The Third Section (8 page)

‘How did you get this?’ he asked, gazing down at the glass vial cupped in his hand. It was small, perhaps the size of the top two joints of his middle finger, and the dark liquid that flowed from one end to the other as he moved his hand scarcely half filled it. But that did not matter – it was a question of quality, not quantity, and this blood was of the highest quality imaginable. It excited him just to know that it rested in his palm. This was Romanov blood.

‘He let me kiss him,’ she said lightly, still looking at the blanket as if she could see what lay beneath.

‘The tsarevich let you kiss him? As simple as that?’

She turned her head to look at him. ‘He’s a goat – they all are. He expected more.’

‘Did he get it?’

‘Not after I’d taken what I wanted. Anyway, he had a party to get back to.’

‘He didn’t notice?’ Yudin again looked at the vial and at Aleksandr’s blood within.

‘Perhaps later. I took it from his lip. They never feel it, do they?’

Yudin had carried out many experiments to determine that. To say ‘never’ was an overstatement, but a
voordalak
could secrete a substance that numbed its victim to the superficial pain. For himself, he had never had the desire to save anyone pain; neither had Raisa. But in this case it was a necessary concession.

‘How much did you take for yourself?’ he asked.

‘About twice as much again.’ She turned her head towards him and gave a little pout. ‘I have my needs too,’ she said.

It was easy to understand how Aleksandr had been tempted by her, even though any such emotion was lost to Yudin. The party had been given by the American ambassador in Petersburg. There
had
been no problem for Yudin in procuring an invitation for Raisa. It wasn’t certain that she’d be able to get anywhere near the tsarevich, but she’d clearly proved her abilities. That little vial of blood was the result. He slipped it into a drawer of his desk.

‘What do you make of Tamara Valentinovna?’ he asked, changing the subject.

She turned back to the desk, sitting opposite him. ‘I despise her.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘Oh, she doesn’t know.’ Raisa was a little more enthusiastic now, then switched to a tone of mockery. ‘She thinks we’re friends.’

‘Keep it that way.’

‘For how long?’

Yudin considered, but he had no answer. His plans were not yet fully formulated. ‘For the time being,’ was the best reply he could offer. ‘And then, she can be yours. They all can, if you want them.’

Raisa’s eyes grew distant. Yudin could guess what she was thinking, and the idea aroused him just as it must have done her. Young blood was always to be relished, and Raisa worked and lived in a house that brimmed with it. Images of death and terror and blood-smeared flesh washed through his mind, delighting him. Perhaps, when the time came, he would not let Raisa have them to herself. Perhaps he would make her share.

‘You pretend you’re different, but you’re not,’ said Raisa, both guessing and interrupting his thoughts. There was no joining of their minds as there would have been if one had created the other, but after so many years she understood him better than he found comfortable.

He smiled slightly. ‘You and I are both different. That’s why we’re alive.’

‘What do you know of her?’ asked Raisa.

‘Tamara Valentinovna?’ He skimmed through the files on his desk and found Tamara’s, although he could remember perfectly well the basic information it conveyed. ‘Born in Moscow in 1821. Daughter of Valentin Valentinovich Lavrov – a cloth merchant – and Yelena Vadimovna. Married. Moved to Petersburg. Had children. Began affairs with
numerous
gentlemen of varying
nobility
. One of them was a senior figure within the Third Section – not myself, I hasten to add – and so we were soon making good use of her; just as all those others had been. Recently she requested a move to Moscow …’

‘Enough!’ said Raisa abruptly.

‘You asked.’

She stood and walked back over to the chest, reaching out her hand to pull off the blanket. As she grasped it she paused, looking back towards Yudin. ‘Aren’t you going to stop me?’ she asked.

Yudin shrugged.

She tugged at the cloth and it fell to the floor, revealing a mirror. There was nothing special about it. The frame was of gilded wood. Its three sections were joined with hinges, like a triptych. It would grace any lady’s dressing table – as once it had.

‘
Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand
,

‘
Wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?
’

Yudin smirked as he spoke the words of the Grimms’ fairy tale. It was utterly apposite, as Raisa gazed into the mirror, searching for her lost beauty. But it was not original. He must have uttered the words a hundred times, on every occasion he caught her standing despondently in front of a looking glass, which was often. He hated to repeat himself, but he knew how much it annoyed her, so he continued to say it.

She ignored him, or at least put on a good show of doing so. He got out of his chair and stood behind her, gazing like her into the glass. The windowless room was lit only by lamplight, but still every detail could be seen. His desk, his chair, the shelves upon shelves of books, the stairs up to the world outside, the doorway down to what lay below. The only thing missing was any trace of either him or Raisa.

‘You promised me,’ she said.

‘I’ll keep my promise,’ he replied – and he meant it, though he knew she had little basis for believing him.

‘When?’

‘When I know how.’

‘It’s been thirty years.’ Her voice bore the weariness of those
years
. ‘Thirty years in which I’ve never been able to look upon my own face.’

Yudin’s eyes scanned the mirror, coming to rest at the point where he imagined his reflection should be. It was there – he knew it. Years ago he had carried out experiments that proved that the reflected image of a vampire could be seen by man and vampire alike, but that the minds of both for some reason blocked out that image and replaced it with nothing – or rather with what the mind expected to see. He knew that the image he saw, behind where his body should be, was a construction of his own intellect, formed from memory and guesswork. He could see a door that was closed, but that was because it had been closed when he last glimpsed it. If, somehow, one of those sad wretches from the chambers below were to ascend the stairs and silently open the door, intent on revenge for what had been done to them, then he would be quite oblivious to it. His own imagination would continue with the happy illusion that the door remained safely shut.

He turned and looked, but the door – the real door – was still closed.

‘I’m getting close,’ he said, almost forgetting that it was Raisa and not himself he was speaking to.

‘I have no reason to believe you,’ she said, ‘except that I know you’re even more curious than I am.’ She understood him perfectly. He wasn’t in the least curious to see his own face in the mirror, but was desperate to understand the mechanism that prevented it.

‘I’m expecting a delivery soon,’ he explained. ‘A new piece of equipment. From Iceland!’ His enthusiasm was real – dimmed, but still surviving from when he had been … from before. But he also knew he had been down similar roads already, always to find a dead end. It was a simple idea: a looking glass that could reflect the face of a vampire. And yet it had eluded him for a quarter of a century.

She turned away from the mirror to face him. ‘So am I still beautiful?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ he said. He wondered if she even thought it worth listening to him. For one thing, he could so easily lie, and for another, he did not know whether he any longer had the ability to judge. Every sensation, every human desire, had been dimmed
when
he had made that transition and become a
voordalak
. The hunger for food and the thirst for drink were gone, as was the desire for the touch of female flesh. For Yudin, such things had always been weaknesses – base, animal desires that acted only as a distraction from what truly interested him. But with hunger came the appreciation of the work of a great chef; with thirst came a palate that recognized a fine vintage; with lust came the admiration of a beautiful face. His intellect understood that Raisa Styepanovna was beautiful, but his heart felt nothing. He saw her as though through a glass, darkly, and was glad of it. He had lost all his visceral human yearnings and replaced them with one: a taste for blood that he could easily control. But what had remained of him? The only thing in himself that he had ever loved: his curiosity.

Raisa raised her hands and put them to her face, running her fingertips across her pale skin. ‘I feel … old,’ she said.

Yudin peered at her. He genuinely couldn’t see it, but he knew that he could not trust himself. And it was a possibility. A vampire could be forever young, but only if it remained well fed. He looked into her eyes and saw a smile in them. He knew what she was asking, and since he had not completely banished his own corporeal desires, he was happy to indulge her – and himself. Their conversation had given him a thirst.

He turned and went to the door behind them, unlocking it with a key that he kept inside his jacket on a chain. He opened the door and held out his hand, showing Raisa Styepanovna that she should lead the way. She lifted her skirts slightly and began to descend the narrow stone staircase. Yudin closed the door behind them and followed her down, down to a department of the Third Section that not even Dubyelt had the first inkling existed.

It was a journey Tamara knew she had to make. The house where she had grown up, still her parents’ home, was scarcely two versts from where she now lived – and worked. She certainly wasn’t going to make the suggestion that
they
should visit
her
. She hadn’t written to say she was moving back and so they had not heard of her by any means for quite some time. They knew as well as she did that they were not her parents, but she had no doubt they
possessed
as much love for her as they did for her brother, Rodion Valentinovich – whose pedigree she had no reason to question.

She crossed Great Nikitskaya Street, the halfway point of her short journey, and felt suddenly more nervous. She stepped back into a doorway to light a cigarette, taking off her mitten so that she could hold it. The match flared brightly, illuminating her face, but nobody was near to see it. She breathed in, enjoying the noxious, sulphurous smell in anticipation of what it portended. She felt instantly calmer. A man walked past and glanced at her through the dancing snowflakes. She noticed a look of outrage beginning to form on his face, but then he walked briskly past. People could object as much as they wanted. A word from her could have him arrested. She enjoyed the sense of power, even though she had never used it so trivially.

Emboldened, she stepped out into the street and continued walking, cigarette in hand. In the case of the gentleman who had just passed, she realized, there would have been no need to threaten arrest. He had recognized her, and she him. She had seen him at least twice at Degtyarny Lane – he might even be heading there now. Tobacco was nothing in comparison with
his
vices.

Would Valentin Valentinovich and Yelena Vadimovna ever have the slightest chance of understanding her, she wondered. She hoped she would never find out. Yelena at least would be prepared to listen, perhaps to sympathize, but it was difficult to envisage in similar circumstances her doing the same, even to protect her own husband.

Vitaliy Igorevich had been Tamara’s first love, and her only love. She had moved to Petersburg to be with him when they married, in 1840, when she was nineteen. He had been twenty-eight. On the eve of their wedding he had, a strict traditionalist, presented her with his diary. She had stayed up almost the whole night reading it, reading of the seven lovers he had previously known, of his feelings towards her as expressed to himself and of his hope for the future, not only for them, but for Russia. By morning she had discovered ways in which she loved him that she had never guessed, without any diminution of the ways in which she already loved him. That evening she discovered yet another way to love him, and for him to express his love for her.

It was in 1844, when Milenochka was three and Stasik was nearly one – Luka not even dreamed of – that things changed. Up until then Tamara had always felt a liking for Prince Larionov, not least for the fact that he was her husband’s most enthusiastic sponsor. Vitaliy was a physician. He did not come from a wealthy family – Tamara herself had probably brought more money to the marriage – and so he spread his work between meagre employment at the Army Medical Academy and more lucrative private practice. Prince Larionov, a regular patient, recommended Vitya’s services widely to his friends, and even occasionally paid for those services when his friends saw fit to ignore their medical bills.

But in 1844 Larionov had called on Tamara during the day, while Vitya was at the Academy. There was nothing so unusual in that, but the story he told her was concerning. There had been a death a few weeks earlier in the Academy hospital. A young soldier had been horribly burned when a cannon exploded near him. The tragedy was that it had not even taken place on the battlefield, merely during artillery training at Volkovo Polye. Whether much could have been done to save him was a moot point, and Vitya had been just one of several doctors who had tried, but the soldier had come from a noble family and his death might have ramifications. Tamara remembered the word as it had formed on Larionov’s lips – ‘ramifications’.