Killigrew and the Sea Devil

by Jonathan Lunn

  Aurélie saw the problem too. With a broad smile fixed on her face, she hissed out of the corner of her mouth to Killigrew, ‘We’ve just walked into a trap!’

  He gave her arm what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. Several seconds had passed, and no one had denounced them. In fact, most of the guests had returned to their conversations, pointedly ignoring the two bourgeois Helsingfors parvenus who had stumbled into their midst, although a few young military officers eyed Aurélie speculatively, wondering if she had her card marked for every dance. Most of the guests already there were army or navy officers, resplendent in bright uniforms with yards and yards of gold braid, although there were a few civilians in black alpaca tailcoats, who had arrived on the eight o’clock ferry.

  ‘I need a drink,’ muttered Aurélie.

  ‘Why not?’ said Killigrew, steering her to intercept a flunkey, who moved amongst the throng with a silver salver of champagne flutes.

  The most dangerous moment was past, and while overconfidence now might yet prove fatal, he felt they could relax a little. They each took a glass of champagne and moved to stand across in a corner, watching the couples dancing in the middle of the compound. They were playing the awkward, out-of-place bourgeois couple to the hilt.

  Killigrew cast an eye over the other people attending the ball. A thickset, bearded man in his late twenties wearing the full-dress uniform of the admiral-general of the Russian fleet had to be His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaievich Romanoff, brother to the young Tsar. He stood with Governor-General von Berg and a man in the dark green uniform of a rear admiral of the Russian navy; Matyushkin, the naval officer commanding Sveaborg, Killigrew supposed. Inevitably, a crowd of fawning toadies surrounded them. Change the language and the uniforms, and this might have been an Admiralty levee back in London.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ asked Aurélie.

  ‘We can’t afford to bide our time,’ mused Killigrew. ‘They’ve let two nights slip by without using the Sea Devil, surely they won’t miss a third. They might be preparing her to set out even as we speak.’

  ‘We may even be too late,’ said Aurélie.

  ‘I haven’t come this far to give up now. The first chance I get, I’ll slip out of here and try to find the Sea Devil. I’ll leave you to rescue Stålberg and Lindström.’

  ‘All right. See if you can see a discreet way out of here.’

  Killigrew looked up at the battlements above them. The guards were looking out to sea and only occasionally glanced into the compound below, but there was no way someone could climb up there and slip over the parapet without being noticed. The only other way out was the main gate. Gazing towards it, he noticed a man in the uniform of an artillery captain going out without being questioned.

  ‘What I really need is a Russian naval officer’s uniform,’ he told Aurélie.

  She cast an eye over the throng. ‘Plenty to choose from. What about that fellow over there?’ She nodded to a heavily built man in the green-so-dark-it-was-almost-black uniform of a naval lieutenant.

  ‘Too big.’

  ‘All right… how about that one?’

  ‘Too small.’

  ‘That one?’

  ‘Too wide.’

  ‘That one?’

  ‘Too tall. You’re not even trying!’

  ‘Well, pardon me! Must you be so fussy?’

  ‘With this many naval officers to choose from, we might as well make the effort to find one who’s roughly my build. It’s going to look damned suspicious if I try to march out with my sleeves flapping over my hands… wait!’ He nodded to a naval captain-lieutenant standing on his own in one corner. ‘Just right! Do you think you could lure him somewhere quiet and out of the way?’

  ‘Luring men somewhere quiet and out of the way is my speciality!’ she asserted, moving from his side to glide across to where the captain-lieutenant stood.

  Killigrew watched as she started to address him. He glanced at her and flicked his eyes away with a bored expression, casting his gaze elsewhere. Aurélie persisted, putting a gloved hand on his arm and leaning forward slightly, the better to show off her cleavage, but for all the reaction she got from him he might as well have been made of stone. After a couple of minutes she gave up and walked back to where Killigrew stood.

  ‘Not a glimmer,’ she told him. ‘He must be an auntie.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘If you were a man, would you be able to resist me?’

  ‘Well, no, but I… wait a minute, what do you mean, if I was a man?’

  ‘I’m teasing you. He’s all yours, Casanova.’

  Killigrew swallowed. ‘Oh, the things I do for Queen and country!’

  * * *

  Aurélie watched as Killigrew walked up to the captain-lieutenant and introduced himself.

  The Russian favoured him with a smile, which was more than he had deigned to give her; sometimes even a woman had her limitations. The two of them talked for a couple of minutes, and then the captain-lieutenant led Killigrew across to the door of one of the blockhouses surrounding the compound. Aurélie had to give credit where credit was due: the Englishman was a fast worker.

  She was about to follow and give him a hand when the powdered flunkey’s voice boomed from the gateway: ‘His Highness Rear Admiral Prince Samoyla Iakovlevich Zhirinovsky!’

  She swore under her breath. Quickening her pace towards the door Killigrew and the captain-lieutenant had just disappeared through, she had almost made it when a handsome man in an ornate sky-blue uniform stepped into her path.

  ‘Forgive me, madame, but I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure…’ She resisted the temptation to brush him off with . and I don’t think you’re likely to, either’ and instead gave him her most dazzling smile.

  ‘Nekrasoff,’ he introduced himself. ‘Colonel Radimir Fokavich Nekrasoff, at your service.’ He bowed low, clicking his heels.

  If her smile flickered, he showed no signs of noticing, although at the mention of his name she felt as though a fist of ice had punched through her stomach to clutch at her innards. ‘Enchantée, Colonel. I am Madame Ögren.’

  ‘I wonder if I might be so bold as to ask for the pleasure of this dance?’ he suggested as the band struck up a waltz.

  She glanced around, trying to look casual, searching for Zhirinovsky, but he had disappeared into the throng. If she wanted to hide, there were probably few better places in the compound than amongst the crowd of dancing couples. Besides, instead of looking at Nekrasoff as a threat, it occurred to her that he also presented an opportunity: perhaps he could tell her where Stålberg and Lindström were being held. And Killigrew could look after himself for a few minutes.

  She extended a hand to him. ‘Why, Colonel, I’d be delighted.’

  He slipped an arm around her waist and whirled her away with the throng. He was a good dancer. ‘Is there a M’sieur Ögren?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s here somewhere.’

  ‘Would he have any objections to my dancing with his wife?’

  ‘Most certainly! Ambrosius gets terribly jealous. I cannot think why,’ she added archly, fluttering her eyelashes at him in mock-innocence. Nekrasoff grinned. ‘Should I be afraid of him?’

  ‘He is a gun-dealer. But he’s also a terrible shot. He takes his clients out on hunting trips sometimes. They shoot up the whole forest, but they rarely come back with any trophies.’

  ‘These hunting trips are usually an excuse for men to get drunk together away from their wives,’ snorted Nekrasoff.

  ‘You do not hunt yourself, then?’

  ‘Oh, I’m a hunter of a different sort. My quarry is men.’

  ‘Isn’t that illegal?’

  ‘Not if you’re an officer of the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancery.’

  ‘You’re an officer of the Third Section? That must be terribly exciting.’

  ‘It has its moments…’

  ‘Thank heavens I’m only a mere woman! I hard
ly think I should be able to cope with that much excitement.’

  ‘You might be surprised. We employ all sorts of people in the Third Section.’

  ‘Even women?’

  ‘Women make the best spies of all. As a matter of fact, one of my most brilliant agents is a woman. She’s just helped me to expose a nest of traitors right here in Helsingfors.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Aurélie, wide-eyed.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I’ve got two of them locked up here in Sveaborg—’

  ‘Colonel Nekrasoff?’ said a new voice.

  They both turned, and Aurélie’s heart leaped into her mouth.

  It was Zhirinovsky.

  Chapter 21

  The Sea Devil

  Killigrew followed the captain-lieutenant into a latrine. The place was surprisingly clean for a latrine on a Russian military base; he supposed a squad of defaulters had been ordered to spend all day making it immaculate in preparation for tonight. Killigrew had attended enough supposedly sophisticated balls to know it would not stay in its pristine condition for long, but thankfully it was early yet and the place was still empty.

  Smiling at Killigrew, the captain-lieutenant backed into one of the stalls. Killigrew followed him inside… and threw a fist into his Adam’s apple.

  Clutching at his throat, the captain-lieutenant collapsed on to the earth closet. He was trying to scream, but no sound would emerge from his crushed windpipe. Following him into the stall, Killigrew took off his chimney-pot hat, hung it from the hook on the back of the door, and replaced it with the peaked cap from the captain-lieutenant’s head. Then he grabbed a fistful of his hair and hauled him up, spinning him around and encircling his neck with an arm. Placing his other hand against the back of the captain-lieutenant’s head, he gave it a wrench, snapping his neck. The man’s lifeless body crumpled to the floor.

  Killigrew looked down at the corpse. After killing Kizheh, he scarcely had any self-loathing left in him for one night; but at least Kizheh had deserved to die. This poor devil’s only crime had been sodomy; still a hanging offence in Britain, admittedly, except he had never seen anyone hanged for it, and he invariably turned a blind eye whenever he stumbled across it on board ship.

  He stripped off his tailcoat, hung it up on the back of the door, and dragged the tunic off the dead man, shrugging it on. He hurriedly unfastened his trousers and pushed them down around his ankles, kneeling before the victim to take off his jackboots. He unbuckled the man’s belt and unbuttoned his fly before rolling him over and dragging off his trousers.

  ‘Disgusting!’ a voice exclaimed behind him.

  Startled, he twisted to see the door on the stall had swung open as far as the chimney-pot hat on the peg would allow, and now a major of grenadiers stood outside, glowering at him. ‘Typical damned sailors! You should be ashamed of yourselves!’

  ‘Don’t criticise what you haven’t tried,’ Killigrew told him, pushing the door to and making sure it was bolted this time. He heard the major muttering under his breath as he relieved himself into the trough. This never happened to the other feller! Killigrew thought ruefully as he took off his own trousers and put the captain-lieutenant’s on in their place. And some people think espionage is glamorous!

  By the time he had completed his disguise, the major had gone and the latrine was deserted once more. Killigrew took Wojtkiewicz’s fob watch from the pocket of the discarded waistcoat. It was nearly ten o’clock. The captain-lieutenant’s uniform had no waistcoat, so he slipped the watch into his trouser pocket.

  He climbed over the top of the stall door and dropped down on the flagstones outside. He had arranged it so it looked as though the stall was merely occupied.

  There was a tarnished mirror on the wall above the washstands, and he checked his appearance in it before venturing outside. It felt good to be back in uniform, even if it was the uniform of the enemy, and he had to admit that the uniforms of Russian naval officers were rather dashing: a shade of green so dark it was almost black, with a double-breasted tunic, matching trousers, and patent leather jackboots. He set the officer’s peaked cap on his head at a jaunty angle, and went outside.

  The ball was in full swing now. Killigrew looked around for Aurélie and got a shock when he saw her talking to Nekrasoff and Zhirinovsky. Glancing past the admiral, she caught Killigrew’s eye and gave him an infinitesimal shake of her head, as if to tell him she had the situation under control. She had never met Nekrasoff, of course, and as far as he was aware she had only met Zhirinovsky once, at his ball on board the Letayushchaya Tarelka. Perhaps he had not recognised her? One thing was certain: if either he or Nekrasoff had known she was a spy working for French military intelligence, they would not be standing around making polite small talk with her; a session in a cellar with thumbscrews and brass knuckles was more their style. Besides, there was nothing he could do: they might not recognise her, but at the first glimpse of him they would both be screaming for the guards to seize him. Trying to convince himself she would be all right, he headed for the gateway before either of them glanced in his direction.

  No one tried to stop him as he passed through the gateway. He crossed the bridge back on to East Svarto, receiving the salutes of a handful of matrosy who passed him. Walking past the arsenal, he turned left before he reached the parade ground to follow the shore to where the gunboat sheds stood.

  He approached the first. The windows were boarded up on the inside, but he could see light between the cracks. Now that Kizheh was dead and Nekrasoff and Zhirinovsky were back in the citadel, there seemed little danger of being recognised, so he adopted the bold approach, opening the door and marching straight inside.

  A large dock running out below the gates at the far end of the shed dominated most of the floor, with a flagstone quay on three sides of it and a wrought-iron gantry running overhead. A gunboat eighty feet from stem to stern took up the entire length of the dock, its topmasts taken down to allow it to fit inside. The only people in the shed were four matrosy: stokers, by the look of their broad shoulders, grimy faces and vests covered in coal dust. They each sat on a wooden crate, arranged around a fifth crate that served as a card table between them, but as soon as Killigrew entered they leaped to their feet and formed a line, standing rigidly to attention and saluting.

  Killigrew glanced at the gunboat. No smoke issued from the funnel, although there were vents in the roof above to allow it to escape so the boilers could be fired without filling the shed with smoke.

  ‘Why in the devil’s name aren’t you getting steam up?’ he demanded of the stokers.

  ‘We’ve received no orders,’ stammered one.

  ‘What?’ Killigrew exploded furiously. ‘Admiral Matyushkin’s orders to Captain Kovaleff were quite specific. Did he not pass them on?’

  ‘N-no, sir. We don’t know any Captain Kovaleff—’

  ‘Whether or not you have Kovaleff’s social acquaintance is no concern of mine, matros! The fact remains that this gunboat is due to be moved out at ten o’clock; and here we are at a quarter to, and the boilers are cold! This is a shambles! I’m going to have to report this to the admiral at once; but I shall be back in one hour. If you do not have a good head of steam up by then, your next posting will be to the Petropavlovsky Squadron! Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ chorused the matrosy.

  ‘Jump to it, then!’

  The stokers raced one another to get on board the gunboat. Killigrew left them to it, slamming the door behind him. Unless some idiot came along to countermand his orders, they might be able to use the gunboat to escape once he had destroyed the Sea Devil and Aurélie had rescued Stålberg and Lindström.

  He opened the door to the next gunboat shed and marched inside. The interior was the mirror image of the shed next door, except that instead of a gunboat in the dock he found what could only be the Sea Devil itself.

  Having spent so long going over the plans with Brunel, there was no mistaking the fifty-two-foot-long, iron
-black cylinder that floated low in the water in the dock. It looked like nothing so much as a big, black mechanical whale. There was a hatch on top, and a raised box at one end with three portholes in it.

  To Killigrew’s dismay, however, there were also nine matrosy in there, playing cards or dozing on the floor as they waited for orders. They scrambled to stand to attention at the sight of his uniform. So much for his hopes of being able simply to put a keg of gunpowder in the Sea Devil and light the fuse.

  When the nine matrosy were standing in a line, Killigrew marched up and down in front of them, trying to put a swagger he did not feel into his step, although the dark-green uniform seemed to help. He inspected the matrosy with a critical eye.

  ‘You are the crew?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Who is in charge here?’

  ‘Lieutenant Fedorovich, sir,’ said one of the men, a non-commissioned officer.

  Killigrew looked around nervously for Fedorovich, but there was no sign of any officers.

  ‘Lieutenant Fedorovich has been murdered,’ he told them crisply.

  The matrosy looked shocked enough to suggest Fedorovich was popular with the men assigned to serve under his command.

  ‘Most likely by those swine, the Wolves of Suomi,’ Killigrew continued, ‘in revenge for arrest of their co-conspirators. I am ordered to take his place. I am Captain-Lieutenant Kovaleff, and I have orders to take the Khimera out at once.’ He hesitated before continuing, watching their faces, but their expressions gave nothing away. They were probably expecting a speech, but he did not have time for one: Lieutenant Fedorovich might turn up at any moment and ruin everything.

  ‘Our target is the Duke of Wellington,’ he told them.

  The matrosy huzza’d. Smiling indulgently, Killigrew waited for them to fall silent. ‘That’s the spirit, mouzhiki.’ He indicated the Sea Devil. ‘She is ready to go?’