The Jewel of St. Petersburg

She sat up facing him and coiled her legs around his waist. He scooped his hands under her buttocks and pulled her closer. Her skin smelled faintly of carbolic soap.

  “Tell me about the monk, Rasputin,” she said.

  “For heaven’s sake, Valentina, why on earth do you want to know about that vile man?”

  “Tell me.” She was serious. Her forehead rested on his collarbone so that he couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her breath on his naked chest, small shallow puffs of warm air. “He came to St. Isabella’s,” she told him.

  “Keep away from him. He’s done enough harm.”

  “What kind of harm?”

  “Grigori Rasputin is widening the divide between the tsar and his people.”

  “Jens, my love, don’t be angry. Tell me about him.” Her tongue touched a patch of his skin.

  “He claims to be a holy man of God, sent by Christ to guide the people of Russia, particularly to guide the tsarina. And through her, to guide the tsar himself.” This was a subject that roused him to despair. “Tsar Nicholas is a fool. The monk is meddling in politics, turning His Imperial Majesty against his appointed advisers and—” He halted.

  “And what?”

  He shrugged. “Forget about him. Let’s have no more of Petersburg’s problems. The battle lines will form soon enough.”

  “Are you so sure it will come to that?”

  He tumbled her back on the pillows. “None of us can be sure, so . . .”

  “Don’t placate me, Jens. I’m not a child.”

  The way she said it chilled him. Her eyes had witnessed too much today in that damn hospital of hers. Where was the girl who had gazed at the stars with him on a cold winter’s night in the forest? He caressed the smooth slope of her shoulder. He sat back against the pillows, reached over to the bedside table, and lit himself a cigarette.

  “Valentina, my love, the tsar’s court is a corrupt melting pot. It is dissolute and degenerate.” He kept his voice matter-of-fact. “Grigori Rasputin is a failed monk, but he struck lucky. Tsarina Alexandra has few friends other than the mild-mannered Anna Vyrubova, and he gained power over her. Some say that he has healing powers that help her son. Or that he hypnotizes her. Maybe even a sexual bond between them.”

  Valentina blinked. “How could anyone want to go to bed with such a repulsive man?”

  “You’d be amazed. The women at court scratch each others’ eyes out to oblige him.”

  “But he smells.”

  Jens’s laugh was harsh. “A strong-smelling peasant, a ragged moujik who doesn’t wash or change his clothes. Clearly a man of God!”

  “Jens”—Valentina took the cigarette from his fingers and inhaled its pungent smoke—“do you think Rasputin really has healing powers?”

  He removed the cigarette from her hand and stubbed it out. “No. So don’t even think of taking Katya to him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of it.”

  But the lie hung in the air as transparent as the smoke.

  VARENKA WASN’T DEAD. THAT WAS SOMETHING, AT LEAST. The street was no better and the front door was still split, the odor as overpowering as ever in the unlit hallway. But she wasn’t dead.

  “I’ve brought more food,” Valentina said as she placed a bag on the table. Beside it she tucked a purse. Neither mentioned it.

  “So I see.” Varenka smiled. It was nothing like a real smile, just a shifting of facial muscles, but it would do.

  “I’ll make us some tea, shall I?” Valentina suggested.

  The woman with the scarred scalp was slumped on the floor, wrapped in a threadbare blanket. A whisper of flame struggled in the stove and she hunched in front of it, mouth slightly open, as if she would devour the yellow flame.

  Valentina yanked a bundle of kindling from the bag. “Here.”

  The woman eagerly extracted three sticks and laid them with care in an arch above the flame. When they crackled at her, the thin face smiled back at them as if they were friends, while Valentina boiled a kettle and provided tea. The dainty cakes from her mother’s kitchen looked ridiculous in this setting, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. She ate three of them before she spoke.

  “What have you come for?”

  “To make sure you are still here.”

  The woman made a strange noise in the back of her throat, and it took Valentina a second to realize it was a laugh.

  “You think I could be anywhere else?” Varenka asked.

  “Do you work?” Valentina asked.

  “I did.” The woman shook her head. “In a mill. But I was fired when I took a day off because my boy was sick.” Her eyes were hard. No tears.

  “I know a dressmaker who is looking for a cleaner. I could speak to her. If you want the position.”

  “Of course I want it.”

  There was a stillness in the room, each expecting something of the other. Valentina spoke first.

  “Then I shall ask her. But you will have to be clean.”

  Varenka looked down at her filthy hands. “The water pump in the street is frozen again. I melt snow for tea.”

  Valentina’s stomach turned as she looked at her own half-drunk cup. “Dogs piss in the snow.”

  Once more the rusty chuckle rattled out. Varenka looked at her new friend. “What is it you want? You’re not here just to feed me.”

  Valentina removed a pot of apricot conserve from the bag, and a loaf of black bread. If Jens knew she had come here alone, he would be angry. “I want you to warn me.”

  “Warn you of what?”

  “When the danger is coming.”

  “What danger?”

  “This revolution of yours.”

  It was as if she had spoken a magic word. The deadness vanished and Varenka’s eyes, her mouth, her dull skin, all changed. It shocked Valentina that one word could have such power.

  “This is my address.” She pushed a sheet of paper across the table.

  Varenka didn’t even glance at it. “I can’t read. And anyway I wouldn’t come near the kind of mansion you must live in. Even your servants would spit on me. Think of something else.”

  “There is a notice board I’ve seen by the bus stop in St. Isaac’s Square. Pin a piece of a scarf on it to let me know.”

  “A red scarf?”

  “If you want.”

  Varenka nodded. “Whatever the men say, it will not be soon, this revolution of theirs.”

  “I once saw an army of stinging ants swarm over a vole and kill it,” Valentina commented. “Maybe your ants aren’t ready to be an army yet.”

  “Tell me, what is it you do to make your fingers look so strong?”

  “I play the piano.”

  Varenka prodded Valentina’s fingers as if she could coax music from them. “I’ve never heard anyone play the piano.”

  Her words made Valentina want to weep.

  IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. JENS HAD NOT INTENDED TO CALL ON Katya. It happened because he had spent an evening playing poker at a friend’s house. Dr. Fedorin was there, and between losing hands at cards he told him of a new treatment for spinal injuries that was being tried out at the spa resort of Karlovy Vary. He had heard good reports. Fedorin had in mind the apprentice boys whose brittle young backs had suffered the brunt of the saber blades, but Jens immediately thought of Katya.

  When he was out riding the next morning and spotted Valentina’s wild Cossack prancing through the watery fog on the back of a jittery mare, it was only natural to comment on his mount.

  “She’s an elegant creature, Popkov, that’s certain. But not exactly your style, I’d have thought.”

  The Cossack swayed his head from side to side, like a horse himself. “The animal is not for me,” he said gruffly.

  “Ah! A surprise for Miss Valentina perhaps?”

  “Nyet.”

  Jens kicked his own horse into a longer stride, but the young wheat-colored mare had taken a liking to Hero and quickened her pace to keep abreast of him. The Cossack loosened her reins, allowing her to
toss her mane at Hero and pick up her feet as prettily as a ballerina.

  Jens couldn’t resist a laugh. Even the Cossack cracked a smile indulgently and they rode side by side through the damp streets, Jens placing Hero between the mare and the traffic, giving reassurance when the crossroads made her nervy. The fog wrapped its thin gray arms around them all the way to the Ivanov house.

  POPKOV WAS RUBBING DOWN HERO’S COAT, AND HE HANDLED the big horse well. Jens liked a man who could sense an animal’s mood through the tips of his fingers and knew where to scratch a fold of skin to produce the wide-nostril whicker of a contented horse.

  “I won’t be long,” he told the Cossack.

  The man grunted.

  Jens filled up a bucket from a tap in the yard and placed it in front of Hero, who pushed his great black nose into it with relish. Jens stood and watched the animal for a moment.

  “Popkov,” he said, “you are in a privileged position in this household.” He glanced around at the big man with a wry smile. “As a thick-headed Cossack, I can’t image why you are permitted inside the house or given access to the young Ivanova ladies.” Jens ran a hand down Hero’s muscular neck. “It must be because of your natural charm, I suppose.”

  The Cossack’s mouth split open in a wide grin, revealing white tombstone teeth. “Go to hell.”

  I’VE NEVER SEEN VALENTINA SO HAPPY.”

  Jens smiled at Katya and balanced the tiny teacup on his knee. “It’s working in the hospital that has done it. She has gained a sense of purpose.”

  “That’s what Mama says.”

  “Your mother is probably right.”

  “Mama does not know her as well as I do.”

  “What is it,” he asked carefully, “that you know, that your mother doesn’t?”

  “Jens, I may not have the use of my legs but I can still use my eyes.”

  “So what is it you see?”

  She laughed. “I see the way her skin glows when it should be gray and weary from long hours at the hospital, how her step grows heavy when she is forced to spend the day at home. I see the way her mouth smiles a secret smile when she thinks no one is watching, and the way her breath catches. She’ll be in the middle of a sentence and suddenly she can’t speak.” Katya’s voice grew wistful. “I believe it happens when she has just remembered something.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “A moment. One that invades her mind.”

  “Katya, what an acutely observant girl you are.”

  “She’s my sister. I love her.”

  Their gaze held. “So do I,” he said softly.

  She nodded, bouncing her blond curls. “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know Valentina. She is in love, and she is loved.”

  “I will take great care of her, Katya.”

  She smiled at him. “I believe you will, Jens. But be careful. If Papa finds out that she prefers you over Captain Chernov, he will deny you entry to this house.”

  “Thank you for the warning.”

  It could not be easy for Katya to give him her sister so readily.

  JENS HEARD THE UPROAR FROM THE STABLES BEFORE HE reached them. Fearing for Hero, he moved quickly. Shouts and crashes were reverberating off the wooden walls, and he found five men beating the hell out of Popkov. The big man was lumbering and lunging like a drunken bear, blood pouring from a gash above his eye. The other grooms had fled, and that meant only one thing. They knew exactly who these men were in their black coats and polished boots, and knew enough to keep away. But five against one struck Jens as harsh odds.

  He seized one attacker’s shoulder, spun him around, and received a fist in his stomach as a thank-you. He grunted. Before another fist could come his way, he rammed his head into the other man’s chest, knocking the bastard off balance. A quick upward jerk of Jens’s neck and his head cracked the man’s jaw. A scream ripped through the damp air, setting the horses into a frenzy of kicking and whinnying. Curses and crowbars crunched down on Popkov’s shoulders till he hit the ground, but he took two men with him. Boots thudded and chests heaved with effort.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Jens shouted, “stop this now. You’ll kill him. What’s going on here?”

  One head half-turned. A face with heavy features and a mulberry birthmark glared at him from eyes that were nothing but dense black pupils, deep greedy pits of enjoyment.

  “Get lost. Unless you want some of the same.”

  A crowbar swung from the side and threatened to smack against Jens’s skull. He had no idea what this fight was about, but he no longer cared. He ducked, snatched the knout from a hook on the wall and unleashed it. Its lash was tipped with metal barbs.

  The first crack of the whip ripped open a man’s back; the second sliced a strip of flesh from an unguarded neck. Blood spurted onto the straw. The two men, who were still standing, abandoned their Cossack prey and turned on Jens, but another flick of his wrist curled the length of rawhide through the air in elegant swinging loops. They backed off. Too late they became aware of the wounded man on his feet behind them. The stolen crowbar in his fist slammed down first on one head, then on the other, and they dropped like stones.

  “Fuck them!” Popkov bellowed.

  “Fuck you!” Jens muttered, breathing hard. “What the hell did you do to start this fight?”

  They were both looking at each other, trying not to grin. Unexpected blood brothers.

  “Damn it,” Jens said, “what have you gotten me into?”

  A quiet voice came from behind him. “Put down that whip. And you, oaf, drop that metal bar.” No threat in it. Just a quiet statement. “Or I will put a bullet in your brain.”

  Twenty-five

  FEAR COMES IN MANY GUISES. FOR JENS IT CAME IN THE form of a pen, the pen in his questioner’s hand. When his questioner was calm it lay still and somnolent between the man’s fingers, but when he grew agitated it adopted a fast flick-flick-flick. Jens’s heart rate echoed its beat.

  “Ask Minister Ivanov,” Jens said for the twentieth time. “It’s his house, not mine. I came to collect my horse, that’s all.”

  “Why was the horse there in the first place?”

  “I told you. I was visiting the minister’s daughter.”

  “Or were you using that excuse just as a cover to give you access to the stables?”

  “No.”

  “To retrieve the box of hand grenades from where you’d hidden it.”

  “No.”

  “When did you secrete the grenades in the stables?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Who asked you to collect them?”

  “Nobody. I know nothing about them.”

  “You attacked my agents with a whip.”

  “They were killing the Cossack.”

  “So you admit this Liev Popkov is your accomplice in an anti-government plot.”

  “No. I hardly know the man. He is a servant there; that’s all I know of him.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No.”

  They danced around in circles. Flick-flick-flick. Jens sat as though indifferent to it all as he replied to the same questions again and again. Yet it was all so civilized. No bare interrogation room, no harsh lights, no handcuffs tearing his skin. A chair with padded arms, even the offer of a cigarette. Which he declined.

  They were seated in an ordinary office with manila folders and a flourishing potted plant on a shelf. A smart new carpet on the floor. No bloodstains, Jens noticed. His questioner was a small balding man with a patient face and large ears, which he fingered in moments of uncertainty. Each time Jens said, “Speak to Minister Ivanov. He is a loyal servant of His Imperial Majesty,” the fingers sought out an earlobe. The questioner was treading with care, feeling for how thin the ice was under his feet.

  The damn Cossack was a fool. Nowhere was safe, nowhere unobserved by Okhrana eyes. If Popkov thought the stables of a government minister would be a clever place to hide antigovern
ment weapons, he knew nothing about the way the secret police worked. Nevertheless he found it hard to believe that Popkov was a Bolshevik. Damn it, it gave him the shivers to think of Valentina anywhere near such a lethal package.

  “Where is Liev Popkov?” he asked abruptly.

  “The revolutionary is being interrogated.”

  Jens’s blood chilled. Interrogated.

  “I don’t believe Popkov is a revolutionary. Anyone could have put the grenades there to endanger the minister.”

  “Including you.”

  “No, not me.”

  “What you believe is irrelevant.”

  The man’s eyes were hungry. He wanted to unleash his teeth and devour Jens, but something was holding him back. Jens realized it was the title beside his own name on the front of the folder on the desk. JENS FRIIS: ENGINEER TO His MAJESTY THE TSAR.

  ENGINEER TO HIS MAJESTY THE TSAR.

  He would make use of it, that title. Why not? His pulse drummed in his ears. He knew there were a hundred reasons why not, a hundred interrogation cells in the basement nowhere near as cozy as this one. Ones with chains attached to the chairs and dried blood on the tiled walls. He spoke pleasantly to his questioner.

  “Where is Liev Popkov?” he asked. “I want to see him.”

  It was plain the man was annoyed by the request but struggled not to show it. After a long silence during which the pen flicked back and forth he rose to his feet, walked over to the door, and swung it open with such force that it banged off the wall.

  “Come.”

  JENS GRIPPED ONTO THE EDGE OF HIS FURY. STOPPED IT FROM banging its fist against the metal door, prevented it from seizing his escort’s neck and ramming it through the narrow observation flap. He stood outside the prison cell and called Popkov’s name.

  Inside the cell he could make out a broad back, blood pouring from fresh wounds. He moved closer and through the rectangular peephole in the door saw the Cossack chained by his wrists to the opposite wall. Stark naked but still on his feet, face pressed to the filthy tiles. The massive muscles of his buttocks were black with bruises; electrodes trailed from his genitals to a battery. Feces slithered down the back of his legs.