The White Russian (57 page)

The guards watched its departure for a moment, then moved away.

Ruzsky edged forward. No one was visible at the rear of the train. The Okhrana men inside were behind closed doors and those in the armored engine had ducked down to avoid the blizzard.

The train began to gather speed. As the last transport carriage drew level, Ruzsky began to run. He slipped once, then picked himself up and waded through to the path. Out on the track, the snow drove hard into his face and mouth.

He heard shouts behind him and what sounded like a shot, but the train was moving at the pace of a run now and his eyes were on the great iron bar at the rear of the last car.

He reached it and took hold of its lip, but was almost pulled from his feet.

Ruzsky grunted to himself and jumped. He was half up on the ledge, one leg banging along the ground.

He heaved himself forward. Another shot rang out and he looked up to see the two guards, both down on one knee, their rifles pointing toward him, but the train roared onward, and their bullets were lost in the darkness.

When he could no longer see the station, Ruzsky pulled himself upright and climbed the ladder to the iron roof of the carriage.

The snow whipped into his face, and the night groaned and howled around him. Flat on his stomach, almost unable to see, he clawed his way forward slowly. He reached the end of the carriage and slipped down into the gap before climbing up to the next. He repeated the exercise until he was only a few yards short of the engine.

They were out of the city now, the landscape a brilliant white, the plow sending great chunks of snow flying across him. Occasionally, Ruzsky looked ahead, but all he could see was the Tsar’s yellow and black flag snapping in the wind.

F inally, the train slowed.

Ruzsky pushed himself onto his knees. The snow had stopped and the moon cut through thinning clouds to leave slivers of light dancing upon an indifferent landscape.

They were coming down a slight incline, and ahead, Ruzsky could see a road that ran through the middle of the wood and up to the edge of the track. It had been recently cleared. A large military truck was parked across the line.

The train jolted as the brakes were applied, almost sending Ruzsky tumbling over the lip of the carriage. It came slowly to a halt less than ten yards from the obstacle. Ruzsky kept low, but the only sound was the wheezing of the engine.

Up ahead, he saw two Okhrana men walking toward the truck. He heard a shouted command, but there was no response. The men looked about them.

The engine appeared to grow quieter, the forest around it still.

One of the men moved up to the rear of the truck, a revolver in his hand. He wore a black fedora and it spun high into the air as his body slumped to the ground, the powder lifting around him as the snow cushioned his fall.

For a second, there was no reaction, even from his companion. And then the second man turned, his own hat falling in his haste.

He got no more than a yard as the air was filled with the crack and whistle of rifle shots. Dark figures emerged from the woods, charging toward the carriages. There were shouts, doors banging, more shouts, screams, and then the dull pop of shots muffled by the wood.

Vasilyev was sacrificing his own men in the interests of staging an authentic robbery.

And then all was quiet once more.

Ruzsky heard the roar of a truck being started, and he watched as from down the lane a line of headlights begin to swing through the wood.

The convoy wound its way down to the crossing.

Ahead of them, on the far side of the track, the road ran straight up a hill. Halfway up it, in the moonlight, Ruzsky could make out Borodin and Maria. She did not wear a hat; her long hair was swept back from her face, as if she wanted to be recognized. Despite her height and slender grace, she seemed a frail figure alongside him.

There was a hiss of steam, then an eerie silence.

Ruzsky listened to the clank and whimper of the engine.

There was a shout. “I have him!”

All of the men in the clearing moved at once. Figures swarmed from the shadows. There was a shot, then another.

Borodin turned in the direction of the confrontation, but Maria continued to stare straight ahead.

Ruzsky heard a distant cry.

He waited, his heart pounding.

Had they been waiting for him?

He saw Dmitri being led over the brow of the hill.

Ruzsky pushed himself up, fumbling for his revolver, and as he did so, he felt the cold metal of a gun barrel on the back of his neck. “Good evening, Chief Investigator,” Prokopiev said. “Time to join us.”

Ruzsky looked up. He put his revolver down. “Don’t hurt him.”

“We’ll see.”

“Don’t hurt him.”

He saw the tension in Prokopiev’s face. “Get down.”

Ruzsky swung around and jumped into the drift beside the crossing. He walked forward, Maria’s gaze fixed upon his.

Dmitri turned around, his face white. He was ringed by men in long overcoats, their rifles and revolvers pointed unerringly at him. There was fear in his eyes, such as Ruzsky had only ever seen in those of condemned prisoners before they were led to execution. He took his brother’s hand, his grip icy cold. “It’s all right,” he said.

Dmitri fell into his arms and Ruzsky held him tight. For a moment, they were thousands of miles away, far from the harsh-faced men who surrounded them, clutching each other on the top floor of the house at Petrovo. “It’s all right,” he whispered.

He looked up to see Michael Borodin striding toward them. He saw no shred of humanity in his eyes.

Borodin pulled them apart. He kicked Ruzsky and forced him to his knees. “Mr. Khabarin,” he said.

Ruzsky stared at Maria.

“Your Russia is dead, Prince Ruzsky,” Borodin said. He cocked his revolver. “And your kind will soon be finished. You understand that, don’t you?”

Ruzsky listened to the last gasps of the steam engine. Maria’s eyes bored into his. Her expression was one of infinite sadness, as if she was reaching out to him but could never touch him again.

Ruzsky felt the cold metal of Borodin’s revolver at the back of his skull, but did not flinch. He mumbled a prayer. He thought of his father’s smile in the hallway of the house on Millionnaya Street and Michael pounding through the snow and into his arms.

The world around him was distorted and out of focus.

All he could hear was his own breathing.

He kept his eyes upon Maria.

Dmitri began to move, a blur on the periphery of Ruzsky’s vision. He got only a yard toward Borodin before the revolutionary fired a single shot through his forehead. His body crumpled and fell.

The clearing was still. Maria had taken a pace toward them, but had now frozen where she stood.

Ruzsky crossed himself.

He waited. He closed his eyes.

“There was no need for him to die,” Borodin whispered, his mouth close to Ruzsky’s ear. “She wanted you both to live. That was the trade.”

Ruzsky looked up at Maria.

Her sadness was not for him, but for herself. She had come to say goodbye.

He heard the snort of a horse and the bells on a sleigh.

“Start walking, get in and go away,” Borodin said. “Turn around and you’ll regret it.”

Ruzsky did not move.

“She has paid for your freedom. Better take it before I change my mind.”

Ruzsky stared, transfixed, at Michael’s tiny figure beyond the crossing. Ingrid sat next to him, two Okhrana agents either side of them, their guns pointed toward him. He looked down at the body of his brother sprawled in the snow.

“Don’t you want to know what she thinks you are worth?”

Ruzsky kept his eyes upon his son.

“She has offered what only a woman can give.”

Ruzsky still did not move.

“She sent your brother to kill me, but when she understood that she could not stop you trying to save him, she traded her own freedom in order to keep you alive. It is quite heroic.”

Ruzsky could not think.

“I would start walking, Prince Ruzsky.” Borodin leaned closer, his breath warm against Ruzsky’s ear. “Or perhaps you think she can escape?

“We had a telegram from the local police in Yalta. They found out that a very clever chief investigator went to see a girl in a sanatorium. So I think I will have them both.”

Ruzsky’s head pounded. His mind screamed at him to turn around.

“Start walking, Mr. Khabarin, and don’t look at her again or none of you will leave this clearing.”

Ruzsky looked at the guards towering over his son. He began to walk, concentrating on the sound of his boots in the snow.

The Okhrana men watched him approach.

He walked through the quiet of the Russian forest.

He could feel her eyes upon his back. Ahead, he saw that Michael was crying, and his son’s tears triggered his own.

“It’s all right, my boy,” he said.

As he crossed the tracks, Ruzsky whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He climbed into the sled and took his son into his arms. The driver cracked his whip and the sled jerked forward.

As it climbed the hill, Ruzsky could resist no longer. He turned and saw her standing alone on the clearing, watching him.

She did not move. Her eyes were fixed upon him until they disappeared from view.

T he February Revolution in Russia broke out little more than a month after the end of this novel. It began with protests over food shortages and escalated rapidly as it became clear that the regime could no longer rely upon the loyalty of large sections of the armed forces. The fictional Dmitri had many real-life counterparts who were well aware of the dangers of having the capital’s barracks entirely full of reservists. Had the Tsar kept some of his more experienced soldiers in Petrograd, revolution might have been averted.

After the revolution, the Tsar was forced to abdicate. He tried to do so in favor of his young son, but soon realized this would mean that they would inevitably be separated-for all his many faults, there is little doubt Nicholas II genuinely adored his family-and handed the throne instead to his brother, Michael. However, Michael was soon forced to concede that there was no place in the new Russia for a Romanov tsar.

Lenin and many other revolutionaries returned from exile immediately after Nicholas’s abdication, but it seemed for a while as if a liberal, democratic Russia might emerge. However, a second revolution in October-a coup, in fact-left the Bolsheviks in charge, with drastic consequences. As many contemporaries predicted, the removal of Nicholas II led to a period of great suffering for all Russians. A stubborn man who had resisted all reform ended up pushing his people into a great catastrophe.

This novel is not history. I have striven hard to re-create the atmosphere of the time and to be accurate in all possible details, but it is a novel first and foremost. The telegrams quoted toward the end of the book are genuine, though it is most unlikely that the Tsarina did have a physical affair with Grigory Rasputin. Lonely, desperate, and half mad, Alexandra clung to the peasant priest spiritually, but the idea that the two could have become lovers still seems preposterous, even if it was believed by many contemporaries.

Anyone wishing to explore this extraordinary story further should read Edvard Radzinsky’s brilliant The Rasputin File or Alexandra: The Last Tsarina by Carolly Erickson. The best contemporaneous account of the old regime is Once a Grand Duke by Grand Duke Alexander, and the most complete and scholarly study of the revolution, A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes. I would also recommend Michael and Natasha by Rosemary and Donald Crawford, the story of the doomed love affair between Grand Duke Michael, brother of Nicholas II, and a divorcée.

Those wishing to take their research a stage further should go to a library and try to get hold of a copy of the memoirs of the French ambassador to Petrograd, Maurice Paléologue, which provide a fascinating, day-by-day account of the onset of revolution.

The imperial family and many other members of Russia’s former elite were, of course, executed by the Bolsheviks. The St. Petersburg of today is still brimming with reminders of a world that disappeared with them.