A Game of Soldiers

TWO

Led by the splendid figure of Prince Nestor Vissarionovich Evdaev, two thousand horsemen proceeded along the embankment of the Yekaterininsky Canal, a route which took them past the Church of the Resurrection, a short way from the capital’s huge parade ground, the Field of Mars. It was a great plain, a huge rectangle with one end sliced off by the Moika and the Mikhailovsky Gardens, a corner defined by the Marble Palace, and one long flank bounded by the Summer Gardens.

A breeze billowed down the canal, thick with the heat of an early summer and the many fragrances of soldiery. Prince Evdaev’s mount was Khalif; snow-white, his mane shorn and ribboned with satin – a perfect animal. For two weeks Zonta, his groom, had trained Khalif, fed him a secret diet devised by the old equerry. In preparation for today’s ceremonies Evdaev and his officers had returned to the gymnasium and he was hard now, his skin browned by the hot Russian sun, his legs strong, his moustaches waxed, freshly bathed and barbered that very dawn, his cheeks stung with a mint lotion. His valet had spent an hour polishing his helmet, his breeches were newly tailored for the occasion, his gloves chalked to perfection.

Oh, and were the streets not glorious! No expense had been spared for today’s celebrations, only one of a year’s worth of events marking the 300th year of the Romanov dynasty. Oh, it was wrongheaded, of course. An extravagance. A veneration of incompetence. But nevertheless, Evdaev thought…glorious.

Golden double-headed eagles, flags hanging from every lamp standard, decorations in every shop window. The evening before (only a few hours ago!) he had been here in the throng, giggling at the amazing fireworks overhead – a display especially designed by talented Spaniards, a gypsy family that specialized in the beautiful and the dangerous.

They clattered along the cobbles that curved beneath the Church of the Resurrection. Evdaev looked up to the mosaics set into the bricks, the arms of the great royal families of Russia. Above he saw his own family’s arms – a burning flame suspended over a bloody stockade wall – the House of Evdaev. He bowed his head, made the sign of the cross, a small act of contrition as he rounded the site. The next time he raised his eyes he saw the ikons of the saints staring down at him and for just a moment he could see his own image there – his face transformed into a grinning skull, with eyes burning hellfire for eternity.

Treason! I am committing treason!

Was God watching him, protecting him? The church was new, only completed a few years earlier, and known as the Saviour on the Spilled Blood, because it had been built on the exact spot where Tsar Alexander II was killed. On that bloody day a terrorist had thrown a bomb as the Tsar arrived to visit his aunt. Alexander had escaped injury from the blast, and had even attempted to help wounded bystanders, truly a saintly act.

But there was a second assassin lurking with a second bomb and Alexander had died in his palace, the bedroom preserved as it was when he’d succumbed; the bloodstained sheets, his last lists to himself. A water glass, reading glasses. Could Alexander’s ghost see into his traitor’s heart?

There was still time, he thought.

He could dismount, crawl up the steps to the church, confess and make his penance atop the bloodstained cobbles. Still time, still choices to make.

But…thousands of hooves clattering on the road blended with the cheers of the bystanders – a buoyant, jittery torrent of sound. The crowd was screaming, their faces upturned; smiling red-faced shopkeepers off for the day, families dressed in their finest marshalling their children into some sort of order, newly arrived peasants transfixed with amazement, girls laughing with their hands covering their mouths, boys running ahead to keep the pace.

Everything was too quick, everything was irrevocable. Evdaev held his breath, waiting for the dead Tsar’s revenge, waiting for a Romanov curse to strike him from the saddle.

But it did not come.

They rounded the church and gradually the apparitions vaporized behind him. Nothing ahead of him but cheering citizenry. No curse, no ghost, no revenge.

‘God give his blessings to you, sir!’ his young adjutant shouted to him, and Evdaev turned and saluted. ‘And to you, Lieutenant. But we are late, we’d better hurry along!’ He smiled, raised his sabre, and spurred Khalif into a canter as they reached the bridge. A scream of trumpets heralded their arrival and an immense cheer went up from all sides of the field.

Evdaev sighted the blaze of lime spread across the ground ahead, all but eradicated by the caissons of the artillery and the herds of infantrymen who had shuffled across the field. By the time the trick riders of the Caucasian Regiment had done with their acrobatics – diving beneath their saddles to retrieve handkerchiefs tossed by the young grand duchesses – there was nothing but a chewed-up field of stubbly grass. Then, because of the extraordinary heat, his guardsmen had been delayed yet again by a comical team of sprinkling carts unloading themselves in a futile attempt to keep down the dust.

Finally the whistles blew. Now his guardsmen waited – two thousand gleaming statues as the priests finished their blessings. There was no way that a regiment of cavalry could charge across the field and bring their mounts to an abrupt stop without some accident taking place. It could happen to anyone, a horse would certainly go down, bringing others with it. There would be blood, broken bones, fractured spines, death. Certainly it would occur here in just a few moments. Somewhere inside he was praying.

Afterwards, after he had celebrated with his officers, he would go to meet Sergei.

Somewhere secret, somewhere utterly safe. They would feast, and drink toasts to the success of their camarilla. Things were progressing well, he’d been informed. There was not much longer to wait. Surely before the year was out.

Across the holy ground, soil that was consecrated with the blood of generations of Russia’s soldiers and their animals, sheltered within a gingerbread-trimmed pavilion, sat the man he was destined to supplant. Nicky. The Tsar. The Tsar of all the Russias. One sixth of the world’s surface. They had been children together, cadets. Courted and bedded the same ballerinas. A lifetime of memories.

And soon…surely before the year was out. He would have to die. And the boy.

Evdaev could see the royal family, Nicholas shuffling into his seat. The pretentious lieutenant’s dress uniform that he wore. Flaunting his power by dressing as a junior officer. Absurd. The dull eyes, the invisible smile beneath the moustaches that covered up his rotten teeth. Smiling and blinking. He’d grown into a silly, even weaker version of his childhood self.

Soon.

Besides, the money continued to arrive. Money and even more money, for longer than a year now, ever since he’d agreed to the Plan. Under Sergei’s astute direction he had invested most of it, and the returns had been spectacular. They were building a war chest – funds to purchase arms, to purchase men, to purchase allegiance.

Khalif twitched between his legs, pawing the dust. The horses always knew, they remembered from one year to the next. They could smell the excitement, the smoke, and the blood. It had been bred into them for generations. Drums began to pound and the artillery fired a rippling salute. Now he was screaming a command and his men drew their sabres…the sudden gleam of sharpened steel against the white sky.

He had hardly to touch the spur to Khalif, and they were off.

THREE

Sergei Andrianov sat in his box in the dignitaries’ grandstand that spanned the long eastern dimension of the Field of Mars. The enclosure was a wooden creation with finely turned filigree along the eaves of the roof, wide awnings freshly painted in the Imperial colours. Pennants flew from every flagstaff, from every post – a rush of red, white, and blue. The men surrounding him were in summer suits, some with straw hats and coloured feathers pinned to their lapels. The women were fanning themselves against the heat, chattering and cheering. Almost everyone had opera glasses.

There had not been time for him to take his private car and he was exhausted because he had been forced on to the express, then had spent a sleepless night mulling over the chaos that had taken place at the bindery. In the hours before dawn he arrived in Petersburg, and took a carriage straight to his house; a mansion inherited from his father and refitted with all the modern conveniences, built upon the rise of the Kamenoovstrovsky Prospekt, giving on to a fine view.

Andrianov, except for the quality of his clothing, was the kind of man that was overlooked, until he moved. He knew that it was his energy people first noticed. Business, pleasure, whatever he did, it was like that. Not stopping was attractive to some women, not attractive to others. He couldn’t help that. The rules of life were made for ordinary men, not someone like him. A cultivated man, a man with money. A fine nose, even features. Perhaps more Teutonic than Slavic in his appearance, with blond hair and eyebrows that emphasized his brow and the shape of his skull. Looking out over the field below him, as the gleaming cavalry regiments organized themselves into multi-coloured patterns, he was glad he had elected to come alone, mainly because he could make an easy exit when the festivities were finished.

Unfortunately he had to share the box with Dr Lemmers and they’d found themselves beside the repulsive Brogdanovitch who was wedged into his seat, red-faced and sweating. The moment Brogdanovitch had laid eyes on him, he’d abandoned his wretched family and leaned across to hector Andrianov about the new electric engines he was experimenting with in his mills.

Andrianov listened and nodded, pretended to be more interested than he was. But inevitably it was too much; he let Brogdanovitch’s theories on oil transport fade away, turned his attention to the field and watched Prince Evdaev as he wheeled his horse and took his place at the head of his cavalrymen. Behind him the regiment cantered smartly to their stations.

Andrianov looked along towards the military enclosures, the ornate uniforms, the splashes of gold braid and feathers creating a perfectly ironic display of romantic traditionalism. A lesser man would be laughing at the absurdity. All around him in the capital he could see the chaos mounting. How many others on the Field of Mars had the blessing of such sight? A dozen?

Less than a dozen, he decided.

He had only reached out to a select few of these visionaries. He could bring the others into the Plan later, when the time was right.

He shook his head at the plumes, the polished brass, gold, and silver – the huge lie that was being paraded before him. Evdaev’s beloved military had grown soft under the command of an inherited elite, unable to project Russia’s will even within her borders. It amounted to a supreme obscenity to which this horde of perfumed aristocrats was utterly blind. The best rifles in the world were British, the best light howitzers French, the best heavy ones German, the best General Staff, German again. So much for Russia as the great military steamroller.

Domestically? The economy was as thin as pasteboard; he knew its fragility intimately, and, yes, he had taken advantage of the markets, why not? The police were ineffectual and corrupt. And all of it ruled by a teetering autocracy – Nicholas held in thrall to Alexandra, his German-born Tsarina, and her grotesque companion, Rasputin. Throughout Russia were cries for reforms that would never be granted until it was too late. And Andrianov was supposed to simply sit on his hands, put his holdings at risk while the Tsar and his sycophantic ministers dithered? They were like a pack of blind children, stumbling towards the brink!

The looming threats were there for anyone to see, but none of this crowd had ever visited the darker quarters of the city, none of them could begin to grasp that surrounding their perfect palaces and sculptured gardens was a rising tide of revolutionary ferment.

If the Tsar did nothing, sooner or later someone would take matters into their own hands. And Sergei Andrianov had long realized that the future belonged to the one who struck first.

That morning he had struck over breakfast.

Breakfast was with Bear, otherwise known as General A.I. Gulka, head of the Third Branch of the Imperial Chancellery, the Okhrana. Alexandr Ivanovich was a large man, more porcine than ursine, with puffed, watery eyes. Like all military men he was fond of his uniform and decorations, and he wore them at all times. He wheezed, and ate his meal enthusiastically while Andrianov listened.

‘I can assure you there is no cause for worry, excellency. It is an insignificant death,’ Gulka breathed.

‘You’re certain? Nothing that would put Gosling in jeopardy?’

‘Mmmn…absolutely nothing at all.’ Gulka chewed reflectively for a moment, knife and fork standing at attention, and then, after having decided that he believed what he’d just said, returned to his plate. When Andrianov had not made a comment after several seconds, he looked up. Innocent. Unknowing.

‘You didn’t have to intervene…send anyone to take care of it?’ Andrianov asked quietly.

‘Mmm, no, no. Nothing could be simpler. It’s purely a municipal police matter. Some little whore, she’s disgusted by her life, lovesick, homesick, who knows? She throws herself out a window in order to end it all. It’s plausible.’ Another shrug.

‘And no relatives have come forward, no one to look under the rugs?’

Gulka half-laughed, shook his head. ‘Girls like that, Sergei. No one wants them back, eh?’

Andrianov stared at him. Gulka was one of his most valuable assets. His resources were infinite. The coup would be impossible without his cooperation. If he had not been brought into the Plan, Andrianov would have been forced to kill him. Appropriately, Andrianov’s payments for his services ran to thousands of roubles each month. What made it more difficult was that the fat man knew his worth, exploited it at every opportunity, constantly tried to raise the stakes. Not for the first time Andrianov reflected that Gulka’s greed might bring the entire scheme crashing down.

‘Good. I’m glad there’s no trouble, because Gosling is important, very important, Alexandr Ivanovich. He may seem like a small bird, but we need him, eh?’

‘Mmnn…Yes, if you say so, Sergei. He’s our holy grail if you say so.’

‘He’s the one who signs the papers, and he doesn’t know us, cannot be traced back to us, yes? He’s the one who’s in front. He doesn’t know it yet, and we’ve taken these steps to ensure that he will never turn on us. That was the rationale all along, that was Ivo’s big idea. To isolate Gosling from the rest of us, yes? I’ve never met the man. You yourself said it was a good idea. I’m sure you understand his value, and I’m sure you are aware of the danger. If something were to go wrong –’

‘Nothing is going to go wrong, Sergei…’ Gulka was laughing and eating at the same time.

‘But…if something were to go wrong, better Gosling than one of us, eh?’ He waited for Gulka to comment, but the man only kept on eating. A waiter appeared, refreshed their champagne. The windows were open against the heat and the noise of the traffic along the embankment wafted into the restaurant. Andrianov stared at his own untouched plate, reached into his jacket for his wallet. ‘That’s why he’s important. He’s our insurance.’

‘I promise you, Sergei. I’ll take care of it. I have taken care of it. It’s all been taken care of,’ Gulka said without looking up from his plate.

Andrianov stared at him for a long moment. One day he would erase Gulka, he promised himself, if only for his patronizing attitude. ‘Well, good. That’s excellent, wonderful. I suppose, Alexandr Ivanovich, no news is good news as they say.’ He forced himself to smile, extracted a fifty-rouble note and slipped it under the edge of his plate. ‘Just remember, if anyone makes enquiries we shut them down, and quickly.’

‘Mmm…but of course…’ Gulka nodded, his mouth full of food, waving his fork in an ornate salute as Andrianov headed out of the room.

He met Heron inside the arched entrance to the Summer Gardens at the Alexander Nevsky Chapel, a particularly ironic spot, Andrianov thought. The chapel had been built in memory of Alexander II’s survival of an assassin’s bullet, and there was a warning inscribed on the walls – ‘Do not touch the anointed sovereign.’ It had taken the People’s Will terrorist group eight attempts to get him.

It wasn’t the same these days, he thought.

Andrianov only had to wait for a moment or two and then a carriage pulled up and Count Ivo Smyrba, the Bulgarian military attaché, leapt out, smiling. Heron was a little man, meticulous with his dress and toilet, always in fashion, utterly disorganized and distracted by his ready eye for the ladies. In some ways Smyrba was a tolerable presence, but in others vastly more disgusting than General Gulka.

Andrianov had recruited him carefully, mindful that he might be loyal after all, and funnel information straight back to Bulgarian military intelligence. Using him was delicate; valuable because Andrianov made frequent trips to Sofia, and hoped to make more. His business interests were expanding there, there was money to be made even during the recent fighting, and Smyrba had cooperated over the months, helping with introductions, information, rumours, gossip – in short, the grease that turned the wheels of industry more efficiently, war or no war.

Andrianov reminded himself to stay in control of his emotions, to maintain an even temper as they talked, yet everything that had gone wrong had been Smyrba’s fault as far as he could tell.

‘Please, I had no idea, I assure you, that the Baron…I mean, that this Gosling was like that…’ Smyrba waggled his hand to indicate an instability of mind.

‘Violent, you mean?’

‘Of course. He showed absolutely no indication. You would have never thought. A distinguished man of that sort, a man of taste. Naturally we all knew he was a paedophile. He liked children, fine. That was always the basis, the entire basis of the…’

‘Yes, your idea was good. Blackmail him, bind him to us for as long as we need him. Tell me about the photographs,’ Andrianov said quietly.

‘Oh, yes…’ There was hesitation in Smyrba’s voice.

Andrianov stopped, there on the walkway, grabbed the little man by the sleeve. Now he could see the fear in Heron’s eyes. He kept his expression muted, his face calm.

‘It’s best, Ivo, if you tell me everything,’ he said quietly. He even smiled. Perhaps that was why Smyrba was so frightened.

The little Bulgarian cleared his throat, his eyes flicked down the pathway. ‘Yes, excellency, we do have the photographs, but they are barely useable. Blurred, you see…’

‘Blurred?’

‘Well, he was moving very quickly and there was insufficient light…I brought these…’ Smyrba reached into his jacket, extracted an envelope and handed it to Andrianov. ‘As you instructed, the negatives have been placed in a box for safekeeping.’ Smyrba smiled reassuringly.