“Even though you hadn’t uncovered Durant’s secret, did you still know for certain that it was the Duc who had stolen the document?” Blackstone asked.
“No. If I had have done, I would have seen to it that you were pointed in his direction from the very beginning. But the truth was, the theft could just have easily been carried out by any of the decadent Russian aristocracy who were in the house at the time of the robbery.” Vladimir smiled. “You can’t imagine how much I was itching to conduct the investigation myself.”
“But you couldn’t, could you?”
“No, I couldn’t. I spy on my own Tsar. I do not want to, but I cannot trust him to do the right thing. And if he does do something wrong, it must be corrected as soon as possible. So, both for his sake and for the sake of my country, I need to be aware of what he is doing. This, of course, can sometimes create a problem. I knew exactly what had happened at the house, but I was not supposed to know about the house at all. Thus, as so often happens, I was forced to work behind the scenes, prodding my chosen instrument in the direction I wished him to go. And in this case, my chosen instrument was you. You should be flattered.”
“You know I’m not,” Blackstone said.
Vladimir nodded. “I suppose I do. What was it you once said to me? ‘A man does not have to run with the fox or the hounds. He always has the choice to stay at home and tend to his vegetable garden.’ Isn’t that it, more or less?”
“Something like that,” Blackstone agreed.
“Unfortunately, my friend, in order to protect that garden, it is sometimes necessary to run with both the fox and the hounds.”
The train began to slow down again.
“Is this where you get off?” Blackstone asked. “Or where we both get off?”
Vladimir stood up. “I will be the only one,” he said. “I am satisfied that you have not changed since we last met in London, which means, of course, that I do not have to rob you of your life. I hope you will believe me when I say that gives me a certain amount of pleasure.”
“I believe you,” Blackstone said.
The train juddered to a halt. Blackstone looked out of the window. There was no station or any other building in sight, but there was a coach, escorted by a group of soldiers.
“If I had my choice, I would gladly travel with you all the way to St Petersburg, but there is another piece of business I must conduct in this area,” Vladimir said regretfully.
“I see you have the army on your side,” Blackstone said.
“Some units in the army are on my side,” Vladimir replied, “but there are others — more numerous — which would gladly see me dead. Still, though I walk a tightrope every day, I have not fallen off it yet.”
“I take it that Captain Dobroskok is one of those soldiers who supports you,” Blackstone said.
“What makes you think that?”
“Something about the way you moved just then.”
“Explain yourself.”
“The men who rescued me on the train from St Petersburg were wearing masks, but I’d be willing to swear that one of them was you.” Blackstone laughed. “Why were you doing your own rough work, Vladimir? Because you don’t have enough men under your command who you can rely on? Or because there is a part of you which is still enough of the schoolboy to enjoy the rough and tumble?”
“The latter,” Vladimir admitted. “But what has this to do with Captain Dobroskok?”
“The fact that you were on that train means you must have arrived in the village after his cordon was thrown up. I’ve seen that cordon for myself. It was very impressive. You’d never have got through it without the Captain’s cooperation.”
“True,” Vladimir agreed. He opened the door and stepped down from the train. “I would like to promise you that we will never meet again,” he called back up to Blackstone. “I am sure that is what you would like me to say. But with the world the way it is, we both know that is not a promise I can ever be sure I would be able to keep.”
One of the soldiers who was part of the waiting escort was holding out an opened military greatcoat. Vladimir stripped the provincial-official’s jacket he had been wearing, and dropped it carelessly on to the ground. That done, he slipped on the greatcoat. As he walked the few remaining yards to the coach, he had already become a different man.
The train began to move off again. Blackstone lit a cigarette and wished that the next few minutes of his life simply did not have to happen.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Thank goodness he’s gone,” Agnes said, when she returned from the sleeping compartment.
“Why should you say that?” Blackstone wondered.
“Because he frightens me.”
“Did he frighten you when he was Peter the Revolutionary?”
Agnes sat down in the chair opposite Blackstone’s. “Yes, I think he did even then,” she said. “But I pushed my fear aside, because I believed in what he was doing — or, at least, I believed in what he was pretending to do — and I wanted to find out more about it.”
“It’s strange that you should have sympathies with a revolution,” Blackstone said.
“Is it? Why?”
“Because of your background. You were brought up in an Army cantonment, where the two cardinal virtues are faith in the established order and the discipline to do whatever is necessary to protect it.”
“And are we always to be governed by what happened to us in our childhood?”
Blackstone thought of his own childhood in the slums and the orphanage, and about how — even now — his first loyalty was to the decent people of the East End of London.
“Childhood is certainly not something that anyone can lightly discard,” he said.
“Well, I have,” Agnes said firmly. “Trust me on that.” She reached across the gap between them and squeezed his uninjured arm. “I’m so looking forward to being in England. I won’t need any revolution once we’re there.”
“Will it be so easy to give it up?”
“Yes, because I’ll have you, and that’s a full-time occupation for any woman.”
“When exactly was it that you decided you’d like to come back to England with me, Agnes?” Blackstone asked, deliberately forcing a light and teasing note into his voice.
“I think it was probably the first time I saw you,” Agnes replied, looking at him adoringly.
“I’m not so sure it was,” Blackstone said. “I’m not even sure it was your decision at all.”
Agnes smiled. “You mean that the way you swept me off my feet left me with very little choice in the matter?”
Blackstone shook his head. “No. I mean that I think it was probably Vladimir’s decision.”
Agnes tensed — not much, but enough for Blackstone to notice. “Vladimir?” she said. “Who’s Vladimir?”
“The man who just left the train.”
“I didn’t know his name was Vladimir.”
“No, you possibly didn’t,” Blackstone agreed. “But you know him under at least one of his many other different aliases.”
“What are you talking about?” Agnes demanded. “I may have met him as Peter the Revolutionary, but as far as I was concerned, when he got on the train he was a complete stranger to me.”
“Then why did you tell him this carriage was not for ordinary members of the public?”
“Because it isn’t for ordinary members of the public.” She smiled again. “It’s for very special people. People like us. People who are in love — and who are going back to England to share a new life together.”
“You’re missing the point,” Blackstone said, refusing to be seduced. “You say that, to your knowledge, you’d never met him before, and that from the way he was dressed you took him to be a minor official.”
“Yes, all that’s true.”
“Yet when you spoke to him, it was in English. Why did you assume that this unknown minor official would even speak English?”
“So I made a mistake,” Ag
nes protested. “My mind was confused. It’s been a confusing few days.”
“The way you talked about Peter the Revolutionary, it seemed to me you’d known him for at least a couple of weeks,” Blackstone said. “Is that right?”
“About two weeks,” Agnes replied, on the defensive now.
“He travelled down from St Petersburg on the same train that I did,” Blackstone said. “He probably reached the village even after I reached the Big House. You’ve not known him for only two weeks, Agnes. He’s been visiting the village for much longer than that — probably ever since you were appointed governess to the Count’s children.”
“And why would he do that?”
“To see you, of course. By disguising himself as a muzhik, he could meet you without anyone who really mattered noticing it. The peasants would have seen you, of course, but they would only have found it amusing that a lady from the Big House would come into the village to debate with a revolutionary.”
“This is incredible, Sam. I can’t believe I’m actually hearing you say it.”
“And even if the Count had found out,” Blackstone ploughed on relentlessly, “he would only have assumed that you had mild revolutionary tendencies. He might have dismissed you from your post, of course, but that wouldn’t have mattered. You could have been transferred somewhere else easily enough, and a replacement brought in. The only important thing was that the Count should never suspect what you’d really been doing in the house — because then he would have been suspicious of whoever was sent to replace you as well.”
“And what was I doing in the house?”
“The Count is not just any old provincial aristocrat. He’s a personal friend of the Tsar’s. That gives him influence. That gives him power. And that makes him dangerous to people like Vladimir.”
“You still haven’t explained—”
“You were there to spy on the Count — to report back to Vladimir on what he said and thought, and how that might affect the future of the country.”
“You’re talking as if I were a member of the Okhrana!” Agnes protested. “Whatever could have given you that preposterous idea?”
“You went out of your way to convince me that the golden egg — by which, of course, we both mean the document — was still in the house,” Blackstone said. “Why did you do that?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“It was in case I decided to give up looking for it. Throughout the whole of the investigation you were very carefully guiding me. And for what purpose?”
“Because I wanted to help you, Sam!”
“Because Vladimir wanted you to help me. Because I was doing his work for him.”
“This is ridiculous,” Agnes said. “If this Vladimir did have an agent in the house, then it certainly wasn’t me.”
“When the robbery occurred, you and the children were visiting friends of the family,” Blackstone said.
“Exactly!” Agnes said, as if she’d scored a point. “Why would I have left the house at that important juncture if I’d actually been working for Vladimir?”
“Because you didn’t have any choice. You were the children’s governess, and you couldn’t refuse to go with them without making the Count suspicious. But later — because Vladimir really needed you — you were prepared to risk even that. Only four people were allowed to pass through the military cordon. Two English policemen, one Russian spy — and you! For the moment at least, you were more important than a Grand Duke.”
“Sam...” Agnes pleaded.
“And if I needed any more proof, there’s always the fire.”
“The fire?”
“Vladimir started it so that whoever had hidden the document would panic and attempt to retrieve it. But in order for his plan to work, there had to be someone there to watch what the guests did. Vladimir was in his peasant disguise, so he couldn’t do it himself. He simply had to have an agent.”
“One of the servants might—”
“The servants were all busy fighting the fire. The watcher had to be someone who wasn’t involved in that. A woman who was almost a lady. You!”
“It’s not true!” Agnes protested.
They could go on like this for ever, Blackstone thought — accusation and denial, denial and accusation — but he was weary of discussing the fire, and it was time to move on.
“It wasn’t real blood I found on the sheets the night after we made love for the first time, was it?” he asked.
“How could you say that? How could you even think that?” Agnes asked. “I sacrificed the most precious thing a woman owns. For you! And it means nothing to you!”
“You played the virgin well. You played almost everything well,” Blackstone told her. “But once one illusion’s gone, the rest quickly fall away as well. You once said we should always be honest with each other, Agnes. Why won’t you be honest with me now?”
Agnes’s shoulders slumped, as she finally gave in to the inevitable.
“It was real blood,” she said, “but not blood which had flowed from between my legs.”
“Whose idea was it to pretend that you were a virgin?” Agnes sighed.
“Vladimir’s,” she admitted. “He has always been a great source of good ideas.”
“It was meant to help disguise what you really were,” Blackstone said. “To make me think of you as an innocent, vulnerable young woman, rather than a hardened agent of the Okhrana.”
“And since you are a decent man, it was also intended to make you feel responsible for me,” Agnes said listlessly. “To make you lose any doubts that you trusted me, since I so obviously trusted you.”
“How did you become involved with Vladimir? Did he recruit you before you came to Russia?”
“No. I really was a just a governess at first. But then I met Vladimir, and he told me I was wasting my talents. He said that despite the fact I was a woman, my background had given me a military mind, and that he could use such a mind.”
“And what was in it for you? Money?”
“Money certainly came into it. I had no wish to grow old and penniless, and live out the remainder of my life on the charity of my last employer. But if money had been my only motivation, Vladimir would never have recruited me. To work for him, you have to believe.”
“In what?”
“In order. In discipline. Empires exist for a purpose, and however ineffective they are, they are infinitely better than what would replace them. Under the Tsar, millions go to bed hungry every night. But if he ever falls, they will have no beds at all — and will starve to death. And if the Russian Empire is swept away, what is to stop other empires following? What is to stop the British Empire — for which my father gave his life — crumbling into dust?”
“You admire Vladimir in almost the same way you once admired your father, don’t you?” Blackstone asked.
“Of course I admire him! How could anyone who knows him not admire him?”
“And have you slept with him?” Blackstone asked, surprised to detect a note of anger in his voice.
Despite the situation she found herself in, Agnes laughed. “All men are the same — even you,” she said. “You don’t ask if I ever loved him as I love you now, only whether I ever slept with him. But I’ll answer your question anyway. No, I have not slept with him, though I would have done if he’d asked me to.”
“Why didn’t he ask you to? Did he find you so unattractive?”
“Was that meant to hurt?” Agnes asked.
Yes, Blackstone thought, surprising himself for a second time in only a few minutes. Yes, it was.
“I’m sorry, I should never have said that,” he told her.
“I don’t think Vladimir finds any woman attractive in a physical way,” Agnes said. “Nor, in case you are wondering, any man, either. I used to think there was something physically wrong with him.”
“And now?”
“And now I think he does not dare to admit attraction. Russia needs him to be strong, and s
o he cannot allow himself any normal human failings.”
“Why did Vladimir have Major Carlton killed?” Blackstone asked, changing tack.
“How do you know he did?:
“I didn’t,” Blackstone said. “At least, not until you just refused to give me a flat denial. But the indications were already pointing towards him.”
“What indications?”
“The only person who might have been interested in seeing Major Carlton dead was the Duc de Saint-Cast, and he had no Cossacks at his command.”
“Cossacks, like most other commodities, can be had with money.”
“If they’d been working for the Duc, they’d have killed me, too. Of all the people involved in this affair, only Vladimir had an interest in me staying alive.”
“And me,” Agnes said.
“But only because that was what Vladimir wanted. If he’d deemed it necessary to have me killed, you’d have gone along with it readily enough. Isn’t that the truth?”
Agnes sighed wistfully. “Think what you want to think,” she said. “After all that’s happened, there’s nothing I can do to alter that.”
“So why was Major Carlton killed?” Blackstone persisted.
“He said that he was related to the Count, which was true. And that his visit to the Big House was a purely social one, which was a lie.”
“The British Foreign Office asked him to arrange to be there at the same time as the Prince and the Tsar?”
“That’s right. The Russians have professional spies. You are forced to rely on enthusiastic amateurs like the Major.”
“You still haven’t said why he was killed.”
“Vladimir was afraid that his blundering about would endanger the whole operation. And from what I saw, he was right. Why did the Major take you out onto the steppe, Sam? To brief you on what he had discovered himself?”
“And to express his fears about a future European conflict,” Blackstone said.
Blackstone and the House of Secrets (The Blackstone Detective series Book 3) Page 22
