The White Russian

by Tom Bradby

  There was a fifth member of the group and when he stepped forward into the light, Ruzsky could see that he was just a boy. Sixteen at most.

  “As soon as Michael has finished speaking,” the older woman went on, “he will make the announcement. Then we will go.”

  “Come,” Borodin said, with sudden urgency. He turned and marched away down the corridor, the torch above his head. They climbed another stone staircase and onto an iron gangway that ran the length of the factory. Borodin walked quickly, the torch splashing light onto the machines standing idle beneath them. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.

  Ruzsky was at the rear of the group, Maria just ahead of him.

  Borodin led them into a room on the far side of the building. There was a clock on the wall and four desks, all facing tall windows with views across the factory floor. A shelf in front of them was laden with boxes of tools of every description: wrenches, hammers, spanners.

  It was cold in here, too.

  Borodin swung around to face him.

  “Let’s talk about your friend a little more, Maria.”

  “He looks like a police agent,” the older woman said, her mouth tight.

  Ruzsky tried to keep his breathing even, his face calm.

  “An official inside the Ministry of War? It was too good an opportunity to miss.” Maria smiled at him. “I-”

  “What is his name again?”

  “Khabarin. Alexander Khabarin.”

  “How senior is he?”

  Maria turned.

  “Grade seven,” he responded.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I was given his name and address by a friend in Moscow. I was told he was loyal and decent and”-she looked at him significantly-“I have not been disappointed.”

  “Why have you not mentioned him before?”

  “He needed to be convinced.”

  “No revolutionary should need to be convinced.”

  Maria did not flinch. “He can provide details of the movements of soldiers and other information that might prove useful. He’s strong and brave.”

  This last remark was directed at Borodin, in apparent admonishment of some other members of the group. Ruzsky understood that she was using her own personal standing with the leader to appeal over the heads of the others.

  Borodin took a step forward. His face was dark and unyielding and his every movement suggested a violence barely suppressed. “Why now?” Borodin asked.

  “I told you already,” Ruzsky responded.

  “Where were you educated?”

  “My parents were teachers at the Kirochnaya.”

  Borodin nodded, understanding the significance of the name. It was an officers’ school and explained his aristocratic bearing.

  “He still looks like a police agent,” the woman said.

  “I found him, Olga, not the other way around,” Maria’s voice was still controlled. If she shared his fear, the way in which she contained it was extraordinary.

  Borodin turned to the others. “Maria is right. We cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by mistrust, isn’t that so, Andrei?”

  The boy looked startled. “Of course.”

  “But it would be naive to imagine they don’t try to infiltrate us, wouldn’t it?”

  Andrei realized he was required to respond. “Yes, Michael.”

  “Do you think they have succeeded?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, no, they have not.”

  “And yet I wonder. This man Maria has brought… It appears she sought him out. The ones we have to watch most carefully are those who have sought us, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “Factory workers could be unreliable, couldn’t they, those who approach us to be involved in our work?”

  He hesitated. “Yes, they could be.”

  “Or students.”

  Borodin had returned his hands to his pockets, his black overcoat drawn back. He wore a smart suit beneath it, a silver watch chain strung across his waistcoat.

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  “Students worry me especially, Andrei.”

  Ruzsky saw the boy’s Adam’s apple move violently as he swallowed.

  “You’re a student, Andrei.”

  Andrei didn’t answer.

  “Tonight, for instance, we have plans. Plans that only people in this room know about. People in this room and, I’m told”-he looked Ruzsky straight in the eye-“the police.”

  They were silent.

  Olga glared at Maria. Ruzsky edged closer to her, but she betrayed no fear, her expression steady, her attention on Borodin. Andrei was farthest away from the torch and his breath was visible on the cold air.

  “The police are expecting us.” Borodin took a step back toward the shelf full of tools. “Do you think it should stop us, Andrei?”

  “No. I don’t know.”

  “The Cossacks are waiting. Aren’t you frightened of them?”

  Andrei did not answer, his face white in the half-light.

  “Or are you more afraid of being discovered?”

  The only sound was the rasp of the boy’s breathing.

  “Just a few more days, Andrei.”

  The boy swallowed violently.

  “By Saturday, our task should be complete. Do you think they know about us?”

  Andrei did not respond.

  “Answer me!”

  “I don’t know.” Andrei blinked rapidly.

  “What about our friend the American? What about Ella? What about Borya? Who is killing them, Andrei?”

  “I don’t know, Michael.” The boy was on the edge of tears.

  “Did the police kill them? Are they picking us off one by one before we can reach our goal?”

  As the boy shook his head, Ruzsky moved a fraction and felt the photographs pressing against his chest. He felt a bead of sweat gathering upon his forehead.

  Borodin turned toward him, as if sensing his fear. “Perhaps the police are watching us, Khabarin. Perhaps they are trying to infiltrate us?”

  Ruzsky did not answer.

  “An official at the Ministry of War befriends a pretty girl. She vouches for his loyalty, perhaps in ignorance of his real purpose.”

  Ruzsky could feel the sweat run down into the corner of his eye. He tried not to blink.

  “They use an agent to try and get close to us. It would be their way, would it not?”

  The question was directed at him. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Borodin shook his head. “Then you appear to be less of an expert on the workings of your own government than I think you are.”

  They were silent again. Borodin’s eyes never left his. “An infiltrator,” he said softly. “What should we do with such an enemy in our midst?”

  Borodin turned away, half shielding the torch. Ruzsky listened to the sound of the boy’s breathing, hoping it drowned out his own.

  The eyes of the group flicked from Ruzsky to the boy and back again. Maria watched Borodin.

  The torch hit the ground. The flame flared, casting nightmarish shadows as Borodin grabbed a wrench from one of the boxes and turned, his arm above his head. Ruzsky saw his eyes glint as he walked purposefully back toward him. He felt the ice crack beneath his feet, and knew that this time, no one would be able to save him.

  Ruzsky saw the terror on Andrei’s face for a split second before the wrench struck the center of the boy’s forehead.

  Blood spurted into the air.

  Andrei fell, but Borodin was onto him even before he hit the ground, his arm rising and falling. They listened to the sound of the wrench pulverizing flesh and bone.

  At last, Borodin straightened. The boy’s head was half lit, but unrecognizable, almost indistinguishable from the pool of blood and pulp that lay beneath it.

  Borodin breathed heavily. He began wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand, but it only smeared it further. He bent to pick up the torch.

  “Get m
e a cloth, some water,” Borodin snapped.

  Nobody moved.

  “Get it,” he snarled.

  Maria moved first and broke the spell. Olga followed quickly after her.

  Ruzsky stood opposite Borodin, whose breath still rasped from the exertion. He took out a white handkerchief and began to clean his face.

  He tried to wipe small particles of Andrei’s skull from his shirt and coat.

  Maria returned with a bowl of water and a cloth. She put the bowl down on the shelf and began to attend to Borodin like a maidservant, washing his face and hands, before trying to remove the stains from his clothes.

  Ruzsky felt the blood pounding through his brain.

  “You still want to be part of this, Khabarin?”

  For a moment, Ruzsky did not respond to his assumed name, but he recovered. “Now more than ever,” he said.

  “You can report the death to the police, if you wish.”

  Ruzsky stared at the revolutionary. He thought that only a man with an intimate relationship with the police would dare to behave like this in front of a stranger, but he held his tongue. “Change has casualties. It could not be otherwise.”

  Maria bent over and wiped the blood from the silver chain of Borodin’s pocket watch. Ruzsky felt the muscles twitching in his jaw as he tried to hide his revulsion at the way in which she was attending to him. He tightened his overcoat, the tip of his revolver pressing into his chest.

  Could he have stopped the boy’s murder?

  Was this the man who had repeatedly stabbed the American and almost severed Markov’s head at the Lion Bridge?

  Borodin turned toward him. “You don’t flinch from the sight of blood?”

  Ruzsky stared at Andrei’s corpse. Olga and the other man took an arm each and dragged it away to the far corner of the room. Ruzsky heard a thump as they rolled Andrei up against the wall.

  “Why aren’t you at the front?” Borodin asked. Maria was concentrating again on his collar.

  “I work in the War Ministry.”

  “Don’t you want to do your patriotic duty?”

  “I’d rather not die for the Tsar, if it is all the same to you.”

  Borodin smiled. He took hold of Maria’s hand.

  They followed Borodin out onto the steps, Olga holding the torch aloft beside him so that the crowd could see his face. For a moment, Ruzsky stood behind him, but he saw Maria slipping away and he followed her to a corner where they would be less conspicuous.

  As she turned, Ruzsky expected to see some kind of recognition or warmth in her face, but all he received was a blank stare. The woman who had saved his life only moments before was again a stranger.

  “Good evening, comrades,” Borodin’s voice boomed. His face shone. Ruzsky realized that Andrei’s death had not just been a performance for Alexander Khabarin’s benefit. Borodin had enjoyed every minute of it. He couldn’t dispel the image of Maria kneeling before the revolutionary, wiping the blood from his cloak.

  “Which of us here is not hungry?” Borodin demanded of the now silent onlookers. Ruzsky noticed a soldier ahead of him on the far side of the steps, leaning against the wall of the factory.

  “Which of us here hungers for enough bread to eat, to feed their families, enough fuel to warm their home, enough…” He was drowned out by the roar of the crowd.

  “Bread,” he went on, when the crowd had quieted. “That’s what I promise you, comrades. Bread, and peace.”

  There was another roar.

  “How many have you lost in our great patriotic war? Papa’s war. Mama’s war, though who knows which enemy Mama is fighting…” The crowd began to shout its approval again, but he quieted them with a sharp cut of his hand. “We have all lost. Fathers, brothers, husbands. Each and every family has lost a soul, and for what have we been forced to make these terrible sacrifices? So that Papa and Mama could sit at the knee of their unmentionable priest?”

  He scanned faces in the crowd, his head twisting one way and then the other.

  “It is not men and women who go to the front, but a silent army of the damned, forced to their deaths like cattle. Without rifles, without purpose, without hope, while Mama is paid by the enemy to starve our families to death.

  “We see train after train of the wounded arriving at the Warsaw Station day after day after day. We see the hungry eyes in the slums, we see the corrupt officials in their carriages and the parasitic merchants and aristocrats who wanted this war for the greater glory of the Empire, well I say enough. Enough!”

  Borodin was silent.

  “This is our country too. We want our land back. We want our people back. We want bread, we want peace!”

  The crowd began to shout its approval, but Borodin once again demanded silence with a wave of the hand.

  “Now, we can wait no longer. We the people, the workers, demand change. We demand a government that can deliver peace, that can give us bread so that our children do not starve while we slave to provide the armaments to protect their empire. Tonight we demand a new beginning. This is not simply a strike. This is a message we wish to send to the heart of the government of this country. To Papa, to Mama.”

  Borodin smiled as he once again used these as terms of abuse.

  He waited.

  “Tonight we march to the palace. Like our brothers and sisters did before us. And we will send a message to the government and the world that we will take no more.” He paused once more and then leaned forward. “Do the police and soldiers dare stop us from passing, comrades?”

  “No,” chanted hundreds of voices in unison.

  “Comrades, it is better for us to die for our freedom than live as we have lived until now.”

  “We will die!”

  Ruzsky looked at Maria, but her face was stony, her lips tight, her eyes fixed on the man at the top of the steps.

  Ruzsky glanced about him and took in for the first time the composition of the crowd. He saw railwaymen in uniform and workers from the tramcar depot in knee boots and leather jerkins, better-dressed civilians from white-collar jobs in long overcoats and groups of what he would have said were no more than children, pockets of schoolboys and girls. “Do you swear to die?” Borodin demanded.

  “We swear!”

  “Let the ones who swear raise their hands…”

  Borodin swept down the steps and through the crowd, pushing forward toward the gates. Maria followed, Ruzsky half a step behind her.

  He turned to see Pavel making his way toward him, his eyes wide with alarm. “Slowly,” he seemed to be saying, but as Ruzsky forged ahead through the factory gates, the big detective was swallowed by the crowd.

  The moon was bright. Around him, in every face, Ruzsky saw determination and anger as the protesters cascaded out into streets. He walked by Maria’s side.

  She still would not meet his eye.

  Ruzsky brushed past a group of schoolchildren; would they not be siphoned off from the march?

  And then Borodin was once again alongside them. He had put on a fur hat. He leaned toward Ruzsky. “Do you fear the police, Khabarin?” he asked quietly.

  Ruzsky shook his head.

  “Do you fear the Cossacks?”

  He did not answer.

  “If blood is shed, then it will be to the greater glory of our revolution, isn’t that so?”

  Ruzsky still did not respond.

  “People do not care anymore, do they? Desperation is the force we need.” Borodin touched his shoulder. “Can you fire a rifle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will find a use for you.”

  Borodin swung around the front of them, so that he was next to Maria. He whispered in her ear and then dropped back. Ruzsky wanted desperately to know what he had said.

  As they passed the barracks of the Lithuanian Regiment, a group of soldiers hurried to the iron railings to cheer them on. “We’re with you,” one shouted. “Show the dogs,” another called. As they walked along, more soldiers came to the railings. A
few started to sing the first bars of “ La Marseillaise ” and the song was taken up by the crowd.

  There was a shot from inside the compound and a series of barked orders from the officers.

  Ruzsky was swept on.

  Half a minute later, there was another shot. Ruzsky began to wonder if this was the beginning of the end.

  Was this revolution? What plans had Borodin sought to involve him in?

  The strikers were silent as they marched over the bridge. Across the river, the city’s ornate and classical domes were swathed in moonlight.

  Occasionally, one of their number would cough, but otherwise the only sound was of hundreds of feet crunching against the snow-covered ground.

  Maria had been pushing forward, so that now they were once again nearing the front of the crowd. There was more space here and Ruzsky caught up with her. “What happened-”

  She turned to him, her eyes blazing. “I never asked you to get involved,” she hissed.

  Ruzsky took hold of her arm, but she shook it free. He looked around to be sure that others had not witnessed the gesture, but saw only grim concentration; they expected the worst.

  As they came to the far side of the bridge, the protesters wheeled right. Ruzsky turned to see if Borodin was still watching them. He heard muffled cries.

  The snow had shielded the sound of the horses’ hooves and the Cossacks were close, approaching fast, heads low and sabers raised.

  For a brief moment, it was unreal and almost beautiful: the dark horses against white snow and moonlight glinting off swords held high above the soldiers’ heads.

  They thundered silently toward the marchers, snow flying up around them.

  The protesters were suddenly still. There was a single cry and then others. The crowd began to break up at the back. There was a high-pitched scream as the horses reached them and Ruzsky saw the first lightning flash of a saber striking down.

  The panic spread in an instant, like wind on water, and Ruzsky was a prisoner of a chaotic, uncontrolled mass. He was almost knocked down, but he used his strength to hold himself upright against the swell. He took hold of Maria and moved forward, pushing through the chaos around him. She did not resist.