by Jasper Kent
But whatever she might think, she evidently did not believe in her heart that either of the Volkonskys was her father, or that Valentin Valentinovich was her father or Yelena Vadimovna her mother. Otherwise, why did she not see their faces in her dreams?
The train had slowed, as it always did, to climb the Valdai Hills. It was the steepest incline on the route from Petersburg to Moscow. The line had only been open for five years, but already there were plans to reroute it – to follow a longer, shallower path around the hills. And already there were plans to use that for propaganda against Tsar Nikolai. The story would be that Nikolai had drawn the route between Saint Petersburg and Moscow himself, using a ruler on the map to find the shortest distance. But his thumb had lain over the edge of the ruler and caused a bump in the line, just at the point of the Valdai Hills. And none of the tsar’s cronies had dared make a correction.
She had never met the tsar, but knew people who had, and though he might be resolute in his judgements, he was not a fool. Anyone who had seen the surveyors out, in all weathers, trying to determine the most practical route for the line, would know that Nikolai was in no position to make such detailed decisions. But she also knew that there were many in the government and beyond who would like to make him out to be a despot, even those close to him – perhaps even his own sons.
The train was late already. She smiled to herself. Five years ago she would have had to take a coach on the paved chaussée that ran between the old and the new capitals, and it would have taken days. Now, the journey was less than twenty-four hours, and still everyone complained over a couple of hours’ delay – including Tamara.
The train reached the top of the hill and began to speed up again. This wasn’t the first time she had taken this journey, nor was it likely to be the last, but today it did have a sense of permanence to it. Today, she was leaving Petersburg and going to live once again in Moscow. Moscow was the town where she had been born – if any of the details of her early life could be believed – and where she had grown up. The Lavrovs still lived there. Petersburg was the town where she had married and where she had borne three children. But it was not a city that could tell her what she needed to know.
Only Moscow – the city of those dim remembrances – could do that. It was where she was most likely to find any records relating to her lineage. She had exhausted the archives of Petersburg and her contacts there, and now she must move on. There was no certainty that she would discover anything, but she had to try – otherwise, what was she for?
She had been fortunate to get work in Moscow that would give her the possibility of access to the great library of letters and documents that lay hidden within the Kremlin. Only a government official would have a chance of gaining entry and for a woman that kind of work was rare. But she had carried out such work – however distasteful – in Petersburg and she doubted whether she would find its nature very much different in the old capital. Besides, she needed the money. After she had married, her father had always forwarded her the payments from Volkonsky – ‘a little gift from Papa’, as he had called them, as if forgetting that he had admitted where they truly came from – but with Volkonsky’s death that had stopped. Tamara wasn’t destitute, but a regular income was a blessing.
She stood up. It would be an hour until the next stop, and she desperately needed a cigarette. Even if smoking were allowed on the train, there would be frowns to see a woman partaking of that pleasure in public. She walked down the carriage, opened the door at the end and stepped into the cold night air. A railing surrounded the narrow platform at the end of the wagon, with gates that would allow her to the next one or on to the station when they stopped.
She reached into her reticule and took out a cigarette, lighting it with a match. The junior conductor, standing at his post by the brake, glanced at her, but raised no objection to her breaking the rules. He had probably witnessed it a hundred times. And even if he had thought of calling a gendarme at the next station, he had seen her authority to travel when he looked at her ticket, and would guess that the police would not interfere.
Tamara drew deeply on the cigarette, enjoying the sensation of the smoke clutching at her lungs, and glanced up at the starry sky, then gazed out across the flat, snow-covered countryside as it raced past her. She exhaled. The train – this miracle of Russian modernity, built by American engineers and running on English rails – pressed on into the night, carrying her, for all its faults, at a speed of almost forty versts every hour, towards the truth that she had forever yearned to know.
Tverskaya Street was much as Tamara remembered it, its neat columns of trees naked of leaves and with the February snow clinging to their branches. It was less than a year since she had last visited Moscow, but even in the twelve years since she had made the move to Petersburg, there had not been much that had changed. She crossed Strastnaya Square with its cluster of churches and headed north-west, away from the Kremlin – her first port of call on arriving in the city. The gate and bell tower of the Convent of the Passion, which gave the square its name, were new, though she had seen them slowly rise up over the past few years. Now they were complete, she couldn’t say that she admired the rose-pink walls. But Moscow had to be renewed. Her parents – the Lavrovs – often spoke of how things had been before the war, before the fires that had destroyed two-thirds of the city, but back then they too had lived in Petersburg, and knew the old capital only as tourists.
It was dark now, even though it was still early. The snow here in the city had melted under the persistent tread of feet and wheels of traffic, but it would come again soon; the worst of winter was not over. She crossed a side street on the right and knew that the next would be her destination – her new home as well as her new job.
She turned off the main street and into Degtyarny Lane. The building was easy to spot, on the north side, its plaster walls painted a pale lilac, as garish as those of the convent, but in this case seeming entirely appropriate. This part of town had avoided the fires of 1812. Opposite the building stood a little bench, but the street was empty of people. Although it was dark, it was still too early for there to be much likelihood of business. That would change over the next few hours.
Tamara lifted the heavy iron knocker and rapped on the door. Moments later a little wooden flap at eye level, covered with a grille, was opened from the inside and Tamara was faced with a pair of the most scintillating blue eyes. The hatch closed and Tamara heard the sound of bolts being drawn back, then the door opened to reveal a young woman. She was somewhere in her early twenties, the blonde of her hair as perfect as the blue of her eyes. She was a little shorter than Tamara and dressed as though for a party. At her throat was a simple black-velvet choker.
She looked Tamara up and down. ‘You must be Tamara Valentinovna,’ she said.
‘That’s right. And you?’
‘Raisa Styepanovna,’ replied the girl with a smile.
She led Tamara inside.
Tamara had been told, not an hour earlier, that Raisa Styepanovna was the only one of the girls she could fully trust. Her first appointment of the day, direct from stepping off the train, had been inside the Kremlin. In Petersburg, the location of the offices of the Third Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancellery was well known; the ‘building beside the chain bridge’ as it was usually called, the bridge being the one that crossed the Fontanka at the southern end of the Summer Garden. But in Petersburg, the leaders of the Third Section – Count Orlov and General Dubyelt – believed that a secret police force was most effective when it was least secret; that fear was a more effective weapon than surprise. In Moscow the organization was run by Actual State Councillor Yudin and though technically he was subservient to both the count and the general, Moscow was far enough from Petersburg for them to let him do things his way.
And his way, it seemed, involved the utmost secrecy.
Tamara had known only to report to the gate in the Nikolai Tower at the northern end of Red Square. From there th
e guard had led her into the Kremlin and its chaotic clutter of buildings erected by tsars and tsaritsas through the ages, each determined to make their own mark, none daring to expand beyond the walls established centuries ago. They walked between the Arsenal and the Senate, both relative newcomers to the citadel, and then turned, as if intending to leave via the Trinity Gate. At the last moment, the guard turned again and took them along the inside of the thick defensive outer wall, to a small wooden door, just beside the corner of the newly built Armoury. There a small, precise, balding man named Gribov had met her and escorted her down a short flight of stairs that led into the foundations of the wall itself.
At its bottom, sitting quietly in his subterranean office, she had met Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin. He deliberately ignored her arrival – a common enough trick to ensure that a subordinate did not feel at ease. Instead he continued to read the magazine that he clutched close to him, hiding his face from her. Tamara looked at the cover, but could not make sense of the writing. Then she realized it was in the Latin alphabet. The title was Punch, though she couldn’t guess what language the word came from.
Yudin turned a page and laughed loudly; in doing so, he pretended to notice for the first time that Tamara was there. Without asking who she was, he handed the magazine across to her, pointing to a cartoon at the bottom of the page. It portrayed a man playing a church organ. It took a second look before she realized that the figure portrayed was intended to be Tsar Nikolai. The oddity of it – the point, she presumed, of the joke – was that he was sporting a large pair of bat’s wings and, when she looked closely, had pointed ears, again seemingly meant to be suggestive of the animal.
It was clearly some kind of test. She returned the magazine to Yudin, considering her response. ‘Why would they portray His Majesty as a bat?’ she asked.
‘Why indeed?’ Yudin was still smirking from whatever humour he had seen in there. ‘Makes you wonder if they know something we don’t.’
She considered for a moment whether it was appropriate for him to be reading the enemy’s propaganda in the middle of a war, but she could easily see that it fell within the purview of the Section.
Yudin indicated that she should sit down. As she complied, he slipped the magazine into a drawer of his desk. ‘You come on the highest recommendation of Leontiy Vasilievich,’ he said, referring to the man that she had only ever spoken of as General Dubyelt.
The office was dark, dank and old – certainly no recent addition to the complex. Here beneath the surface, windows were meaningless. Yudin’s desk was lit by a single oil lamp, and a similar one stood on one of the crowded bookshelves behind him. Anyone who lived in a city where in the winter there were almost sixteen hours of darkness became accustomed to operating in such gloomy conditions, but few would welcome it as Yudin seemed to have done in his choice of rooms. A strange smell hung in the air that Tamara put down to damp. They must be close to the level of the Moskva here, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if the room had been flooded more than once.
‘Thank you, Your Excellency,’ she replied. Given the role Dubyelt had recommended her for, it was difficult to know whether to take what Yudin had said as a compliment.
Yudin raised his hand with an air of humility. ‘We are not in Petersburg now, Tamara Valentinovna. I think we can be a little less formal.’
He was a younger man than she had been expecting. She guessed he was in his late forties, but as she looked at him she realized he might be ten years older than that, or more. It was his hair that confused her. It was of such a deep and uniform shade of black that it was quite obviously dyed, in a way that suggested a much older man. But the tone of his skin was not that of a man with greying hair. He was clean-shaven – as the law dictated for a civilian – and had gone to the trouble of dyeing his eyebrows the same dark hue. Only his eyelashes were pale, glittering as they caught the lamplight.
He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and glanced at it. ‘Some very impressive names,’ he said. ‘And some impressive information that you’ve wheedled out of them.’
‘Men think power makes them attractive, and powerful men have secrets.’
‘And how can they demonstrate that they have secrets without whispering a few of them to you?’
‘That’s how it works,’ she said blankly, trying to avoid any possibility of him thinking she might enjoy her work.
‘Do you find it attractive?’ Yudin asked, as if making small talk. ‘Power?’
She had heard it all before. All her superiors – all of them men – had a fascination for what drove her, unable to believe that her work was to her as monotonous as theirs was to them; a necessity in order to live. Even so, she thought about his question for a moment. The image of her husband, Vitya, came to her mind and she felt her face redden. It would not be noticed in the darkness. ‘Not that kind of power,’ she replied.
Still he persisted. ‘You were certainly in a position to choose to sleep with these men. You must have found them in some way attractive.’
He understood nothing; nor should she have expected him to. ‘General Dubyelt led me to believe that my role here would be somewhat different,’ she said.
‘He did?’
Yudin knew it perfectly well. Tamara had seen the letter that Dubyelt had sent him, but clearly he wanted to hear how Tamara would describe her work.
‘I’m not young any more, Vasiliy Innokyentievich.’
‘You’re still very attractive.’ He said it as though he had read the information in her file.
‘He told me I’d be in charge,’ she said firmly. There had always been the possibility that the nature of her work might change by the time she got to Moscow. If it had, there was not much she could do about it, but now was her best chance to try.
‘An officer, rather than a foot soldier?’ suggested Yudin.
‘If you like. He said it was a new venture in Moscow; that a woman would be able to manage things less conspicuously.’
Yudin nodded slowly. ‘We’ve acquired a house in the north of the city. It’s an established bordello – been going since before the war.’ He stopped for a moment. ‘The Patriotic War, I mean.’ While the distinction between the current war and that of 1812 might have been necessary, Tamara couldn’t help but note the implication that the current war was in some way less than patriotic. ‘The former owner got into some legal trouble,’ continued Yudin, ‘and we took the establishment off his hands. It has a very respectable clientele.’ He picked up another list of names and handed it to her. ‘Just the sort of men you like to … rub shoulders with.’
‘So the girls there know what they’re doing?’
‘Most of them were there when we took over. They know one side of the job – how to get their man to bed – but they’re less acquainted with the other – how to get him to talk once he’s there.’
‘So I’m to teach them everything I know?’
Yudin shrugged. ‘You’re in complete control – at least on a day-to-day basis. You’ll have your own rooms there and you’ll run the place as you see fit. All I want from you is regular information.’
Information was all that interested Tamara – though not of the kind that Yudin sought to learn from sweaty generals and libidinous privy councillors. But it was too soon to mention her interest in the archives. She felt a sense of relief washing over her at the fact that Yudin’s view of her job matched Dubyelt’s, and she wasn’t going to push her luck.
‘About anything in particular?’ she asked.
‘Broadly, there are three categories. Foreigners, for a start. They may well be wary, and of course there are not many English or French around just now, but it would be useful to know which way Austria is going to jump. Among our own people there are two sorts. Some you’ve been dealing with already: soldiers and ministers who just talk too much. We need to know which of them are loose-lipped and put a stop to it.’ He paused. ‘And finally there are those who tell us things that we don’t know.’
> ‘Such as?’ Tamara could already guess what he was talking about.
‘It’s been almost thirty years since the Decembrists were rounded up. That’s long enough for people to start to forget. You remember ’48?’
Tamara’s eyes flashed at him. She wondered how he could know, how he could be so cruel, but then realized that the year 1848 meant to him, to most of the world, something very different from what it did to her. She nodded.
‘Half of Europe went mad with revolution,’ he continued. ‘It didn’t happen here, but it might have. That’s our biggest fear. That’s what I want you to listen out for. Even within our own government there may be revolutionary voices. Perhaps even in this department.’
‘So I report only to you?’
‘Has Leontiy Vasilievich told you otherwise?’
Tamara shrugged. Dubyelt had said nothing on the subject, but she knew well enough the internal politics of the Section to understand that it was best to keep everybody guessing.
‘Then I won’t contradict him,’ said Yudin. He pushed an envelope towards her. ‘Here are details of the place and its employees. The only other one of our people in there is Raisa Styepanovna Tokoryeva. You can speak freely to her, but she’s under your command.’
