The White Russian

by Tom Bradby

  “A connection?” Vasilyev enunciated the words slowly and with the utmost precision. “I am not certain you understand, Sandro, as your father most certainly did, the true nature of our predicament.”

  “Our predicament?”

  The young man came back, carrying a silver tray. Vasilyev poured a cup of tea and offered it to Ruzsky, who shook his head. “These are challenging times,” Vasilyev went on. He moved to the window and looked out at the dull afternoon light as he sipped his tea. “When our home catches fire, we must look to see what we can save. Is that not so, Sandro?”

  Ruzsky faced him, stilled by Vasilyev’s change in tone.

  “The bigger the fire, the greater the danger. But for each man, a different notion of what is precious: For one a painting, or some symbol of great wealth. But for another… a son, perhaps a grandson.”

  The words hung in the air. Vasilyev did not look around. “For a third, the woman he loves.”

  The chief of the Okhrana turned and smiled, holding the cup of tea to his lips. “Always choices to be made, Sandro. Isn’t that so?”

  “You think we’ll disappear?”

  Vasilyev took a sip of his tea, then put down the cup on the edge of his desk. “My advice to you is to save what you can before the house burns down.”

  “Did you make the same threat to him?”

  Vasilyev shook his head. It was not a denial, but an expression of surprise at his naïveté.

  “My father’s opposition to you sealed his fate.”

  “Goodbye, Sandro.”

  “You told him what you would do to us if he did not agree?”

  “I have a feeling we will not meet again.”

  Outside, Ruzsky leaned back against the stone wall and breathed in the cold winter air.

  He was not ten yards from the entrance to the Okhrana’s headquarters and yet all was quiet. A tram had stopped, its dull yellow light a hazy beacon against the black trees behind. A man got off and disappeared down the street, then the bell rang and it continued on its way.

  Ruzsky took out and lit a cigarette. His hand shook violently.

  He could see the dome of St. Isaac’s in the distance and, closer, the spire of the St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral, but this was no longer his city; it was alien and remote.

  The old man’s love had sealed his own fate and, if it had not done so already, old Russia was dying with him.

  Then Ruzsky thought of Michael sitting alone in his room in Millionnaya Street and he began to run. “Hey!” he yelled at a droshky driver on the far side of the street. “Hey!”

  46

  R uzsky burst through the front door of Millionnaya Street. Ingrid was in the hallway. “Sandro,” she said, alarm on her face.

  “Where is he?”

  “In his room, but…”

  Ruzsky had already reached the stairs.

  “She is up there,” Ingrid hissed.

  Ruzsky stopped, looking at his brother’s wife for a moment, then turned and pounded up toward the attic.

  Michael sat on his bed, looking at a book. Irina was in the center of the room, packing his clothes into a leather case. Ruzsky steadied himself against the door.

  Irina stopped what she was doing. Her narrow face softened for the first time in his presence for many years. “I’m so very sorry, Sandro,” she said.

  She did not know whether to come to him, so remained where she was, awkwardly folding one of Michael’s white cotton shirts.

  They were silent. Michael watched them both.

  Irina was wearing an overcoat, her long, slender hands concealed in black leather gloves. A new jewel at her throat sparkled even in the dull light of the single electric lamp. Her hair was glossy and her foxlike face made up with meticulous care. It was a far cry from the radical student he had married and he saw the recognition of that fact in her eyes, also. “What are you doing?” Ruzsky asked.

  She did not answer.

  Ruzsky felt his son’s eyes boring into him. He kissed his forehead, sat by his side, and draped an arm around his shoulder. “Where did you find this?” he asked, turning to the book’s hand-drawn front cover.

  “Uncle Dmitri gave it to me.”

  Ruzsky looked at the pictures and the neatly inscribed verse. The story recounted the preparations for the fictional wedding of Tsar Dmitri I. It had been drawn and written in the era before their father and mother had discouraged Dmitri’s precocious artistic talents.

  “I’m sorry I was not here,” Irina said.

  Ruzsky did not respond. He pulled his son closer to him.

  “He was a strong man.”

  Strong rode high in Irina’s lexicon of approval. Strong was everything. But her failing was that she drew no distinction between the strength of the hero and the villain. “What are you doing?” he asked again.

  “Sandro…”

  Ruzsky leaned forward, uncoupling his arm from his son’s shoulder. “Where are you going?”

  Irina inclined her head toward the room opposite. She wished to talk to him out of Michael’s earshot.

  Ruzsky hugged his son. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he whispered. “It will be all right.”

  He followed his wife through to Ilya and Dmitri’s room, their footsteps echoing on the wooden floorboards. Irina shut the door and stood close to him in the half-darkness.

  Ruzsky listened to the sound of her breathing.

  He wondered if she would take him in her arms and what his own response would be.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Truly sorry.”

  Ruzsky did not answer.

  “You know how he felt, don’t you?” Irina asked him. “Whatever may have been said?”

  Ruzsky wished Irina to take him in her arms now and wondered momentarily if it was too late for them. He thought of Michael sitting alone on his bunk next door.

  “Irina-”

  “It is not healthy for him here, Sandro, don’t you see that?”

  “I can’t be without him.”

  “I cannot leave him here, Sandro.”

  Ruzsky looked at his wife. Even in the twilight, he could tell that she was shielding something from him. “You’re going away,” he whispered.

  “No-”

  “You were going to take Michael away from me.”

  “This is no place for him, Sandro, don’t you see that?”

  “This is his home.”

  “It would not be for long. Just for a few months. Until the situation here-”

  “You plan to take him from Russia?” Ruzsky shook his head incredulously. “To Nice? To the Grand Duke’s promenade?”

  “Sandro-”

  “My father’s body is barely cold and you would rob me of our son?”

  “Be reasonable. What is left for him here?”

  “This is his home.”

  “But who will care for him?”

  “I-”

  “You’re never here. You’re always at work.”

  “Ingrid is-”

  “Ingrid is not his mother,” she said crisply. “I am.”

  They faced each other in silence.

  “Think of what happened to your father,” Irina whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think he was alone in feeling that way? Look about you. The tension is in every face. Look in the mirror; you will see it in your own. Old Russia -our Russia -is on the brink of catastrophe. The dogs in the streets know it.”

  Ruzsky could not think straight; she was right, but if he let her go, he was certain it would be the last he would ever see of his son. “It’s out of the question.”

  “I’m his mother, Sandro. It’s not your right to decide-”

  “No. I won’t countenance it.”

  “I’m his mother.”

  “You’re an adulteress and, unless I am mistaken, society will grant you no rights whatsoever.”

  He had uttered harsh words more violently than he meant to. Even in the darkness, he heard he
r sharp intake of breath.

  “Please leave this house,” he said.

  Irina did not move. Her silence was meant to admonish him. “It was not just your father’s loss,” she whispered, “that you were not your father’s son.”

  “Please leave.”

  Irina hesitated a moment more, before turning and retreating rapidly down the stairs. Ruzsky walked across to the far side of the attic. He saw that Michael had heard every word of their exchange.

  “Will I be staying with you now?” Michael asked.

  Ruzsky hesitated. He could see on his son’s face the answer he wished to hear. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  As soon as Irina had gone, Ruzsky lifted the receiver in the hall and placed a call to Maria’s apartment. It rang and rang, but there was no answer.

  He tried the Mariinskiy Theatre.

  “I would like to speak to Maria Popova.”

  “Not performing tonight.”

  “Is she there nevertheless?”

  “No.”

  “Would you mind going to look for her? It’s important.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Could you take a message?”

  “Call again in the morning. She will not be in the theater before then.”

  The line was cut.

  Darkness crept silently through Millionnaya Street. Ruzsky worked alone in his father’s study. In the central drawer of the secretary, he found a single envelope, addressed to their cousin in England but not yet consigned to the mail. He slit open the envelope and moved the letter within beneath the desk lamp. It had been written the previous evening.

  My dear William,

  I fear it is now almost a year since my last missive, for which please accept my most profound apologies. This war continues to take its toll upon us all.

  There has been some good news. Dmitri survived frontline duty in the Brusilov Offensive with nothing worse than a relatively minor injury to his arm, and is back at the barracks in Petrograd. Sandro has, to my great relief, also now returned from Tobolsk, and taken up his former post. He is gloriously unchanged, and my grandson a constant source of joy. In other circumstances, there would be much to celebrate.

  But, as I’m sure you will have read in your own newspapers, the conduct of the government, and of the war, remains scandalous. The murder of Rasputin has been greeted with universal celebration, but upon sober reflection, has been shown to have changed nothing at all. The Empress, already domineering, neurotic, and hysterical, has become quite unhinged. All men of competence in the government have been dismissed, and we have been left with men of the caliber of Sturmer and Protopopov who are universally detested and beneath contempt.

  I pause, my dear cousin, in the hope that I must be exaggerating, but I fear it is not so. Such things-and much worse-are said upon every street corner. The list of those who have beseeched the Emperor to form a government led by men respected in the country at large continues to lengthen; the Dowager Empress has pleaded with him, as has his brother Michael Alexandrovich, and more grand dukes, senior members of the Duma, and foreign ambassadors than one cares to count. The Emperor listens to all of them, but says nothing, smoking incessantly and drinking tea prescribed by a quack doctor, which those around him at Mogilev believe to be a mixture of henbane and hashish, which reduces him to a state of almost complete inertia.

  So, what then, dear cousin, is to become of us? I fear the worst. As each day lengthens, the few remaining officials of any honor and competence try to prevent the inevitable catastrophe. All around is panic, greed, mistrust and fear. We are increasingly in the hands of our own secret police, a group of men as unscrupulous as any enemy. A Guards officer attempted to assassinate the Empress two weeks ago, but was caught and hanged. However, it is only a matter of time before someone succeeds. There are plans to remove the Emperor and make his brother regent to his son, before the revolution on the streets begins, but I fear it is already too late. It is now only a question of when and in what form change will occur. Everyone knows it.

  Forgive me, my old friend, but I find it impossible to convince myself any longer that my fears are unfounded. While I have no right to do so, I hope you will forgive me if I request that you offer those members of my family who may find their way to England all possible assistance. I will, of course, never leave my post, and the same is true, I’m sure, of Sandro. I have grave fears, however, for Dmitri’s wife, Ingrid, and am attempting to persuade her to travel abroad. It may become necessary for her to take my grandson with her. I am transferring adequate funds.

  It is late and I must try to sleep. Pray for us, please.

  Your ever loving cousin,

  Nicholas

  Ruzsky folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. He sat back, staring at the ceiling.

  The old man had expected disaster, but there was no sign here that he was about to give up.

  Ruzsky lit a cigarette. He thought, as he smoked it, of the way his father had once revered the Emperor’s father, the giant Alexander III, who had appeared to them, when they were children, as nothing short of godlike.

  Then he recalled the Tsarina’s strained, haunted face, upon their meeting at Tsarskoe Selo not two weeks ago.

  Ruzsky leaned forward, stubbed out his cigarette, and continued with his work. He sifted through the rest of the desk drawers and made piles on the floor around him of papers that he would need to discuss with Dmitri. The biggest contained those relating to the family’s financial situation. Most pressing was a letter from the manager of the Moscow Bank on the Nevsky asking for firm confirmation of the order to press ahead with the transfer of a significant part of the family’s cash reserves to the bank in London. It was dated yesterday and delivered by hand. A bank statement revealed that the balance of their father’s account stood at more than a million rubles. The old man had clearly been liquidating assets for a considerable period of time.

  Other papers detailed the rest of the family’s wealth. There were shares in three private banks and numerous companies, including several involved in arms production. But the paperwork was not assembled in order. The old man had not been intending to take his leave so suddenly.

  Ruzsky worked alone in his father’s study by the light of a desk lamp, looking for documents or letters relating to what the old man had told him that morning. He found nothing.

  He remembered the precise words now. To protect the wealth of the Tsar from the mob.

  Ruzsky moved his chair, knocking over a pile of letters that he and his brother had written from the Corps des Pages. He bundled them together again, then sunk to his knees and dragged his hand along the ledge beneath the desk, where his father had always kept the key to the safe.

  There was no sign of it.

  He stood and moved to the hall. He placed another call to Maria’s apartment, but there was still no response.

  Ruzsky asked the exchange to put him through to the theater again.

  “Mariinskiy.” He had reached the same operator, but could hear the guests gathering for the evening performance in the background.

  “I would like to speak to Maria Popova, please.”

  “Not dancing tonight.”

  “Could you get a message to her, it’s important.”

  “Call again in the morning.”

  As the line was again abruptly cut, Ruzsky swore violently under his breath. He stood in the silence of the dark hallway, thinking, then moved through to the drawing room.

  There was a sled parked on the opposite side of the street, in a dark corner beyond the gas lamp, its driver huddled up on the front seat in swathes of blanket, as if expecting a long wait. Vasilyev’s men were making little attempt to conceal that they were watching him.

  Ruzsky returned to the hall. He placed a call to Tsarskoe Selo. A woman answered. “May I speak to Colonel Shulgin, please.”

  “Who is calling?”

  “Chief Investigator Ruzsky of the city police department. If you could tell him
it is urgent.”

  Ruzsky waited. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time before he once again heard footsteps crossing the hallway. “Colonel Shulgin is engaged. May I take a message?”

  “Could you tell him to telephone me… Chief Investigator Ruzsky in Millionnaya Street. Petrograd 266. At once. Please tell him it is urgent.”

  “Call again in the morning.”

  “Will you tell him it is urgent?”

  “I already have. He says to telephone again in the morning.”

  The call was terminated.

  Ruzsky walked slowly back to his father’s desk. He removed the silver case from his jacket pocket and lit a cigarette. For a moment, he watched the smoke curling up toward the ceiling and imagined his father sitting here alone.

  Ruzsky turned over the case and looked at the family crest. It had once belonged to his great-grandfather and had been passed on to each eldest son on his eighteenth birthday.

  He sat back.

  There was a knock at the front door. Ruzsky stood and moved to the doorway as he heard a servant’s footsteps. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and checked that he had ammunition in his revolver.

  47

  R uzsky relaxed as he heard Pavel’s voice.

  A few seconds later, the big detective slipped into the study. Ruzsky put the revolver back into his pocket. “Expecting company?” Pavel asked.

  Ruzsky pointed at the leather seat opposite his desk. Pavel took it, and the proffered cigarette. They smoked in silence. Ruzsky wondered if Pavel had noticed the Okhrana agent outside, and if so, why he had not mentioned it. Had they grown so used to being watched?

  “That was where we used to sit,” he said, “while Father read out our school reports.”

  “I’m sorry, Sandro.”

  “Don’t tell me, you’ve found that all is as it appeared; Sarlov says there was no sign of a struggle, the cause of death is suicide, and the only fingerprints on the revolver belong to my father.”