Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (13 page)

The twin flights of the marble staircase were overlooked by a selection of caryatids, trompe l’oeil atlantes and a fresco of the gods on Mount Olympus. Ten solid granite columns supported
the vaults of the staircase. The walls and balustrade dripped with decoration, with gilding, with mirrors. The ceiling, way above the staircase, showed the gods of Olympus besporting themselves in
a heaven scarcely less spectacular than the Winter Palace itself. The route upwards was decorated with monumental statues brought from Europe by Peter the Great: Diana, Power and Might. In the
great days of the St Petersburg season, before the Japanese War and the threat of terror put an end to the festivities, the rich and the fashionable of St Petersburg would progress up the Jordan
Staircase to dance until dawn in the great state rooms on the first floor.

Today it was the route by which the Emperor led his procession to attend the annual service of the Blessing of the Waters at Epiphany in commemoration of Christ’s Baptism in the river
Jordan. It was an uneasy time in the capital. Workers were on strike against their conditions of employment and their numbers increased every day. Police reported the working class districts as
being restive and liable to erupt in violence. For the Blessing a temporary pavilion was set up on the ice of the Neva at a point opposite the northern entrance to the palace. The Metropolitan of
St Petersburg dipped a cross in a hole made in the ice and referred to it as ‘Jordan’. A small cup was then lowered into the hole and presented to the Emperor who took a sip of the
water and handed the cup back to the churchman. Prayers were said for the health of the Tsar and his family, wisely, the more cynical observers thought, in view of the impurities of the river
water.

Out on the Neva a detachment of marine police inspected the ice for any signs of suspect activity. The secret police had warned the imperial family that there was a high risk of terrorist
activity at this time. The Tsarina and her daughters stayed behind the tall windows of the Winter Palace, staring out at the scene on the blue-green ice. When the proceedings were over there came
the sound of a great salute from the guns of the Fortress of Peter and Paul across the river. The more historically minded of the citizens referred to the fortress as the Russian Bastille. Its
reputation as a place of incarceration was fearful. Prisoners were said to have died of cold, of hunger, of the terrible beatings they received from the guards. In fact, there were never more than
a hundred prisoners in the fortress at any one time and some of them even spent their time reading revolutionary literature without any interference from their jailers.

The fortress was also the necropolis of the Romanovs. Almost all the Tsars were buried inside. And on this Epiphany Day it seemed as if some malignant spirits were intending to increase their
number. For these were not blanks being fired from the great guns. This was live ammunition. A policeman standing beside the Tsar fell wounded to the ground, his blood spreading out in strange red
patterns against the snow. Shots were fired into the Winter Palace itself, the glass in the windows shattering and flying inside, threatening the flesh of any who got in its way. Other shots
ricocheted off the Admiralty Building back into Palace Square. On the first floor in the Field Marshal’s Hall shards of glass lay at the feet of the Tsar’s mother and sister, but they
were unhurt. Out in the snow the Tsar crossed himself and began saying his prayers. Not far from there his grandfather had been driving in his carriage twenty-four years before when a bomb
shattered his vehicle, wounded his horses and his companions but left the Tsar himself unhurt. Stepping down from the wreck of his carriage he went to inquire after the wounded. Another assassin
ran up and threw a bomb directly between the Tsar’s feet. In a huge sheet of flame and metal his legs were torn away, his stomach ripped wide open and his face badly mutilated. Still
breathing he asked for what remained of him to be carried into the Winter Palace to die. He left a trail of black blood on the marble stairs while they carried him to a couch for his last moments
in this world. Before he passed away, his grandson Nicholas, dressed in his blue sailor suit, came and watched in horror from the end of the bed. Now that grandson, currently Nicholas the Second,
Tsar of All the Russias, was hurried, unhurt, into the same palace where his grandfather had died in agony. The word flashed round the great mansions of the capital with astonishing speed. In the
bar of the Imperial Yacht Club, the
fons et origo
of St Petersburg chic, the aristocrats and the generals crossed themselves and prayed for their future. The French Ambassador, holding court
by the window, told whoever would listen that the most significant thing in the assassination attempt was the fact that the guns were manned by sailors. These are not the fanatic students who blew
up the Interior Minister last year, he said. These men swear a powerful oath to be loyal to their rulers. If they desert the Tsar, what future for the Romanovs? The foreign correspondents rushed
from their bar at the fashionable Evropeiskaya Hotel to interview or invent eyewitnesses to the event and telegraph the news, suitably embellished and dramatized, to their employers.

Watching alone by one of the intact windows of the Field Marshal’s Hall the Empress Alexandra shivered slightly as she looked out at the snow. She was remembering a prophecy attributed to
St Serafim. ‘They will wait for a time of great hardship to afflict the Russian land,’ it read, ‘and on an agreed day at the agreed hour they will raise up a great rebellion all
over the Russian land.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt decided he had spent too much of his time in Russia listening to people. Listening to the Ambassador and the cynical Secretary at the Embassy,
listening to the translations of his young interpreter from policemen and bureaucrats in the Interior Ministry. Now, the day after Epiphany, they were in a rather different waiting room of a very
different section of the Russian bureaucracy, waiting for another interview, this time with a senior official of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The Interior Ministry, Powerscourt had decided, looked rather like one of those vast mental hospitals the authorities built round the fringes of London towards the end of the previous century,
enormous complexes where the mad could get lost finding their way back to their own ward, and where a man could forget what few wits he might have left trying to work out how to find the front
door. The Foreign Ministry, however, looked like a French Second Empire hotel that had once known better times, a resort that had lost its
raison d’être
perhaps, Vichy without
the water, Bath without the spa. The place had certainly once had considerable stylistic ambitions, but now the gilt was falling off the mirrors and the imitation Watteaus on the walls had lost
whatever lustre they once possessed, the dancers and the musicians exhausted. Mikhail had told him on the way that while the people in the Interior Ministry saw it as their mission to pacify the
interior of Russia, the mission of the people in the Foreign Service was to join the foreigners, preferably somewhere rather warmer than St Petersburg, as quickly as possible. Some of the
diplomats, Powerscourt was told, spent almost their entire lives abroad, only returning at the end of their careers to advise on the foreign policy of a country they no longer knew and whose nature
they were not now equipped to understand. Combined with the abilities of the Tsar, Mikhail had said savagely, this was a system guaranteed to produce one of the most incompetent foreign policies in
the world. Hence, Mikhail shrugged an enormous shrug, the unbelievably stupid decision to go to war with Japan.

A flunkey in a stained frock coat told them in bad French that they were expected inside. The Under Secretary, a man who had risen effortlessly through the hurdles of Deputy and Assistant,
greeted them warmly.

‘Ivan Tropinin at your service, gentlemen. Please sit down.’

Mikhail had said the man would probably speak French. France after all was the favourite posting of most of these would-be foreigners. It was astonishing, he said, how many little Russian
diplomatic missions were peppered along the south coast from Biarritz to the Riviera to Nice and the Italian border. But Tropinin was speaking in his native tongue. Powerscourt wondered if it was
to throw him off the scent, whatever the scent might be.

‘Please, Lord Powerscourt, your reputation precedes you, we are delighted to see you here.’ Tropinin ushered them on to two very decorative French chairs, as uncomfortable as only
the French knew how to make them. ‘I know you are in St Petersburg about the affair of Mr Martin.’ Tropinin was a small thin man with a tiny beard and very delicate hands which he
inspected from time to time in case they were going coarse.

Powerscourt nodded. Mikhail was looking intently at the fading portrait of a semi-naked lady on the opposite wall. Perhaps these badges of status came to those who reached the rank of Under
Secretary. He wondered what happened when you were promoted above the level of Under Secretary. Maybe there were no clothes at all then.

‘I am most grateful,’ Powerscourt began, ‘for your time. I know how busy you all must be here in the ministry.’

Tropinin laughed. He leaned forward and looked Powerscourt firmly in the eye. ‘You will have to talk to many people in this city, my English friend. More than you would like, I suspect.
Most of them will be lying to you. I am not going to tell you lies.’ Powerscourt had a sudden vision of men from Crete and people telling lies and long undergraduate arguments in his rooms in
Cambridge. ‘I am going to tell you the truth. Why? Because I like England and I like Englishmen. I have spent some time in your country, Lord Powerscourt. They took me to some of the great
houses like your Blenheim Palace. To a Russian, of course, it is scarcely bigger than a hunting lodge, but it is very fine. The park is beautiful. And I know the father and the family of your young
translator here. I have known them for years.’ The Under Secretary nodded vigorously. Powerscourt wondered if there was some secret code at work, some private language of bribery or
obligation he did not understand.

‘I am most grateful for your assistance,’ Powerscourt put in with a smile, keen to get back to business.

‘Of course,’ the diplomat said, checking his hands once more. ‘Let me come to the point.’ Tropinin paused and looked at his two visitors.

‘It is a very little thing I can tell you, but believe me when I tell you it is true. Many people will try to tell you that your Mr Martin was not here a couple of weeks ago, that his body
was not found by the Nevskii Prospekt, that as there is no body there can be no crime and as there was no Mr Martin, Lord Powerscourt, there is nothing for you to investigate, and as there is
nothing for you to investigate you may as well go home and leave St Petersburg to its fate. This is what some people want you to believe.’

‘Are you saying that that is not the truth?’

‘I tell you, Lord Powerscourt, he was here, he was killed here. That is all I can say.’

‘Did you see him, Mr Tropinin? Did you have a meeting with him as you are now having one with us?’

The little man held his hand up. ‘I told you I had one thing to say. That was it, I cannot tell you anything else.’

‘Do you know why Mr Martin came to St Petersburg? Can you tell us that much?’

‘I have nothing further to say.’

‘Do you know if he succeeded in his mission, whatever that was, Mr Tropinin?’ This was Powerscourt’s last throw.

‘I cannot help you. I have nothing more to say.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was standing on the roof of the Stroganov Palace at twelve o’clock on Sunday morning, wearing an enormous borrowed coat in dark grey that brushed
the ground as he walked. He liked to think it had belonged to some military man in the distant past, a campaigning Shaporov perhaps, commanding the artillery in battles long ago and far away. On
his head he wore a thick Shaporov Russian hat. Beside him, Mikhail was wearing a similar coat and had two very expensive pairs of binoculars wrapped round his neck. By his side, wearing the warmest
coat and gloves that London’s Jermyn Street could provide, stood Rupert de Chassiron, Secretary to the British Embassy, who had been invited to share the view and the spectacle from the top
of the palace. The three men had come to watch the great march of workers that was going to set out from different points of the city and converge on Palace Square, site of the Tsar’s
residence, the Winter Palace, where their leader, Father Georgy Gapon, was to hand in a proclamation to the Tsar. While they waited for the marchers to appear, Mikhail told Powerscourt about his
recruitment of Natasha and her news from the palace about the boredom and the rituals and the vanishing eggs and the sick little boy.

Below them, diminutive people strolled along the Nevskii Prospekt in their Sunday best. Late worshippers were going in to a service at the Kazan Cathedral to their right, a favourite place for
prayer and meditation of the Empress Alexandra. The trams rolled on their tracks towards the Alexander Nevskii Monastery. On their immediate left was the Moyka river and beyond that the great
expanse of Palace Square flanked by the General Staff Building, the Hermitage and the Winter Palace, the winter sun glistening off its golden domes. Across the frozen Neva, slightly to the north,
the forbidding Fortress of Peter and Paul, burial ground of the Romanovs and prison fortress for their enemies. Further round to the north-west, Vasilevsky Island, home to the university and
cabbage soup. To the north-east behind the Finland station, the Vyborg side, home to many factories and unimaginable squalor. To the south-west, beyond the Yussupov Palace and the Mariinsky
Theatre, lay the Narva Gates, built to commemorate victory over Napoleon, and behind them the Putilov factories where the current wave of strikes began. From all these different districts the great
columns of marching people would be snaking their way towards the heart of St Petersburg.