father and his great-uncle before him, he would grow up to plunge the whole of Europe into a pointless war. Dmitry felt sure of it. He wondered if he would live to see the day.

He was old already; older than he had been three days ago. That had been his birthday; his forty-ninth. He’d stayed in Petersburg just long enough to celebrate it with Svetlana. Then he had been off to Moscow, feeling as though he were nothing like that old, and with a wealth of ideas for how to prove it – ideas and an enthusiasm that he wished he had possessed as a younger man. He’d landed a convenient posting – a place on a committee to organize the cavalry parades for His Majesty’s forthcoming coronation. It was the best he could hope for with his injury, but it meant he would be in Moscow. Just as his father had been drawn to the old capital, so now was he.

And, of course, back in 1825 there had been one other reason that Aleksei was so thrilled to return to Moscow – one of which, at the time, Dmitry had been totally unaware. If he had, back then, known of that reason – that person – he would have despised her perhaps more than he did her mother. Thankfully, Dmitry had changed. Aleksei had travelled to the old capital to visit his daughter, and now Dmitry would be able to visit his sister. In each case, it was the same individual: Tamara Valentinovna.

The year so far had been busy. The end of the war, though not yet formalized, allowed the passions of the soldier to be directed more towards his fellow woman than against his fellow man. For the most part, Tamara had managed to avoid being the object of that passion herself, but had still found her time fully occupied organizing the other girls, buying wine, vodka and food for the clients, stocking up on willow leaves as a prevention and pennyroyal as a cure. Over the whole year she had been at Degtyarny Lane, there had been only three suspected pregnancies. Most
of
the girls used a pessary soaked in vinegar in addition to the willow leaves. Some of them had their own methods, but where possible, Tamara ensured that those were additional to what she told them to use. She’d learned it herself from Vitya – a doctor naturally knew these things – when they’d decided that with three children their family was perfect and complete.

Of the three girls who had fallen pregnant, one had proved to have been imagining it, and one had been dealt with successfully using pennyroyal. The third had gone back to her family to bear the child, and had returned to work within two months, explaining that she had left the little boy in the care of her sister. Tamara hoped she could believe it.

It was only Raisa who made no specific efforts at all towards avoiding the risk that came with her profession. Tamara had asked her about it.

‘I can’t,’ Raisa said.

‘Can’t take willow leaf?’ Tamara replied.

‘Can’t have children.’

‘You’re sure?’

Raisa had nodded sadly. Tamara grasped her hand. ‘I became pregnant when I was very young,’ Raisa continued. ‘My father was horrified. He sent a woman to me. She removed the baby – and more besides.’ Raisa had looked up at Tamara and blinked, but no tears formed in her eyes. ‘It’s a blessing in this job,’ she concluded. Tamara couldn’t imagine anything more awful.

Today though, for the first time in many months, Tamara had managed to go back to the archives and continue her research. There was a specific reason for it – a note from Gribov telling her he had discovered something. It seemed he had taken pity on her, watching her plough through the reams of paper with little success, and had asked her who and what most interested her. She had drawn a blank on Aleksei, but her visit to Petersburg had brought up the name of Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov, so she’d asked Gribov if he could follow that up. Then, for want of any other names, she had mentioned to him Natalia Borisovna Papanova, the old woman who had first set Tamara down the path of investigating the original murder at Degtyarny Lane – the one in 1812.

It was a fine afternoon when Gribov met her beside the tapestry behind which the stairs to the archives descended. A little snow remained, scattered in a few patches around the Kremlin, but it seemed that spring was truly upon them. He picked up a lamp and led her down the steps, along the dark, low corridor and, once they had entered the library, to a table where several papers had been laid out.

‘You don’t come up with easy requests, Madame Komarova.’

‘You wouldn’t have it any other way,’ she teased.

‘I do enjoy a challenge,’ he said, allowing a rare hint of emotion to creep into his voice. ‘Let us deal first with Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov.’

‘Yes?’

‘A difficult man to find. We have no official record of him. That is to say “we” as the Third Section or any of its predecessors.’

‘So he’s never been political.’

‘Not that we suspected. I can find no record of his birth, and only a few mentions of him on a number of commercial invoices and legal documents. The earliest is in Petersburg,’ he said, handing her a rental agreement for a building.

‘When?’ she asked, without really looking at it.

‘1812.’

She bit her bottom lip and considered. ‘He must have been an adult then. That would make him in his sixties now – at least.’

‘Had he lived,’ said Gribov. Tamara felt deflated. Gribov replaced the document in her hand with another. ‘I say he had not been suspected of political activity, but I did find this. It’s from an interview with a Decembrist rebel.’ He pointed to about halfway down the page of small, tight handwriting. Tamara read:

The prisoner was asked to comment on reports of him being seen on the Great Neva, comforting a man who appeared to have been shot. The prisoner replied that the man had been shot, but had not died, and that his name was Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov. The prisoner was asked if Makarov had been with the rebels and responded that he had been, adding that he had been one of those keenest to bring
about
the death of Nikolai Pavlovich. The prisoner’s claim of Makarov’s survival contradicts other witness testimony which states he fell beneath the ice. No trace of Makarov, alive or dead, has been found
.

‘The witnesses were wrong,’ said Tamara. ‘He’s still collecting rent for properties in Saint Petersburg.’

‘Interesting,’ said Gribov, at his most non-committal.

‘Who was the prisoner being interviewed?’ asked Tamara.

‘I’m glad you asked that.’ Gribov flicked back through the document and showed her the cover.

Tamara clicked her tongue in wonder at what she saw.

‘I never saw this,’ she said.

‘It was misfiled,’ he explained.

‘I have to read it all.’

‘Now?’

Tamara said nothing. She had already sat down and pulled the lamp towards her. Her eyes began scanning back and forth across the pages.

‘I’ll leave you to it.’

Tamara scarcely noticed him depart. It took her only ten minutes to read the short document, but she read it through again immediately. There was no mention of any of the murders – not even the one that Aleksei had witnessed outside the Maly Theatre, but that would have been more than she could hope for. There was only one further mention of Makarov, when the interrogator asked how Aleksei knew him. Aleksei said that he had only encountered him a few times, at meetings of the Northern Society. It seemed to Tamara like a lie, but the interrogator chose to accept it.

Aleksei was also asked about his son, Dmitry. Tamara thought back. Dmitry would have been just eighteen then. Aleksei denied
that
his son had anything to do with the uprising, even though the boy had been in Petersburg at the time. Again the interrogator accepted this. Here there was a note added in the margin:
P. M. V. confirms
.

There was no mistaking the initials: Pyetr Mihailovich Volkonsky, the man who had watched over her and paid for her upkeep until his death four years before. For whatever reason, it seemed he had been watching over Dmitry too.

Overall though, despite there being little useful information in the interview, Tamara sensed that she was beginning to get a feeling for the sort of man Danilov was. She pictured him as looking like Dmitry. He came across as very brave, very clever, and an out-and-out liar. He’d clearly been tortured. She already knew what the Decembrists had suffered, and although the document was not specific, it made a few mentions of pauses in the interview, after which it was hoped Aleksei would be a little more willing to talk. He told them nothing that they couldn’t easily discover by other means. Only that one assertion – that Makarov was not dead – stepped outside of what he could be sure was already known.

He refused to denounce any of the other rebels, except one, Kakhovsky, who he said had shot Governor Miloradovich. Tamara remembered that Kakhovsky was one of only five Decembrists sentenced to death for their crimes. Aleksei was even asked about the poet Pushkin, but denied his involvement, though with none of the condemnation he had expressed when saying the same thing about his own son.

She wished she had been there. She’d have done a better job than whoever it was had actually spoken to Aleksei; the rumour was that Tsar Nikolai himself had carried out all the interrogations. She’d have followed up on so many of the answers that just didn’t seem to make sense. Even so, she couldn’t be sure she’d have been smart enough to catch Aleksei out, certainly not on this new question: had Dmitry in fact been a Decembrist, just like his father? She was surprised how little she cared about the answer.

She left the document on the table from where Gribov had fetched it and went back along the winding, dark route to the surface and to Gribov’s office.

‘Thank you very much, Arkadiy Osipovich,’ she said. ‘That was very interesting.’

‘I thought you’d like it. But I don’t suppose it helps in the main line of your research.’

‘No.’

‘There was one other name you were interested in.’

‘Yes?’

‘Natalia Borisovna Papanova – the daughter of a cobbler, you said, I think.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I found a record of her marriage, in 1816, to a man named Bazhenov – Ilya Vladimirovich, also a cobbler. There’s an address.’

‘Show me,’ said Tamara, holding out her hand.

‘It’s forty years out of date.’

‘These people don’t move,’ she said, though she knew less of the life of a cobbler than she did of … a grand duke. Gribov handed over the paper. ‘Thank you again,’ she said.

Could he have betrayed me? It was the first thought on Yudin’s mind as Dmitry sat down opposite him. They were at Testov’s, where Yudin was finally making good his promise to take Dmitry out to dinner. It was always a useful ruse, as Yudin had discovered over the years – no one expected to see a
voordalak
in a crowded public place, nobody expected to see one eating fish or drinking wine. He doubted the possibility had ventured into the furthest extremity of Dmitry’s mind, but it was ploys like this that stopped it from getting even that far. But Dmitry might have other, more concrete reasons to suspect Yudin; that was what this dinner was all about. As for the wine, that would pass through Yudin’s body easily enough. The food he would throw up later, when he was alone.

They had not met since Yudin’s encounter at the church with his former captives. That was the cause of his suspicion of Dmitry. There were two reasons behind it. The first was obvious; that the vampires had gone to seek out Aleksei’s son in Sevastopol. Mihailov said they had been rebuffed, but it could easily have been a lie. The second reason was more subtle: somehow, Zmyeevich had known of Yudin’s whereabouts – his new identity. Not many
people
could associate Yudin with any of his former aliases. Only two, in fact: Raisa and Dmitry. Raisa was not beyond suspicion – Yudin was no fool – but today it was Dmitry who sat before him.