The People's Will Read online

  But now he had to go, for the first time in his life, to Petersburg. Petersburg was where, as far as he knew, Luka still lived. And both Dmitry and Iuda knew of Luka and so to find him might be to find them. Perhaps it would be a good time too to attempt to make himself known to Konstantin and discover whether his mother’s claims could be anything close to the truth. Now of all times, there was least to lose if they proved a lie. Now of all times, Mihail needed a father.

  He read again the words of the letter he had begun writing in hospital:

  My dearest Mama,

  I have seen him, face to face. He was just as you described him. I will not waste your time by recounting my feelings, but must tell you immediately: I failed. I failed in the sole task that you have raised me to accomplish. He escaped me, but he is not free, and I shall soon hunt him down again.

  Let me tell you from the beginning …

  At that point Mihail had put down his pen to think, and soon after the letter to him had arrived, and there was no need to write any more.

  The letter was from Saratov, from Nadia Karlovna Lukina, the matriarch of the family whose surname Mihail had adopted. Tamara had gone to Saratov with Mihail still in her womb and sought out the family, knowing – praying – that they would help her, out of their respect for Aleksei. In the Patriotic War, Aleksei had fought alongside Maksim Sergeivich Lukin. It had not ended well for Maks, but the two men had been firm friends, and that friendship extended to his family. On her arrival at their house, four and a half decades later in 1857, the pregnant Tamara had only needed to mention Aleksei’s name to be taken in and cared for.

  Nadia’s letter brought the news that Mihail had expected and feared. The item inside, which he had felt through the paper of the envelope and immediately recognized, was an icon – a small oval icon showing the face of Christ – hanging from a silver chain. It was old now; at some point the chain had snapped and been hurriedly tied in a fine knot. Tamara had not known when – it had happened before the icon was given to her. She had always worn it around her neck, ever since Mihail could remember, and always promised that Mihail would have it when she died.

  And now Mihail did have it. It hung around his neck and nestled against his chest, beneath his shirt. Tamara had been only four when her father had given it to her – it was one of her few memories of him from back then. He in turn had been given it by his wife, Marfa – Dmitry’s mother, but not Tamara’s – as he set out to do battle against Napoleon in 1812. That Mihail now wore it meant that his mother was dead.

  He read through Nadia’s letter again, but there was little it could tell him. It corralled many words into expressing a simple concept – a death. It explained how Tamara had found it harder and harder to breathe, and how every day she coughed up blood more regularly. It explained how Tamara did not blame her son for being absent at the moment of her death, in such a way that suggested that though Tamara might not, Nadia perhaps did.

  Mihail did not blame himself and knew that his mother did not blame him either. She had raised him to have but one destiny, to fulfil one goal that she knew she was too old and too weak to achieve. Although he had failed on this occasion, nothing would have given her more pleasure than to know that at the time of her passing, or close to it, he was face to face with the creature that had caused the death of her father, of her mother, and destroyed her life. If she had lived to see that destiny fulfilled, all the better, but Mihail knew she had died in the knowledge that her son would one day achieve what she had sent him out to do. She would have died happy.

  Mihail folded the letter from Nadia and slipped it into his pocket. Then he crumpled his own letter to a ball and let it drop from his hand, watching the wind catch it and take it away from the hull of the ship before flinging it into the sea. His eyes followed as it floated away and became entangled with the foam of the ship’s wake, never to be seen again.

  He reached inside his shirt and stroked his thumb across the face of the icon, remembering his mother, remembering what she had told him of her life, and how most of that had been the story of her father’s life, recounted to her in short, painful breaths in the few hours before his death. Beside the icon hung another item that Tamara had given to Mihail and that Aleksei had given to her. This one was a locket, square and made of silver. Aleksei had handed it to Tamara moments before his death. She had given it to Mihail the day he left to go to university in Moscow.

  He had only looked inside once, but Tamara had already explained what was in there: twelve strands of blond hair, coiled into a circle. It was the same blond – the same hair – that Mihail had seen on the head of the prisoner in Geok Tepe just a few days ago. Aleksei had ripped it from Iuda’s head as he’d tried to drown him in the frozen Berezina, seventy years before. One day, Mihail would reunite those hairs with their owner, and complete the job his grandfather had begun.

  And those few hairs were not the only memento he had to remind him of Iuda. The other was buried deep in his luggage. Major Osokin had shown it to him as he lay in the field hospital – Iuda’s severed ear. Osokin had scarcely dared to voice the implication of what he had witnessed, and had almost wept with relief when Mihail had unquestioningly agreed with his interpretation of what had taken place. He had gladly handed the lump of flesh over to his subordinate, hoping to forget all that had happened.

  Mihail did not know what use he would make of it. However distant, it remained a part of Iuda’s living body. If he exposed it to the sun and let it burn, then Iuda would feel it burn – but that was not a pleasure to be squandered. When Iuda finally died, then the ear would crumble to dust with the rest of him. If that were to happen at the hands of another then at least Mihail would know. But his hope was to be there, to destroy Iuda for himself and in the monster’s dying moments to reveal his heritage and his true name.

  Until then, he would stick with Lukin. It was the name by which he was known in the army, and so it would make life, and travel, much easier if he kept it. And his revenge was not just in Aleksei’s name. Iuda had killed Maks too, and Vadim, and it was for them that Aleksei hated him so. Mihail was happy to carry Aleksei’s hatred along with his own – his mother had taught him that.

  But once he had Iuda in his power, once there was no chance of interruption from inconvenient uncles, once it was time for the sentence passed against Iuda to be carried out, then Iuda and the world would know Mihail’s true name:

  Mihail Konstantinovich Danilov.

  CHAPTER V

  NOW HE WAS making progress. The boat across the Caspian had been speedy enough, but from Baku Mihail once again had travelled over dirt roads, either in creaking carriages or on the back of post horses so old that he suspected it was only his riding them that kept them from becoming a part of that evening’s stew. He’d headed north-west at first, sticking to the Caspian coast and observing how quickly it got colder as he progressed. At Petrovsk-Port the road turned inland and the journey continued by the same slow, unreliable means.

  But at Vladikavkaz modernity returned – in the form of the railway. Now he travelled at thirty, sometimes even forty versts an hour. The track had turned almost due north and the change in the climate became more obvious with each passing hour. The train was slowing now, coming into Rostov-on-Don. The journey from Baku to Vladikavkaz had taken five long days. From Vladikavkaz it had taken scarcely twenty-two hours. Even so, it was now nine days since he had left Geok Tepe; twelve since Dmitry and Iuda’s departure. From here the journey would speed up, and that meant that those two might almost be in Petersburg by now. Mihail had no wish to tarry, but there wasn’t a train until the afternoon. There was little he could do but wait.

  The town sat on the river Don, still a good forty versts from the Sea of Azov into which it emptied. A little way across that sea was the town of Taganrog, where Aleksandr I had died. That was the official story; Mihail knew better. Aleksei had told Tamara everything, and she had told Mihail – even down to the name that Aleksandr had chosen for his new
life: Fyodor Kuzmich. It was dangerous knowledge, though less so now. Kuzmich must surely be dead – otherwise he would be over a hundred. But Tamara and Mihail both knew a way that that might be possible. Iuda, by their reckoning, was around that age.

  In Rostov Mihail found a bathhouse and some lunch and returned to the station in good time for the Moscow train. On the platform he felt uneasy. He looked around him, but in the clear light of day he had no fear of vampires. He felt the same discomfort that every Russian experienced, especially when travelling. He was being watched; they all were, by the Ohrana – the secret police that had so recently taken over from the Third Section. Dmitry had been posing as one of their agents, or perhaps more than posing – he could well be a genuine operative – but his aims within that organization would be quite different from those of its more regular employees, which were to ensure that the people remained in their place.

  Mihail could not despise the Third Section the way that others did. His mother had been one of their agents and had taught him much of what she had learned – anything that might help him in his quest. She believed that much of what she had done had been good work for the benefit of the nation. She loved the tsar, as a matter of principle, but in all her concern about bringing Mihail up to hate her enemies, she had neglected to make him an unquestioning royalist. He was no socialist either. Government by and large was an irrelevance; how would a change of government help him in his one goal, to destroy Iuda? Perhaps he was a nihilist, to use Turgenev’s definition – ‘a man who declines to bow to authority, or to accept any principle on trust, however sanctified it may be’. Nullius in verba – take nobody’s word for it – was another way of putting it. For a moment Mihail paused, wondering how he knew the phrase, then he gave a wry smile. They were the words that Aleksei had seen on the cover of Iuda’s notebook, years before – the motto of the Royal Society in London.

  In current times, he could hardly blame the tsar for being fearful of his own people, or for sending out spies to keep an eye on them. His people had done enough over the last few years in attempting to kill him. It was less than twelve months ago that they had exploded a bomb in the Winter Palace itself, and not long before that they had blown up what they thought was the imperial train, only to discover that they had done nothing more than exterminate His Majesty’s luggage.

  That was why the railway stations drew so much attention. Mihail could see two men on the platform who were obvious ohraniki, but there would be at least the same number that he hadn’t spotted. He suspected that they posted the ineffectual ones – the ones who peeped over the tops of newspapers that they never read – just to lull the terrorists into a false sense of security. It was the ones you didn’t notice that you had to worry about.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but have you seen a porter?’

  Mihail looked around and then down. She was a short woman, but pretty; the same age as Mihail, or a little older. Her blonde hair was pinned up on the back of her head. She did not look well. Her skin was pale and moist, like clay, and her green eyes, which might have been her best feature, bulged a little in their sockets. Beside her were two cases – one almost half her height, the other smaller. Perhaps it was the effort of carrying them that had caused her so much strain; perhaps not.

  ‘I just dismissed one,’ said Mihail. He looked around in the direction that the porter had gone, but could not see the man. He smiled. It would be a long journey, and there was no one on the platform with whom he would rather spend it. ‘I’m sure I can manage if you’ll allow me.’

  Before she could agree he had picked up the larger bag and begun to lift it into the carriage, ignoring the pain in his wounded hand. It was heavy, but he tried to make it seem like a matter of no effort. He placed it at the end of the compartment, just next to where the porter had put his own trunk, and then returned to help the young lady with her other bag. She had already lifted it and was halfway up the iron steps to the second-class carriage. He reached out, but she ignored him, continuing to manhandle the bag herself and forcing him to step back.

  At last she sat down. He took the seat opposite.

  ‘You wouldn’t prefer to sit by the window?’ he asked.

  She shook her head curtly, and then raised her hand to her temple as if the action had hurt her. ‘I prefer the shade,’ she said.

  His mother had always taught Mihail to be prepared, to notice the signs and be ready to act upon them. And here there were signs enough: an aversion to sunlight; the pallor of the skin. But it was only a few hours after noon and she had been standing out on the platform. Admittedly it was winter, but the sun was clear, reflecting off the piles of shovelled snow as brightly as it shone in the sky. Mihail leaned forward, pretending to flick a speck of dirt from his trousers, and breathed in through his nose. Sometimes there was an odour to them, particularly if they’d recently eaten. What Mihail smelt was quite different, and yet very familiar to him. It confirmed a quite different diagnosis of what she was.

  ‘Might I introduce myself?’ he asked, smiling. ‘I’m Lieutenant Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin.’

  She returned his smile. ‘My name is Nikonova,’ she said. ‘Yevdokia Yegorovna. My friends call me Dusya.’

  Mihail didn’t really have friends. His mother had called him Mishan and he doubted he would ever want to hear that name from anyone else. He said nothing and felt uncomfortable at the silence.

  A man entered from the far end of the carriage. Mihail did not recognize him as one of the ohraniki he had seen on the platform, but in tow he had a uniformed gendarme, which somewhat gave the game away. They began questioning the passengers. Mihail glanced meaningfully at Dusya and then back in the direction of the two men. She twisted to look before turning back to face Mihail. She was even paler than before, if that were possible.

  Mihail winked at her. She gave him a puzzled look but said nothing.

  Soon the ohranik and the gendarme came to them.

  ‘Papers!’

  They both handed over their passports. The ohranik examined Mihail’s first, while the gendarme swung his gaze up and down the carriage, trying to appear necessary to the whole business.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin. Lieutenant – Grenadier Sappers, Pyetr Nikolayevich Battalion.’ The rank and battalion were evident from his uniform.

  ‘Not with your regiment?’

  ‘On leave.’ Mihail held up his bandaged left hand. Blood had started to seep through from the effort of moving Dusya’s bag.

  ‘Turkmenistan?’

  ‘Geok Tepe.’

  The ohranik nodded approvingly. ‘That was good work Skobyelev did out there.’ He turned to Dusya, examining her papers. ‘And you?’ he asked, without looking up.

  ‘Yevdokia Yegorovna Nikonova.’

  ‘Mrs?’

  ‘Miss.’

  He glanced between her and Mihail. ‘You two travelling together?’ he asked.

  Dusya opened her lips to answer, but no sound came. Her eyes fell to the floor.

  ‘Yevdokia Yegorovna is a friend of my brother,’ said Mihail. He could have left her to her fate, but she was pretty and he enjoyed the thrill of taking an unnecessary risk.

  Dusya looked up, her eyes fixed on him. She might have blushed, but with her sickly skin it was impossible to tell.

  ‘We’re engaged to be married,’ she said, a little too quickly. She was not used to this, and seemed inadequately trained.

  ‘She and my brother, I should say,’ explained Mihail casually. ‘Not she and myself.’ He gave a slight chuckle and Dusya joined in, more naturally this time. ‘It’s pure chance I bumped into her,’ he added, distancing himself in case his ruse proved insufficient.

  ‘I see. How far are you going?’

  ‘To Petersburg,’ said Mihail.

  ‘Only as far as Moscow’ was Dusya’s response. Was that a hint of apology in her eyes?

  ‘I’ll be returning to Moscow in time for the wedding,’ Mihail added. He said
no more. It wouldn’t do to be too helpful.

  The ohranik nodded and he and his henchman moved on. Mihail raised his hand to his face and as he did so slipped his thumb between his first two fingers, making the sign of the sheesh at their backs. They could not see, but the gesture was not for their benefit. Dusya saw and her face suppressed a smirk. The ohranik turned, but already Mihail’s palm was open and innocent. He watched them as they questioned the remainder of the carriage’s occupants, but they didn’t look back again. At last they were finished, and climbed down to the platform. A moment later Mihail heard a slow creak followed by a clang as the brakes were released and the train began slowly to ease its way out of the station.

  Somewhere behind Mihail a man stood up and walked down the carriage in their direction. He was tall – as tall as Dmitry – and heavily built, with a thick beard. He took another seat a little way ahead of them, but Mihail noticed the glance that was exchanged between him and Dusya as he passed. Mihail, it seemed, might have done well as an extemporized guardian for the young lady, but she had never been alone.

  The train was fully up to speed before she dared to look him in the face again. She seemed keen to say something, but uttered not a word. She rubbed her temple again and her eyebrows became pinched.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mihail. ‘You don’t need to explain.’

  She gave a meek, embarrassed smile and turned away again, but she had misunderstood. She didn’t need to explain because he understood perfectly well. Beyond that familiar odour – a scent that made Mihail feel almost at home – there were the symptoms: the bulging eyes, the pallid complexion, the headaches. He’d been warned about them on almost his first day at the Imperial Technical School, and he’d seen it more than once in the field, in men who were less than familiar with the tools of their trade.