Spies in St. Petersburg

by Katherine Woodfine

  He wasn’t the kind of person anyone else would have paid any attention to. He looked like an ordinary old man, with an unkempt beard. He wore a shabby overcoat with the collar turned up, and his hat pulled low. He wasn’t like the other gentlemen who came to Rivière’s: the haughty young aristocrats; the Tsar’s officers with their gleaming gold braid; the wealthy merchants in fur-lined coats. And yet he visited the shop almost every day. Once there, he would shuffle his way slowly around, before coming to rest, in silent contemplation, before a cabinet of enamelled opera glasses and jewelled lorgnettes. It was always the same display that held him transfixed – and as he looked at it, Sophie looked at him.

  The beard, the hat and the collar did not fool her in the least. She knew that this was no ordinary, shabby, harmless old man. In fact, the man who was gazing at the opera glasses was the reason she was here in St Petersburg – and he was someone very dangerous indeed.

  Rivière’s, The Nevsky Prospekt, St Petersburg

  ‘I don’t understand why you waste time on him,’ Irina muttered, as she and Sophie stood together behind the counter, some distance away from where the old man was peering at a gilded magnifying glass. ‘He’s never going to buy anything! He’s obviously got no money – just look at the state of his overcoat!’

  ‘I know,’ said Sophie, with a shrug. ‘I suppose I feel sorry for him.’

  Irina tutted disapprovingly. ‘Alice! I know you haven’t been here very long, but you have to understand! If you want to earn a commission, you can’t start feeling sorry for people. You have to choose your customers with care.’ She cast her eye around the shop. ‘Look – see him, for example? That young fellow, with the gold trim on his coat. He’s got money burning a hole in his pocket, I can tell. See how he wants to impress his lady friend? I recognise her – she’s a dancer from the Mariinsky. He’s the one you want to go for.’

  She raised her eyes at Sophie, encouraging her, but Sophie just smiled. ‘He’s all yours,’ she said sweetly.

  Irina shrugged. ‘Your loss. I bet you fifty kopeks I can get him to buy that gold bonbonnière.’

  She strolled off in the direction of the young man, and Sophie grinned after her. She was fond of Irina, whose easy confidence sometimes reminded her a little of Lil. But the truth was, she wasn’t concerned with earning a commission. The small attaché case, carefully hidden under her bed in her room at Vera’s, contained more money than Irina would earn in a year, courtesy of the Secret Service Bureau.

  Sophie wasn’t here to earn money. She was here for the old man in the shabby overcoat.

  ‘May I help you? Would you like to take a closer look at the opera glasses?’

  He looked up and smiled at her, a little embarrassed. ‘You must think I am mad,’ he said, in fluent French – though Sophie could detect the traces of a German accent. ‘Almost every day I come here, and every time you are kind enough to show these to me.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s my job,’ said Sophie pleasantly, as she unlocked the cabinet with one of the small keys that hung on her belt. ‘We have many customers who come back to look at their favourite items. There is one lady who likes to try on a particular diamond tiara every week!’ she added, with a smile.

  The old man smiled back, but his eyes were already fixed on the pearl and ruby opera glasses she was showing him. ‘Fascinating,’ he murmured, extending a careful fingertip to touch the gold filigree. ‘Such perfect craftsmanship!’

  ‘Is there anything else you would care to look at today, Herr Schmidt?’

  Sophie knew that the man’s name wasn’t ‘Herr Schmidt’, any more than her own was ‘Mademoiselle Alice Grayson’. She’d decided to use her mother’s name as her alias – her false name – while she was travelling undercover. It seemed rather appropriate, as she knew her mother had visited St Petersburg as a young girl: she’d read all about it in the old diaries that she had inherited.

  For a brief moment, she wondered why the man standing before her had chosen ‘Herr Schmidt’ as his own alias. Perhaps he simply thought that with such an ordinary German name, no one could possibly guess that he was no harmless old man, but in fact the Count Rudolf von Wilderstein – disgraced cousin of the King of Arnovia, and husband of the notorious Countess von Wilderstein, hiding under a false identity in St Petersburg.

  When Sophie had left Paris in Captain Nakamura’s aeroplane, she’d never expected she’d end up following the Count all the way to Russia. She’d hoped she would be able to catch up with him at the next stage of the air race, and seize back the stolen notebook he was carrying: the notebook containing the all-important information about the secret weapon. But catching up with the Count had not been as easy as she’d hoped. After the dramatic arrest of the Countess in Paris, he and his plane had disappeared from the race, as though they had vanished into thin air.

  It had been Nakamura who had explained that it would not be possible for the Count to disappear altogether – not if he continued to travel by plane, at any rate. After all, there were not very many airfields where a pilot could stop to refuel, or to fix the endless problems which Sophie had learned affected aeroplanes at every stage of a journey. And so, at each stage of the air race, while Nakamura had traded stories with the other pilots, or made essential repairs to his plane, Sophie had talked to the mechanics to learn what she could of the Count’s whereabouts. As the weeks passed and they made their way across Europe, telegrams had zigzagged back and forth to the Bureau in London, and with their help, she’d pieced together the Count’s route. At first he’d roughly followed the path of the air race, taking advantage of the free passage across borders offered to the pilots. He’d travelled out of France to Belgium, and then to the Netherlands, where they’d almost caught up with him, missing him at the airfield by barely an hour. After that they’d lost him for a while, before getting a tip-off that he had landed at an airfield in Sweden.

  ‘He must be in a great hurry,’ Nakamura had said, as they studied the route that Sophie had pencilled on the map. ‘He’s barely stopped to rest for more than an hour at a time – and flying is tiring. I would think it dangerous to fly so long without a proper break.’

  ‘I think he’s trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and Arnovia,’ Sophie had observed. ‘He must know he’s wanted by the authorities, for plotting against the King.’

  ‘So what will we do now?’ Nakamura had asked. ‘There are only two more stops: Milan, and then Zurich. The air race will be finished in a few days. After that, would you like to go in pursuit of the Count and the notebook?’

  Sophie had looked up at him, pleased and surprised. She’d assumed that Nakamura would go back to Japan as soon as the air race was over – but now here he was, proposing that they keep following the Count.

  ‘I’d like that very much, if you really would be willing. But I just wish I knew for sure that he still has the notebook.’ It was far too precious to be sent by post, but there was always the risk that the Count had handed it to some fellow on an airfield somewhere, who’d been entrusted with seeing it safely into the hands of the Fraternitas. ‘If he hasn’t, then all I’ve done will be for nothing.’

  Nakamura had been looking down at the map, as though already working out their route. He’d glanced up and raised his eyebrows at Sophie. ‘Well . . . there’s only one way to find out,’ he’d said simply.

  And Nakamura had been right. She’d come so far already: there was no sense in giving up. By the time they’d arrived in Milan, her sources were reporting that the Count had left Sweden for St Petersburg, in Russia, where he’d made arrangements to store his plane – suggesting he planned to stay there for a little while at least. A telegram to the Chief had ensured papers were ready for them to collect in Zurich, which would eventually allow them to travel over the border to Russia.

  Once they’d arrived in St Petersburg, Sophie had put her detective skills to work, eventually tracking down the Count’s aeroplane, stored in a farm shed not far from the air
field. From there she’d worked hard to locate the man himself, who she learned had taken a room in one of the city’s dingier hotels, under the name of ‘Herr Schmidt’.

  ‘I bet he’s meeting someone from the Fraternitas here to hand over the notebook,’ she’d said to Nakamura that evening, over a Russian dinner of unfamiliar, strangely fragranced dishes. ‘He can’t have given it to them yet.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Nakamura had asked.

  ‘If he had, they’d have paid him well for it – and that hotel doesn’t look like the sort of place that a member of a Royal family would stay, if they had money.’

  For the next two days, she’d watched the Count’s hotel but there had been no sign of him. She’d barely been able to bring herself to stay away for a few hours’ sleep, she’d been so determined not to miss her chance. At last, her persistence had been rewarded: she’d glimpsed the Count slipping out of the hotel, and hurrying along the street. Was he going to meet his Fraternitas contact at last?

  But no meeting had taken place. Instead, Sophie had tracked him to a bank on the Nevsky, where after a short conversation with a clerk, he’d passed a small parcel wrapped in brown paper over the counter. Afterwards, she’d followed him to Wolff’s, where he’d bought an Arnovian newspaper; to a café where he’d sat at a table in the darkest corner, and furtively eaten a large pastry, topped with chocolate and cream; and finally, strangest of all, to Rivière’s, the city’s most magnificent jeweller, where he’d lingered outside for a while, as if trying to pluck up the courage to venture in.

  He’d spoken to no one but the cake-shop waitress and the bank clerk. He’d walked with his head down and his collar turned up against the wind. Sophie knew he’d been a military man, who had won medals for his bravery, but he hadn’t looked brave, nor in the least like someone who until recently had hoped to rule a country. Instead, he’d looked only lonely, tired – and afraid.

  ‘He’s hiding,’ she’d said to Nakamura. ‘He’s worried about being caught, even here.’

  ‘What about the notebook?’

  Sophie had leaned her chin in her hands. ‘I’m pretty sure the notebook is what was inside that brown paper parcel. It looked to me as though he was putting it into a safe deposit box at the bank, which is rather interesting.’

  ‘Why?’ Nakamura had asked. ‘I would think that was a very sensible thing to do.’

  ‘Oh, of course. It’s absolutely sensible. In a bank vault it’s safe – there’s no risk of someone like me trying to steal it. But I don’t believe he’d have put the notebook into the bank if he was expecting to hand it over to the Fraternitas immediately. He must be expecting to wait for at least a few days.’ She couldn’t help thinking that was rather strange. She knew how important the notebook was to the Fraternitas, and how much they wanted the information it contained. Why would they delay collecting it from the Count?

  What’s more, how was she to get hold of it now? If the Count had kept it in his hotel room, or even in his pocket, she’d have had a chance at stealing it. But locked away in a bank vault? That would be impossible. She’d have to wait for the Count to withdraw it from the bank to give it to his Fraternitas contact before she’d have her chance.

  She’d kept a careful watch on the Count, but even after a week had passed he hadn’t returned to withdraw the notebook. It had been time for a new strategy, so she had come to Rivière’s.

  Now, under the twinkle of the crystal chandelier, the Count was saying to her: ‘You must get quite used to these treasures, being surrounded by them every day.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe I could ever get used to them!’ Sophie replied. ‘I have my own special favourites too.’

  She’d intended to point to one of the bird music boxes, but a sudden instinct made her point instead towards a silver box with a delicate enamel painting of a London scene on its lid – the river and the spires of Westminster.

  The Count turned to examine it. ‘A lovely English scene. You are English, are you not, mademoiselle?’

  Sophie felt triumphant. She’d been talking to the Count at Rivière’s for several days – but this was the first time he’d asked her a question about herself. ‘Yes, from London,’ she replied casually. ‘This reminds me of home, which seems very far away. You’re far from home too, aren’t you?’

  She said it as lightly as she could, turning slightly away to close the door of the cabinet, so the Count could not see her face. She dared to add: ‘From Arnovia, I think?’

  Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she felt the Count stiffen. There was a moment of tense silence, in which she locked the cabinet door and then turned to him with an expression of perfect innocence.

  ‘You know Arnovia?’ he asked, in a hoarse voice.

  ‘Oh no, not really. I’ve never been there. But I met a couple of Arnovians once, and I remember what they sounded like.’ No lie in that. She had met some Arnovians once, if you counted those brief moments on the airfield in Paris, when she and Lil had rescued Crown Prince Alex with Princess Anna’s help. ‘I believe it’s a lovely place,’ she added.

  Relaxing now, the Count nodded. ‘It is,’ he agreed, wistfully. ‘The mountains are beautiful. And Elffburg, the capital – it is a perfect little city. There’s nowhere else like it.’

  ‘You must miss it very much,’ said Sophie. ‘I know I miss London.’

  But the Count only nodded briefly, as if realising he’d stayed longer than he should have. ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time, mademoiselle. Thank you for showing me the opera glasses.’

  Sophie smiled in her friendliest manner. ‘Come again. It’s been a pleasure to talk with a fellow exile.’

  The Count looked at her sharply. ‘Exile?’ he repeated.

  Her face remained innocent as she replied: ‘Yes – it almost feels like that, doesn’t it, when you’re far from home? Come again and tell me more about Arnovia. Perhaps I’ll go there one day. I’d like to see Elffburg – and I hear they have the most wonderful cakes!’

  The Count’s face broke into an unexpected smile. ‘Indeed they do! The cake shops here are not bad – but I have found only one patisserie, in the Summer Gardens, that does real Arnovian-style pastries.’

  ‘I’ll have to try it,’ said Sophie.

  The Count bowed a polite farewell, and shuffled away – past Irina, who was taking the gold bonbonnière to be wrapped for her customer.

  Sophie watched him go, disappearing into the crowds on the Nevsky. It might not have seemed like much of an exchange, but for her it was important. It was a small but significant step towards completing her mission – and she was beginning to think that her plan for getting back the stolen notebook might just work.

  The British Embassy, St Petersburg

  It was half past six by the time Sophie left Rivière’s, having helped Irina to carefully lock away all the jewels in the enormous safe for the night. At this time of day, the Nevsky was still full of the clatter of tram cars and the jingling of carriages, driven by grand coachmen in blue coats and peacock-feather hats – no doubt conveying their passengers to the Mariinsky Theatre for the evening’s performance.

  As she always did, Sophie called in at Wolff’s to pick up a London newspaper – noticing as she did so that the assassination of Stolypin in Kiev had made the front pages, even there. But she didn’t dawdle for long – not to look at the books in the window of the English bookshop, nor to admire the pretty green frock on display in a French boutique, nor even to examine the enormous brightly coloured poster for the Circus of Marvels which was soon to arrive in St Petersburg. She had to drop off her regular weekly report to the Chief.

  She’d been writing to the Chief each week ever since she’d arrived in St Petersburg. She knew he would want to keep up to date with her progress and especially the whereabouts of the Count von Wilderstein. It didn’t take long to walk over to the Palace Embankment, where rows of immense mansions, painted powder-blue or butter-yellow, stood overlooking the wide grey river.
The British Embassy was at number 4: an elegant mint-green mansion with a long balcony and a row of flags. As usual, she bypassed the grand front door and slipped round to a discreet side entrance. A footman in white gloves accepted the envelope, marked CLARKE & SONS, with a grave bow.

  As she came back on to the Palace Embankment, she glanced swiftly around her. The Chief had warned her to be on her guard in St Petersburg and had instructed her to be particularly careful with her communications back to the Bureau. But there was nothing unusual to be seen on the street, so Sophie turned more comfortably towards home, looking forward to telling Nakamura about her day – especially her conversation with the Count.

  Nakamura was her closest friend in St Petersburg and the only person who knew Sophie’s true identity. Sometimes it was hard to believe that they’d met little more than three months ago. They’d exchanged only a few polite pleasantries before Nakamura had invited her to climb aboard his plane in pursuit of the Count.

  You got to know someone very quickly when you were travelling with them in an aeroplane across Europe. But becoming friends with Nakamura hadn’t been at all like getting to know Billy, or Joe, or Mei – and certainly not in the least like making friends with Lil, who from the very first moment they’d met had been falling over herself to talk. Sophie smiled to herself, thinking of how Lil couldn’t wait to tell you everything about herself, and to ask you a million questions. Nakamura, on the other hand, had barely asked her anything at all – though surely he must have been curious about why a young woman was so desperate to chase after an Arnovian pilot.

  For the first few days of the journey, they’d hardly spoken: after all, you couldn’t have much of a conversation when you were high in the sky in an aeroplane. The wind had rushed in Sophie’s face, and roared in her ears, leaving her unable to do anything but stare out at the immense blue sky and the green land, spread beneath her like a counterpane. She’d always had a secret fear of heights, and the thought of soaring into the sky in Nakamura’s flimsy-looking plane filled her with horror. Yet once the first terrifying moments were over, she’d begun to take an unexpected pleasure in the tranquillity of the open sky. It was very calm, high up in the air, and in spite of the wind and the thundering engine, she’d found her thoughts drifting with the clouds, in a way that was quite different to anything she’d known before.