The People's Will (30 page)

The hotel lobby was busy when he entered. He had chosen the time carefully, between afternoon and evening, when those whose reason for being in Petersburg was to frequent the prestigious boutiques on Nevsky Prospekt were returning, and those whose plans were for dinner or a night at the theatre would be
preparing to leave. The busier it was the less likely Mihail would be subjected to serious scrutiny.

He waited until the concierge had finished giving an elderly lady and gentleman directions to the Mariinskiy Theatre, and then approached him. The man looked tired and irritable, but forced a smile as Mihail came near.

‘I wonder if you could present this to the hotel manager,’ said Mihail, handing him the envelope, and within it the note that he had recovered from Luka’s rooms. Underneath was a one-rouble bill, folded up. The concierge smiled as his fingers rubbed across it.

‘With pleasure, sir,’ he said, turning away. Mihail couldn’t see quite how he slipped the banknote into his pocket, but was sure that he had done. The concierge disappeared through a door at the back of the lobby. After two minutes he emerged with another man, who came to speak to Mihail, smiling unctuously.

‘It’s been some months since we’ve been privileged to receive a visit from a representative of Collegiate Councillor Chernetskiy,’ he said, handing the letter back to Mihail. ‘I trust that His High Nobleness is in good health?’

No, he’s rotting in a dungeon in the Peter and Paul Fortress. It would not be a helpful response, however much the words would be a pleasure on Mihail’s lips. ‘He’s very well, and sends his regards. He trusts his instructions have continued to be carried out.’ It was pure bluff, but Mihail could hazard a guess as to the nature of the arrangement between Iuda and the hotel.

‘Absolutely.’ As he spoke, the manager guided Mihail towards the front desk. ‘His rooms have remained quite undisturbed.’ He leaned over and whispered in the ear of one of his staff, who turned to the rack of keys behind him.

‘Good. Good,’ muttered Mihail.

The key was handed to the manager and the manager handed it to Mihail. ‘Would you like someone to show you the way?’

‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’ The number, 215, was clearly stamped on the tag attached to the key.

Mihail followed the direction that the manager had involuntarily indicated, leaving the lobby via a short flight of steps on to a corridor from which a far grander staircase ascended. At the
top stood the door to a dimly lit dining room, while the stairway turned and continued upwards on either side. However intent he was on his task, Mihail could not help but be awed by the opulence of the hotel – and the expense of it. He was the son of a grand duke, and yet he would never be able to afford rooms in a place like this. The stairs turned again. Mihail glanced at the room that led off the landing, at the front of the building overlooking the street. Its main feature was a grand piano, finished in colourful marquetry. This was still the level of public rooms. After the third flight of stairs, things became less grandiose, but only slightly. The corridor led off in both directions, but all the numbers began with the figure 1. Now the stairs were more mundane, what Mihail might expect in any large building, constructed of iron and twisting back on themselves to take up the minimum amount of space. He needed to ascend only one more flight. He noted the numbers as he passed: 209, 211, 213. At last he was there. He hesitated, then put his ear against the door. There was no reason to expect the room to be occupied. Iuda was a captive. If Dmitry knew of the room, he could not come here in daylight. Even so, Mihail was cautious. Dmitry could have come here at night, and be waiting inside. He knocked and listened again. There was no response. He could think of no more precautions he could take. The key turned smoothly and he pushed the door open.

Iuda awoke. He had slept well. How a
voordalak
would manage without the tombs of the rich was a mystery. The common man was buried in the ground, but for the rich an ornate chamber was built and the casket was placed within a stone dias so that though it would decay, it would not be food for worms. Iuda lay alongside one such long-departed noble – safe from the sun, comfortable among the dead. He was almost surprised not to find other creatures like himself gathered around the sarcophagus to sleep, like faithful dogs around their master. But there were many graves about the world, and few
voordalaki
. There were two others in Petersburg though, of that Iuda was sure. Where might they be sleeping, he wondered.

He crawled through the narrow gap that had given him entrance to the tomb and emerged into the cemetery. He raised
his hand to his face, but could feel no stains of blood upon it. Even so, he picked up a handful of snow and washed himself. He had no mirror to look in, not that it would have helped. He’d stolen the clothes of the student he had killed – but for the shirt, which was drenched in blood. They weren’t ideal, but they were better than the ragged garments that he had worn for three years in gaol. They would be enough to get him into the hotel without raising too many eyebrows. There he had plenty of other outfits to choose from. And he would need them. Tomorrow was the appointed day for his meeting. It would not do to be ill-dressed for that.

He headed south, back to the centre of town.

There were three rooms in the suite: a bathroom, a bedroom and a study. The bathroom and bedroom were much as might have been expected in any great hotel, except that nothing had been cleaned or even touched for many months. The windows were shuttered. A thick layer of dust sat upon every surface. The wardrobes and drawers were filled with clothes of every style, from the finest evening dress, through a variety of military uniforms, to peasant outfits. Iuda was prepared for any eventuality – for any disguise he might need to adopt. He had not, it seemed, been prepared for moths. Half of the garments were unwearable, most had one or two holes. But it was not these for which Mihail had come.

The study contained three locked cabinets. Mihail had no qualms about wrenching them open. Within he found what he’d been looking for – and much more. The first cupboard contained notebooks – more than fifty of them, all written in English. Some dated back to the 1810s, the latest was as recent as 1877. Mihail had brought a knapsack for the very purpose, but he could not take all of them. With luck he would have the chance to return for more later, but he could not be sure of it. He skimmed through them, trying to determine which were the most valuable, checking dates and headings and glancing over the body of the text for any words that might shout out at him. His English was good, but he did not read it like he could Russian; each word had to be deciphered and understood, rather than simply recognized as a
familiar shape. It took him two to three minutes to scan the first volume. He moved on to the second.

He froze. There it was, written in the Latin alphabet but still unmistakable, his grandfather’s name: Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. Preceded by one and followed by two others that Mihail knew almost as well: Vadim Fyodorovich Savin, Dmitry Fetyukovich Petrenko and Maksim Sergeivich Lukin. The last bore the surname that Mihail had adopted and was still using. There was nothing much to the entry – just a note that they were the four officers who would be liaising with Iuda and the others when they were in Russia. It was dated 27 August 1812. It was the beginning of a story that Mihail knew well.

He quickly worked his way through the notebooks. There may have been other references familiar to him, but if there were he missed them. Everything was in too much detail to be of any real use. These were the day-by-day observations of a scientist; they described the minutiae of what Iuda had seen, but made little effort to explain it. It was only when it got to the more recent volumes, from the 1870s, that Iuda had begun to set down his conclusions about the nature of vampires, drawn from so many years’ experimentation. These Mihail slipped into his bag, along with those from 1855 to 1860 – the years that Tamara had been in contact with Iuda, and a few more after that. Mihail was keen to discover how much Iuda had really known about his mother and, vitally, whether he even guessed at Mihail’s existence.

The second cupboard contained other papers – not Iuda’s own writings but mostly correspondence he had received. Rather than being categorized by date they were divided into folders named after cities: Constantinople, London, Moscow, Simferopol, Saint Petersburg and others – the cities Iuda had been in when he received the letters, Mihail guessed. Again, he had to compromise and took only Moscow and Saint Petersburg. At the bottom of that cabinet there was also money – both paper and coins, some Russian, some from across Europe. The coinage would be too heavy, but he took the banknotes. He wasn’t short of funds, but there was a pleasure in stealing from Iuda – a breach of the eighth commandment that served as an aperitif to the violation of the sixth that Mihail would soon commit against him.

The final cabinet was the most securely locked, and on smashing his way into it Mihail understood why. It contained blood – dozens of small glass bottles and vials, each carefully labelled with a name. Some Mihail recognized: Raisa Styepanovna Tokoryeva, Marfa Mihailovna Danilova, Vadim Fyodorovich Savin. It seemed that Iuda collected blood as a child collects postage stamps. From every person – man or vampire – that he had encountered and had been afforded the opportunity, he had taken blood, even before he became a vampire. Of the names Mihail recognized all were dead, or at least so he presumed – hoped. There was one exception: Zmyeevich. His was the largest bottle of all, though it still fitted in the palm of Mihail’s hand. He made sure the seal was good, then slipped it into his bag.

He looked at the other samples and wondered what he should do with them. Most, if not all of the donors were dead, but still Iuda might have some foul purpose for them. Even if not, it was disrespectful – particularly for the likes of Marfa Mihailovna, Aleksei’s wife – to have the remnants of their corporeal existence here on display long after they had died. Perhaps they should be returned to family members, or buried with due ceremony so that their owners’ souls could rest in peace. But Mihail doubted that God would require any such ritualism to help in His judgement of who was and was not righteous. Besides, Mihail did not have room to take them all. Thankfully the newly rebuilt hotel was an exemplar of modernity. The bathroom had running water – both
froide
and
chaude
according to the enamel labels – and a sink that drained directly to the sewers. It was a simple if time-consuming task to empty out every bottle and wash its contents away. It struck Mihail as odd that the stuff hadn’t congealed, but evidently Iuda had found a way to keep it as fresh as on the day it had been drawn from the body. No doubt it was described somewhere in all those journals.

At the bottom of that last cabinet there was a small, brown envelope – unmarked. Mihail picked it up. The contents hidden within were small and unyielding – six little lumps as hard as stone. Mihail could make no guess as to what they were. He ripped open the paper and poured the contents on to the table. Now there was no misunderstanding: two distal phalanges; two intermediate
phalanges; two proximal phalanges. They were the bones of the smallest two fingers of the left hand of his grandfather, Aleksei Ivanovich, cut from him in a gaol in Silistria in 1809. It was a slight leap of intuition, but Mihail felt confident in it. There was no doubt that they were finger bones, and who else’s would they be? How they had come into Iuda’s possession was a mystery, but they would not remain there. Mihail returned them to the envelope and placed it in his bag.

It was time to go. Mihail had been in the room for over an hour now. From what he could guess, Luka’s duties had simply been to keep an eye on things while Iuda was away. Mihail was playing the role of his replacement, and the manager might become suspicious if he stayed too long. He looked around him at the mess he had made; the smashed cabinets and the pile of emptied bottles. It did not matter. No one would be entering here. The hotel staff was under orders not to and Iuda was safely locked up. It was a shame. Mihail would have liked him to know just how easily this inner sanctum had been penetrated.

He took one last look around the place, then headed for the door.

Iuda turned off Mihailovskaya Street and into the Hôtel d’Europe. It was much as he remembered it: the elegant high ceilings, the bustling clientele, the attentive staff.

‘Round the back!’

Iuda felt an iron grip on his shoulder as he spoke. He could have broken the man’s arm without a second thought, but he required the goodwill of the hotel and its staff.

‘What?’

‘If you’re looking for work,’ explained the concierge, ‘it’s round the back. Though to be frank, I don’t rate your chances.’

Iuda switched from Russian to French, in the hope of making it clear he was very much entitled to use the front door. ‘Is Monsieur Kryukov available?’

‘Who?’

‘Kryukov, your manager.’

‘Kryukov’s not been here for two years. It’s Sazanov now.’

‘Well go fetch Monsieur Sazanov, and when you find him, tell him that Collegiate Councillor Chernetskiy is here.’

‘Chernetskiy?’ The idiot seemed to recognize the name. ‘But …’

‘Just go and do it.’ Iuda raised his voice a little. It had the desired effect.

Moments later a figure approached, almost bowing as he walked. Iuda presumed him to be Sazanov.

‘Your High Nobleness. I should have known. I should have known.’

‘Known what?’ snapped Iuda.

‘That we were to be graced by your presence.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of your man. You sent him ahead. To prepare the room for you.’

Iuda squeezed his jaws hard together, feeling the muscles tighten. He’d been right to be concerned. Luka had given something away before he died. Iuda should have come straight here and not wasted so much time the previous night.

‘I sent no one,’ he said firmly. ‘When was this?’

‘An hour ago. An hour and a half.’