The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  “This way.” Jens’s voice at her side was harsh and angry.

  He pulled her along behind him. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her ears hurt. She lowered her head as he dragged her into a smaller offshoot tunnel.

  “This way!”

  Valentina’s mind struggled. But she reached behind her, found someone else’s hand and pulled it along with her. Together the group stumbled forward. But ahead of her, even in the suffocating blackness, Jens seemed to know where he was heading, and his fingers had latched around her wrist tight as wire. He wasn’t going to let go of her. She clung to that single thought.

  SILENCE. IT CAME IN THE END. THE SILENCE THAT ONLY exists underground. Jens knew it well, that total absence of sound. Sometimes he wondered if death was like this, not a burning raging hell but a cold and implacable absence. No life, no sound, no fresh air to breathe. A grinding ache gripped his skull. He lit a candle and only he saw the tremor in his hand. Around him he heard the whimpers of relief as the flame flickered into life. It was his rule never to venture underground without matches and a candle in his pocket.

  “How many of us?” He counted heads. “Eight.”

  Eight out of seventeen. Dear God! Minister Davidov was here and his wife, as well as Kroskin, the young surveyor. But no assistant engineer. No Prutz, the water specialist. Who else? He raised the candle higher, sending shadows scrambling through the thick dust-ridden air.

  Valentina was here, crouched on the floor. For one sickening moment he feared she was hurt, but no, she was helping the nurse, both of them tending Kroskin, the young surveyor, who was stretched out on the damp ground. One of his trouser legs was shredded, and the flesh on his shin gleamed wetly. Two others stood trembling, a whiskered member of the Duma parliament and his wife. He was crying, deep hacking sobs, and she was rocking him in her arms, whispering sharp little instructions. “Hush, no tears, Jakob, hush now, wipe your eyes.”

  “We’re going to die here.” His words came in short gasps.

  Valentina raised her head. Her hat was gone, her dark hair coated in dirt. She turned steady eyes on Jens.

  “Are we?” she asked. Just a straight question. “Are we going to die?”

  All eyes fixed on him and Jens felt the weight of them as heavy as the layers of rock above their heads.

  “No. Nyet. Of course not. Take a look at where we are. It’s what is called a passing chamber. Two sluice gates, one beside the other to channel and control the flow of water through the open gully over there.” He gestured into the darkness beyond the reach of the candle’s glow, and hot wax dripped onto his fingers. Keep talking. Keep crowding their minds with words to flush out their fears. “But over here”—he walked away from the huddle of figures—“on a hook, ready for emergencies, is this.”

  He held up an oil lamp, like a magician producing a rabbit. He lit it from the candle flame and watched its light paint the ashen faces a sickly yellow. Their eyes grew rounder, no longer flat and stunned.

  “We must give the aboveground engineers time to assess what has occurred,” he continued. “Everyone will be in shock up there at the moment, as we are down here.” He forced out a smile. “We’re safe here,” he told them. “Be thankful.”

  “How do you know there won’t be another roof collapse any moment?”

  It was Minister Davidov. Damn the man. Everyone scanned the curve of bricks three feet above their heads at its highest point, seeking cracks. Jens could smell their fear slinking around the chamber.

  “The tunnel is strong and solid.”

  “So strong it crashed down on us.” Davidov’s lean face was hollow with tension.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, Friis?”

  “The tunnel did not collapse because it was weak.”

  Valentina rose to her feet, a small figure in the gloom of the cavern. “There was an explosion. I heard it.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish, young woman. The roof was weak. It crashed down on—”

  “She’s right,” Jens cut in.

  Such sharp ears. She was alert, she listened. Most people didn’t listen.

  “What the fuck are you trying to—”

  “Andrei,” Madam Davidova said pleasantly as she laid a firm hand on her husband’s arm, “not now. Let’s get through this the best we can. Leave the recriminations till later.” She looked around her and smiled. It wasn’t a particularly convincing smile, but it helped. The tension slid down a notch.

  “Madam Davidova, what you say is true. We must remain calm. The most important thing now is to check on everyone’s wounds.” Jens walked over to Kroskin, the surveyor on the floor. The young man’s arms were curled across his chest to hold in the pain. “How bad is it?”

  Kroskin grimaced. “I’ll live.”

  “We’ll all live.”

  The nurse nodded encouragement. “The flesh is stripped off one leg below the knee but fortunately the bone isn’t broken.” Already in her hands was one of her voluminous petticoats, pressed hard against the wound.

  “Here.” Jens pulled a pocketknife from his belt.

  Kroskin’s eyes widened.

  “We’re not going to hack your leg off, boy,” Jens reassured him. “Just cut up bandages.” He placed a hand on the nurse’s shoulder. “Do your best,” he murmured. “Davidov, come and slice up some bandages here.”

  He passed the knife to the minister.

  “Any more wounds?”

  No one spoke. He looked around at his companions, trapped in this alien nether world of near-darkness, and he was impressed by their fortitude. He felt a rush of respect for them, even for that bastard Andrei Davidov, who had set to work on the petticoat with quick efficient strokes.

  “We’ve all got bangs and bruises, I know, but”—they weren’t going to like this—“if there’s nothing else major, I’m going to leave you.”

  “No. Don’t.”

  It was Valentina. He noticed a graze on her neck.

  “You’re going back there, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I have to.”

  “Because there might be others who are wounded.”

  Wounded. Crushed. Pinned under rocks. Bleeding and dying. Maybe already dead. Everyone saw images in their heads.

  Valentina said quickly, “It’s too dangerous to go alone. Take someone with you.”

  Take me with you. That was what she meant.

  He glanced across the chamber. “You.” He pointed to the Duma man, the frailest of them. “You come with me.”

  Valentina made a soft noise in her throat. This close he could see the dirt caked on her eyelashes. But he couldn’t take her. He didn’t know what mangled limbs they might have to tread on down there. He relit the candle and took hold of the Duma man’s elbow, steering him back toward the mouth of the tunnel. He could feel the man’s arm trembling.

  “Wait!” Valentina stopped him. “Take the lamp, you’ll need it more than we will. Leave us the candle.” She removed the lamp from beside the wounded man and carried it to Jens. She held it out. “Take it.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Spasibo.”

  “Take care.”

  He nodded. “Minister Davidov,” he called out, “watch out for the women.”

  “Jens,” Valentina said in a low voice, “don’t you know that it is the women who watch out for you men?”

  “So I should be taking you with me?”

  “You should.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I know. No stars to look at this time.”

  He couldn’t help a smile. Then he was gone, swallowed by the black tunnel so effortlessly that for a bleak moment he doubted his existence.

  THE LIGHT, WHICH NOW HAD DWINDLED TO A MISERABLE candle flicker, made people more anxious, nervy as cats in a wolf cage. But for Valentina, the loss of him, that strong center of him, was the worst. Without Jens the chamber felt much emptier, the air fouler, the people smaller. The rescue that only minutes ago had seemed likely, abruptly became u
nlikely. She was frightened he wouldn’t come back.

  She’d seen how he moved in the darkness as if he owned these tunnels, as if they were his, not the city’s. The way you own a house. And for the first time it hit her forcibly what this collapse of his beloved tunnels must mean to him. A groan came from the young surveyor, and she switched her thoughts. She had done all she could to make Kroskin comfortable after Nurse Sonya had finished binding his leg, but it wasn’t much. She had placed a scarf under his head and her fur coat over him, tucking it around him, trying to keep out the pain. His groans were muffled by the arm he had draped across his face and though she held his other hand between hers, he didn’t speak.

  “Is your family here in Petersburg?” she asked.

  He nodded, nothing more.

  “I have a sister,” she told him softly. “Her name is Katya.” Katya, I’m not dead. Don’t believe them if they tell you I’m dead. And don’t be frightened for me. I’ll come back, I won’t abandon you, I promise. “She’s blond like you and loves to play cards. Do you have a sister?”

  A nod again.

  “What’s her name, your sister?”

  Nothing. His shivers grew worse.

  “They have safety systems,” she told him. “Rescue procedures. They’ll get us out of here, don’t worry.”

  His arm fell from his face. “Is that true?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “She’s lying.” Davidov stood beside her, his sharp-angled shadow resting on her. “Just like she lied about hearing an explosion.”

  “Why would I lie?” she demanded.

  “To protect Friis. He’ll be hauled up for incompetence if we get out of here alive.”

  She looked around at the others. “Did anyone else hear an explosion?”

  Nurse Sonya shook her head. Madam Davidova was standing motionless, close to the candle on the floor as though nervous of leaving it. Its flame sent her shadow scuttling up the walls. She stared at her husband with a bemused expression. Only the Duma man’s wife, who had sunk down on her heels, nodded vehemently.

  “I heard it,” she stated. “My ears still hurt from the blast. Don’t yours?”

  “Yes,” Valentina said, and looked at Madam Davidova.

  Slowly the minister’s wife nodded her head.

  “An explosion,” Valentina repeated. She knew the sound. It had been blasted into her brain at Tesovo. “A bomb.”

  The word splintered the fragile shell they had been sheltering under.

  “Why would anyone attack the sewers?” Nurse Sonya whispered. Tears were running down her cheeks.

  “It’s not the sewers,” Davidov snapped. “Are you too foolish to see the target?”

  “The tsar,” Valentina stated bluntly. “They meant to kill the tsar.”

  SHE WATCHED THE CANDLE, THE WAY THE HOT WAX pooled. Watched time burn. Still he didn’t return. She wanted to go after him. Instead she listened to the ever-present swirl and rush of water. She tried to assess the damage to the five faces huddled around the flame. It kept her mind off Jens’s absence.

  Nurse Sonya was steady. She had seen death and damage before. Yes, there were tears, but her hands were steady as she tended her patient on the floor. The surveyor was crumbling. Sweating. Pain and fear too much for him. But Madam Davidova was harder to judge because she was schooled in self-control. Just a small crease between her eyebrows, pulled tight the way Mama did when she had a headache.

  Mama? Don’t worry about me.

  The Duma man’s wife was different. She couldn’t keep still. She sat, she stood, she paced, fingers fretting at her clothes, at her hair, at her throat. She was a thin woman. In the darkness she looked more like a shadow than a person. “The men have been gone a long time,” she said.

  “Searching for others,” Valentina assured her. “It takes time.”

  “But more rocks could fall.”

  “We’d hear if they did. And, don’t worry, the men would shout to us.”

  Davidov stepped between them. “We should not be too alarmed because we have among us someone who is the guarantee of our rescue.”

  “Who?” the woman demanded.

  Davidov directed his gaze at Valentina.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you are about to become the jewel of St. Petersburg.”

  “What do you mean, Andrei?” his wife asked.

  He paid her no heed. “Is that not so, young lady?”

  “No.”

  “Valentina Ivanova is about to marry,” he announced. “Into one of the finest families in the city.”

  “No.” Valentina wiped her hands on her filthy skirts. “It’s a lie.”

  “Your father himself informed me of the match. Congratulations, my dear. And because of you, the Chernov family will move heaven and earth—and rocks—to get you out of here. They’ll send the army in if necessary.”

  Valentina felt the air around her change. Hope fluttered faintly. Eyes brightened and hearts beat faster.

  “Do you have matches, Minister?” Valentina asked coolly.

  He frowned. “Yes, I do.”

  “The candle is disappearing fast. We should save it.”

  “What?”

  “We must blow it out.”

  THE DARKNESS WAS TOTAL. SHE LIKED IT THAT WAY. SHE could hide in it. She couldn’t believe she had ever been frightened of Jens’s tunnels.

  Jens. Come back to us.

  All six of them were seated on the cold ground in a circle, feet touching, so that all were anchored to each other. No one would feel that he or she had been cut adrift in the blackness, alone with the scurrying sound of rats slinking from tunnel to tunnel.

  Valentina felt, rather than saw, the minister on her right lean close. “You are a bright and lovely creature, my dear,” he said under his breath, “far too intelligent to bow to the will of others when you so clearly have one of your own. Take this advice from an old campaigner. Use your weapons.”

  “Weapons?”

  “The greatest of all, my dear. Your beauty.”

  “Do you know what the strongest weapon is?” she asked him in the pitch darkness. “One I will never possess.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being born a man.”

  He chuckled, low in his throat. She sensed him nodding acknowledgment that she was right.

  WAS SHE DEAD? ARKIN WONDERED. He had asked himself that question a thousand times.

  He didn’t want her dead. Or hurt. Or frightened. It shocked him how much he wanted her to be alive. Before this he had killed only strangers and always to further the cause, but this time it was different.

  He glanced up at the window of her room, but she wasn’t there. He was waiting in the cold beside the Turicum outside the front door. Waiting. Half his damn life was spent waiting. When finally Minister Ivanov and his wife descended the steps, both wrapped in heavy furs, both stiff and silent with each other, they seated themselves on the blue leather and didn’t speak. They stared out at opposite sides of the street. It was a familiar routine, but it saddened Arkin that at a time like this, with their daughter missing, they couldn’t find something to hold them together. Was there so little left to their marriage?

  As he drove, his mind replayed his conversation with Sergeyev.

  “Tsar Nicholas is paying a visit to the new sewerage tunnels,” Arkin had told his friend. “This is our chance, Sergeyev.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. The nurse in our household can’t stop jabbering about it. She’s been invited along as chaperone to the older Ivanov daughter. It’s the perfect place for a trap.”

  Sergeyev groaned. “Fuck this arm of mine. It means I’m no use to you. I’m not working underground again yet.”

  Arkin had slapped him affectionately on his good shoulder. “No, my comrade, I know that. But your brother is.”

  Together they started to distribute rifles, and for the first time in many
months Arkin allowed himself to get drunk that night. Tension was a creature with claws and fangs, living in his guts, eating him alive.

  MINISTER IVANOV DEPARTED WITH NOTHING MORE THAN curt nod to his wife and headed into the ministry on the Embankment, while Arkin turned the car around and drove back up Nevsky. Outside Madame Monique’s fashion house, he opened the Turicum’s door and though it was not his usual custom, he offered his hand to Elizaveta Ivanova to steady her on the car’s steps. To him she looked frail, the firm lines of her face blurred and uncertain. She accepted it, and before walking under the blue-and-white awning over the shop she thanked him.

  “I’ll be an hour,” she said to him. “No longer.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  He bought a newspaper and read it in the car. But it told him little. An accident, they were calling it, a tunnel roof collapse. No mention of a bomb. No mention of an attempted assassination. Fuck the bastards. He cursed Tsar Nicholas for his fickle mind. Without the tsar, the corrupt regime would crumble because it had nothing to prop it up. When Minister Ivanov told him that His Imperial Majesty had gone ice skating that day with his children at Tsarskoe Selo instead of inspecting the tunnels, he’d wanted to howl. Where was the uprising? Where was the start of the brave new world Arkin had sold his immortal soul for?

  Finally Madam Ivanova emerged, and he cranked up the engine. He waited for a tram to rattle past before pulling out in front of a monogrammed carriage, but the sight of all the extravagant shops and restaurants only deepened his sense of disappointment. He had truly believed these places would belong to the ordinary people of Russia today. He drove fast, needing to be away from there.

  The noise, when he first heard it, startled him. For a second he thought he must have run over a cat. It was a single loud shriek that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Abruptly it ceased, but by then he’d realized it had come from behind him. He turned in his seat and saw Elizaveta Ivanova slumped forward, her elbows tucked into her lap, her face in her hands. She was moaning.