The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  “So Minister Davidov has no interest in his private life anymore. Yet he is still ambitious, despite his age. Last month he inherited the extensive estates of his elder brother, who was killed in a motor accident.”

  Ivanov narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”

  “He is looking for ways to invest it in furthering his career, broadening its scope. I heard a whisper that he is interested in heading several of the committees that you control, so perhaps I could drop a word in his ear if ...” He left it there.

  Ivanov could not keep the greed from his eyes. Jens flipped open the mahogany cigar box on the desk, removed a cigar for himself, and held a hand out to the minister, who seized it like a lifeline.

  Ivanov smiled and shook it hard. “Welcome to the family, Friis. I always wanted Valentina’s happiness.”

  Jens lit his cigar. Yes, he thought, I’m sure you did.

  JENS WAS WORKING IN HIS OFFICE WITH YOUNG KROSKIN, the surveyor who lost a part of his leg after the tunnel explosion. They were bent over a set of plans on his desk, discussing the latest expansion of the tunnels, when the telephone rang. Jens gave a grunt of irritation at the interruption, walked over to the wall, and lifted the earpiece.

  “Friis here.”

  “Friis, you cunning bastard!”

  It was Davidov. “What is it you want, Minister?”

  “To congratulate you.”

  “On what?”

  “On your engagement, for one thing. I heard it from Ivanov himself. And for a second thing, for arranging my deal with him. He’s one hell of a greedy bugger, so it has cost me a fortune, but I shall enjoy ...”

  Jens stopped listening. Valentina was standing in the doorway of his office. “Excuse me, Minister, I have to go. Thank you for calling.” He hung up.

  Kroskin was staring at Valentina. “Miss Ivanova,” the young man said, blushing, “I’m so pleased to see you. I always wanted to thank you for your help down ... down in the tunnel.”

  She nodded, but her eyes were on Jens.

  Kroskin gathered up his crutch and limped to the door. She let him pass, then entered the office, closing the door behind her.

  “Jens,” she said, and despite the black coat and hat that she was wearing, she brightened the dull room. “I know how we can do it.”

  THEY WAITED TILL AFTER DARK, UNTIL THE FACTORIES spilled out their work shift and shops locked their doors at the end of the day. Valentina loved moving through the city at Jens’s side, her shoulder feeling the solidity of him. He was not going to vanish. Not like Katya. Not like Arkin. Jens would be a part of her life forever.

  The street hadn’t changed at all; the door with the cracked panel was still unmended. Jens knocked loudly and when it remained shut, he knocked on it harder until the panel flapped loose. Only then did a man yank open the door no more than the width of his head, and in the dim light they could see it was a young man’s face with quick curious eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re here to see Ivan and Varenka Sidorov,” Jens said as he slid one foot into the gap.

  “They’ve gone.”

  “No,” Valentina insisted. No. Not vanished. “I think you’re mistaken.”

  “No mistake.”

  Jens took a hand from his pocket, and between his fingers lay a five-rouble note. “May we see for ourselves?”

  The note disappeared into the man’s jacket. “Of course,” he smiled, amused. Easy money. He stepped back and they saw that the door on the left stood open, a kerosene lamp burning inside, as the sound of a woman singing trickled into the hallway.

  “Take a good look,” the young man offered.

  Valentina walked into the room. It was still dank and small, still with a cracked ceiling and mold on the wall, but it had been transformed. The furniture was cheap and worn, but a scattering of material in rich colors gave the place a life it had not possessed before. Golds and ambers, magenta and scarlet, colorful swathes of it were draped over chairs and table and bed. Valentina stared. In the middle of the room a young woman with long black hair and gypsy eyes was swaying as she sang softly, an old folk song that belonged in the wilds of the Russian steppes.

  Abruptly Valentina turned and walked out.

  JENS LED HER DOWN TO A BASEMENT. HER FEET FELT FOR each step in the dark. It had started to rain and the air here stank of factory waste that burned the eyes, but Valentina focused on the blackened house in front of her and let herself hope that Arkin could be here. Beside her Jens stood silently. Ever since they’d left Varenka’s old place, he had said little except, “I know someone else who might help.” She had tucked an arm through his and slid the flat of her hand under his coat so that she could gently rub his chest as they walked. He seemed to have withdrawn.

  The door to the basement swung open. It was not what she had been expecting. One large room was crowded with beds and bodies and the wail of a hungry child, while a short squat dog with fighting scars sniffed her leg as though considering whether to taste it. Jens put an arm around her, keeping her close, kicked the dog away, and approached a thin woman with a golden-haired baby at her shoulder.

  “I came here before,” he said to her. “Remember?”

  “Of course I remember you.” She smiled and let her eyes linger on him with interest. But it was the baby that Valentina could not take her eyes off. She wanted to touch the gossamer curls on its head, to feel their softness. Exactly like Katya’s.

  “Is Larisa Sergeyeva here?” Jens asked, his gaze probing the shadows of the room.

  The woman laughed and rolled her eyes at him. “Gone off, that one has.”

  “Gone where?”

  “How should I know? A man came in very early in the morning a few days ago and they spent an hour with heads tight together, talking and arguing. But all smiles in the end. She just picked up her bag, tied the babe on her back, and we haven’t seen her since.”

  “A man?” Valentina asked. “What did he look like?”

  “Tall, I suppose.” She smiled at Jens again. “But not as tall as you. Brown hair, old clothes but neat.”

  “A face that knows what it wants?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” the woman nodded. “That’s him.”

  “Chyort!” Valentina swore. “He’s ahead of us.”

  Jens walked her out and up into the street where he curled an arm around her neck, warm and intimate. “There are other places,” he told her.

  AT ANY TIME ARKIN COULD HAVE STEPPED OUT OF THE shadows and put a knife in her throat to make this hounding cease. But he didn’t. He knew he couldn’t. Any more than he could put a knife in her mother’s delicate white throat. He despised himself for his weakness. They were his enemy; they were the oppressors.

  The engineer too was his enemy, a far more dangerous one. If Arkin killed Valentina Ivanova, he would have to kill the engineer as well because if he didn’t, one day Friis would find him. There was no question of that. And that day would be his last.

  So for now, he let the girl live.

  ARKIN WALKED ALONG THE HOTEL’S LONG CORRIDOR, aware of the risk he was taking. He didn’t for one moment think Elizaveta would be here in the Hotel de Russie. Instead Okhrana agents could be waiting for him in the room, but, even so, he didn’t turn back. He stood silently outside the door and listened for a long time, but there was no sound. That meant nothing. At his touch on the handle, the door opened and he entered the room.

  Elizaveta Ivanova was sitting on the edge of the bed clothed in sepulchral black, with a veil under a hat of glossy black feathers. An expression of bleak misery lay on her face, and a large gun sprawled like a lapdog on her knees. One gloved hand was stroking it. At the sight of him she picked it up. For a moment they stared at each other without speaking.

  “Dobriy vecher,” he said at last. “Good evening, Elizaveta.”

  She rose to her feet and steadied the gun with both hands. No words.

  He moved forward till he was close enough to touch it, but he kept his hands away from her.
“I didn’t mean for Katya to die,” he said quietly.

  She shook her head from side to side, a slow awkward movement, as though it were too heavy for her neck. “That’s not what Valentina says.”

  He took a step toward her so that the muzzle of the gun was jammed into his chest. He could feel his heart beating against it. “Pull the trigger if it makes you happier.”

  She closed her eyes behind the veil. He held his breath and counted to ten, but there was no blast of pain to rob him of life. Without comment he took the gun from her hands and tossed it onto the satin quilt, then gently removed her hatpin and let the hat fall to the floor. His arms encircled her trembling figure and he rested his cheek against her hair, her breath warm and quick against his neck. For ten minutes they stood locked together, the rigid frame of her body slowly melting into his.

  “How can I not hate you?” she whispered. “How can I be such a bad mother?”

  “I wish,” he said, “that you and I had met at a different time and in a different place.”

  “There is only this time. There is only this place.”

  He kissed her hair, inhaled its familiar scent, unclipped a pearl grip, and watched a golden tress tumble to her shoulder.

  “How did you know I would come today?” he asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  The words swirled in his mind. He pictured her, day after day, a lonely figure seated on the edge of the hotel bed with a gun on her lap. Anger in her heart. Waiting for him. It was too much. His tears fell on her hair.

  VALENTINA HUNTED HIM, SHE AND JENS TOGETHER, WEEK after week. The way hounds hunt a fox, from den to den. She wanted him to feel her hatred pursuing him as he shifted from place to place, abandoning one safe corner after another as they ventured into bars and slums, churches and meeting halls. Always with roubles in their hands.

  Twice they came so close she could smell him in the air they breathed, but each time he disappeared through a window or over a rooftop. By day she worked once more in St. Isabella’s Hospital, but by night she and Jens stalked the backstreets. When her mother asked where she was going, she was honest with her. “I’m searching for Viktor Arkin.”

  “The police are handling that. There’s no need for you to do so.”

  “They have failed, Mama. I don’t intend to.”

  But instead of forbidding her to leave the house, her mother stared at her solemnly and warned, “Tread carefully, Valentina. An eye for an eye may seem like justice to you, but he has a ruthless mind and is quick to anger.”

  “What makes you say that, Mama?”

  Her mother’s cheeks flushed. “He’s a revolutionary, isn’t he? They are all in a rage that eats their hearts out.”

  “I know his mind, Mama. Don’t fear for me.”

  JENS, WHAT IS IT?”

  There was something wrong. Valentina could feel it in the room, an unease that set her pulse pounding. Jens was standing at the window of his apartment, looking down at the traffic and at the people hurrying to escape the chill autumn wind. Behind him in pride of place on a long table stood an elaborate wooden mouse palace with turrets for the white rodent to scurry up and bridges for its tiny feet to balance on. At this moment the animal was running inside its wheel, making a steady whirring noise that was oddly comforting.

  “It will snow soon,” Jens murmured. “The cold will stir the workers into strike action again. There is no bread in the shops.”

  Valentina came to stand behind him and laid her cheek against his back. “What is it?” she asked again.

  “Valentina, you won’t catch him.”

  “Arkin?”

  “Not like this. He’s always one step ahead.”

  “Let’s not talk of him right now.” She ran her hands down his naked sides and tucked her body against his, the hard muscles taut against her ribs. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his spine so hard it hurt. “Jens.” She turned him around so that she could smile up into his dark green eyes. “You are right. We must think of something new.”

  ARKIN TOOK THE LETTER FROM THE PRIEST IN THE CHURCH and for a moment could think of no one who would have sent it. It was a rule: put nothing in writing. It could get you killed.

  “Where’s Father Morozov?” he asked the priest, a man with a domed head and small wire spectacles.

  “He’s in his village. There have been police here, asking questions about him.” He shook his head nervously.

  “So he is keeping out of sight?”

  “Da. Yes.”

  “He is important to us.”

  That was when the priest offered him the letter.

  “Who brought it?” Arkin asked. On the front of the envelope was his name in large elegant lettering.

  “A young woman.”

  He tore it open.

  You expect too much of life, Viktor Arkin. You expect too much of me if you think I will stay away. So let us be direct, let us meet face to face, just you and me, no one else. Let us say what there is to say. You can call me an oppressor, I can call you a killer. Meet me tomorrow in the courtyard at the back of St. Isabella’s Hospital. Three o’clock. What then? Then I can tell you that our small personal tragedies mean everything in the storm that is sweeping through Russia and that I am carrying your child.

  Arkin’s hand shook, so that the words blurred in front of his eyes.

  SHE HAD CHOSEN WELL. THE COURTYARD LAY IN FITFUL sunshine, neither private nor public. Arkin had inspected it just as dawn was breaking over the city, and he could see why she had settled on this as the meeting place. It did not make a good trap. It had too many escape routes. As well as the massive metal gates that stood open at the entrance for ambulances and delivery vans, there were also two doors into the hospital, another in the rear wall that led to a side street, and a metal hatch down into a cellar of some kind.

  Both of them would breathe easier. He wanted to trust her.

  He observed the courtyard for several hours. For much of the time it remained empty but at irregular intervals it filled with activity, so that at any point their meeting could be interrupted. That made it safer. A couple of brick storage huts along one wall gave him concern, but he had easily opened their locks and found nothing but stocks of kerosene and crates with equipment like bedpans and sterilizers inside. He took in which parts of the courtyard were in view of the rear of the hospital and which parts weren’t. As the sun climbed he smoked a cigarette in a shaded corner behind one of the huts and knew he was invisible.

  Yes, Valentina Ivanova, you have chosen well.

  VALENTINA WAS BUSY. THE WARD WAS FRANTIC. A FIRE AT the sailmakers’ workshop brought in a stream of burn victims, mainly women. Time ran too fast. Whenever she glanced at the clock, the hands had leapt forward in huge unexpected jumps. One o‘clock. She bathed a damaged limb with hypochlorite solution and helped a man with dehydration drink a glass of tea at the speed of a snail. Two o’clock.

  Her mouth was dry. Would he turn up?

  She thought again about the letter. She had been careful not to show it to Jens, just told him she had written it to ask Arkin for a face-to-face meeting. No mention of its last line about the child. Would Arkin believe it? She sat quietly with a woman who was confused about where she was and why her son had brought her here.

  Two fifty-one.

  She washed her hands, put on her nurse’s cape. Two fifty-six. She began the long walk down the corridors to the rear of the hospital. She pushed open the double doors and stepped out into the sunlight, so bright after the somber interior that she had to screw up her eyes.

  There he was. Viktor Arkin stood against one of the walls, taller than she remembered, noticeably thinner. His forehead and cheekbones jutted through his skin. Her eyes fixed on the gun held loosely in his hand, and for the first time she let into her mind the thought that he might kill her. No, not if she could make him believe she was carrying his child. She walked over to a brightly lit area next to one of the huts, but Arkin didn’t move. A full minute
ticked past and she could hear each second click inside her head, but just when she thought he would be tempted no closer he approached, up on his toes like a cat. He stopped five paces from her, and she saw his eyes adjust as he stepped out of the gloom.

  “You’ve given me trouble,” he said.

  “I’m glad.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Your engineer.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  He smiled politely, and she had no idea whether he believed her. He shrugged and lowered his gun to his side, watching her carefully. “That may be true. I can’t imagine you would want him to know what a little whore you were in the izba.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “So what is it you want?” he asked, suddenly brusque and businesslike.

  “Where are all your men? I’m sure they’re hiding somewhere here, a whole army of them inside the huts and down in the cellar.”

  He smiled, but this time it wasn’t polite. “No one is here except me. Don’t think I didn’t consider it. I could have taken you captive again and kept you locked up for nine months, then taken the child and slit your throat.”

  He had seriously considered such an action; she could hear it in his voice, and the thought made her legs tremble. “I’d have stuck a fork in your throat long before the nine months were up.”

  He laughed, genuinely amused. “I do believe you would. If the child is really mine, not your engineer’s, have you considered marrying me instead, or even letting me have the child after it is born?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. So what is it you want? We’re here face to face. Do you intend to try to kill me?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

  How could he smile? How could he laugh? How could this man not tear his hair out and rend his clothes into shreds after what he did to Katya?