City of Silence (City of Mystery) (30 page)

Chapter
Eighteen

Here
was the secret that very few men knew:  The attempt on the life of the tsar two
years earlier had been a fake. 

Well,
that is, at least somewhat of a fake.

The
events of a political revolution may seem to move like lightning to those
watching from outside, but the planning of them requires patience.  Placing
Filip Orlov within the tsar’s guard had been a necessary first step, but the guard
employed so many men that the guard was a virtual army.  The Volya knew that in
order to utilize Filip’s unique talents to their fullest potential, they would
have to find some way to differentiate him from the dozens of others serving a
similar role. 

It
had been decided that the simplest way to do this would be to have Filip throw
himself between the tsar and a would-be assassin.  The tsar, like many gruff
men, had a profoundly sentimental aspect to his nature; he might reward a
detective who had thwarted a murder through clever investigation with some
jewel-encrusted trinket, or decorate a guard who had acted quickly to subdue a
threat by pinning any number of festoons upon his chest.  But his most profound
gratitude would be reserved for a man who had suffered in his stead, the one
whose body absorbed the bullet which had been intended for him.

And
thus the Volya had launched a two-tiered initiative.  Most of the lads believed
that the mission was to shoot the tsar.  And so it was, although the senior and
more experienced members of the group knew that this plan, without irony, was a
bit of a long shot.  The marksman understood that if his first bullet went
astray, he was to cut his losses and fire the second one into Filip; that way,
if the Volya couldn’t manage to assassinate Alexander III on the anniversary of
his father’s murder, then the entire mission should not fall to ruins.  It
would at least buy them a comrade placed high within in the tsar’s private
circle.

The
assassination attempt may have been a fake but the bullet, unfortunately for
Filip, was real.  As it ripped into his well-cushioned side, expertly placed
there by the Volya’s best marksman, he had been surprised not only by the pain
– somewhat different in actuality than it had been in theory – but also by the
sense of violation.  As he had wailed and stumbled and collapsed in the middle
of the street, his grief had been unfeigned.

From
there, events had happened exactly as planned.  The stretcher, the doctors, the
recovery in an elevated suite of rooms within the Winter Palace.  The news that
several of his comrades had been arrested – that some of them had talked and
others had been hanged.  Fortunately none of the ones who broke under pressure
had known that the shooting of Filip had been part of the overall plan, but
still…one never could never predict what details might emerge under
questioning, especially the sort of highly persuasive interrogation the private
guard was known to employ.  Each day in his starched white hospital bed Filip
had lain with both physical pain and a far more tormenting sense of anxiety. 
Any hour could bring the sound of advancing steps, the guard coming to tell him
that he had been revealed and was thus to hang with his comrades. 

The
days turned into a week, then two, as contagion swept the infirmary and his
recovery was delayed.  But still no such steps rang down the hall and eventually
Filip relaxed.

When
he eventually expressed a desire to return to his ancestral home for the
remainder his rehabilitation, this small request had been graciously granted –
so graciously, in fact, that Filip had traveled in one of the tsar’s own
carriages.  His mother had wept at the sight of him, although he had never been
entirely sure if it was the size of the wound or the size of the carriage that
had brought about such an uncharacteristic reaction.  He announced his
promotion to the elite guard casually, while smoking in the garden with his
brothers, but word spread fast, just as he knew it would.  Before he left to
assume his new post, his village had bestowed upon their favored son the
greatest gift such a humble town had to offer: Tatiana.

She
did not love him.  He knew this, but was not offended by the fact.  One might
argue that, other than the enchantment of her beauty, he did not particularly
love her either, at least not at the time of their wedding.  But despite the
surface differences between them, he knew that they were similar in the core. 
They were pragmatists, cursed to spend their lives among people who did not think
clearly, who likely would never be able to do so.  They had both noticed, at
some point in their miserable youths, that the only road out of town led to St.
Petersburg, and they also shared a certain cold ambition – he for his politics
and she for a better life.  Tatiana did not know about her husband’s
involvement with the Volya, nor the fact that his marriage to her was a way to
accelerate his plans.  Being shot in lieu of the tsar might have moved him into
the inner circle, but Filip knew that to stay there, it would take more.  A
beautiful wife who proved a quick study in the ways of the court was an asset. 
Yes, he was rescuing her, but she brought advantages for him as well. 

That
was the part that happened quickly.  The rest of the plan had taken more time. 
For the Volya was also, in its way, a slow moving force for change, their plans
hampered by the comings and goings of the members.  A university was by design
a transient place.  Young men were trained at great effort and great expense,
sometimes of funds and sometimes of life.  In most cases, the investment did
not pay off.  The young men married or took up professions and became caught within
the maw of personal ambition.  They moved on, their revolutionary days a mere
memory, something they would brag about behind closed doors and after much
drink.  Only a small percentage of the boys recruited remained long enough to
progress within the group and even they could not always be trusted.

Yulian
was the perfect example.  At Gregor’s insistence they had gotten him inside the
palace and through the boy’s own gift for dance he had thrived there.  But then
came the girl, the damn girl who wanted nothing more than to dance in that
whore of a city called Paris, and Yulian’s head had been turned.  We will kill
the tsar after the tour, he told them.  Katya and I must go to Paris first.  It
means so much to her.  Yes, this was the impudence of the boy.  He looked into
the face of a man who had offered his body up to a bullet and said that yes, he
would help them, but that he wanted to go to Paris first.

Paris
first. 

That
is what the boy said.

The
revolution could wait until his holiday was complete.

And
then he had added casually, almost as an aside, the remark which sealed his
fate.  “Katya understands I must someday return and do my duty.  I tell her
everything, you see.”

Here
was the secret that only one man kept:  the death of Yulian Krupin came at the
hands of the cause he served.

The
day he decided he must eliminate one of his own was a dark day indeed, but
Filip had long ago accepted the need to make difficult decisions.  You could
hardly take the boy without the girl; the two had argued quite convincingly to
everyone within earshot that their fates were linked.  Yulian had died as he
lived – blindly - and Katya had followed with remarkable ease, almost
cooperatively, almost as if she understood that for Russian women, romantic
love was generally a death sentence. 

Even
when one is a member of a collective there are times when one must act alone. 
Filip understood that no one in the Volya could ever know of his decision, and
nor could anyone within the palace.  Keeping his secret had already proven
difficult, for Gregor had many unanswered questions about his brother’s death. 
At the memorial service he had approached Filip and held out a handkerchief
saying “So that you might weep for my brother, comrade.” 

The
statement was probably nothing more than a rebuke over the fact that Filip had
remained dry-eyed among the wailing of the others, but for a moment Filip’s
blood had run cold.  He had taken the handkerchief and nodded briskly, a
gesture which seemed to satisfy Gregor, but then Filip’s gaze had fallen on the
equally dry-eyed Vlad who was leaning against the plaster wall.  Watching and
listening, just as he always did.  A pesky mosquito, that one.

Within
the palace, the death of the dancers had attracted little interest from his
fellow officers, who had either been fooled by the flourishes of his staging or
too unimpressed by the stature of the victims to care.  Just the damn British
woman, another of those watch and listen types, another mosquito begging for
the palm of a hand.  Her interference had been unfortunate and her death, he
feared, might still arise to haunt him, especially in light of the nearly
simultaneous arrival of a contingent of her countrymen.  If the British should
decide to investigate…

Which
is why he had decided that attention must be deflected to Konstantin 
Antonovich at once.

There
were those, he knew, who liked to gossip that Filip’s pretty little bird had
flown.  He had heard the guffaws behind his back, the suggestions that his wife
and the dance master waltzed below the bedsheets as well as above.  But Filip
knew these whispers were not true. There were few certainties in life, but he
was sure that Tatiana would never betray him.  She was too grateful.  Too aware
of what awaited her if he should ever decide to send her home in disgrace.  She
had married him in a gown with its hem stained a dark rust color, for when a
woman is the daughter of a butcher, even her best dress has absorbed the blood
of the slaughterhouse floor.   No, his Tatiana had seen no end of dreadful
things before she turned ten years old.  A woman who goes to the altar in a
blood-soaked dress is, if nothing else, a realist.  She would do nothing to
risk his wrath or to jeopardize her hard-won position within the palace.

Most
people would have found it surprising that a man like Filip should have ever
joined the Volya in the first place, much less remained loyal for enough years
to rise in their ranks.  He was not typical of their membership.  Older than
most, as broad as a wall, and from some hopelessly obscure little town in the
countryside.  But appearances can be deceiving, so they say, and Filip knew
that his lumbering form and graceless lack of manners gave off the impression
he was stupid.  He was not.  When he had first entered the tsar’s guard he had
learned the three additional languages of the court with a rapidity that he
knew was not typical of his fellows.  This is what had inspired him to go to
the university, where those in service to the imperial family were allowed to
sit spectator to the classes, an advantage few within the Romanov court
pressed.  What act of fate had carried him into the classroom of Professor
Tomasovich and first brought him into contact with the words of Karl Marx? 
Filip could not say, but his mind absorbed the logic of the revolution just as
a dry sponge expands with water.  Filip Orlov was that rarity:  a man who came
to politics by way of his head rather than his heart.

When
he had offered his services to the Volya, they had initially laughed, which
didn’t surprise him.  The Marxists were as snobbish as the Romanovs in their
way and Filip knew he didn’t look like the others.  Didn’t have their middle
class background or university polish.  Only one boy had seen through this to
his potential and asked “But must we all be cut from a cloth, comrades?”  Sasha
Ulyanov had shown him respect, Sasha alone had opened the door to admit him,
and Filip had never forgotten this.  Perhaps that was why, even now, he
tolerated Vlad, as a gesture of respect to his dead brother.

The
first time Filip had killed, it was to protect the cause.  The second time, it
was to save his own skin.  And so again it would be with the third, but the one
thing he was discovering, as his career as an assassin progressed with dizzying
speed, is that murder is much simpler if you kill people who don’t matter. 
After an initial flare of interest, the deaths of the ballet dancers were
almost forgotten and it appeared to go even better yet if you killed people who
were not well liked.  No one, not even her own countrymen, seemed particularly distressed
by the absence of Mrs. Kirby.

And
so it would be with Konstantin Antonovich.  Filip knew he was not the only one
who had noticed the man’s arrogance, his extraordinary sense of entitlement,
the sheen of his red trousers and dark hair.  The way he put his hands on other
men’s women as if they were his own.  The women by all appearances liked these
presumptions.  They seemed to become whatever their dance master commanded them
to be.  They seemed to transform within his arms and move for him in ways they
did not move with their husbands, and thus he was ideally suited as a suspect. 
One might even say he had practically stepped forward and volunteered to take
the blame.

For
no matter what his nationality, rank, or political persuasion, there would not
be a single man within the Winter Palace who would be sorry to see the Siberian
fall.

Chapter
Nineteen

The Winter Palace - The
Breakfast Room in the Imperial Suites

June 23, 1889

10:45 AM

“They
are all preoccupied with plans for that silly ball,” Nicky whispered, his eyes
darting around the sparsely filled room.  “This could be our last opportunity
to meet.”

Alix
knew he was right.  The halls around the imperial suites had been unusually
empty all morning and she could only assume that the area around the theater
was correspondingly abuzz with activity.  Tonight was the rehearsal, tomorrow
was the ball, and her grandmother had informed her that they sailed for home
the next day.

“It
is a chance,” she conceded. 

“And
one worth taking,” he responded.  “No one ever goes to the graveyard.  We will
be alone.”

Alone. 
The word sounded in her head like an oriental gong.  Alix had been alone very
few times in her life and never alone with a man.

“You
will find the chapel out across the lawn,” he said, slightly inclining his head
in the general direction of the windows, and thus the river.  “It stands in the
center of the graveyard where the servants are laid to rest.”

“A
chapel?” she repeated.  She had only been in the enormous chapel within the
palace with its golden altar and columns of cobalt and jade.  She had found it,
in fact, quite difficult to pray amid such a cacophony of earthly splendor.

“And
I have something for you,” he went on in a low voice as he pressed an object in
her hand.  It was hard and flat and she recoiled when a sharp edge jabbed into
her palm. “It stands proof of the seriousness of my intentions.”

She
looked down and found a diamond brooch in the shape of a single flower, large
and bursting with brilliants.  A simple gift, no doubt, by the standards of the
Romanovs, but it was the grandest piece of jewelry she had ever held. 
Fifth-born princesses from minor German districts did not customarily wear such
items about the house.

“Granny
will never let me accept it,” she whispered, glancing about.  They were the
only two seated at their end of the enormous table.  Her grandmother had
already departed the breakfast room but quite a few members of the imperial family
remained, dawdling over their sausages and soft boiled eggs.  From the corner
Ella was watching them like a hawk, but Alix knew her older sister would
completely approve if she chose to accept the brooch from Nicky.  In all
likelihood, Ella had been the one to pick it out.

“You
don’t have to wear it publically or at least not when she is present,” Nicky
said.  “Just keep it and know…”  He trailed off here, as if this was the one
part of the speech he had not rehearsed.  “It is a gift,” he finished weakly. 
“Nothing more.”

But
gifts have meaning, Alix thought, closing her fingers around the diamond and
noting that the brooch was entirely too large to be concealed in her hand. 
Sometimes the things a woman accepted from a man marked her even more clearly
than the things she gave to him.

Nicky
smiled, as if the very fact she held onto the brooch rather than letting it
clang to the floor like a wayward fork, was somehow proof of her answer.

“Meet
me in the graveyard at five,” he whispered.  “No one will look for us there.”

The
Winter Palace - The Guest Quarters

10:50
AM

At
another breakfast table, down another hall, Davy was finishing up his story
along with his eggs. 

“I
feel like a fool,” Rayley said.  “I sat talking with the man for hours in the
smoking room and not once did it occur to me he was some sort of turncoat.”  He
took his glasses off and wiped the lenses in a somewhat compulsive manner.  “We
must inform the authorities of course, but which ones?  How can we be sure that
Filip is the only revolutionary within the guard?  It seems that we could
easily tell the wrong person and thus turn him in to his own comrades.”

“For
once I am glad that the imperial guard and the palace police are separate
units,” Trevor said.  “Since he is with the guard, our best option, I suppose,
is to take this news to the police.”

“They
plan to do something at the Tchaikovsky ball, don’t they?” Emma asked.  “The
Volya, I mean.”

Davy
wiped his mouth.  “No one has said it quite so plain as all that.  But Vlad did
ask me if I was going to be there, and the Queen, and I can’t think of any other
reason he would have made such an inquiry.  Or known there was to be a ball at
all, for that matter.”

“True,
true, all true enough,” Trevor said.  “The very fact that a self-proclaimed
revolutionary knows the schedule of entertainments within the Winter Palace is
alarming and we can only assume that this information came to him courtesy of either
Yulian Krupin or Filip Orlov.”

“We
shall have to be on high alert,” Rayley said.  “Starting tonight, for this
evening is the dress rehearsal, is it not, Emma?”

“High
alert?”  Trevor shook his head just as Emma was nodding hers.  “When this news
is revealed, the ball will be canceled.   I’ll see to that much at least.”

“You’ll
see to it?  I understand your sentiments completely, Welles, but this isn’t
London.”  Rayley replaced his glasses and studied Trevor with sympathy.  “We
can certainly suggest that Her Majesty and Alix send regrets and perhaps even
Ella, if it comes to that.  But we hardly have the authority to cancel a ball
within the Winter Palace.”

“Nor
are the palace police likely to do so,” Tom said.  “Such threats are apparently
such a common occurrence that everyone is quite blasé in the face of them.  I
suppose that if the imperial family avoided every public event with the
potential for violence, none of them would ever leave their rooms.” 

“Besides,
when you think of it, the situation bears as much opportunity as crisis,”
Rayley said briskly.  “The ball is our chance to flush the traitors out, to see
what other Volya members may reside unsuspected within these walls.”

“I
agree,” said Tom. “They’ve had, what…less than two weeks to adapt to the sudden
absence of Yulian, whom they were evidently relying on a great deal if for
nothing more than a diversion.  Any plan they’ve created since then would have
to be rather slapdash, would it not?  Besides, if we’re to catch them, our own
clock is ticking at the same speed.  Forty eight hours from now the Romanovs
will be packing for the coast and we shall be sailing for London.”

“Very
well,” Trevor said with a sigh.  “Draw the traitors out we shall, but I refuse
to use Her Majesty as bait.  I shall advise her not to attend the ball and to
keep Alix away from the theater a well.  And in the meantime I suppose I must
consult with that bald man, what’s the name?  That Viktor Prakov who appears to
be head of the palace police.  I doubt he will welcome my visit.”

“I
shall come with you,” Rayley said.  “For I’ve met him just a bit, you see.  He
was one of the fellows in the sauna that day.”

“Good
god,” said Trevor.  “Who wasn’t in that ghastly room?  Next you’ll be telling
me that the tsesarevich himself was in attendance.”

“Most
certainly not,” Rayley said with a quick grin.  “I don’t have the feeling Nicky
Romanov is that sort at all.  He sticks to his room, does he not?  And prays
for the strength to be a better man.”

“Poor
Alix,” Emma said.  But she said it softly, and none of the men heard her.

The
Café of the Revolutionaries

11:20
AM

“I
cannot imagine why you felt the need to introduce me to that little British pip,”
Filip was saying in irritation as he finished his beer.  His first beer of the
morning, but certainly not the last.  The day ahead would likely prove
challenging, the evening even more so.  “It was not as if we were at some sort
of dinner party.”

“If
I did not introduce you, he would have been far more suspicious,” Vlad said,
his face flushed. 

“So
why did you not make something up?” Gregor snapped.  He had not made such
steady progress on his own beer and Vlad’s, he noticed, sat completely
untouched.  No man in Russia could outdrink Filip Orlov, especially when he
began before noon, so there was probably no reason to try and keep pace with
him in a show of solidarity.  “Just say the first name that came to your mind?”

“I
am not good at making things up,” Vlad said, refusing to meet either of the
older men’s eyes.  “But why is it forbidden for me to confer with Mabrey just
because he is English?  Cooper vouched for him and neither of you thought
anything of it two or three days ago.  Meanwhile Filip here is in consort with British
policemen, inviting the Queen’s private guard to sweat with him in the saunas.”

“An
entirely different matter,” Gregor said with a wave of his hand. 

“Yes,”
said Filip.  “For I am, you see, quite good at making things up.”

If
possible, Vlad’s flush grew even deeper, mottling his pale skin and, to his
horror, even his eyes were beginning to water.  Gregor and Filip had never been
so openly displeased with him, and his disgrace could not have come at a worse
time.  Not now, on the day they had decided they must make their move.  He had
been the one to point out that the dress rehearsal would be the perfect time to
snatch Xenia.  For while she - and indeed everyone else involved with the
presentations for the ball- would be in their appointed places, the absence of
an audience would mean that the theater would be relatively unguarded.

“Davy
is a nothing, a mere messenger boy,” Vlad said, when he had regained his
composure enough to trust his voice.  “The odds are that he does not even know
the detective you met in the gentlemen’s enclave.”

“Don’t
be an idiot,” Gregor said.  “They all came over on the same boat.”

“Here
is the first rule of revolution,” Filip said, seemingly either unaware or
uncaring about the slight crust of foam that was forming within his mustache. 
“Assume that everyone knows everyone.  Assume that the woman on the bench is
the sister of the man stepping off the train.  Assume the grocer is the lover
of the woman in his shop and while you are at it, assume that he is also the
lover of the man getting off the train because the world is full of its
surprises.  This I know, comrades.”

Gregor
grimaced and turned to Vlad.  “If this messenger boy of yours happens to see
Filip within the palace –“

“He
won’t.  He said he won’t be anywhere near the ball and I believe him.”

“Then
let’s hope he’s not one of the ones who are good at making things up,” Filip
said, shaking his empty beer mug in the general direction of the serving girl. 
“For his sake and for yours.”