The White Russian (51 page)

They smoked in silence. Prokopiev glanced at his boots. They had been newly polished. “I heard about your father,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.”

Ruzsky did not respond. He took a pace toward the body, but Prokopiev raised his hand. “Don’t go any closer,” he said, smoke bleeding through his mouth and nostrils.

Ruzsky examined the dead woman. The hilt of the knife bore a striking resemblance to the one they had discovered on the Neva.

“You know who she is?” Ruzsky asked.

Prokopiev shrugged.

“Might I take a look?”

Ruzsky inched forward and this time Prokopiev made no move to stop him.

Olga had fallen awkwardly, her body twisted. Her assailant had been waiting in the shadows of the doorway and her face, never beautiful, was savagely distorted.

Ruzsky squatted, an arm resting upon his knee. He reached forward to touch the skin of what remained of her cheek. She had been dead some time.

He examined the knife. It was an ancient, simple weapon with an iron handle, but no inscription that Ruzsky could see.

There were three stab wounds: one in the left cheek, another in the mouth, and a third directly through the center of the eye. He didn’t need Sarlov to tell him that the killer had been tall. The wounds were deep. A pool of congealed blood had frozen on the stone floor around her head. Her remaining eye was fixed upon him. It appeared to be as filled with hatred for Ruzsky and his kind as it had been when she was alive.

Prokopiev leaned on the iron balcony. “So, who did you think it was, Chief Investigator?”

“There are no witnesses?” Ruzsky asked, ignoring Prokopiev’s knowing look. He had seen no onlookers or curious glances through half-open doors. Such was the fear of the Okhrana.

Prokopiev did not respond.

Ruzsky reached a hand toward the pocket of Olga’s overcoat.

“There’s nothing in there.”

Olga’s clothes were ill-fitting and loose, so he started to ease her overcoat away from her right shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

Ruzsky did not respond.

“Step back, Sandro. Please.”

But Ruzsky had already pulled back Olga’s overcoat and was now shifting the thick shirt beneath far enough to allow him a glimpse of her shoulder.

She had the mark, a dark star branded upon white skin.

“Move back,” Prokopiev said.

“You see this? This brand? The American had one; so did the man we found at the Lion Bridge.”

Prokopiev bent down to take a closer look. Ruzsky could see that he knew exactly what it meant.

“The mark of the assassin,” Prokopiev sighed, almost inaudibly. He straightened, his eyes boring into Ruzsky’s own. “Do not mourn for them, Sandro.”

“You know the woman?”

“Few will regret her passing.”

“You know her from Yalta?”

“An anarchist.”

“How did she come to be here?”

“No tears will be shed for her. But, for your girl…” He paused. “Now she is a very different matter.”

Ruzsky stared at him, searching for some sign that this was another threat, but Prokopiev’s expression was concerned-almost imploring. “Did you know her in Yalta?”

“No.”

“You were on the train with us?”

“When you disappeared? Yes.”

Ruzsky gestured at the bodies. “Vasilyev has been behind these killings, hasn’t he? He wishes to remove all traces of the connections that date from Yalta?”

“You’re smarter than that. No general kills his own soldiers before the battle begins.”

“What battle?”

“Your time is short.”

They heard labored footsteps on the stairs below. “Back,” Prokopiev instructed. He fixed Ruzsky with an intense stare. Your time is short, his eyes blazed.

Vasilyev turned the corner, a dark cape around his shoulders, fastened at the throat by a gold chain. He mounted the steps with his head thrust forward, his face glacial. He ignored Ruzsky and examined the body, betraying no reaction.

“Thank you, Chief Investigator. That will be all.”

As Prokopiev led him away, Ruzsky dropped the remains of his cigarette and looked back at the dark figure stooped over the body. At the bottom of the stairs, he noticed a small pool of blood and stopped to examine it.

Prokopiev lifted him up gently and propelled him onward. Ruzsky tried to turn back, but the door of the apartment building was slammed in his face.

Pavel was waiting on the far side of the road, to one side of the queue. “Who was it?” His eyes told Ruzsky he knew who it was not.

“Olga Legarina.”

“She’s also from Yalta?”

“She’s one of the group, yes.”

“Did you get a look at the body?”

“It’s the same killer, with a similar knife. She had an identical mark on her right shoulder.”

“The same as the American?”

“Yes. Prokopiev called it the mark of the assassin.”

Pavel said, “If we don’t reach her, she’s going to die, isn’t she?” He did so without emotion, as if considering the possibility for the first time. “We had better find her.”

But Ruzsky was deep in thought. “We’ve been foolish,” he said. “Or I have. I should have spent more time looking for the families of the victims.”

“I thought they were robbers.” Pavel shook his head. “Armed robbery, you said.”

Ruzsky was staring at the doorway opposite. He thought of the passage in the records he had uncovered in Yalta. Popova expressed view that Chief of Police in Odessa better target.

He turned and walked rapidly back toward the sled. “Hurry up,” he said.

T he records division of the Petrograd City Police Department was housed in the vast cellar that ran all the way under Ofitserskaya Ulitsa. It was cold, the documents it contained damp and frayed at the edges.

The duty clerk led them to the far wall and pointed at a section of buff-colored files which stretched for thirty yards or more. No one had ever counted exactly how many servants of the regime had been murdered in the past twenty years, but it clearly ran into the thousands. For each assassination, the local police office telegraphed notification and a request for information to every major city department in the country. Every crime against the regime was recorded here.

The only desk in the cellar belonged to the clerk, so Pavel and Ruzsky sat on the floor. Pavel began on the shelf for 1910, Ruzsky for the year before. Each folder contained the telegraph traffic for one week.

“What are we looking for, precisely?” Pavel began to turn over the tattered sheets of the first file. “An assassination in the Crimea?”

“And the surrounding area, unless something else leaps out at you.”

Ruzsky looked up at the narrow slit in the far wall. The ceiling shook as an automobile passed on the street above. He thought again of the brief description of the group’s activities in the records in Yalta and its reference to both the chief of police and governor of Odessa. “I think they concentrated on the peninsula, and possibly Odessa.”

Pavel did not look convinced.

Ruzsky began to sift through the telegraphs in his hand. They provided a window on an empire in which it was all too easy for criminals to evade capture.

After half an hour, Ruzsky found a string of correspondence relating to the murder of an imperial official-the principal private secretary to the governor-in Kazan. No group was mentioned and the two suspects were “believed to have traveled to Moscow.”

He replaced the file and began to work through the next, but he was finding it hard to concentrate. “It’s age that divides them,” he said.

“Divides who?” Pavel asked, without looking up.

“The victims. Olga, the American, and Markov from the Lion Bridge are all considerably older than Ella. And it is they who have the mark.”

“So?”

“The mark of the assassin predates…” Ruzsky stopped.

“What?”

“Hold on a second.” Ruzsky shut the folder on his lap, stood, and replaced it. He moved down the line of shelves, examining the dates. “I’m going to start earlier.”

Pavel didn’t answer. Ruzsky continued until he found the section for 1905. He was recalling not Ella’s history, but Maria’s.

Ruzsky took down the file for the first week of that year. It contained a seamless record of similar, mostly anonymous crimes, from across the Empire. They merged into each other, but he flicked through the pages methodically, before replacing the file and taking the next.

The telegraph traffic for the year was exhaustive, as the revolution which began in St. Petersburg slowly consumed the whole of Russia. It was particularly heavy from Odessa during the summer, as revolutionary fervor spread to the Black Sea Fleet, sparking a mutiny in the battleship Potemkin. Members of the local police department had recorded the string of ordinary crimes that occurred during the period of anarchy, even as the entire fabric of their world teetered on the brink of extinction. Ruzsky gave a wry smile.

He looked up at his partner, who sat with his head bent, absorbed in his task.

He returned to his own file and began to leaf through the pages once more.

“What are we looking for, Sandro?”

“You know what we’re looking for.”

Pavel had not raised his head. “If you say so.”

They worked without a break. Stanislav appeared as the light began to fade.

Ruzsky looked at him, but remained silent.

“I’m surprised you are here,” Stanislav said. “I heard-” The look on Ruzsky’s face persuaded him not to continue. “I’m sorry, anyhow.”

The journalist shrugged. He glanced at Pavel and began fiddling nervously with his mustache. “There’s an alert for Friday and the weekend.”

“What do you mean?”

“The entire Petrograd garrison. I heard Shulgin and Count Fredericks want the reserve battalions brought in from Peterhof and Gatchina, but the Tsar won’t hear of it.”

“I thought the Tsar was at the front.”

Stanislav shook his head. “Apparently not. There are delegations on their way. Italians, French…”

“Why is there an alert?” Ruzsky asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

“I don’t know, but the city is being divided up by military district and they are to patrol the streets before dawn. The Finland Regiment on Vasilevsky, the Preobrazhenskys on South Quay and along Horseguards, the Volynsky from the Nevsky down to Nicholas Station…”

Ruzsky put his folder down and stood.

“What are you doing down here?” Stanislav asked, looking about him.

“Why is there an alert?” Ruzsky asked again.

Stanislav shrugged.

“You must have heard speculation.”

Stanislav said, “I heard you found another body.”

Ruzsky did not respond.

“The newspapers are going to love that.”

“Well, you’d better ask Vasilyev before you get them to print it.”

Stanislav tugged harder at the ends of his mustache. “What are you doing down here?” He glanced at Pavel, who still had not moved.

“Some research,” Ruzsky answered.

“Into what?”

“Never mind.”

“It is still your case?”

Ruzsky took a pace forward. “I’d like you to do something. I want to know what all the murder victims were doing back in Petersburg, especially the American. He was staying at the Astoria, so go down there; talk to the bellboys and the chambermaids. See what you can find out. What did the American do with his time here? What visitors did he receive? Where did he go when he went out? Did the girl, Ella, ever come there?”

“The Astoria?”

“Yes.”

“He was staying at the Astoria?”

“Yes.”

Stanislav raised an eyebrow. “What else?”

“Just find that out, and get back to me. I want to know exactly what the American’s movements were from the moment he arrived until the moment someone stuck a knife in his chest, out on the ice.”

A few minutes later, Ruzsky tramped up the stairs to the deserted offices of the Criminal Investigation Division. The secretaries had tidied their desks, and all the doors around the central room were shut.

He picked up the telephone on his desk and asked the operator to put him through once again to Colonel Shulgin at Tsarskoe Selo.

It took a long time to make the connection and when it was achieved, a woman answered, her voice distant. “Yes?” she demanded.

“Might I speak to Colonel Shulgin?”

“Who is it that wishes him?”

“Chief Investigator Ruzsky, Petrograd City Police Criminal Investigation Division.”

“Oh, yes.”

He heard her footsteps receding.

Ruzsky drummed his fingers as he waited.

“Yes?” another voice answered. “Shulgin here.”

“It’s Ruzsky, sir.”

“Oh… yes, Ruzsky.” There was a long pause. “I was sorry to hear about your father.”

“I called you last night, sir.”

“Yes, you said it was urgent. My apologies.”

Ruzsky could tell someone else was listening, or standing close. He hesitated again.

“I’d be grateful if I could speak to you in person at the earliest opportunity.”

“Yes.” Shulgin’s tone was noncommittal.

“Preferably tonight.”

“That is not going to be possible, Chief Investigator.”

“My father’s death was no accident, sir.”

Shulgin was silent.

“It occurred within minutes of an unscheduled meeting with Mr. Vasilyev. I’m sure you will agree that it was quite out of character.”

“The meeting was not unscheduled. And Mr. Vasilyev is privy, I’m afraid, to a great deal of information that disturbs the minds of the sanest of men.”

“That is hard to accept,” Ruzsky said quietly.

“So are many things, at this time.”

“You were close to my father.”