The Man From St. Petersburg

by Ken Follett

  In the region of the Old Kent Road he found the kind of slum where he could get cheap accommodation and no questions asked. He took a room on the fifth floor of a tenement building owned, the caretaker told him lugubriously, by the Church of England. He would not be able to make nitroglycerine here: there was no water in the room, nor indeed in the building--just a standpipe and a privy in the courtyard.

  The room was grim. There was a telltale mousetrap in the corner, and the one window was covered with a sheet of newspaper. The paint was peeling and the mattress stank. The caretaker, a stooped, fat man shuffling in carpet slippers and coughing, said: "If you want to mend the window, I can get glass cheap."

  Feliks said: "Where can I keep my bicycle?"

  "I should bring it up here if I were you; it'll get nicked anywhere else."

  With the bicycle in the room there would be just enough space to get from the door to the bed.

  "I'll take the room," Feliks said.

  "That'll be twelve shillings, then."

  "You said three shillings a week."

  "Four weeks in advance."

  Feliks paid him. After buying the spectacles and trading in the clothes, he now had one pound and nineteen shillings.

  The caretaker said: "If you want to decorate, I can get you half-price paint."

  "I'll let you know," said Feliks. The room was filthy, but that was the least of his problems.

  Tomorrow he had to start looking for Orlov again.

  "Stephen! Thank Heaven you're all right!" said Lydia.

  He put his arm around her. "Of course I'm all right."

  "What happened?"

  "I'm afraid we didn't catch our man."

  Lydia almost fainted with relief. Ever since Stephen had said, "I shall catch the man," she had been terrified twice over: terrified that Feliks would kill Stephen, and terrified that if not, she would be responsible for putting Feliks in jail for the second time in her life. She knew what he had gone through the first time, and the thought nauseated her.

  "You know Basil Thomson, I think," Stephen said, "and this is Mr. Taylor, the police artist. We're all going to help him draw the face of the killer."

  Lydia's heart sank. She would have to spend hours visualizing her lover in the presence of her husband. When will this end? she thought.

  Stephen said: "By the way, where is Charlotte?"

  "Shopping," Lydia told him.

  "Good. I don't want her to know anything about this. In particular I don't want her to know where Aleks has gone."

  "Don't tell me, either," Lydia said. "I'd rather not know. That way I shan't be able to make the same mistake again."

  They sat down, and the artist got out his sketchbook.

  Over and over again he drew that face. Lydia could have drawn it herself in five minutes. At first she tried to make the artist get it wrong, by saying "Not quite" when something was exactly right and "That's it" when something was crucially awry; but Stephen and Thomson had both seen Feliks clearly, if briefly, and they corrected her. In the end, fearful of being found out, she cooperated properly, knowing all the time that she might still be helping them to put Feliks in prison again. They ended up with a very good likeness of the face Lydia loved.

  After that her nerves were so bad that she took a dose of laudanum and went to sleep. She dreamed that she was going to St. Petersburg to meet Feliks. With the devastating logic of dreams, it seemed that she drove to catch the ship in a carriage with two duchesses who, in real life, would have expelled her from polite society had they known of her past. However, they made a mistake and went to Bournemouth instead of Southampton. There they stopped for a rest, although it was five o'clock and the ship sailed at seven. The duchesses told Lydia that they slept together at night and caressed each other in a perverted way. Somehow this came as no surprise at all, although they were both extremely old. Lydia kept saying, "We must go, now," but they took no notice. A man came with a message for Lydia. It was signed "Your anarchist lover." Lydia said to the messenger: "Tell my anarchist lover that I'm trying to get the seven o'clock boat." There: the cat was out of the bag. The duchesses exchanged knowing winks. At twenty minutes to seven, still in Bournemouth, Lydia realized that she had not yet packed her luggage. She raced around throwing things into cases but she could never find anything and the seconds ticked by and she was already too late and somehow her case would not fill up, and she panicked and went without her luggage and climbed on the carriage and drove herself, and lost her way on the seafront at Bournemouth and could not get out of town and woke up without getting anywhere near Southampton.

  Then she lay in bed with her heart beating fast, her eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling, and she thought: It was only a dream. Thank God. Thank God!

  Feliks went to bed miserable and woke up angry.

  He was angry with himself. The killing of Orlov was not a superhuman task. The man might be guarded, but he could not be locked away in an underground vault like money in a bank; besides, even bank vaults could be robbed. Feliks was intelligent and determined. With patience and persistence he would find a way around all the obstacles they would put in his path.

  He was being hunted. Well, he would not be caught. He would travel by the back streets, avoid his neighbors and keep a constant lookout for blue police uniforms. Since he had begun his career of violence he had been hunted many times, but he had never been caught.

  So he got up, washed at the standpipe in the courtyard, remembered not to shave, put on his tweed cap, his pea jacket and his spectacles, had breakfast at a tea stall and cycled, avoiding the main roads, to St. James's Park.

  The first thing he saw was a uniformed policeman pacing up and down outside the Walden house.

  That meant he could not take up his usual position for observing the house. He had to retreat much farther into the park and watch from a distance. He could not stay in the same place for too long, either, in case the policeman was alert and keen-eyed enough to notice.

  At about midday a motor car emerged from the house. Feliks ran for his bicycle.

  He had not seen the car go in, so presumably it was Walden's. Previously the family had always traveled in a coach, but there was no reason why they should not have both horse-drawn and motor vehicles. Feliks was too far away to be able to guess who was inside the car. He hoped it was Walden.

  The car headed for Trafalgar Square. Feliks cut across the grass to intercept it.

  The car was a few yards ahead of him when he reached the road. He kept up with it easily around Trafalgar Square; then it drew ahead of him as it headed north on Charing Cross Road.

  He pedaled fast, but not desperately so. For one thing he did not want to draw attention to himself, and for another he wanted to conserve his strength. But he was too cautious, for when he reached Oxford Street the car was out of sight. He cursed himself for a fool. Which direction had it taken? There were four possibilities: left, straight on, right or sharp right.

  He guessed, and went straight on.

  In the traffic jam at the north end of Tottenham Court Road he saw the car again, and breathed a sigh of relief. He caught up with it as it turned east. He risked going close enough to see inside. In the front was a man in a chauffeur's cap. In the back was someone with gray hair and a beard: Walden!

  I'll kill him too, Feliks thought; by Christ I'll kill him.

  In the traffic jam outside Euston Station he passed the car and got ahead, taking the chance that Walden might look at him when the car caught up again. He stayed ahead all down Euston Road, looking back over his shoulder continually to check that the car was still following him. He waited at the junction by King's Cross, breathing hard, until the car passed him. It turned north. He averted his face as it went by, then followed.

  The traffic was fairly heavy, and he was able to keep pace, although he was tiring. He began to hope that Walden was going to see Orlov. A house in North London, discreet and suburban, might be a good hiding place. His excitement mounted. He mig
ht be able to kill them both.

  After half a mile or so the traffic began to thin out. The car was large and powerful. Feliks had to pedal faster and faster. He was sweating heavily. He thought: How much farther?

  Heavy traffic at Holloway Road gave him a brief rest; then the car picked up speed along Seven Sisters Road. He went as fast as he could. Any minute now the car might turn off the main road; it might be only minutes from its destination. All I want is some luck! he thought. He summoned up his last reserves of strength. His legs hurt now, and his breath came in ragged gasps. The car pulled remorselessly away from him. When it was a hundred yards ahead and still accelerating, he gave up.

  He coasted to a halt and sat on the bicycle at the side of the road, bent over the handlebars, waiting to recover. He felt faint.

  It was always the way, he thought bitterly: the ruling class fought in comfort. There was Walden, sitting comfortably in a big smooth car, smoking a cigar, not even having to drive.

  Walden was plainly going out of town. Orlov could be anywhere north of London within half a day's journey by fast motor car. Feliks was utterly defeated--again.

  For want of a better idea, he turned around and headed back toward St. James's Park.

  Charlotte was still tingling from Mrs. Pankhurst's speech.

  Of course there would be misery and suffering while all power was in the hands of one half of the world, and that half had no understanding of the problems of the other half. Men accepted a brutish and unjust world because it was brutish and unjust not to them but to women. If women had power, there would be nobody left to oppress.

  The day after the suffragette meeting her mind teemed with speculations of this kind. She saw all the women around her--servants, shop assistants, nurses in the park, even Mama--in a new light. She felt she was beginning to understand how the world worked. She no longer resented Mama and Papa for lying to her. They had not really lied to her, except by omission; besides, insofar as deceit was involved, they deceived themselves almost as much as they had deceived her. And Papa had spoken frankly to her, against his evident inclinations. Still she wanted to find out things for herself, so that she could be sure of the truth.

  In the morning she got hold of some money by the simple expedient of going shopping with a footman and saying to him: "Give me a shilling." Later, while he waited with the carriage at the main entrance to Liberty's in Regent Street, she slipped out of a side entrance and walked to Oxford Street, where she found a woman selling the suffragette newspaper Votes For Women. The paper cost a penny. Charlotte went back to Liberty's and, in the ladies' cloakroom, hid the newspaper under her dress. Then she returned to the carriage.

  She read the paper in her room after lunch. She learned that the incident at the palace during her debut had not been the first time that the plight of women had been brought to the attention of the King and Queen. Last December three suffragettes in beautiful evening gowns had barricaded themselves inside a box at Covent Garden. The occasion was a gala performance of Jeanne d'Arc by Raymond Roze, attended by the King and Queen with a large entourage. At the end of the first act one of the suffragettes stood up and began to harangue the King through a megaphone. It took them half an hour to break down the door and get the women out of the box. Then forty more suffragettes in the front rows of the gallery stood up, threw showers of pamphlets down into the stalls and walked out en masse.

  Before and after this incident the King had refused to give an audience to Mrs. Pankhurst. Arguing that all subjects had an ancient right to petition the King about their grievances, the suffragettes announced that a deputation would march to the palace, accompanied by thousands of women.

  Charlotte realized that the march was to take place today--this afternoon--now.

  She wanted to be there.

  It was no good understanding what was wrong, she told herself, if one did nothing about it. And Mrs. Pankhurst's speech was still ringing in her ears: "The spirit which is in women today cannot be quenched . . ."

  Papa had gone off with Pritchard in the motor car. Mama was lying down after lunch, as usual. There was nobody to stop her.

  She put on a dowdy dress and her most unprepossessing hat and coat; then she went quietly down the stairs and out of the house.

  Feliks walked about the park, keeping the house always in view, racking his brains.

  Somehow he had to find out where Walden was going in the motor car. How might that be achieved? Could he try Lydia again? He might, at some risk, get past the policeman and into the house, but would he get out again? Would Lydia not raise the alarm? Even if she let him go, she would hardly tell him the secret of Orlov's hiding place, now that she knew why he wanted to know. Perhaps he could seduce her--but where and when?

  He could not follow Walden's car on a bike. Could he follow in another car? He could steal one, but he did not know how to drive them. Could he learn? Even then, would Walden's chauffeur not notice that he was being followed?

  If he could hide in Walden's motor car . . . That meant getting inside the garage, opening the trunk, spending several hours inside--all in the hope that nothing would be put inside the trunk before the journey. The odds against success were too high for him to risk everything on that gamble.

  The chauffeur must know, of course. Could he be bribed? Made drunk? Kidnapped? Feliks's mind was elaborating these possibilities when he saw the girl come out of the house.

  He wondered who she was. She might be a servant, for the family always came and went in coaches; but she had come out of the main entrance, and Feliks had never seen servants do that. She might be Lydia's daughter. She might know where Orlov was.

  Feliks decided to follow her.

  She walked toward Trafalgar Square. Leaving his bicycle in the bushes, Feliks went after her and got a closer look. Her clothes did not look like those of a servant. He recalled that there had been a girl in the coach on the night he had first tried to kill Orlov. He had not taken a good look at her, because all his attention had been--disastrously--riveted to Lydia. During his many days observing the house he had glimpsed a girl in the carriage from time to time. This was probably the girl, Feliks decided. She was sneaking out on a clandestine errand while her father was away and her mother was busy.

  There was something vaguely familiar about her, he thought as he tailed her across Trafalgar Square. He was quite sure he had never looked closely at her, yet he had a strong sense of deja vu as he watched her trim figure walk, straight-backed and with a determined quick pace, through the streets. Occasionally he saw her face in profile when she turned to cross a road, and the tilt of her chin, or perhaps something about the eyes, seemed to strike a chord deep in his memory. Did she remind him of the young Lydia? Not at all, he realized: Lydia had always looked small and frail, and her features were all delicate. This girl had a strong-looking, angular face. It reminded Feliks of a painting by an Italian artist which he had seen in a gallery in Geneva. After a moment the name of the painter came back to him: Modigliani.

  He got still closer to her, and a minute or two later he saw her full face. His heart skipped a beat and he thought: she's just beautiful.

  Where was she going? To meet a boyfriend, perhaps? To buy something forbidden? To do something of which her parents would disapprove, such as go to a moving-picture show or a music hall?

  The boyfriend theory was the likeliest. It was also the most promising possibility from Feliks's point of view. He could find out who the boyfriend was and threaten to give away the girl's secret unless she would tell him where Orlov was. She would not do it readily, of course, especially if she had been told that an assassin was after Orlov; but given the choice between the love of a young man and the safety of a Russian cousin, Feliks reckoned that a young girl would choose romance.

  He heard a distant noise. He followed the girl around a corner. Suddenly he was in a street full of marching women. Many of them wore the suffragette colors of green, white and purple. Many carried banners. There were thous
ands of them. Somewhere a band played marching tunes.

  The girl joined the demonstration and began to march.

  Feliks thought: Wonderful!

  The route was lined with policemen, but they mostly faced inward, toward the women, so Feliks could dodge along the pavement behind their backs. He went with the march, keeping the girl in sight. He had been in need of a piece of luck, and he had been given one. She was a secret suffragette! She was vulnerable to blackmail, but there might be more subtle ways of manipulating her.

  One way or another, Feliks thought, I'll get what I want from her.

  Charlotte was thrilled. The march was orderly, with female stewards keeping the women in line. Most of the marchers were well-dressed, respectable-looking types. The band played a jaunty two-step. There were even a few men, carrying a banner which read: FIGHT THE GOVERNMENT THAT REFUSES TO GIVE WOMEN THE PARLIAMENTARY VOTE. Charlotte no longer felt like a misfit with heretical views. Why, she thought, all these thousands of women think and feel as I do! At times in the last twenty-four hours she had wondered whether men were right in saying that women were weak, stupid and ignorant, for she sometimes felt weak and stupid and she really was ignorant. Now she thought: If we educate ourselves we won't be ignorant; if we think for ourselves we won't be stupid; and if we struggle together we won't be weak.

  The band began to play the hymn "Jerusalem," and the women sang the words. Charlotte joined in lustily:

  I will not cease from mental fight

  Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

  I don't care if anybody sees me, she thought defiantly--not even the duchesses!

  Till we have built Jerusalem

  In England's green and pleasant land.

  The march crossed Trafalgar Square and entered The Mall. Suddenly there were many more policemen, watching the women intently. There were also many spectators, mostly male, along either side of the road. They shouted and whistled derisively. Charlotte heard one of them say: "All you need is a good swiving!" and she blushed crimson.