Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (38 page)

‘You!’ the left-hander barked at the coachman. ‘Follow us.’ A very young soldier took his place beside the coachman on the box seat and stuck a gun in his ribs.

‘What do you think is going to happen now, Francis?’ whispered Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘I think they’re going to haul me off for questioning, Johnny. If they take me on my own that probably means it’s Derzhenov. He doesn’t need an interpreter. If they want
Mikhail to come too, it’s a different collection. Whatever happens, I don’t think it’s going to be good for my retirement prospects to stay with these gentlemen long, whoever they
may be.’

The coach had turned out of the park and was now passing down the main street of the village. At the very end of the built-up area they turned left into the grounds of a rather dilapidated
house. Faint lights could be seen in a room on the ground floor. The paint seemed to be peeling from the pillars by the front door. There was some discussion between the men who had captured them.
Then Powerscourt and Mikhail were ordered out of the carriage and marched roughly into the house. Four men stayed on guard by the coach, scowling at the English and smoking strong-smelling
cigarettes.

Powerscourt and Mikhail were shown into what had once been a handsome room with high ceilings and sash windows. There were a couple of battered armchairs in the middle of the room. Two wooden
chairs had been placed in front of a rickety table at the opposite end from the window. Powerscourt noticed to his dismay that there were a number of stout sticks and a couple of Russian knouts or
whips lying casually in the corner of the room. Opposite the chairs was a pale officer in his mid-forties with a great scar running down the lower side of his face. Most people, Powerscourt
thought, would have grown a beard to hide the injury. Not this man. He flaunted it like a badge of honour. His hair was grey and his eyes were a dull brown.

‘Major Andrey Shatilov of the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division,’ he said crisply.

‘Lord Francis Powerscourt, attached to His Majesty’s Foreign Office,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘Mr Mikhail Shaporov of the Shaporov Bank, acting as my translator. Pray
explain to us why we have been taken prisoner in this fashion. I shall report this to my Ambassador here.’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly if the world of conventional diplomacy, with its notes and its niceties, its protocols and its levees, was somehow alien even in St Petersburg. Peter the Great may
have been trying to civilize a nation when he built his capital here on this isolated spot, but after two hundred years he still had not succeeded. These people here, the Major with his scar and
the rough soldiery outside, belonged to some alien world, the world of the peasants perhaps, tucked away in the great empty vastness of Russia with only their women and their violence for company.
Russian generals, he remembered, had always been careless with the lives of their men. There were so many of them, endless reservoirs to make up the numbers when the first drafts had perished.

Shatilov’s voice was crisp. ‘It is not for you to inquire why you have been taken into temporary custody by the local authorities here, Powerscourt or whatever you say your name
is.’

Powerscourt said nothing. Two of Shatilov’s thugs were lounging on the chairs in the middle of the room. One of them was fiddling with a very long piece of rope.

‘My request is quite simple,’ Shatilov said, managing to imbue even those innocent-sounding words with a charge of venom. ‘All you have to do is to tell me the nature of your
conversation with the Tsar.’

Powerscourt paused for a moment. ‘Don’t translate this bit,’ he said to Mikhail, speaking very fast, ‘I want to make him lose his temper. My conversation with the Tsar
was confidential,’ he went on more slowly. ‘It is not my business to tell you of his business any more than it would be for me to tell you of any discussions I might have with my King
in London. What right do you think you have to make such a request?’

Shatilov was beginning to warm up nicely, Powerscourt thought. His fingers began strumming on the table.

‘Those of us in charge of the security of the imperial family are entitled to know all of his conversations! All of them. For his own safety! Now will you please tell me the nature of your
conversation!’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly what would happen if it became known that the Tsar was planning to send his children abroad. It would say, as surely as if he had signed a proclamation, that he was
not in control of events, that he had lost faith in the ability of his regime to protect his children. The Emperor himself would be announcing that he has no clothes. The myths and façade of
autocracy, built up over nearly three hundred years of Romanov rule, would vanish like mist on a summer morning. Maybe the monarchy would fall and the Tsar would have to follow his family to
England to stick family photographs into English albums and watch an English sea lapping at an English coast. The alternative, of course, might be worse, the Tsar’s children blown into minute
fragments by a terrorist bomb, or murdered in their beds. It was, they had said to him in London before he left, a matter of vital national importance. Well, Powerscourt thought, looking absently
at the Major’s scar, it certainly was for Tsar Nicholas the Second. And for King Edward the Seventh? The presence of the Tsar’s family in England would surely lead to an alliance with
Great Britain. Confronted by the vast forces of France, Russia and the British, surely even the Kaiser would not risk a war, particularly when those other English-speakers, the Americans, might
join the battle on the side of the Allies. A matter of vital national importance in London as it was in St Petersburg.

‘I would like you to tell me about a different conversation, Major Shatilov, a conversation you had, possibly in this very room, with a predecessor of mine, a man called Martin who came to
St Petersburg, who saw the Tsar on a Wednesday evening, and who was found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt later that night or very early the next morning. Did you come across Mr Martin, Major? Did he
perhaps sit in this very room with you and your thugs?’

There was a quick muttering from the pair in the chairs. ‘I know little or nothing of this man Martin,’ said Shatilov. ‘I repeat, before my patience runs out, tell me what
happened with the Tsar!’ He looked meaningfully at the whips in the corner.

Now it was Mikhail Shaporov’s turn to speak very fast. ‘We weren’t meant to hear it, but one of the chair people said, “Mind the same thing doesn’t happen to
you,”’ and then he went on to translate the rest of it.

Powerscourt wondered how much longer Johnny Fitzgerald and the man from the Black Watch were going to be. He had no doubt that they had begun working on a rescue mission as soon as he and
Mikhail had been taken away. He too looked with some suspicion at the whips in the corner. Whatever happened he had no intention of betraying the Tsar. He wondered how painful it might be.

‘Did you kill Martin? Here in this room?’ He spoke with as much hostility as he could muster.

‘Shut up about Martin!’ shouted Shatilov, half rising now out of his chair. ‘I want to know about the Tsar!’

‘Did you kill Martin?’ If Powerscourt had wanted to make the Russian Major angry he had certainly succeeded.

‘Shut up about Martin! For the last time, I want to know about your conversation with the Tsar!’

Powerscourt was certain the man was lying about Martin.

‘Did you kill Martin?’ Powerscourt shouted for the third time. Mikhail Shaporov raised his voice to the same pitch.

‘That’s it! That’s it! I’ve had it. Vladimir! Boris! Tie them up!’ Shatilov had turned bright red.

‘The full treatment, boss?’ one of the soldiers asked.

‘Not yet, tie them up first,’ said Shatilov, going over to the corner and picking up a whip.

‘Sorry about this, Mikhail,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll be all right in the end,’ said the young man cheerfully.

By now the two men were tied securely to their chairs. Powerscourt found he could just about move his arms. If there was a deus out there somewhere, he said to himself, he wished he would hurry
up and get out of his machina. Shatilov was pacing up and down behind the chairs, brandishing the whip in his left hand. Powerscourt felt there appeared to be a poverty of imagination in Russian
torture methods, whips, whips and more whips.

‘Do you see this, Lord Powerscourt?’ Shatilov was showing him the leather thong. ‘In a moment, this is going to tear into the bare flesh of your back. After a while there
won’t be any flesh left. All you have to do is to tell me the nature of your conversation with the Tsar and nothing will happen to you.’

‘Is this what you did to Martin? Whip him till he died?’

‘Cut his coat off!’ Shatilov was shouting to his assistants. Powerscourt felt his jacket being ripped away from his back.

‘You can keep your shirt on to start with, you bastard,’ yelled Shatilov, and the whip whistled through the air to bite deeply into Powerscourt’s back.

‘Tell me about your conversation with the Tsar,’ Shatilov shouted. ‘You’ve got ten seconds before I whip you again. After that your shirt comes off. Ten, nine, eight,
seven, six –’

On the count of six there was a tremendous crash as Johnny Fitzgerald and the sergeant from the Black Watch rushed into the room, pistols in their right hands. They made
straight for the two soldiers who had left their guns by the chairs in the centre of the room. But it was Ricky Crabbe who was the real revelation in the rescue party. Powerscourt was to say later
that he had seen David as in David and Goliath reborn in a dingy house on the outskirts of the Tsar’s Village. He had bestowed about his person a number of large stones. The first of these,
less than a second after Johnny had entered the room, he despatched with remarkable accuracy at the head of Major Shatilov. It took him right in the centre of his face and he collapsed to the
ground, blood pouring from his face, hands searching amidst the blood for what might remain of his nose.

‘Fantastic shot, Ricky!’ said Powerscourt as Johnny Fitzgerald released them from their ropes. ‘I am so glad to see you all! Now, let’s tie them up. I want to have a word
or two with the Major here when he’s strapped to the chair.’

The Black Watch sergeant was expert at binding the prisoners in ways they would not be able to escape from. Shatilov was spitting blood down his uniform as he was locked in position. Powerscourt
took a pistol from Shatilov’s pocket and pulled up a couple of chairs next to him.

‘Can you make this sound as bloodthirsty as you can, Mikhail? He’s got to believe that I mean it when I say I’m going to kill him.’

‘Of course,’ said Mikhail.

‘Now then, Major, let me just explain the rules now we’re in charge.’ Powerscourt laughed what he hoped was a bloodthirsty laugh. The Major seemed to find it difficult to talk.
‘All you have to do is to tell us what happened to Mr Martin. Then everything stops. Possibly including you. I haven’t decided on that yet. But what you need to understand is that there
are a number of ways in which we could help you talk, and there are a number of us to do it. The sergeant,’ Powerscourt pointed to the six feet four inches of the man from the Black Watch,
‘is very keen to see what happens with one of your knouts on a bare back. Death perhaps by whip. Ricky, our expert marksman here, is anxious to see what happens when people are pelted with
stones from different distances. Death maybe by stoning. A biblical death for you, Major. Johnny Fitzgerald is a great believer in the sticks or canes you keep in the corner of the room. Another
death by beating. I, believe it or not, Major, believe in the pistol as the means of making you talk. I have made a rough count of the number of bullets available here for this particular gun and I
have so far counted fifty-four. I am curious to see how many wounds the human body can sustain before it actually dies.’

There was a sort of gurgle from the chair. Ricky’s stone had certainly left its mark.

‘So,’ said Powerscourt, pointing his pistol absent-mindedly into the middle of Shatilov’s wounded face, ‘let us begin. Why don’t we start with the moment Mr Martin
was brought here at about a quarter to ten in the evening. Why don’t you take it on from there, Major?’

There was another gurgle from the Major. Powerscourt turned the pistol to the ground and fired it six inches from Shatilov’s left foot. The noise was deafening. The two soldiers twitched
in their ropes as if they thought they might be next.

‘Perhaps that might help your concentration.’ Mikhail was sounding very fierce as he translated the ferocious Powerscourt, the Powerscourt hungry for wounds and thirsty for
blood.

There was another gurgle. Powerscourt now placed the barrel of the gun in the middle of Shatilov’s bloody mouth. He could feel the teeth rattling inside. ‘I don’t have to use
all the fifty-four bullets, Major. I could kill you now, rather like, I suspect, you killed Mr Martin and took his body away. Now it’s my turn to count to ten. You’d better start
talking before I get to ten, Major, or your mouth will disappear. Probably not quite enough to kill you as long as I avoid what passes for your brain. One, two, three . . .’

There was a lot of rustling about in the Shatilov chair. He was trying to shake his head.

‘Four, five, six . . .’

Shatilov’s hands were tied behind his back so he could not point. ‘I think he’s trying to ask you to take the gun out of his mouth, sir,’ said Mikhail.

Powerscourt peered closely at the Major. ‘Seven,’ he said. He withdrew his gun from Shatilov’s mouth. ‘Eight.’

‘It was all an accident,’ Shatilov began, the words slurred and heavy as if he were drunk, and Powerscourt thanked God he hadn’t had to reach ten. He wasn’t at all sure
what he would have done.

‘I don’t want to know whether you think it was an accident or not, Major. I’m sure the scribes and Pharisees would have described Christ’s death on the cross as an
accident, given half a chance. Just tell me when and how things happened.’

The Major looked at Powerscourt with pleading eyes. Please don’t kill me, they seemed to be saying. Powerscourt was remaining pitiless for the time being. His quest was nearly over.