The White Russian

by Tom Bradby

  “The mark of the assassin,” Prokopiev sighed, almost inaudibly. He straightened, his eyes boring into Ruzsky’s own. “Do not mourn for them, Sandro.”

  “You know the woman?”

  “Few will regret her passing.”

  “You know her from Yalta?”

  “An anarchist.”

  “How did she come to be here?”

  “No tears will be shed for her. But, for your girl…” He paused. “Now she is a very different matter.”

  Ruzsky stared at him, searching for some sign that this was another threat, but Prokopiev’s expression was concerned-almost imploring. “Did you know her in Yalta?”

  “No.”

  “You were on the train with us?”

  “When you disappeared? Yes.”

  Ruzsky gestured at the bodies. “Vasilyev has been behind these killings, hasn’t he? He wishes to remove all traces of the connections that date from Yalta?”

  “You’re smarter than that. No general kills his own soldiers before the battle begins.”

  “What battle?”

  “Your time is short.”

  They heard labored footsteps on the stairs below. “Back,” Prokopiev instructed. He fixed Ruzsky with an intense stare. Your time is short, his eyes blazed.

  Vasilyev turned the corner, a dark cape around his shoulders, fastened at the throat by a gold chain. He mounted the steps with his head thrust forward, his face glacial. He ignored Ruzsky and examined the body, betraying no reaction.

  “Thank you, Chief Investigator. That will be all.”

  As Prokopiev led him away, Ruzsky dropped the remains of his cigarette and looked back at the dark figure stooped over the body. At the bottom of the stairs, he noticed a small pool of blood and stopped to examine it.

  Prokopiev lifted him up gently and propelled him onward. Ruzsky tried to turn back, but the door of the apartment building was slammed in his face.

  Pavel was waiting on the far side of the road, to one side of the queue. “Who was it?” His eyes told Ruzsky he knew who it was not.

  “Olga Legarina.”

  “She’s also from Yalta?”

  “She’s one of the group, yes.”

  “Did you get a look at the body?”

  “It’s the same killer, with a similar knife. She had an identical mark on her right shoulder.”

  “The same as the American?”

  “Yes. Prokopiev called it the mark of the assassin.”

  Pavel said, “If we don’t reach her, she’s going to die, isn’t she?” He did so without emotion, as if considering the possibility for the first time. “We had better find her.”

  But Ruzsky was deep in thought. “We’ve been foolish,” he said. “Or I have. I should have spent more time looking for the families of the victims.”

  “I thought they were robbers.” Pavel shook his head. “Armed robbery, you said.”

  Ruzsky was staring at the doorway opposite. He thought of the passage in the records he had uncovered in Yalta. Popova expressed view that Chief of Police in Odessa better target.

  He turned and walked rapidly back toward the sled. “Hurry up,” he said.

  50

  T he records division of the Petrograd City Police Department was housed in the vast cellar that ran all the way under Ofitserskaya Ulitsa. It was cold, the documents it contained damp and frayed at the edges.

  The duty clerk led them to the far wall and pointed at a section of buff-colored files which stretched for thirty yards or more. No one had ever counted exactly how many servants of the regime had been murdered in the past twenty years, but it clearly ran into the thousands. For each assassination, the local police office telegraphed notification and a request for information to every major city department in the country. Every crime against the regime was recorded here.

  The only desk in the cellar belonged to the clerk, so Pavel and Ruzsky sat on the floor. Pavel began on the shelf for 1910, Ruzsky for the year before. Each folder contained the telegraph traffic for one week.

  “What are we looking for, precisely?” Pavel began to turn over the tattered sheets of the first file. “An assassination in the Crimea?”

  “And the surrounding area, unless something else leaps out at you.”

  Ruzsky looked up at the narrow slit in the far wall. The ceiling shook as an automobile passed on the street above. He thought again of the brief description of the group’s activities in the records in Yalta and its reference to both the chief of police and governor of Odessa. “I think they concentrated on the peninsula, and possibly Odessa.”

  Pavel did not look convinced.

  Ruzsky began to sift through the telegraphs in his hand. They provided a window on an empire in which it was all too easy for criminals to evade capture.

  After half an hour, Ruzsky found a string of correspondence relating to the murder of an imperial official-the principal private secretary to the governor-in Kazan. No group was mentioned and the two suspects were “believed to have traveled to Moscow.”

  He replaced the file and began to work through the next, but he was finding it hard to concentrate. “It’s age that divides them,” he said.

  “Divides who?” Pavel asked, without looking up.

  “The victims. Olga, the American, and Markov from the Lion Bridge are all considerably older than Ella. And it is they who have the mark.”

  “So?”

  “The mark of the assassin predates…” Ruzsky stopped.

  “What?”

  “Hold on a second.” Ruzsky shut the folder on his lap, stood, and replaced it. He moved down the line of shelves, examining the dates. “I’m going to start earlier.”

  Pavel didn’t answer. Ruzsky continued until he found the section for 1905. He was recalling not Ella’s history, but Maria’s.

  Ruzsky took down the file for the first week of that year. It contained a seamless record of similar, mostly anonymous crimes, from across the Empire. They merged into each other, but he flicked through the pages methodically, before replacing the file and taking the next.

  The telegraph traffic for the year was exhaustive, as the revolution which began in St. Petersburg slowly consumed the whole of Russia. It was particularly heavy from Odessa during the summer, as revolutionary fervor spread to the Black Sea Fleet, sparking a mutiny in the battleship Potemkin. Members of the local police department had recorded the string of ordinary crimes that occurred during the period of anarchy, even as the entire fabric of their world teetered on the brink of extinction. Ruzsky gave a wry smile.

  He looked up at his partner, who sat with his head bent, absorbed in his task.

  He returned to his own file and began to leaf through the pages once more.

  “What are we looking for, Sandro?”

  “You know what we’re looking for.”

  Pavel had not raised his head. “If you say so.”

  They worked without a break. Stanislav appeared as the light began to fade.

  Ruzsky looked at him, but remained silent.

  “I’m surprised you are here,” Stanislav said. “I heard-” The look on Ruzsky’s face persuaded him not to continue. “I’m sorry, anyhow.”

  The journalist shrugged. He glanced at Pavel and began fiddling nervously with his mustache. “There’s an alert for Friday and the weekend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The entire Petrograd garrison. I heard Shulgin and Count Fredericks want the reserve battalions brought in from Peterhof and Gatchina, but the Tsar won’t hear of it.”

  “I thought the Tsar was at the front.”

  Stanislav shook his head. “Apparently not. There are delegations on their way. Italians, French…”

  “Why is there an alert?” Ruzsky asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

  “I don’t know, but the city is being divided up by military district and they are to patrol the streets before dawn. The Finland Regiment on Vasilevsky, the Preobrazhenskys on South Quay and along Horseguards, the
Volynsky from the Nevsky down to Nicholas Station…”

  Ruzsky put his folder down and stood.

  “What are you doing down here?” Stanislav asked, looking about him.

  “Why is there an alert?” Ruzsky asked again.

  Stanislav shrugged.

  “You must have heard speculation.”

  Stanislav said, “I heard you found another body.”

  Ruzsky did not respond.

  “The newspapers are going to love that.”

  “Well, you’d better ask Vasilyev before you get them to print it.”

  Stanislav tugged harder at the ends of his mustache. “What are you doing down here?” He glanced at Pavel, who still had not moved.

  “Some research,” Ruzsky answered.

  “Into what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “It is still your case?”

  Ruzsky took a pace forward. “I’d like you to do something. I want to know what all the murder victims were doing back in Petersburg, especially the American. He was staying at the Astoria, so go down there; talk to the bellboys and the chambermaids. See what you can find out. What did the American do with his time here? What visitors did he receive? Where did he go when he went out? Did the girl, Ella, ever come there?”

  “The Astoria?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was staying at the Astoria?”

  “Yes.”

  Stanislav raised an eyebrow. “What else?”

  “Just find that out, and get back to me. I want to know exactly what the American’s movements were from the moment he arrived until the moment someone stuck a knife in his chest, out on the ice.”

  A few minutes later, Ruzsky tramped up the stairs to the deserted offices of the Criminal Investigation Division. The secretaries had tidied their desks, and all the doors around the central room were shut.

  He picked up the telephone on his desk and asked the operator to put him through once again to Colonel Shulgin at Tsarskoe Selo.

  It took a long time to make the connection and when it was achieved, a woman answered, her voice distant. “Yes?” she demanded.

  “Might I speak to Colonel Shulgin?”

  “Who is it that wishes him?”

  “Chief Investigator Ruzsky, Petrograd City Police Criminal Investigation Division.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He heard her footsteps receding.

  Ruzsky drummed his fingers as he waited.

  “Yes?” another voice answered. “Shulgin here.”

  “It’s Ruzsky, sir.”

  “Oh… yes, Ruzsky.” There was a long pause. “I was sorry to hear about your father.”

  “I called you last night, sir.”

  “Yes, you said it was urgent. My apologies.”

  Ruzsky could tell someone else was listening, or standing close. He hesitated again.

  “I’d be grateful if I could speak to you in person at the earliest opportunity.”

  “Yes.” Shulgin’s tone was noncommittal.

  “Preferably tonight.”

  “That is not going to be possible, Chief Investigator.”

  “My father’s death was no accident, sir.”

  Shulgin was silent.

  “It occurred within minutes of an unscheduled meeting with Mr. Vasilyev. I’m sure you will agree that it was quite out of character.”

  “The meeting was not unscheduled. And Mr. Vasilyev is privy, I’m afraid, to a great deal of information that disturbs the minds of the sanest of men.”

  “That is hard to accept,” Ruzsky said quietly.

  “So are many things, at this time.”

  “You were close to my father.”

  “We were colleagues.”

  “Close colleagues.”

  “I was aware of your father’s concerns.”

  “Would you share them with me?”

  Shulgin sighed. “No, Sandro. I’m sorry. I cannot.”

  “Am I not to be permitted to know why my father took his own life?”

  There was a longer pause. “Nicholas Nikolaevich was a senior government official. Our hands are thus bound in ways we might not wish.”

  “So he placed a revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger purely as a result of the situation in which Russia finds herself at this time?”

  Shulgin did not answer, but his silence suggested he also did not believe this was an adequate explanation.

  “In the meeting we attended, you made reference to events you expected to take place on Friday or Saturday. You spoke with Mr. Vasilyev about intelligence you had received.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have been informed that the Petrograd garrison has received specific orders relating to this weekend.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you mind telling me why?”

  “You know the answer perfectly well.”

  “You fear unrest?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is more than a routine matter?”

  “We would not issue an alert without specific intelligence. But what bearing does this have on your investigation?”

  “I thought it might shed light on the victims. It is possible that they have been murdered as a result of activities they planned to conduct in the capital.”

  Shulgin was silent again.

  “There has been another body, sir. A fourth victim. A woman.”

  “I see.”

  He could tell Shulgin already knew. Ruzsky pictured the colonel standing alone in the hallway of the Alexander Palace, the Tsar and his wife secluded in the rooms behind him, their children asleep. It seemed not just incongruous, but suddenly quite mad that the government of an empire should rest upon such foundations.

  “I appreciate the burdens of office,” Ruzsky said. “Especially at this time. But it is not just blind faith that prevents me believing in my father’s suicide.”

  “I understand that.”

  Ruzsky waited for Shulgin to continue.

  “Do you know who she was?” Shulgin asked. “This new victim.”

  “She was another of the revolutionaries from Yalta. Olga Legarina was her name.”

  “Have you spoken to Mr. Vasilyev about this?”

  “Briefly.”

  “I see. If you… hear of anything, you will let me know, won’t you, Sandro?”

  The sudden intimacy surprised Ruzsky, and touched him. “Yes. Of course.”

  As he replaced the receiver, he had a strong mental image of Colonel Shulgin walking slowly away across the hallway of the Alexander Palace.

  Ruzsky put his elbows upon his desk and his face in his hands.

  He thought of his father. He wanted to be able to pick up the receiver and place a call to the study at Millionnaya Street and have the old man answer.

  Ruzsky was about to push himself to his feet when the telephone rang. He picked it up.

  “Chief Investigator?”

  “Yes.”

  “Colonel Shulgin.”

  “Yes.”

  “We…” There was a long pause. “We would like you to present yourself here at first light.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come alone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After a few minutes, Ruzsky walked back down the corridor and returned to the cellar.

  51

  T he clerk had gone home, and Ruzsky persuaded Pavel that he must do likewise.

  He sat in the basement, alone in his task. The work was laborious, but it was how he most liked it.

  He flicked through the files covering the period from 1905 to 1908, but with the exception of the era of quasi-revolution in the first of those years, there was little serious crime reported from the Crimean peninsula and its immediate surroundings.

  There were assassinations in other parts of the country, but not in Yalta, Sevastopol, or Odessa.

  Pavel had checked through the records for the latter half of 1908 and the two following years, which left Ruzsky with nowhere to go but backward.

&nb
sp; He began on the files for 1904.

  He reached July before he found what he was looking for. His eyes had begun to droop, but the sight of the name on the telegraph snapped him awake.

  Governor Bulyatin murdered. Bomb thrown in carriage. Wife and son also fatalities. Two daughters unharmed. Further information soonest. Yalta.

  Ruzsky stared at the telegraph, then began to turn the pages. A period of intense traffic had followed, culminating in the identification of a suspect.

  Suspect in Bulyatin case identified as Michael Borodin. Await further information.

  But if the office in Yalta had uncovered further information, none came. The Bulyatin case was referred to with diminishing vigor for the remainder of the year, the suspect Borodin not at all.

  Ruzsky took the original telegraph from the file, folded it up, and slipped it into his pocket.

  The wind had strengthened again, and it had begun to snow heavily, drifts gathering against the houses and around the bases of the gas lamps. The streets were deserted.

  Ruzsky crossed the canal and turned off Sadovaya Ulitsa. The light was on in her window and there was no sign of a cab or sled outside. A dark shape emerged from the shadows, hurrying toward him, a woman-old or young he could not tell-cloaked in the robes of mourning, her face covered in a veil.

  Outside Maria’s building, Ruzsky looked up through the swirling snow. He saw her at her window, silhouetted against the light.

  He pushed the door open and climbed the stairs.

  At the top, he leaned back against the wall. He thought of the document he had in his pocket, and the reason for her exile. Did she think of the white house she had told him of in Yalta, with its high ceilings, airy rooms, and views of the bay, as she stared out of the window at a dark Petersburg night?

  He imagined a young girl leaning out of the window to listen to her mother sing on a warm summer’s evening, her sister beside her.

  Ruzsky knocked. He heard footsteps and then nothing.

  He thought of her beyond the door, in the darkness.

  A minute passed, perhaps more. A key was turned and the door slowly opened. She wore a long red dress, a black velvet bow in her hair. She was painfully beautiful; her lips were slightly parted and her eyes shone with a potent blend of love, loneliness, and loss.