Ian Hocking

THE AMBER ROOMS

For Jessica: Cool as.

I will lead my fear

Saskia Brandt illustrated by Pia Guerra

Author’s Note

The Saskia Brandt Series

You are reading the third book of the Saskia Brandt series. It may be read as a standalone novel, but it will spoil aspects of the first two books, Déjà Vu and Flashback. If you intend to read them at all, I recommend doing so before you continue.

Have you lost the plot? I’ve included summaries of Déjà Vu or Flashback at the end of this book. There you will also find an author interview.

At the end of Flashback, Saskia Brandt has used Jennifer Proctor’s time band to escape 2003. Her last moments in that book feature a vision of forested land and eastern European myths.

Characters and Events

The keystone historical event in this book is real. The 1907 Tiflis (now Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi) heist, known also as the Yerevan Square Expropriation, took place on the 26th June, 1907 (Old Style calendar) and shocked the world for its daring and the unprecedented sum of money stolen. It was enacted by Bolshevik paramilitaries as a way of procuring funds for seditionist activities.

The courageous, chivalrous and murderous psychotic Bolshevik known as ‘Kamo’ is real. In our own world-line, Kamo languished after the revolution and passed through a series of jobs secured through his boyhood connection to Joseph Stalin. He was briefly a member of the feared All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Counter-revolution and Sabotage—its acronym is Cheka—but was forced to leave when his behaviour was considered too brutal even for them.

As an old man, Stalin said, ‘Kamo was a truly amazing person… A master of disguise.’

In 1922, Kamo had returned to Tiflis to write his memoirs, which would include Stalin’s days as a bandit, when he was killed under mysterious circumstances. It seems likely that he was removed to protect Stalin’s image as a statesman, and likely that Stalin gave the order.

His fate in my book is somewhat different.

Prologue

Easter, 1906

The Turkish merchantman Theodorus sailed south through the Strait of Kerch towards the Black Sea. It carried a tall, broad-shouldered Russian named Alexei Sergeyevich Draganov. He amused the crew with stories and songs of north-west Russia, which he translated into broken Turkish at their demand. He was an officer of the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order. This department was known to some as the Okhranka.

Theodorus moved clockwise around the Black Sea and touched at Novorossiisk and Cape Kodori, where Draganov went ashore and made enquiries. He carried pistols beneath his tunic because there were thieving practices in this part of the world. His enquiries at the Cape were productive. At their conclusion, Draganov returned to his cabin and ate fish eggs and bread. Then he entered his thoughts in his diary. Each word was encoded with a cipher known only to him and his Protection Department mentor, Dr Kaplan. Once his speculation was set down in the diary, he copied out the text as an addendum to the serial letter that the captain kept on his behalf. The captain had been on a retainer for the Protection since the 1870s, when it had been known as the Third Section.

Towards the end of the voyage, Draganov often spent the later part of the evening smoking his pipe on deck with the ship’s surgeon, an erudite young Georgian called Chabua. They discussed whether the Black Sea itself could be described as a living organism. Both agreed it could be so; it depended on one’s definition. Chabua was taken by the history of the Sea. He had never sailed it before. He was a romantic and fascinated by its role as a watery crossroads during antiquity. To think of the Thracians of the Iliad; to think of these harbours, some older than the pyramids.

Draganov shrugged. He knocked the remains of his tobacco into the creamy wake and bade the doctor a good night. He lay without sleeping in his damnably short bunk. He thought of the Argonauts labouring into the eye of the wind, towards the edge of the known world. A golden fleece the prize. He listened to the slap of water against the hull. The ship’s bell rang to mark the middle watch. Someone laughed. It was a happy ship. Draganov slept, finally, with his feet in the air.

Ever on, the ship nodded its way towards Anatolia.

~

In Sukham, the Theodorus was met by a forgettable Protection Department officer, who paid off the captain of the merchantman and asked to introduce Draganov to the settlement. It was an overcast day and by late afternoon the weather was an unpleasant combination of draughty and hot. Draganov went alone to the bazaar and bought gifts—Caucasian trinkets, for the most part—for certain of his female companions in St Petersburg. He visited a bath house and had a proper shave. Then, for good form, he had tea and jam with the Sukham agent in the botanical gardens, though the fellow bored him with asinine observations on the relationship between cranial topology and anarchistic tendencies, particularly in the Georgian male.

‘Where is she?’ asked Draganov when he could stand their conversation no longer.

The agent fidgeted.

‘In my house. With my wife.’

Draganov dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and watched a child lead a camel across dusty cobbles. The agent seemed to deflate.

‘Shall we?’

~

The Countess stood in the beautiful corner—that place in a Russian house where the icon is hung. She was tall. Her features were a trifle too penetrating for his taste. But her cheeks were rouged and her eyes were green and he looked forward to the interrogation. Age: twenty-six. Not young and not old; able to be either at a whim. She wore fine skirts and a short jacket. Her hat was broad-brimmed and slanted. In all, she was dressed exactly as Draganov would expect a young woman of her class and means to dress. Indeed, she shone with nobility.

Before he acknowledged her, Draganov closed the drawing room door and inspected his surroundings. He looked out of the second-storey window at the white caps of the Caucasian mountains. They were in the north-east of the town. A girl careened down the dust road on a bicycle. A fire bell rang somewhere.

Draganov dropped his canvas bag. He felt that the Countess was watching him with some amusement and this, in turn, amused him. There were no electrical fittings in the room. A fire was burning in the hearth. Winged armchairs faced it. The paintings on the wall were cheap, local prints. A rounded card table had been placed on a bear rug—itself a former local, Draganov had no doubt.

‘May I sit down?’ she asked.

‘Where are my manners?’ said Draganov. ‘Of course.’

It had taken her a long time to ask that question. He noted this, but reminded himself not to read too much into the delay. Her papers were in order, after all.

She assumed the further of the two winged chairs. Her back was straight and her hands remained in her bearskin hand warmer.

Draganov sat opposite her and smiled. He was thinking about the wife of the Protection agent and her servant, both of whom were likely to be listening at the door. The agent himself was probably where Draganov had left him: in the kitchen, drinking milk.

‘Why am I being held here against my will, Mr Draganov?’

He shrugged.

‘A serious crime has occurred. You are an important witness.’

‘I am aware of that,’ she snapped, ‘having been held at gunpoint, along with my travelling companions and the ship’s crew. I would like to know why they were freed and I was not.’

‘When did you last eat?’

‘Yesterday.’

Draganov pulled the cord. The old servant entered immediately. ‘You,’ he said, ‘bring in bread and cold meats.’

‘But Mr—’

‘His methods and mine differ, madam. Our guest has not eaten today. Pick up your feet.’

The servant, who was used to quite familiar exchanges with her master, screwed her face into an expression of disgust. She walked from the room with her hands in the pockets of her skirt.

The Countess said, ‘Do you want me to thank you?’

‘If you wish.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Your servant, madam.’

Casually, Draganov opened his canvas bag and removed the Countess’s confiscated personal effects. He placed them on the tea table next to his chair. The Countess watched him. Draganov tried to note the object on which her eyes lingered. Was it the dull black band?

‘Now, let us begin at the beginning,’ he said. ‘You boarded the Spring Wanderer at Odessa?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was the purpose of your journey?’

‘To see the sights.’

Draganov leaned forward and indicated a handwritten letter. ‘The captain told us that you were returning home following the death of your fiancé, one Paruyr. What happened to his body?’

‘We buried him beneath a silver birch, sir.’

‘You are not in mourning.’

‘Wives mourn. We were never married.’

Draganov leaned back. They did not speak for a while. He listened to the clocks and birds. At length, the woman crossed her legs.

‘When did the pirates attack the Spring Wanderer?’

‘Two days ago. It was the middle of the night. Later, somebody told me that they had joined the boat earlier and stowed their weaponry beneath felt cloaks. I found them quite gallant, actually.’

‘We’ll come to that,’ said Draganov. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Not at all.’

Draganov knocked his pipe against the free-standing ashtray beside his chair. He took a pouch of tobacco from his pocket, grimaced at the clumps, which indicated dampness, and set about sprinkling the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. As he did so, he considered showing the woman a mugshot of a political—perhaps her, perhaps not—that he had obtained in Tiflis.

‘How many of them were there?’

‘Two dozen, I think.’

Draganov nodded and tamped the tobacco with his thumb. He sucked a little on the pipe to test its draw.

‘Are you telling me,’ he said, ‘that two dozen pirates boarded and nobody raised an alarm?’

‘The two dozen includes several of the ship’s crew. They were in on the crime from the beginning.’

‘How would you describe these pirates?’

‘Workers. Intellectuals. It’s difficult to say.’ A smile came and went. ‘They were revolutionaries in style and deed.’

Draganov added more tobacco to his pipe. ‘Do you find the notion of revolution romantic?’

She gave him a hard look. ‘Don’t practise upon me.’

‘It is a plain question. Many women, I hear, find the notion of anarchy romantic.’

‘Anarchy and revolution are not the same.’

‘Really? Tell me the difference.’

She smiled again. ‘I leave that to the intellectuals. But I might say that the revolutionary does not know what he wants, whereas the anarchist does.’

‘I see,’ said Draganov. He looked at the notes made by the Sukham agent. ‘Please describe the head pirate.’

‘He was a tall man—bald and ugly into the bargain. He sounded like someone from the north-west.’

‘Did he, indeed?’ Draganov read once more the description provided by two independent witnesses: short; good looking; freckled complexion; Georgian accent. ‘What did this man say?’

‘Very little. Once, I believe he claimed “I am not a criminal but a revolutionary”.’

‘What happened once you knew the pirates wanted money?’

‘They rounded us up first and made us stand in the middle of the ship. They told us to see nothing. The captain was compelled to show the chief pirate the location of the wage money.’

‘Did the crew put up any resistance as the cash was being stolen?’

‘No. The chief pirate put some officers in the lifeboats as hostages. These officers were later used to row the pirates ashore.’

‘How would you describe the atmosphere?’

‘Businesslike. There was no question that the chief pirate was in control of his men.’

‘Only men? No women?’

‘They were disguised, but I’m sure no women took part.’

‘There are reports that you helped the pirates.’

‘The reports are false and outrageous.’

‘You are a revolutionary, madam.’

‘Never.’

Draganov struck a match and moved it in a circle around the bowl of his pipe, drawing shallow puffs. When the pipe was going, he extinguished the match with a wave and dropped it into the ashtray.

‘You were on the inside. You participated in this expropriation, which was a crime committed by an anarchist gang known as the Outfit. We know that this gang is responsible for several prior robberies around the region. One of their number is a woman known to us only by a codename. She has a peculiar distinguishing feature. Shall I tell you what it is?’

Draganov withdrew his gun. He did not cock it. He laid it crosswise on his leg.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘remove your hands from the bearskin.’

The woman had not moved or shown the smallest sign of alarm.

‘I will not,’ she said.

‘Everything is clear to me, I believe, with the exception of one thing. Why have you not already escaped this house? I have evidence of the range of your skills.’

‘If I’m honest,’ she said, ‘I need the band on the table.’

Draganov cocked the revolver and pointed it at her chest. Carefully, he reached across and pulled the cord for the servant again. ‘So you confess, Countess. Please, show me your hand.’

‘Who betrayed me?’

‘Your so-called fiancé, Paruyr. He should have lain low, consistent with his role of a dead man. Instead, he has been frequenting casinos. We picked him up yesterday.’

‘Who else did he betray?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘My travelling companion, Alenya, is dead, isn’t she?’

‘I cannot be specific. However, in general, I can say that interrogation practices in this part of the world are regrettably behind the times.’

The door opened.

Without turning, Draganov said, ‘Tell your employer that he can come in, but not before he’s called the Chief of Gendarmes.’ He was about to add, ‘We have her,’ when a loop of wire was passed over his head. He was a big man but his reflexes were fast. He was able to put his gun against his throat before the garrotte was pulled taut. His breath stopped and his windpipe was almost crushed by the pressing bulk of the gun.

His attacker grunted and pulled Draganov backwards. His chair tipped. The pipe spun from his mouth and his foot kicked the ashtray. Draganov felt that the gun barrel was pointing past his chin, so he discharged it twice to advertise his predicament. The noise was tremendous. Powder burned against his throat.

As he struck the floor, he felt the garrotte slacken. He did not try to touch it. Instead, he used his long reach to put his hand into the hearth. He fumbled for a burning log and felt his hand grip an iron poker instead. Draganov grinned. Luck was with him. He seized the poker and swung it behind his head.

The poker passed through empty air.

Draganov felt that the garrotte was loose. He whipped it from his throat using the gun. Ignoring the pain of his burnt neck, he coughed and staggered to his feet. He forced air into his lungs but his vision darkened abruptly and he slumped against the upturned chair. He raised his gun into this gloom and prepared to fire.

Draganov could see his assailant. It was an ostler. No, a woman dressed as an ostler—her long, untied hair betrayed her—and she was running for the window. He would have to shoot her in the back. He decided this was justice. It was her own fault for attacking one of the Protection. But he could not bring himself to fire, and in three bounds she was through the window. He expected to see her fall to the ground. This room was on the first floor. Instead, she tumbled onto something that rang wooden and hollow. There had to be a carriage beneath the window.

The Countess was retrieving her belongings from the collection of evidence. She turned to Draganov and looked coldly at the gun as he brought it to bear. She did not hesitate. The last item she took was the black band. She passed this over the stump of her left wrist and secured it at the elbow.

‘It is you,’ said Draganov. His voice had a drunken slur. He felt crushed with sleepiness. ‘You are … Brandt.’

A man’s face appeared in the window. Draganov recognised him as the Georgian poet who had led the pirates. The man hissed, ‘Lynx! Come!’

Instead, the woman walked towards Draganov. He held the weapon but her green eyes scared him. She used her teeth to pull off her glove.

‘We have a custom here,’ she said, talking from the side of her mouth, ‘which a stranger will practise on a child when leaving a house. It helps learn names, and a little respect.’

She slapped him hard.

‘I am Lynx.’

Draganov coughed, then smiled. The Countess moved out of focus.

‘I know you as Saskia Brandt, late of the Federal Investigation Bureau. You remember it as a dream, don’t you?’

Though he could no longer see her face in detail, Draganov perceived her bewilderment. The glove still hung from her teeth. She was staring at him. The moment ended when the man at the window shouted, ‘Now or never again, Lynx. We have it all. Come.’

Slowly, and still covered by Draganov’s gun, the Countess walked away. Draganov fell to his knees. He could hear the shouts of alarm from the floor below. Someone was knocking at the door. Even as he pitched onto his face and his sense of himself evaporated, enough wit remained to appreciate the sophistication of his entrapment. Saskia Brandt, alias the Countess, had been reunited with her most precious possession. Did she even know why it was so important? Did she justify her yearning for the band as a sentimental attachment, origins forgotten? In passing, she had also discovered the identity of the man, Paruyr, who had betrayed their latest expropriation, as well as the death of the woman she called Alenya.

Yes, it was the neatest thing.

Draganov watched the blur of this woman slip through the window. He had been outplayed. But he was determined to meet her again. It would take more than a garrotte to separate him from a vow.

Chapter One

Approaching St Petersburg: Early September, 1907

A late evening train moved north through the empty miles towards the City Upon Bones. The electric lights of the train reflected in the water dripping from the trees and the animal eyes only one passenger, Saskia Brandt, could see. She sat in the dining carriage. Her right hand held The Travels of Marco Polo open at an illustration of Kublai Khan, but Saskia was not reading the book. Her eyes searched for the occluded horizon. She had been thinking of that first meeting with Draganov in Sukham, when he had used her real name and unlocked the puzzle box of her memory.

Pink spray carnations leaned in pity over her uneaten lemon sorbet. Saskia had no appetite. She was more scared than she could remember, and she could remember everything. Fear was her partner and had been since April of 1904. Some days she led; some days the fear took her through every step and turn.

She looked once more to the horizon. The Tsar’s Village was close. She needed to reach it within twenty-four hours or her hope would be lost. She could, if necessary, leave the train before St Petersburg and head to the Tsar’s Village directly, but there was little chance of entering the Summer Palace undetected. She would need the help of revolutionaries, and they were to be found in St Petersburg.

Her right hand closed The Travels of Marco Polo and joined her left wrist within a bearskin warmer that she wore around her waist.

She thought of one hour before, when her travelling companion, who happened to be a psychotic and a murderer, had fallen from the train. Fear rocked the balance of her mind and she imagined this man having clung to the carriage.

Was that Kamo’s bloodied face in the window of the connecting door? No. It was the guard of the dining carriage. She had exchanged pleasantries with him earlier in the journey. His long coat was silvered with rain. He ignored Saskia and moved past her to the curving partition behind which the maître d’ was making preparations for the second service.

Saskia inventoried the occupants of the carriage once more. She worried that her daydreaming had distracted her from the entrance of a passenger she could not trust. Since its inception, the Moscow-St Petersburg railway had unsettled those authorities who did not wish to see the Russian people move quickly between the two cities. The train was intended for passengers above a certain class threshold. Passport control was strict. The train would carry any number of Tsarist agents. Saskia wondered whether a third person had been assigned to watch both her and Kamo and, perhaps, assume responsibility for the completion of their task should they fail.

There were three other people in the carriage. Each was travelling alone. The first was an elderly Hussar who was occupied with the anatomy of his strudel. The second, shaking straight his newspaper at irregular intervals to the annoyance of the first, appeared to be a civil servant. The third was a minor royal of some description, and he was sleeping with an open mouth. Next to him, a stove flickered redly. Saskia looked at the upright carriage clock near the door to the first class sleeping carriage. She alone heard it tick.

Yes, Kamo had failed. He was lying somewhere along a cold curve of rail, miles to the rear, maybe near a rural train station, maybe not.

Two minutes passed. Each second was crowded with ideas, notion upon notion. She thought about the item in the luggage carriage addressed to the Twelve Collegia. At the close of that second minute, Saskia resolved that she would complete her business on the train and jump clear before its arrival in St Petersburg.

The wheels struck an irregularity in the rail. Saskia rocked. The minor royal snorted awake. The civil servant looked at Saskia and smiled in the manner that said: he was a man, she was a lady, and in his opinion everything would be quite all right.

Saskia inclined her head towards him and left the carriage by its rear door. Outside, on the open platform, the wind pressed against her hat, which was securely pinned to her hair. She could see the connective tissue of the train beneath her feet; sleepers flickering by; the knots of time passing. The fear was there, too, leading her.

She tried to relish the air from the Gulf of Finland but her nerves hummed like ramshackle electrics. It was likely her mascara still carried the dust of the Caucasus. She thought about Kamo as the sky in the west lost its blueness for black.

When the train guard came, Saskia was ready. She smiled and touched her hand to his sleeve. He was buttoning his double-breasted coat. Its thick collar reached his ears. His hat was wide and heavy.

‘Madam,’ he said, pinching some soup from his moustache, ‘you would be more comfortable in your compartment. You are not dressed for these conditions. May I lead you there?’

Saskia was wearing the clothes that had been given to her: a vermillion dress with a fishtail skirt, a short pearl-white jacket, and a pillbox hat. It would not have been her first choice, but the revolutionary who had expropriated it from a public bath in Baku had, at least, selected a costume of the correct size.

‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘But you are very good.’

She looked at the pinned flap of coat that neatly dressed his arm, which had been amputated at the elbow. The guard noticed her attention.

‘An old injury,’ he said.

Saskia shook her head. ‘I did not mean to offend you.’

‘You could not offend me.’

The guard had not finished his sentence with “madam”. Saskia took it as a sign that he was willing to forego the strict propriety that would typically characterise a conversation between a noblewoman and a train guard. His age helps, she thought. He must be fifty or sixty. He wants to daughter me.

Saskia removed her left wrist from the hand warmer. The guard looked at the scarf that covered her stump. His expression had not changed. The thick skin of his eyelids did not move.

‘There was an accident. It happened in the Ukraine, during the summer when I went down to the peasants.’

The guard put his hand in one of the deep pockets of his coat. For a moment, Saskia feared that he would draw a gun and denounce her as an anarchist. But then she remembered him taking his official timepiece from that pocket in response to the minor royal’s query about the accuracy of the clock in the dining carriage, not two hours before.

‘I have no weapon,’ she said.

‘Then you have placed yourself in some danger.’

Saskia wanted to ask his name, but she thought that his hesitation might set her back. There was no question that she needed his help. There was a piece of furniture in the luggage compartment that Saskia and her fallen companion had been instructed to escort, regardless of cost to life, to sympathisers in St Petersburg.

Saskia would not let that happen. She needed to press the guard.

‘Are you a friend?’ she asked. ‘Tell me now or go about your business.’

His beard twitched. ‘Are you an agent of the Third Section?’

Saskia smiled. The Tsar’s Third Section had not existed officially for years, but its name still held a chill.

‘My friend,’ she said, touching the arm that had held the timepiece, ‘there is a crated item in the luggage compartment addressed to the University’s Twelve Collegia.’

‘Do you want me to change the address?’

‘You’re a good man, comrade. Here it is.’ She passed him an envelope. ‘Inside are new luggage labels. It will be safer if you do not read them.’

The guarded nodded and put the envelope in an outer pocket.

‘Take these, too,’ she said, pulling a clip of roubles from her sleeve.

‘I will not.’

Saskia sighed. ‘I need the train to be slowed. Can you do that?’

‘You need to be careful.’

The guard had used the informal “you”.

‘Comrade, will you let the train be slowed?’

The guard sighed and took his hand from his pocket. Where Saskia expected the pocket watch, she saw a revolver.

With an apologetic shrug, the guard said, ‘We’re given these.’

Saskia felt a wave of relaxation down the muscles on her right side. She was ready to slap the gun aside and overpower him.

The train whistled.

The guard said, ‘You should have it. What am I meant to do with it? I’m an old man.’

‘Thank you, but keep it.’

‘I will slow the train for you and redirect the crate. Should I tell you my name?’

Saskia put her hand to his cheek. She did not want to give him her assumed name, which would be to meet honesty with deceit.

‘There is a tunnel,’ the guard said, ‘and at its entrance, if you go north, there is a track. That will take you quietly into the city.’

When he left, Saskia slowed her vision to watch the sleepers drift by. She thought about the revolver, how the cylinder would turn with quiet clicks.

I will lead my fear, she thought.

Chapter Two

In the first sleeping carriage, the steward was sitting in his chair. He rose as Saskia passed. She smiled, expressed her desire to remain undisturbed in her compartment, and continued along the narrow, carpeted passage until she reached the last door.

She knocked once and went inside. There was nobody hiding beneath the fold-out seats or in the en suite bathroom. She locked the door. The steward had left her smoked salmon and vodka in an ice bucket. On one seat was a printed note from the train manager. It described the weather and the wildlife one might see coming into St Petersburg. The note from the previous day, which had appeared following their departure from Moscow, had said much the same.

Saskia popped some salmon into her mouth and withdrew a small travelling bag from the cupboard beneath the sink in the bathroom. It had a tumbler lock. She turned the dials, opened the bag, and withdrew her papers. There were several. Each testified to the state’s anxiety. Saskia set them alight using the oil lamp and brushed the debris into the sink. She turned the tap and watched the blackened flakes swill away. Then she opened the window and threw out Kamo’s second hat, his pipe and tobacco pouch, and his wash bag.

She looked at herself in the mirror.

Home, she thought. We’re going home.

There was no time to consider what she meant by ‘we’. Did she feel some responsibility for Ute Schlesinger, the woman who had been born in this body? Saskia knew her own mind to be a digital ghost. Indeed, perhaps her thoughts were only a crude facsimile, a simulation.

Mirror, mirror.

As always, the imperfections stood out. Her eyes were wrinkling at the edges. The dimples either side of her mouth were deeper now. This is age. This is time. The days were long passed since she had shaved her legs or shaped the edges of her eyebrows. Saskia had been told that she gave the impression of a sadly lost beauty, a woman whose twin turned beneath chandeliers. The compliment did not please her. The physical attractiveness distinguished her as surely as her missing left hand. Both were attributes she wanted to hide.

So neat: those petals of skin that a butcher had gathered, folded and stitched during the winter of 1905. It was a curious thing that the absence of her hand should embarrass her when she was alone. Curious too that the hand had been lost in the crash of a heavier-than-air flying machine. What secrets she carried.

It is time for us to go home, she thought.

Am I thinking in Russian?

‘It is time,’ she said in German, watching her mouth in the mirror, ‘to go home.’

The face—Ute’s face, Saskia’s face—smiled.

She took her long coat from the hook on the bathroom door and swung it around her shoulders. She fastened the buckles with a practised movement and folded back the material on her left sleeve. Pinned it. As she held the bearskin warmer between her teeth, she changed her hat for a thick cap, and undid the laces on her boots. They had high heels and would not do.

In Kamo’s trunk beneath the window, she found the expensive fur boots that he had bought in Baku, on the Caspian. She stuffed the toes with newspaper and put them on.

Before she could pack her satchel, there was a knock at the door. It was sturdy but the upper panel, hidden by a green blind, was glass. A strong man would be able to break it open. She watched the brass handle turn. Its lock held.

She remembered that her revolver had fallen from the train along with Kamo, and regretted her refusal to accept the replacement offered by the guard.

Am I thinking in Russian?

The handle turned again.

Fear, she thought. Lead me.

Had there been a day without fear since her unhappy arrival in Russia? Not truly. Days of camaraderie, yes. Mountain work. Milk bar stories in the hard lands around Tiflis. Her friends there had risked death for a future they could not imagine. It had been imagined for them by the orators and downright mountebanks of the revolutionary movements.

A voice outside said, quietly, ‘Open in the name of the Tsar.’

Saskia smiled with one side of her mouth. She entered the bathroom. It had a door, identical to the one leading to the corridor, which connected to the bathroom of the neighbouring compartment. She could break through it but the sound would carry and she would only gain the advantage of another compartment, which could be occupied.

She crossed to the window, opened it, and looked forward along the train. Through habit, Kamo had chosen a compartment next to the maintenance foot-hoops, and they were within reach. She saw the dining carriage, the luggage carriage beyond that, the tender, and the locomotive. The darkness of the sky was complete. The train was passing through a wood whose trees rose to twice the height of a carriage.

She remembered a dervish in Yerevan Square. And the bloody, gut-blown horses. When the horses had screamed, she had not heard them over the echo of grenades. Those grenades had been called “apples” in the parlance of the Outfit. She remembered everything.

Saskia closed Kamo’s trunk and stepped onto it. She swung her leg out into the night air. She had climbed from a moving train window twice before, but she had never ascended to the roof. The bunched newspaper in the toes of her boots made the job difficult. She reached one of the maintenance hoops with her heel and swung out to snag the topmost rung with her hand. She caught it, held on, exhaled. For the moment, she was secure against the side of the train with the window below and to her left.

As she looked, a head emerged from it.

Saskia tried to make herself small against the train. She felt the vibration of the carriage through her cheekbone. She could see that the man was holding onto his hat and looking towards the rear of the train. He did not, however, lift his eyes. She hoped he could not hear the flapping of her skirt.

The train blew its whistle. Saskia squinted against the sooty air and saw the locomotive enter the tunnel that the guard had described. If their speed did not change, she had between six and seven seconds before her own carriage passed through.

She looked down. The man in the hat was staring at her. He had the red eyes of an addict and his mouth was open. One hand still pressed his hat against his head. Saskia could see its brim flutter. His other hand held a gun, but she was already moving when it fired.

The roof was arched, slick with rain and dirt, and swaying unpredictably in the gloom. Saskia stood for a moment, then dropped to one knee. She turned to face the tunnel.

It was four seconds away.

A gloved hand gripped the topmost maintenance rail.

Saskia spun again, this time to face the rear of the train. She had half a carriage in which to sprint as fast as her body could take her, against the direction of travel, cutting her absolute speed by a margin that would reduce the chance of injury from her jump.

She raised her skirt and ran.

When she was two thirds of the way along the carriage, she knew that time had run out. She shortened her run and cut to the side. She released her skirt and leapt as a long-jumper, wheeling her arms. A shot rang out.

Then she was in freefall.

~

She had slipped through a raincloud twisting like a cat. She wore twenty-first century clothes. There was fear; fear like a shrill note, deafening her thoughts. But the reflexes told, with or without her. She settled flat as a leaf. Face down. Her fall described a helix. She arched her back, relaxed her legs, and spread her arms.

Where did I learn that?

Oh, God.

She was thousands of feet above a lake whose waters were the richest blue she had ever seen. Brown-green forest pressed on all its sides.

Where am I?

‘Jem, help me!’

An automated mechanism within her mind captured a diagnostic portion of the shoreline. She heard a single, foreign thought—Siberia—and she understood that the word meant “sleeping land” in a language one thousand years dead.

This is Lake Baikal.

I’m going to—

She dropped her shoulders to bring her crash zone nearer the shore.

Forty seconds remaining.

Baikal. Lake Baikal.

She was screaming.

Russia.

Twenty seconds.

She bit down on the scream, made it her last, and took a huge breath. This relaxed her a little.

Ten seconds.

Oh, God.

She straightened her legs and her body slipped towards the vertical. Her feet were together and her knees were bent. She tried to understand how she could hit this blue-black, indifferent water and live.

Cat.

Remember Ego, the cat? She fell from a balcony in Berlin and lived to chase the birds another day.

How deep?

Seventeen-point-eight-three metres, plus or minus point-three.

When?

She did not know.

Where?

Siberia, no other.

The sleeping land.

Jem, I’m sorry.

~

More than three years after that fall into Baikal, Saskia landed on the yielding stones of the track foundation. Her momentum gave her two backward rolls, a third during which she wheeled her legs to change direction, and then she was jogging through the wet nettles to a stop. She watched the remaining carriages enter the tunnel. Four. Three. Two. Smoke poured from the floor of the tunnel entrance. She heard the rats call as one. They chirped like sparrows.

She flexed her shoulders and brushed away the worst of the dirt. She gathered her skirts and walked up the slope. The trees thinned. There, the domes of the Church of St Alexander Nevsky and of St Isaac’s Cathedral were visible as brighter stars in the flat constellation of St Petersburg.

Saskia imagined its bridges rising. Then she bit the last of the gravel from her palm and set off towards the light.

Chapter Three

Walking the streets until morning would not do. She had to find somewhere for the night. With no sure friends in the city, and no papers, she would gamble on a safe house associated with her late employer, the revolutionary underground. St Petersburg held more than forty safe houses. They could not all be warned to expect her, not so soon, even if the man—or men—who had attacked her on the train had notified confederates upon arrival.

Saskia walked for three hours without incident and entered the city. She presented herself at a bookshop called Pushkin & Co. The superintendent was a short man. He pencilled the name she offered, “Ms Margaret Happenstance”, into his visitors’ book and, seeing interest where there was none, told her that he would erase the letters later and re-write them in peerless copperplate. He was that kind of man. Her back straightened with annoyance. The record of her name was, he sighed, an unfortunate bureaucratic consequence of the recent troubles. He installed Saskia in a small receiving room at the rear of the bookshop, where he continued to impress upon her the signal difficulties of his professional life. The second floor was occupied by a German baron and his wife, who were wonderful. But the higher the floor, the cheaper the rent, the worse the trouble, the greater the difficulty. The exception, he added, was the basement. It was the cheapest by some margin. Could she believe a tenant would pay for such lodgings? That is to say, basement lodgings in a city such as St Petersburg, where the Baltic rammed its cold storms down the throat of the Neva each winter with a regularity that smacked of malice? He, for his part, could not.

Saskia listened to the passers-by and the hoof falls while the superintendent spoke. When he left, she walked around the room. Its curtains were closed and buttoned. Locked concertina doors covered the books. A ginger cat slept on the cooling stove. It reminded her of another cat, Ego. Why were her memories of 2003 returning with such insistence? She might have been an old woman overwhelmed by thoughts of a childhood decades gone.

There was the familiar odour of soot. It was so familiar as to be requisite.

She walked to the icon and looked into its tilted, weeping eyes. She turned and faced the room. There, again in the beautiful corner, she waited.

~

‘They will stage A Life for the Tsar at the Mariinsky next week,’ said the young man, not twenty-five, straightening chairs and adjusting flowers as he crossed the room. A tallow candle burned in his lantern. He passed around the tables with the ease of a waiter. Saskia was surprised that he had not removed his ink-stained apron. The man was either audacious or forgetful. ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘it is the first production of the season. Do you have a favourite ballerina?’

Saskia looked deliberately at his apron.

‘I have four,’ she said. ‘Karsavina, Pavlova, Siedova and Trefilova.’

The man smiled with relief. ‘You are Judjuna Mikhailovna?’

‘Yes,’ she said, though she had never heard the name. ‘I need to wash and pick up some new clothes. Then I must go to the Tsar’s Village. Can you arrange that?’

‘Everyone calls me Grisha. Costumes? We have costumes to spare. I can arrange everything. Please, come with me.’

He put his arm through Saskia’s and drew her across the room to a battered door, which opened onto a descending staircase.

~

The basement was a pit of three rooms: one for the printing press, a bedroom, and a living room-cum-kitchen. Their walls shone like a cold sweat. Grisha asked Saskia to remain in the living room while he attended the press. She was welcome to eat some beef and unleavened bread. Saskia thanked him and helped herself to the food. As she swallowed, ignoring the gristle, she walked the short perimeter. The bookcase was sloping and damp to the touch. The light bulbs were sooty yet harsh. The air smelled of cabbage, body odour and coffee. Wind piped in the hearth, where flames bowed and curtseyed. Saskia watched them until a lanky, red-haired man appeared at the foot of the stairs. This one was no older than twenty years. He was carrying a newspaper, and his first act was to give it to her.

‘Dry your hair. It must be wet, what with the rain,’ he said, flicking a glance at the ceiling. Then he bowed. ‘You may call me Robespierre.’

Saskia took the newspaper. ‘Thank you. Will you have some of this beef?’

‘No.’ Suddenly, he was embarrassed. ‘It’s for you.’

Saskia smiled. She had found the cell and been accepted. Arrangements would soon be in place for her journey to the Amber Room. She tipped her head to one side and drew a handful of her damp hair through the newspaper. She smiled at Robespierre in a manner that made him touch his fist to his lips and frown.

‘Robespierre?’ she asked. ‘That’s an interesting name.’

The man shrugged and put his hands into the pockets of his suit as he leaned against the mantel. Saskia heard the crinkle of more newspaper and she thought of the hidden doves of magicians. His collar was winged, student style. The bones of his cheeks were high but their flesh was dappled with smallpox scars. He stared at her sideways.

‘I chose it with some care,’ he said.

‘How many of you work here?’

Oddly, he switched from Russian to French, as though he wished to keep his name in focus. ‘Two, since they took Lera. Will you have some vodka?’

‘No, thank you.’

Robespierre pursed his lips as though this was an unexpected behaviour. Saskia thought he was right. She continued to watch him while she dried her hair using the newspaper.

‘What’s wrong with your left hand?’ he asked.

‘Why should there be anything wrong with it?’

‘You haven’t taken it out of your warmer. Did you hurt it?’ He stepped to the opposite side of the hearth. ‘Can I get you some medicine?’

Saskia had an idea that there was no medicine to be had.

‘No, thank you. To answer your question, I hurt it on the train.’

Loudly, Robespierre said, ‘Did you fight with her, the traitor?’

Saskia paused in her drying. Whom did he mean? Which traitor, of the endless parade, did he mean? Or was it a question designed to test her?

‘You are surprised that the traitor is a woman, Robespierre?’

‘That would offend my sense of equality, sister,’ he countered. Something in his expression changed. He added, ‘It is well known that the woman from the Caucasus has supernatural powers.’

Saskia laughed to cover her unease. It was possible, though unlikely, that news of her escape from the train had reached this cell. She hoped that Robespierre was cold-reading her. She dropped the newspaper near the bench and resumed her sandwich.

‘Like what?’ she asked, tearing at the beef.

‘Oh, it’s nothing like … My comrade on the Moika claims that this traitor knows when people lie. She can see in the dark.’ Robespierre looked at his shoes. He shrugged. ‘There is also the matter of her left hand. It is missing.’

Saskia stopped eating. She looked at him. ‘What do you study?’

‘I don’t understand.’

In Russian, Saskia said, ‘You’re a student, or dress like one. Let me guess—you study political economy.’

Robespierre pushed a hand through his thick hair. ‘Why do you look at me as if you were better? I studied agronomy until I discharged myself. The decision was mine.’ He looked at the hearth. ‘I am a comrade.’

‘Then you should choose your words with greater care,’ Saskia said. She looked at the door to the staircase. It was closed but not locked. ‘This is not the time for differences of opinion.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Robespierre. He scratched his eyebrow with a thumb. Pinched off a louse. ‘That is not what I meant.’

‘Robespierre,’ she said, swallowing. Why did she pity him, so suddenly and so fiercely? ‘Imagine your namesake here, right now. Think of an eighteenth century French revolutionary manifest in Russia, in troubled times, in the body of a man who stuffs his suit with newspaper to keep warm, named for half-baked notions of romance? And, my dear Robespierre, when the Party calls, you will go to the people. And the peasantry will laugh at you. A zemstvo might have you peeling potatoes for a week before they turn you in.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ he said. His shoulders were raised like hackles. ‘Didn’t Pisarev call for society and state to be turned over, like soil, for a new moral code to grow? We must assume the role of gardener, so to speak?’

‘And what costumes have you worn, Judjuna Mikhailovna?’ asked Grisha, entering from the press room. He removed his ink-stained gloves and touched Robespierre once, tenderly, on his pockmarked cheek. Saskia’s loneliness amplified her perception of the exchange. These pressurised environments encouraged the closest friendships. Even love. The embattled press crews lived minute to minute. A nosey superintendent or a chance street-meeting with an informer would end it. More likely, one of the crew would turn informer when the hunger and stupidity of the situation really bit. Loose teeth loosened the mouth.

‘Call me plain old Judjuna,’ said Saskia. ‘I don’t walk a stage.’

‘Oh, we all walk a stage,’ he said, smiling. ‘Do we not, Robespierre?’

‘You look at us as if you are better,’ Robespierre repeated. ‘And yet you boast about violence.’

‘Quiet,’ said Grisha. His smile had gone. ‘Our guest is eating.’

Saskia swallowed her mouthful and looked from one to the other. She wanted to leave. She appreciated once more that she was in the basement of a revolutionary safe house. The knowledge no longer brought a sense of relief. She was, by deed, an enemy of the revolution.

‘I’m going. Thanks for the food.’

‘Where will you go?’ said Grisha, gesturing to the beef with inky fingers. His grin was wide. His breath smelled of vodka. ‘Eat.’

Saskia looked at Robespierre, whose eyes did not lift to hers.

‘If you want to help me,’ she said, ‘I need to send a telegram.’

‘Where will we find a post office open at this hour?’ said Grisha. He winked at Robespierre, but something had soured between them. Grisha covered the moment by putting more joviality into his voice. ‘Robespierre, where is your charm? This is a pretty lady, after all. Talk to her. Make her feel at home.’

Saskia stood up. Her legs were weak. Was it because of the fall? She moved towards Robespierre, then crouched at the fire. If only something burned there. She looked at the vegetable crate crammed with fresh, illegal literature. How such a cell would worship its printing press. Grisha would be lucky if one in ten of these gazettes was used for a purpose less pragmatic than the wiping of a worker’s arse. The futility of the enterprise was as characteristic of revolutionary fomentation as faith was to the religious: the greater, the grander. Saskia could only guess what stories of water leaks and animal infestations they had used to explain the noise to the superintendent. Perhaps they were bribing him. Yes; Saskia decided they were. Peerless copperplate indeed.

Robespierre put his hand on his hip. In so doing, he exposed the scuffed handle of a revolver. Saskia was not alarmed. Like his name, it was a gesture. Nonetheless, her heart rate was increasing. She drew attention to the bookcase.

‘I see you have some German novels.’

‘We’re supposed to be teachers,’ Robespierre replied. His eyes narrowed. ‘That’s what we do. As a cover, I mean.’

Saskia blinked. Sweat was itching over her scalp. Her mouth watered, as though she was about to be sick. She reached out at Robespierre. He stepped away, embarrassed by her again, and she fell unconscious onto her chest.

~

In a deeper realm than the basement, in a place where her thoughts began, the sparrows came. They poured from an overcast sky. Their keening chirrups were like a thousand windows shattering. When she saw them, she remembered that they had come to her before. Like fear, they were constant in their companionship. Unlike fear, their memory dissolved with the opening of her eyes. They flew in her dreams alone.

Odin had ravens: the first called Huginn, or thought, and the second, Muninn, or memory.

Again, she wondered what these sparrows wanted, and she knew that she had thought this before, back and back, dream after dream.

‘What are you?’

The sparrows reminded her of something. Years before, on the long walk west from Baikal, Saskia had been followed by a feral dog. It accompanied her for a week over the endless steppe. It neither approached nor stalked her. It tracked her day and night. It slept when she slept and moved on when she did. When she threw it bread, the dog ate.

She never knew what happened to the dog. One day, it was gone.

The sparrows wheeled now in the dream sky. A great thickening, visible as a contour, passed through the flock. Beyond them, the overcast sky brightened. She could see shapes in the clouds. Russian letters.

No, Greek symbols.

No: equations.

‘Can you take me home?’ she called.

~

Saskia awoke on a mesh bed in the smaller of the two anterooms. She was certain that only minutes had passed. Her eyes focused on broken ambrotype plates between a chamber pot and the wall. As the shapes became more distinct, a pain grew behind her eyes. She shut them.

The sparrows faded from her mind, forgotten.

I … I got rid of Kamo. I’m in St Petersburg. They poisoned me.

Saskia could not move from the bed. She twisted with another pain, which began in her lower back. She tugged her knees to her chest, put her teeth into a knee. She rode it. Her hand twisted into a claw. When the pain lessened, she tried to relax the hand. She could not.

The room became bright and she saw that Grisha was standing by the bed, tightening the overhead bulb.

‘The Georgians told us to be careful,’ he said. His tone was no longer playful. It was clear that he was speaking to another person. ‘They told us to be careful.’

Saskia lost her sense of where and when she was. She struggled to reorient.

Eighteenth century? Revolution. Beheading. Ah, Robespierre. He speaks to a man called Robespierre.

Saskia gritted her teeth as a cramp rolled through her bowels.

‘What did you give me?’ she whispered.

Grisha leaned close. ‘The real Judjuna Mikhailovna was found dead on the early afternoon train,’ he said. ‘They told us minutes before you arrived.’

Before Saskia could reply, her view exchanged Grisha for Robespierre. He was holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘look what you did. She’s soiled herself. What if she dies?’

‘They warned me what she can do,’ said Grisha. ‘This is better—you can trust me on that—and don’t forget that with the money we can pay off the punchcutter.’

‘You mean to kill her? Say it, if that’s what you mean.’

Saskia tried to roll out of her spastic posture, but fell onto the floor. The pain was a wave that crashed upon her every nerve.

‘Robespierre,’ she croaked.

‘No,’ said Grisha. ‘It’s too late. Our friends will arrive within an hour. Maybe you’ll be alive then, so they can work on you.’

Saskia closed bleeding eyes and said, ‘Robespierre, shoot him. He betrayed me for money. If your principles mean anything, let them lead you now.’ But the effort to speak was too much. She counted her breaths. A few minutes later, she heard the press start up. It would be business as usual while the traitor died.

~

Sleep released her from the tortures of her body. She dreamed that she had fallen upwards into the sky, only to land on its grey membrane and become affixed like an insect stuck to water. The sensation was not unpleasant. She could not see her body, or even be sure that she had a body, but she felt naked.

The sparrows descended.

Yes, she thought. How could I forget about them? This time, when I awake, I will remember them all.

She looked into the uncountable mass of wings, quick eyes, and sharp mouths. She screamed. The birds struck her body like a black waterfall. They pecked at her eyes and the soft flesh between her toes. Their feet scratched. Their wings were unbearable in their fluttering, touching, and though she tried to spit and shake her head, they found her mouth and wriggled inside.

There was no pain.

She remembered the dog that had followed her across the steppe. It had been neither friend nor foe, but a constant companion.

She opened her eyes. The birds poured in. She saw equations and beautiful schematics spelled in fire against her eyelids.

She shouted, ‘I don’t understand,’ and the words were clear, though she knew her mouth to be jammed with struggling sparrows.

The fire became a cloud. It was the distinctive shape of an atomic explosion.

‘You are trying to say something,’ she said. ‘What?’

Mushroom cloud? Is that it?

At once, she understood that the horse radish had contained a deadly fungus called the Destroying Angel.

The Angel of Death.

‘Who are you?’

The sparrows finally tore open the skin of her abdomen. She felt them cram inside. Some beaks snapped up tiny mouthfuls of her blood and spat it into the sky. Others spat new blood. They worked furiously.

~

She awoke in the bedroom. Once more, she felt that something important had been revealed in her dream, but its nature eluded her. The pain returned, along with a creaking sound. She saw that Grisha was tightening a rope around her forearms. The rope was sticky where it met her skin. Something in the poison had made her bleed and keep bleeding.

Saskia looked up and coughed out dried blood.

‘Robespierre,’ she whispered. Her voice was childlike. ‘I will never look at you again as though I am better.’

Grisha settled on his haunches and began to knot the rope. He smiled.

‘My dear, you’re confusing me with—’

Robespierre’s shot passed through Grisha’s chest below his collar bone. He fell against Saskia. He was still holding the rope, and looked from it to Saskia, as though they were pieces in a puzzle. Robespierre struck Grisha’s head with the butt of the gun, lashing left and right, until Grisha was lying alongside her, bloodied and snorting.

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Don’t kill him. You’ve done enough.’

‘Yes.’ Robespierre looked at the gun and his red hands. ‘You’re right.’

‘How long until the others arrive?’

‘Minutes. That assumes, of course, that Grisha told the truth. Maybe there is no time at all.’

‘Pick up the gun,’ she said. ‘Will the superintendent “hear” the shot?’

‘He is one of us. I don’t know.’ He looked at the weapon. He was weeping. ‘I guess this is the end of me.’

‘Listen, Robespierre. You’re a good man.’

He crouched by her head. ‘It’s almost dawn,’ he said. ‘They are coming for you. People from the south. Georgians.’

‘What about the Milkman?’

‘I don’t know anything about that. Don’t ask me.’ To himself, he said, ‘I stopped him because this is not right. This should not be about money. Perhaps I don’t have the strength for this.’

‘There is nobody else for me in St Petersburg, Robespierre. Do you understand? If you don’t save me now, nobody will.’

He pressed his hand against his temple. The hand still held the gun. Saskia tried to smile.

‘Robespierre, concentrate.’

‘I understand. There are people I know—they are unconnected to the Party.’

‘I need to leave the city before the Georgians come. If Grisha knows, they all know.’

‘Grisha told me you had a rendezvous with someone in the Tsar’s Village.’

‘Concentrate. Untie me. Bring me water and salt. But first look to Grisha. Turn his head so that his airway is open.’

‘Why would you be kind to him?’

‘If you do it, I’m not the one being kind.’

Sleep-sleep-sleep, she thought, recalling a nursery rhyme she had heard in Tiflis. Don’t lie on the edge of the bed or a grey wolf will come and bite you.

~

When Saskia saw daylight through the seams of her moving coach, she was detached from the news that she had survived the night. Her bleeding had reduced but her kidneys felt burned. She knew that her death would now be a slow poisoning of the blood, daylight or no daylight, and it would take more than this continuous, secret tour of the city by closed carriage to save her from the Georgians. Robespierre planned to keep her moving while he searched for what he called a “safe landing”. He had found her bandages, towels to line her underwear, and an infusion of blessed milk thistle, which she sipped as the carriage rocked through street after brightening street. Robespierre would not say how he had acquired these medicaments, beyond a mutter that his father would not miss the money. Saskia called him a gentleman and touched his cheek. He frowned and told her to drink more of the tea.

The hours passed. In the early afternoon, the carriage stopped outside an apartment block near the Griboyedov Canal and Saskia was carried, in blankets, to a wheelchair. Robespierre took her to an apartment occupied by polite, indifferent strangers who appeared to owe Robespierre their help and their silence. The strangers offered Saskia food; she declined. She drank only the infusion. On the hour, she changed her bloodstained clothes for nondescript servant apparel. She was careful not to disturb the black band that she wore above her elbow.

Touching the band, she agitated a memory two years old, perhaps three. She had been standing in a book-lined study near Tiflis, in the Caucasus, when she thought she heard a flock of birds settling in a poplar tree outside the window. It was late in the year for such birds, so she pulled the blind. The tree had been empty.

Robespierre, a stranger himself, abandoned her to the care of these strangers. Saskia could do nothing but sit alone and look into the cup of blessed milk thistle, waiting for the Georgians to break through the door and end everything. During these silences, the strangers read books and played cards.

It was late in the evening when Robespierre returned. He claimed to know a reliable smuggler. Saskia allowed him to make the arrangements. He left to do so. At midnight, a boy interrupted Saskia’s sleep with a note. She frowned at the words. Had something broken inside her? She could not understand them.

Внимание! Что-то случилось. Не ищите меня. »Транспортёра« завербовали. Встретитесь с ним в том месте, в котором Ваш хозяин и я в первый раз встретились. »Транспортер« проводит Вас. Пушкин воспевал »Для берегов отчизны дальной Ты покидала край чужой«. Пусть мои мысли Вас охраняют!

Поспешно я остаюсь

Ваш слуга,

Р.

She closed her eyes, took a breath, held it, and opened them again. There was a sense of something blurred coming into focus.

Alarm! Something has happened. Don’t look for me. The “transporter” is hired. Meet him at the place your host and I first met. The “transporter” will take you away. Pushkin sang, “Bound for your far home, you are leaving strange lands”. May my thoughts keep you safe!

In haste, I remain,

your servant,

R.

Saskia stared at the note. Then she bade the boy goodnight and thought about Robespierre and a room in the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars, and home. She slept, and dreamed not of sparrows, but of the Baltic shore and the cinders of amber cast there by the surf.

~

The rendezvous was at Znamenskaya Square, a busy crossing of the Nevsky and Ligovsky Avenues. Here she met her smuggler. He was an Orthodox Jew in his mid-fifties wearing a padded lapserdak jacket. He would not, at first, meet her eye, but he took Saskia’s money, folded it into a small square, and tucked it into his boot. He looked at her chest. She turned away. She did not trust him.

He said, ‘You stink, my dear,’ but Saskia did not reply. If he learned that she had Yiddish, but was a gentile, this would make her an especially memorable character, which she had no wish to be.

The man took her cases. They were not heavy, since they contained only the minimum expected of a woman travelling to see relatives: lacquer boxes, dolls, some books and clothes.

He walked on and Saskia followed, carefully, as though she had gained fifty years in the night. It would be better to hail a carriage but her money would not stretch so far. She scratched her scalp beneath her kerchief and focused on the smuggler’s lapserdak as he walked ahead of her through the gentleman strollers, street stalls, and scuttling children.

The wind came from the true north. Flakes of snow were falling. They settled on her cheap boots. St Petersburg’s green winter was turning white and Saskia might have cried but for the blood in her tears. It would not do to be memorable.

She turned towards the unseen Tsar’s Village. The Amber Room was there. If she had decoded the vibrations of her time band correctly, it was a portal to the future. Her mind stopped once more on the greater question: Who was making the band vibrate? But the countdown had reached zero during the day. The doors of the Amber Room had closed. She did not know when they would open again.

Sleep-sleep-sleep, she thought.

Chapter Five

Switzerland: Spring, 1908

The time traveller had spent winter in a district of Zurich called Aussersihl. Her modest garret was crammed with books, newspapers, unwashed dishes, and a gramophone. Two books were open on music stands: a French volume on methods of cheating at blackjack, and a Russian one on the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars. A chin-up bar had been hammered into the door frame of the bedroom.

The routine of these last weeks had not varied. Saskia would rise around ten or eleven and make coffee, with sugar if she had any. Then she would leave the garret and find her friends, and they would eat lunch. She would return to the garret, read, and meet other friends in the evening. She did not use the name Saskia. She was Godrun Müller, student of agronomy, runaway Bohemian princess to those who cared to ask.

One such was Yusha, a young man with red hair. He was the son of a rich Muscovite and had stopped in Zurich the previous summer on a Grand Tour. After this, he was due to assume the management of his father’s jewellery business, which was second only to Fabergé. Saskia thought him beautiful. In short, there was something of Robespierre about him. She had seen him almost killed in a pointless remonstration with two soldiers. Two of her friends had carried his unconscious body to her garret and laid him out on the bed. Saskia and Yusha had not made love that night, or any night. She had long decided that no man would have this body unless the mind perceiving those heights of sensation was that of Ute.

‘You,’ he had said, when he came around. ‘The woman from the café.’

That was a week ago. This morning, he was still sleeping.

Saskia lifted his arm from her chest and slowly rolled from the bed. Yusha smacked his lips and put his face into the pillow. She smiled at this, then checked his fob watch, which hung on the back of the chair nearest the bed. It was almost seven o’clock. The elderly apothecary downstairs, Herr Trachsel, would be making his coffee by now. The shutters were cut with daylight.

She used the toilet in her bathroom, rubbed water into her eyes, found the toothbrush, pressed this into some tooth powder, and, as she scraped it around her mouth, thought about going home.

Everything depended on her first contact in Zurich, the Count Nakhimov. His villa in Volketswil, not far from her garret, had become a second home for Saskia over the winter. She only visited during darkness and her existence was known only to one servant, Mr Jenner, whom she had never met. Count Nakhimov was a double agent playing with both the Tsarist and revolutionary elements. Saskia did not trust him. But he was straightforward, well connected, and one of the few people in Zurich who could give her background information about the Amber Room in the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars. Besides, he had been recommended.

Saskia returned to the bed and lifted away the blanket. Yusha was not disturbed by the removal. They both slept naked by habit, as the rising heat from the apothecary’s stoves made the garret comfortably warm. Yusha still snored into the pillow. His legs and arms were wide. He looked like a cross-country skier mid-stride.

With a little pressure on his hip, she rolled him onto his back. Still he did not stir. He stopped snoring, took a huge breath, and began to snore again.

Saskia smiled. Carefully, she took his penis in her hand. There was a thought that always occurred to her when she wanted to satisfy Yusha; the thought wounded her because she knew that, if revealed, she would be diminished in his eyes. On the night when Yusha was pushed down steps by the soldiers for chastising their rude treatment of a waitress, one of them had called him a ‘Kleine Hebe’. Little Jew. The term was not muttered. It was as clear as the lusty shout given at the sight of quarry. Many of the other customers had laughed. An otherwise unremarkable husband had turned to his wife and said, ‘Let’s see him buy his way out of this one.’ Saskia had straightened her back and favoured the onlookers with a reptilian stare. Within minutes, she had engineered Yusha’s escape.

She put her lips to his penis and woke him with, ‘Shhhhh.’

‘Morning,’ he whispered, stretching his arms.

‘Morning. Let’s not disturb Herr Trachsel.’

Yusha put his hands behind his head. His fingers messed with his beautiful curls. Saskia remembered the newsreel footage yet to come of bodies being driven into pits by the sweeping white blades of the bulldozers. She tried to suppress this thought by concentrating on Yusha. It almost worked.

~

Two embarrassing encounters with passers-by had been enough to convince Saskia that her habit of running for the sake of it should be indulged in isolation. Only the English gentlemen of the cafés considered it an appropriate form of exercise for a lady, and only then if the lady was a certified eccentric. The other nationalities thought it unhealthy and self-punitive. Here on the mountain, above the snow line, she felt far indeed from punishment. There was an atmospheric emptiness that seemed to draw the sweat off her scalp. Saskia wore her usual outfit of a woollen liberty corset and bloomers. She had tried plimsolls once, but they were too restrictive. Canvas slippers chaffed. Lately, she ran in leather Brogues with soles scored in a cross-hatch for grip.

She leaned into her sprint and placed the ball of each foot in the snow. The crust broke in wet squeaks. She imagined her chest empty on exhalation and full on inhalation. She took these breaths in ratio to her strides and assaulted the slope in fifty-metre pieces. Her route was steep and dangerous. She ran every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

When the wind blew, the trees shuddered and leaned. Birds made black fireworks as she passed.

By late afternoon, she had passed through the deciduous trees to reach the conifers. Her last sprint took her to a high western meadow. The snow was deeper here. It scintillated. Two weaving animal tracks—probably hares—cut across its centre. Saskia put her hands on her hips and looked at Lake Lucerne. The air was clear enough for its ducks to be visible.

She brushed some snow from a flat rock and placed her rucksack on top of it. Then she undressed and bathed in the snow. She towelled herself and considered the altitude while eating a paste of powdered beef jerky and fat from an old tobacco tin. It would take another four hours to reach her bicycle, which she had left in a shed near Unterägeri.

She changed into her everyday clothes: an ankle-length skirt, boots, a white blouse, and a fur cap given to her by Yusha.

She heard cowbells. Following them down using a frozen stream whose heart had thawed to a vein-blue line, she found a cowherd not more than fifteen years old. He could not speak without shrugging and wobbling his hands in a seesawing motion. He charmed her. Saskia bought some cheese, which she ate while he spoke about a new rifle that his father had given him for Christmas. Ultimately, his voice trailed off. She looked at him, saw the direction of his gaze, and moved her skirt so that it covered her bare calf. The moment reminded her that this period of recuperation was coming to an end. She needed to return to Russia. She needed to go home. She needed to help a friend.

The cows began to walk on. In the pattern of their bells, she discerned a quasi-repeating sequence. The reverse-entropic field of the time band was shaping events in her locality. It gave her the date of 17th May, Julian. Two weeks.

Another pattern, which never changed, spelled:

Das Bernsteinzimmer.

The Amber Room.

~

Saskia reached her home in the quiet minutes after midnight. The steep streets were deserted. Snow had been cleared into dirty heaps at the junctions. She was content. The routine of her life had continued without interruption for many months.

As she cycled around the last corner, whistling a piece by Bach, she happened to look at the high window of her garret. It was unlit. Despite this, she was able to perceive a thermographic impression of a face at the pane. The man standing in the darkness of her room was wearing a hat. Yusha would never wear a hat indoors. She could also see that his skin temperature was unusually high. Perhaps he had just walked up the stairs.

She completed the current bar of Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ and pedalled past the apothecary’s shop as though she had no intention of stopping. She was sad for the loss of her garret and some of her possessions. However, she carried the more important documentation on her person. She also regretted that she would never see Yusha again. He was spending time with relatives in Baden and would remain safe if she evaded capture long enough to send him a telegram warning of the danger in Zurich.

She continued up the hill. At its crest, she heard the telltale squeak of her front door. Either the stranger had left the apothecary’s shop, or an accomplice had entered it to warn him. She thought the former was more likely. An accomplice would use a signal. A torch, maybe.

At Stauffacherstrasse, where the street was wider and populated with late-night strollers, she flagged down a cab. It was a single-axle hansom and the driver sat high at the rear. A lantern swung beneath his seat.

‘Need a rest, ma’am?’ he said, gesturing to her bicycle with his whip.

Saskia hopped from the bike and left it against a lamp post.

‘Don’t tell me: I should get a horse.’ She settled inside the cab and drew the blankets across her lap. ‘We’ll go to Volketswil, if you please.’

The driver leaned through the window.

‘Long way,’ he said, companionably.

‘Quite,’ Saskia replied. ‘I’m happy to make it worth your while.’

She looked through the side window. The road to her garret was lit electrically. She could see two men running up it.

‘Don’t you want to lock your bicycle, ma’am? It’s a rough area.’

‘It’s nothing special.’ That was a lie. She had adapted the brakes to be operated using the right handlebar. For men pursuing a one-handed woman, it betrayed her, but there was no time to hide it. ‘If you please,’ she continued. ‘I’m late.’

The driver leaned back, clicked his tongue, and let the horse get underway. Saskia was reassured to see that it was an older, steady horse. She looked back once more and saw the two men emerge onto Stauffacherstrasse. They did not appear panicked. That disappointed her. They split up in opposite directions, then her cab turned and she lost sight of them.

Saskia concentrated on putting a name to the face of the man at her window. On her mind’s stage, she saw fire. Figures danced around it. A large fire; a campfire? Saskia concentrated. The ground was hard. Rocky.

The dance figures are the poor princes of the Outfit. This is a night from last summer. June? July? There was a wedding.

The princes had been dancing with their arms held high and their legs kicking. One man, however, had never danced. He was a quiet individual with huge hands. He wore a Fedora and smoked a pipe just like the one smoked by the Boss. Saskia remembered him crouching on that windy plain, turning to a friend.

Fire in his eyes.

She had his name: Papashvily. Back then, he was no revolutionary but he was useful to the Outfit because he murdered the people he was told to murder. Once, he had thrown an informer into an oven. They called him the Baker after that. Most of the Outfit were indifferent to these murders; a few loathed them; some hailed them. Everyone—even Saskia, at that time—had considered them part of the grand destabilisation.

She pictured Papashvily turning his good ear to his friend.

He has a bad ear, she thought.

The horse jogged beneath a streetlamp and Saskia saw a cloud of condensing breath pass down its flank, ghosting.

~

A quarter moon reflected on the lake. Just as only Saskia had seen the man at her garret window, now only she could see the pale, high dash of the mountain line against the sky.

She knocked on the roof and said, ‘Stop here, please.’

‘It’s another kilometre, at least.’

‘I will walk the remainder.’

She paid the driver and stood at the side of the road, near a wooden snow pole, until the sound of hooves faded. Now she could hear the delicate slosh of water. She looked at the moon again. It was occluded.

There was no barrier between the road and the lake. She stepped into the bushes. Rock slid underfoot but she reached the shore without falling. She lay against one of large rocks that protected the road from erosion. There she waited, browsing her memories of Count Nakhimov.

The masts in the full harbour tick-tocked. A breeze was growing. She felt it through the lace at her throat. The moon reappeared. Somewhere in the village, far uphill, a baby cried.

Ten minutes later, she heard a horse. Saskia angled her make-up mirror to inspect the carriage as it passed. It was identical to her own cab, but held two large men, not including the driver. One of them was Papashvily.

The hoof-clatter faded, leaving the breakers, the bumping of boats, and wind making notes in the narrow, steep alleys of Volketswil.

She dropped the mirror into her bag. She put her nose to her knuckles and thought. Her pursuers were excellent. It was a pity they were not still running around her neighbourhood.

The men would reach Volketswil proper in two or three minutes—if that was their destination. Would they find and question her driver? That would take both skill and luck; unfortunately, they appeared to possess both. How had they found her?

Once she had returned to the road, she gathered her skirt and ran the five hundred metres to the high, iron gates of the Count’s Old Confederacy villa. They were shut, which was usual, but the courtesy lantern was unlit, and that worried her. It had been lit throughout the night for as long as Saskia could remember. She looked from the pillar that supported the right-hand gate to the cherry tree—one of a pair—between the wall and the road.

She looped the strap of her shoulder bag through her teeth and, keeping the bag tight against her body, ran towards the stone pillar. She planted one foot against it and launched backwards, turning to catch the lowest branch of the cherry tree. She swung forward once. On the backswing, she growled into the leather strap and hauled herself onto the branch so that she flopped across it. She rested for a moment. Her right arm was tingling and her palm hurt. Then she worked herself into a seated position.

The villa was surrounded by squares of blank lawn, each of them studded with geometric flowerbeds and paths. The single irregularity was a cluster of trees. Saskia scanned the villa for light in any of its three storeys. None. The greenhouse, which attached to the western wing, was also dark.

She was poised to jump into the grounds when a pale glow filled the greenhouse. A man had entered it from the villa. He carried a lamp, which he held high, as though searching. Saskia leaned forward, but it was impossible to identify the man at a distance of two hundred metres. She saw him stop, then turn. The light dimmed. Had he turned away from her?

Meanwhile, a huge dog emerged from the rear of the villa and ambled into the miniature deer-park of trees and remained there.

Saskia let her bag slip from the branch and then dropped after it. The fall was almost three metres. She kept her feet together and rolled to a standing position. Then she continued into the grounds with the pomp of a lady visitor in full daylight.

A stone porch ran along the front of the villa. She mounted the steps, looked left and right—nobody—and pulled the bell.

Two minutes passed.

Three.

Saskia glanced back at the gate. The shadows beneath the wall were deep. She slipped into the infra-red.

Nothing. Only one reddish stain where she had placed her palm after dropping from the tree.

The door opened. The butler was a young, bald man. He carried that same lamp: a storm lantern, swinging as he lifted it to her face. His uniform was complete, with none of the compromises one might expect given the hour. Saskia and the butler—if this was indeed the Count’s Mr Jenner—had never met. That had been one of the Count’s rules.

‘Good morning,’ she said, relishing the flat sounds of English. ‘I apologise for arriving so early, but it is vital that I meet with the Count.’

‘I’m afraid the Count is not available.’

Saskia said, ‘I’m sure he will make himself available. Will you please tell him that Ms Tucholsky is here?’

‘You misunderstand me.’

‘Add that I need to leave for Russia sooner than we thought. Today, in fact. This minute. It is important.’

The butler seemed genuinely apologetic. ‘Ms Tucholsky, the Count is not at home. He left the country only last night.’

‘Oh,’ said Saskia. She told herself that this was not the disaster it seemed. True, the Count had been her best hope for a safe return to Russia. He had the documentation, the route, and the people. She would find another way. She had to. This was not a disaster.

But she had to blink back her tears. In their months of conversation, she had come to rely on his steady voice, that focus in his thoughts.

Saskia tried to smile. ‘That is unexpected.’

‘“Unexpected” is the word that the Count used, Ms Tucholsky.’ The butler lowered the lantern.

‘Did he leave anything for me?’

The butler gave way.

‘Please come in.’

~

The Count’s library was a windowless room in the east wing of the villa. The walls were white and the floor dark. Its books were set in gated alcoves. An English partners’ desk occupied the centre of the room. Saskia noted the fountain pen missing from its holder; an ebony cradle telephone; two atlases open at north-west Russia; and a larger map of Finland, held flat by brass paperweights. The Count might have left minutes before. He wore a popular cologne called Mouchoir de Monsieur, and its fragrance lingered.

The butler indicated the desk chair. It smelled of varnish and pipe smoke. She sat down and assumed her habitual posture: back straight, hand and wrist inside her warmer, head tilted at an angle to indicate interest.

She raised her eyebrows at the butler. He reached for the green-hooded lamp on the desk and flicked its switch. The bulb crackled like a gramophone and gave little light. The butler tapped the bulb to improve its connection, and the room became dark and bright haphazardly, putting Saskia in mind of clouds crossing the sky on a sunny day. She was glad this room had no windows.

When the electric light had established itself, Saskia said, ‘You’re Mr Jenner, I recall.’ She had learned to remain formal with servants. Twenty-first century familiarity was too often construed as rudeness.

‘That’s correct, madam,’ said Mr Jenner. He lowered the wick on his lantern and placed it on a sooty-looking ceramic dish near the atlas.

‘Like the doctor who developed the science of vaccination?’

‘I’m proud to say he was a direct ancestor.’

‘You should be,’ she said. It was a patronising remark, and it embarrassed her, but the remark was not so unusual given the clear boundaries of their relationship. ‘Now, may I see the things that the Count left for me?’

‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘However, the Count indicated that these materials are quite sensitive, and requested that I confirm the identity of the person who calls for them.’

‘It’s a pity you never saw me during my visits to the villa. I’ve been coming here since the autumn.’

Mr Jenner paused. She guessed that he did not wish to say that it was not his business to notice the comings and goings of women if they entered through the greenhouse rather than the front door, and came only at night.

‘I see the Count was right to trust you,’ Saskia said. ‘However, there is a small chance that I was followed here, and I’d like us to proceed directly.’

‘Of course,’ Mr Jenner replied. He indicated her left hand. ‘May I?’

‘Be my guest.’

Saskia removed her left wrist from the warmer. She unfastened the watch strap that held the sock. As she tugged this away, revealing the scarred stump—skin folded as neatly as gift wrapping—Mr Jenner did not wince. She liked that.

‘The Count asked me to tell you,’ he said, ‘that he has been recalled to St Petersburg as a matter of urgency, and that the plans you discussed still hold. He left these for you.’

Mr Jenner produced a set of keys from his waistcoat and unlocked a drawer. This he slid out completely and placed on the desk. Then he reached into the gap, pressed something, and drew out a second box from deeper within the desk. It opened to reveal a leather document wallet.

‘Thank you,’ said Saskia. ‘Will you leave me alone for a moment?’

Mr Jenner took his lantern and left without another word. She waited for his footsteps to recede. Then, fastening the sock around her stump once more, she spread the contents of the wallet on the desk. It contained six drawings, in the Count’s hand, of a stately room. Saskia knew that he had published botanical monographs, and the drawings evidenced his fine eye. She turned the pages clockwise and anticlockwise, noting the entrances and exits to the chamber. The last page was an overhead view of the stately room. The Count had placed question marks next to some objects.

At the top, the Count had written: The Amber Room.

The envelope also contained high-quality pamphlets on the history of the Tsar’s Village. Last, there were two Russian passports, one foreign and one internal. Both were forgeries of the first order. Their owner was an aristocrat named Yelena Alekseeva Korovin. Age: twenty-eight years. Height: medium. Distinguishing marks: none. That would do. She closed the wallet and pushed it into her bag.

She turned to leave, but was surprised by the presence of the butler in the doorway. He stood quite still and appeared uncomfortable.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid that there are two men outside.’

Saskia frowned. She struggled to suppress the thoughts that followed: How had they traced her here? Had they known about the Count all along? Had others kept the villa under surveillance?

‘Did they see you?’

‘I don’t know.’ The butler cleared his throat. He was trying to pull himself together. ‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure.’

‘Where are they?’

‘To the north, in the higher garden. One is carrying a night lantern. He tried to hide it, but I saw. They haven’t approached the house.’

‘And you came straight back?’

‘Yes.’

The butler looked down at the pistol he was carrying. As he flexed his grip, Saskia noticed an oddity in the tiny movements made by the weapon. The movements did not correspond well to its centre of gravity. Its mass was off by several per cent.

‘It’s not loaded, is it?’

The butler nodded. ‘I came in here to fetch bullets. The Count keeps them in a drawer.’

Saskia tried to concentrate. Was Papashvily one of the men outside? Was he the type to storm the villa? Burn it? Wait for her to emerge?

‘You’d be safer leaving the gun here.’

‘Safer?’ The butler leaned on the desk. ‘Ms Tucholsky, the Count told me to protect you. I’m late of the British Army.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now, help me find the bullets.’

‘You’ve already protected me,’ Saskia replied. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘The Count suggested that a quick escape might be effected if we were to use his boat. There is a passage that connects to it via the cellar. It is damp but useable. I am a formidable rower.’

Saskia looked at this man as she had looked at Yusha when he had stepped into the breach to protect the honour of those women, all those weeks before. Mr Jenner was too preoccupied with his pistol to react when she put her hand to his cheek. He stiffened, then relaxed. He smiled.

‘Thank you, Mr Jenner. That will be all.’

As he turned away, she struck him behind the head with her elbow. He staggered but did not fall. Saskia frowned. Perhaps he boxed regularly or had some form of congenital thickness of the occipital bone. She struck him once more and guided his weight to the floor. There, she placed him in a position where he could breathe freely.

There was no time to look for bullets, but she took the gun anyway. Then she pulled the slipknots on her boots and kicked them off and hurried from the room. Her stockinged feet were silent.

Chapter Six

The hallway was too dark. She paused. I need to see. Part of her mind answered in dull, monochrome shapes with false positive edges, redrawn and redrawn. She closed her eyes, centred herself, and opened them. The scene settled into an impressionistic sketch. She tucked her chin against her chest, readied herself for the imbalance caused by her missing hand, and sprinted from the house, knowing it all before her foot touched a flagstone. The veranda was empty but for potted plants and wooden garden furniture. The steps leading up to the higher garden were on her left. She would make that her route.

There was too much light. Dazzling in contrast to the darkness inside. It was coming from the lantern of a man in the garden. He was holding it high with his left hand. It revealed his face: Papashvily. In his right hand was a gun, and a minuscule spark of ignition had already escaped it.

Saskia felt the wash of air as the bullet passed her shoulder, and then she heard its shot, and she dropped her hip and rolled across the flagstones. The world swung around her. As she came upright, she added the energy of her movement to the flick in her arm. The pistol left her fingers precisely as she intended: just the heft, just the smoothness, and with enough spin to hold it true throughout its flight.

Papashvily shot one more bullet before the pistol struck him below the nose. He snarled and twisted backwards. The sudden turn had more to do with surprise than the force of the throw. However, the pistol was heavy and it caught him fully. He fell to the ground and dropped the lantern.

Saskia closed the distance. She stamped on his throat with the ball of her foot. It would have killed most men. He gurgled a scream but did not drop the gun. It fired once more. She took his wrist and bit it hard. The hairs tickled her lips. Papashvily released the gun.

Somewhere, men shouted (two; young; Russian) and dogs barked (two; large; Rottweiler). The men were lookouts posted at the front of the villa. She had thirty seconds until they reached her, if she were lucky. Maybe longer if the dogs were poorly trained.

Saskia and Papashvily looked at one another. Both were breathing hard. Papashvily smiled. His front teeth were missing and his nose had been flattened.

‘If I don’t break you,’ he said, in Georgian, ‘they will.’

Saskia looked along the villa to the east wing. The lawn there was growing brighter. The first of the men was approaching with his lantern.

She shot Papashvily through the pair of muscles that formed his calf. He screamed and clutched at it.

There was a line of trees ahead. It was the southern flank of an orchard. Saskia sprinted to the trees. There she waited with her back to a trunk. Apple. Their blossoms were white against the darkness, and despite the season a sharp wind blew down the hill.

She thought about the gun. Two bullets left. Two dogs and two men.

The first dog bounded almost playfully from tree to tree. Saskia tracked it with her muzzle. She steadied the weapon on her forearm, exhaled, and shot the dog through an eye when he was five metres away. The animal skidded and yelped. It worked its jaw as though there was something in its mouth. Then it twisted against the ground, dead.

She did not see the second dog until it was almost upon her. Through some hunting instinct, it had worked towards her flank while she dealt with the first. Its attack was hard and deliberate. There was no bloodlust. The dog meant to take her cold.

Its shoulders reflected the moonlight. A bluish-black coat. Rottweiler. Front teeth bared. Slow breath. Silent footfalls. Like a cat.

Saskia shot it through the chest. The wound glistened like a splash of mud. Undeterred, the dog came on. She turned, knowing she could not outrun it and knowing the dog had the advantage of weight and speed.

It leapt.

Jem, Saskia thought.

The dog knocked her against the tree. Its claws ripped at her coat and its head turned horizontal, the better to grasp her throat.

Saskia felt a decoupling at her core. The device at the rear of her brain stepped into a faster mode. Her mind was cast upwards, as though it were travelling in an elevator through the tallest building in the world. She looked down on reality—on the meat of her body—and saw it move with the slowness of a giant.

She heard a buzz. As she rose, higher still, the buzz dropped in pitch until it became the flapping of bird wings.

The sparrows.

Where am I? she thought.

The pain had reduced to its informational component alone. She saw the dog’s jaws snap on the air in front of her nose. The sound was low, like a far away explosion. The skin around its mouth rippled.

Ute?

The animal shook its head. Streamers of saliva flew left and right.

She saw a grey, swirling ground. It passed beneath her. Then she fell towards it. The patterns rushed out to become an immense field of sparrows. Their details were blurred, as though sketched in charcoal. The sound of their calls decreased as she fell until, at length, every bird was silent.

A sparrow said something.

It was too far away for Saskia to make out the words.

What? she said. What did you say?

She heard a second, closer sparrow repeat the words, but some of the sounds had changed. A third sparrow, closer still, repeated the words. Again they changed. Sparrow after sparrow carried the message to her.

Sparrow speaks to sparrow speaks to sparrow.

What are you saying?

At last, the closest sparrow turned to her and said, ‘Grey growth conceals the anger.’

What? What?

Another said, ‘Grade growing covers the rage.’

Ute, the sparrows are talking to me. What are they saying?

Below, her arm took position in front of her face and the dog bit her. Its teeth passed through to the bone and locked.

Scraping.

The eyes of the dog were pale rings on darkness, like the halo around the moon.

Saskia felt herself slipping. The fall, when it came, was like a fall in a dream. She tumbled and screamed. The flapping of the unseen sparrow wings blurred into a single tone, and the tone increased in pitch. At the same time, a terrific pain in her arm blotted out all thought, until she was back in her body.

The dog shook the arm. Once. Twice. With each shake, it rested, stared at her, and snorted great, stinking breaths. Saskia was drowned, deafened, by the hurt in her arm. Blood was running freely into her lap and the edges of her vision were retreating to a tight circle focused on the dog.

Grim day slew the rage, said a sparrow.

She had enough focus to think of the men. They were not nearby, as far as she could see. They had sent in the dogs to do the work.

The dog shook her arm again, but the movement was weaker.

Colourless, said a sparrow. Ideas.

Something was happening. The i-Core had acted.

Sleep, fury.

Saskia felt overwhelmed with tiredness. It was too much effort to push back with her arm any more. When the dog yawned, allowing her to work the arm off its hook-like lower teeth, she yawned as well.

Yes, said a sparrow. Sleeping furiously.

The dog licked its lips and sat. She stared at it in confusion. There was a drunken sway in her torso. For the first time, she felt the wet earth through her skirt and small knots of the apple tree, which had scored her back. The dog had shredded part of her jacket and blouse.

Her arm, however, was destroyed. While there was no arterial bleeding, the venous return tipped her blood steadily into her lap. She could not feel the outside of her forearm or move her fingers. Saskia understood, without quite knowing how, that the palmar cutaneous branch of the median nerve was severed. She held it to her chest like a child cradling a broken doll.

The dog stared at her.

Something twitched in her arm and she hissed with pain.

What is he waiting for?

Colourless green ideas slept, said a sparrow.

What?

Furiously, said another.

~

Everything is blood. It overwhelms me. But blood alone cannot describe this taste-smell. It is the life recipe of the woman I see. She is dangerous, interesting, forbidden, very much bleeding.

I shudder.

Saskia shivered. She could still feel her own mouth. When she licked her teeth, they were straight, and short. But the human body was a ghost, or a recent memory. The more immediate body was that of the dog.

The blood.

There is one word for the man. Love. He is everything. I need him.

As the dog trotted down the hill, slipping between the trees, Saskia felt—

Pain in my chest. Hurts when I breathe.

When I lick the blood.

When I—

She felt the chest muscles bouncing. Her nostrils moved independently now. What is it like?

When I lick the blood.

What is it like to be a dog? This dog.

I see the man. He is clear in the darkness. He holds the lead in a coil and I remember what it means to be whipped by it.

My chest—

Saskia gasped and slid sideways. Something had pierced her heart. Suddenly, her cheek lay against the wet earth, and she forced her eyes shut. I must not scream, she thought. I must not—

Yes, I see the man. I hear his breathing, the movement of his clothes as he stands there, and the wet noises of his mouth and lips. His body is tense.

This is my man.

Now, he is crouching.

Saskia does not want to experience what she knows to be coming. She feels nauseous and unable to stop the dog. Perhaps this is true; perhaps only the i-Core controls it now.

The pops and whistles of human speech emerge from his mouth. They mean he is pleased. I run my paws up his chest as we greet each other, and this signals to my man that he is in danger, but it is too late.

His throat comes away in my mouth.

Saskia rolled to her side and vomited.

He is making noises again. The breath-sound noises. They are loud and meaningless, but some element of them speaks to me; I must shout with him.

Shout.

She heard the dog bark.

Shout.

Another bark.

The blood gets in my nose. I sneeze. It is warm. Like the blood of the woman, it is particular to my man, a recipe of him alone, and the ways the juices mix are his secrets.

The secrets spill out. I hear them patter on the ground. They are rain.

What is it like to be my man?

What is—

~

Saskia sat up. She worked her jaw and blinked, screwing her eyes shut each time. She felt heavy, smothered by her clothes, and limited by her human nose. She was cold and uncertain of her role in the murder of the dog’s owner. Did the i-Core possess her, as it had possessed Cory? He had believed that his mind was his own. But that was untrue. His mind had been a cartoon of its former self. It had been a structure running within the i-Core and no more a real mind than blueprints were a real building.

No, she thought. I don’t believe that. He was real.

I am real.

‘You’re a tough one.’

Saskia blinked again. She looked up to see the last of the three men. He was dressed in tweeds and a night cloak. The clothes were new. Someone had given him cash and told him to blend in.

‘Not going to talk?’ he asked. The words were Russian but the accent Finnish. Saskia might have believed the man had been sent by Lenin himself, if Lenin ever handled these things personally.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in English. She could not help him.

‘What?’

The dog was silent until its last footfalls: eight of them, drum roll sounds of crushed moss and leaves. It exhaled when it jumped, just as a sniper will exhale at the shot. The man was slammed sideways by the impact. His head struck the tree, and this, she guessed, killed him before the dog bit the abdomen and the legs as though searching for something. When the dog reached his face and tugged out his cheek, probing the clenched teeth with its tongue, Saskia turned aside.

I am real, she thought.

The Count had spoken of a Peugeot Bébé. Saskia rose and walked unsteadily to the wooden garage at the east of the villa. There, where the eating sounds were muted, she found the vehicle amongst draped motorcycles. She wound the crank. Her fatigue was suffocating. Sleep, when it came, would be abyssal.

As the automobile rolled downhill, the dogs of neighbouring properties began to bark, disturbed by the buzzing of the small combustion engine. The Bébé had no rear view mirror, so Saskia turned in her seat to watch the dog, her dog, trotting after the car. She opened the throttle to its fullest extent and drove on.

~

The dreams of that night were rich with sparrows. Saskia rotated in space, as though falling, or in orbit around a vast object she could not see. The sparrows were sometimes in her eyes, but mostly in her mauled forearm—where a hunting hawk might rest—struggling to peck at the bad blood.

She awoke once. It was night and she had not been discovered in her hiding place in the hayloft of an isolated barn. As she urinated near the open door, she considered her wounded arm in the moonlight. It looked as though it had been healing for a week. She could ripple all the fingers. The nerves, too, were finding their mates across the gap.

It was her left wrist that hurt more. When she tugged off the sock and examined the stump, holding it through the barn door for the light, she saw that the stitches of the skin were being undone. Doubtless, billions of tiny machines were crawling all over them. Was the i-Core powerful enough to reconstruct her missing hand? The notion unsettled her. It reminded her too much of the trotting dog.

No, not that, she thought. Stop it.

A foreign thought stepped into her mind. It could only have come from the i-Core. She saw two birds in flight against the dawn. The second bird was injured but had enough strength to travel in the slipstream of the first.

No. That is mine. This is me.

The injured bird fell.

Chapter Seven

By the afternoon of the following day, Saskia had completed the ten-hour journey to Monte Carlo, where she finessed her plan while drinking an espresso in Le Café de Paris, which overlooked much of Monte Carlo and abutted the Hôtel du Paris and the casino. Her right arm had fully healed. Her amputation remained just that.

She had spent the Count’s money—intended for bribes and other disbursements—in a waterfront boutique. She had even bought a postcard for Yusha, but she had not posted it. Did he think she was dead? It would be better that he did.

Now, over this perfect coffee, she watched cooling, autumn Monaco. It made her think of St Petersburg, where less was not more. Her eyes moved again to the casino: a fortress of competing architectural styles; hierarchical; symmetrical; ripe.

Yes, St Petersburg. She longed for it, too.

~

‘And two teaspoons of Maraschino.’ Her voice was raised to be heard over the crowd in the casino. ‘Very good thus. Do not shake the glass! Let each cordial show its own place.’ A nod with half her head. ‘That, my clumsy friend, is a pousse-café.’

‘May I try it, Mademoiselle Carrault?’

She made a winding gesture with her fingers. The waiter—well spoken, pretty, likely a prostitute—took a metal cup from beneath the glass bar and poured some of the cocktail into it. He sipped.

‘Good?’ she said.

The waiter looked embarrassed. Saskia laughed. Her delight was in character but true.

‘It grows on you,’ she said.

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Well, sayonara.’ She hated this word, but its use was common among the clique within which her fictional self—a bored French straycat, likely rude, certainly idle—found a dull but tolerable existence.

‘Good luck, Mademoiselle,’ he said. There was innocence in his smile. She hoped he kept it.

Saskia turned to the floor of the casino. It held more than two hundred people. The stations were busy and the costumes colourful. White nebulae of tobacco smoke hung around the chandeliers. That cliché of the shuttered windows held: to deny the day when it came. In a glance, Saskia noted the games being played. The most popular, by table, was Baccarat Chemin de Fer. That was good.

She stayed at the bar and sipped her pousse-café as she noted the clockwork of the casino employees. In fifteen minutes, she had them all. There were two hosts. They stood on the gallery to enjoy an elevated view. Each took one half of the room. Next, she looked for the sweepers, those men who walked the casino floors. There were three.

She moved her attention to the blackjack tables. The nearest, beneath one of the chandeliers, had only two of its six bases free. The dealer used a shoe, not a free deck. This annoyed her because it would be harder to predict the fall of the dealer’s hand, unless she could calculate the number of decks in use.

An elegant man rose from the nearest blackjack table. Either he had placed a large bet, or he was about to give up. He coughed into his fist and scanned the faces of those around him as he walked away. Saskia took the opportunity to replace him, gliding at a speed just short of unladylike.

The two players at the remaining two bases stood as she joined the table. She acknowledged this with a slow blink.

‘Mademoiselle Carrault,’ Saskia said.

‘Goodrington,’ said the first. ‘This is Barnes.’

‘Let me guess,’ she said, in French, ‘you’re alpinists.’

‘Alpinists!’ said the first. ‘We are’—he leaned over his gin and tonic—‘alpinists!’

‘I know this already,’ she said, shaking their hands, ‘because you are two of the loudest and most drunk people in the house.’

Goodrington nodded. He stared at her. The tip of his nose made small circles. He said, ‘Alpinists!’

‘You charm me.’ This time, she spoke English, in part because it was the language of Shakespeare and she loved the pebble-smooth edges of its sounds. Also, she already disliked the role she had cast for herself. Mademoiselle Carrault was rude and spoiled: a trifle par for this course.

The flattering mirror behind the dealer reflected her art nouveau ball gown. It had been worth the money: unweighted silk, a lavender-coloured lace over the pigeon chest and throat; the black buttons on the arm-length sleeves; the prominent waist sash. Only her handwarmer marked her as eccentric. Within it, her right hand worried the stack of chips.

‘You will oblige me,’ she said to the dealer, who was an old gentleman with a Grenadier’s moustache, ‘with a reprisal of the house variation.’

‘Of course, Mademoiselle,’ he said. He also spoke in English, no doubt in a vain attempt to reinforce the rules to the alpinists, who had made little effort to observe them thus far. ‘A higher hand than my own will pay at a ratio of three-to-two. Late surrender is permissible. I win ties. I do not receive a hole card. Finally, I am required to stand on seventeen and draw to sixteen.’

‘Very well,’ she said.

Goodrington announced, ‘Very well,’ to the room at large.

Chapter Eight

Looking up from the open platform at the rear of first class, as her train departed, it seemed to Saskia that the iron hood of Monaco’s only railway station did not move. This made her think about a private docent at the University of Berne, who had a theory about special relativity, and she smiled. The journey to Russia would take five days. Nine hours to Zurich, then three to Stuttgart, a short hop to Mannheim, then two days from Wjasma to Moscow, followed by a last five-hour leg to St Petersburg.

She needed St Petersburg more than ever. Elegant European bones around Russian marrow. St Petersburg was the way back. In 2023, her womanhood would decompress to something greater and less suffocating. And there was David Proctor. Her friend needed her. It was not likely that she could prevent his death, nor stop the crippling madness of his daughter, but neither were these eventualities inevitable. There was uncertainty enough to try, and to care, and to help.

As the future pulled, the past pushed: the ubiquitous city smells of smoke, human excrement and foul water; the disease and the pain commonplace; the slow blackening of houses, trees, faces. Underlying it all was the talk in the coffee houses that Europe had climbed to a high pass during the nineteenth century that would open onto the glorious vista of the twentieth.

Alone, she considered Mont Agel. The wind grew as she stood on the rocking platform. She was obliged to steady her hat with a lace-gloved hand.

‘“Know for certain that once”,’ said a voice that made Saskia’s stomach muscles tighten, ‘“struck down to the ground, an oppressed man strives again to reach the pure mountain when exalted by hope.”’

She turned.

He was a fraction shorter than her and splendidly dressed. Like all illegals, he had selected his costume ad libitum from the fancy dress shop of the Tsar’s imperial forces. Today he was a naval officer with a white, peaked cap and gold shoulder-boards. His moustaches and beard had bloomed since their last meeting, but his left eye was still bloodshot where it had been maimed by a homemade “apple” bomb shortly before the robbery in Tiflis.

He was holding a knife in a reverse grip. Its point stopped at the base of her ribs, where it was ready to breach the whalebone. Kamo looked at her with the expression of a man gorging on her appearance. His eyes zigzagged over her forehead, lingered at her throat, her breasts, and her shoes. There he stopped. The psychiatrists of Saskia’s time would have many words for him. This time had only one—Kamo.

Simon Ter-Petrossian had been given the nickname “Kamo” as a child. It recorded his failure to correctly modify the Russian relative pronoun “to whom”. Something else had happened to Kamo as a child—nobody knew, or told—and it had made him take pride in the details of his murders. The adult Kamo sailed by a star of concentrated, malignant insanity.

She remembered the dog: Shout. Shout.

Many a revolutionary would consider himself a master of disguise. Kamo, however, was truly faceless, and allowed each role to possess him. Perhaps it was thanks to his choice of costume, with its echo of chivalry, that Saskia had been treated only to the appearance of the knife rather than its immediate use.

‘If you kill me,’ she said, quietly, ‘you’ll never find the money.’

‘How could I ever kill you, my Penelope Vailevna?’

He was a paradox. While he had cut out the heart of a man for little more than a rumour of treachery, he had, that same morning, organised the rescue of a girl who had fallen into a well. He had reached the last inches for the girl with the same fervour that he had dug into the chest of the informer.

‘They tried to kill me in Switzerland,’ she said.

Kamo pushed her against the rail. To an onlooker inside the carriage, this would have seemed the reckless act of a lover. His smile would embellish the effect. But, close up, the tobacco-stained teeth betrayed the actor inside the costume. His insanity burned with a familiar heat.

‘Let me tell you something, Lynx. When the Party found out that you had flown to Switzerland, many wanted you eliminated. I proposed that you should be contacted and merely interrogated. That cost me.’

Saskia had asked him about his childhood only once. That had been as they lay in a deserted coppice somewhere near Gori. It was two days after he had rescued her from the Cossacks of the Kuban Host. She thought this had brought about a closeness between them and the right to ask an intimate question. She had been wrong.

‘How kind of you.’

‘Listen, Vailevna. Debts must be repaid; information must be disseminated; actions must be underwritten.’

‘Call it piracy if it’s piracy.’

‘I can tell you truthfully that, if all the funds can be recovered immediately, and every rouble accounted for, there will be no special circumstances surrounding your liquidation.’ Kamo ended this statement with a nod.

‘What if there is no money left? What if I’ve gambled it away?’

‘No, Penska,’ he said. His wounded eye tumbled. ‘You have no money to speak of. You’ve hidden the funds in St Petersburg. Why else would you be cheating the casino last night?’

‘So you saw that.’

‘I followed you from Switzerland. I’ve seen everything.’

Saskia looked at the knife. She reached down and cupped his hand with her own. At the same time, she breathed—shhhh—in his ear, just as she had breathed that night in the coppice wood, when the rage within him threatened to erupt at the temerity of her question: Were you like this as a child?

Kamo, nicknamed for a relative pronoun, let his forehead fall against hers. She felt the skin relax and the wounded eye close.

‘Why should we do this at all?’ he asked. His breath smelled.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘We’ll have some breakfast.’

~

The ladies and gentlemen in the restaurant carriage interrupted their own conversations to look at the beautiful young woman and her officer, unmistakably Russian. Saskia knew that the opulence of Russian court life was open rumour in Europe. To travel its empire was to travel backwards in time. The ladies might admire Saskia’s dress, her upright posture and the fascinator she wore in lieu of a hat. The gentlemen would invent sea braveries for the naval officer. How proper was his insistence that he, not the waiter, pull out the chair for his wife. How economical his movement. The sudden ugliness of his wounded eye would only deepen the impression of heroism. There had been a war, had there not? With the Japans. Yes, this man had had a good war. Saskia felt their silent commentary as though it had been spoken.

Kamo looked self-conscious as he assumed his chair opposite Saskia. Under cover of the mechanical noise of the carriage, and the resumed conversations, he said, ‘So, tell me why you jumped from the train all those months ago. What did it have to do with the gentleman from the government?’

No preamble, then. Saskia attended to those elements of physiology that would betray her lies, and began with, ‘He would have posted men at the station.’ She divided a croissant with a knife. ‘They would have arrested me. I needed to jump prior to the train’s arrival. Surely you can see that.’

She remembered clinging to the side of the train as it approached the tunnel. The sting of the sooty air. The cold. And then the shared look of surprise with her pursuer, leaning from the train with a gun.

‘Odd that you should jump only minutes after I had.’

‘Not so odd.’

‘Tell me about this man. His name?’

Saskia considered lying about this, but there was no true benefit beyond the muddying of Kamo’s thoughts. The cost of the lie was difficult to calculate.

‘He introduced himself as Draganov,’ she said.

Kamo nodded. It struck her as confirmatory. Kamo knew Draganov’s name, then. How?

‘When you and I were three hours from St Petersburg,’ she said, ‘I returned to my compartment. Remember?’

‘You complained of a headache,’ Kamo said. His words were neutral and his countenance steady. He might have been reading the menu.

‘I was intercepted by the tall gentleman whom you recognised as an officer of the Special Section. Will you tell me how you recognised him?’

Kamo put his hands on the table and laced the fingers at the tips. ‘No, I cannot.’

‘He seemed friendly,’ Saskia continued. She made an effort to picture the scene. It made the lie easier. ‘He introduced himself as Draganov. He told me he had been waiting for a chance to get me alone. I tried to interpret this as a proposition and dismiss him, but he was too competent an agent to fall for that.’

‘Never mind his competence,’ said Kamo. ‘I have my own opinion of that. What did he say to you?’

Saskia passed a slice of croissant into her mouth. Kamo had been piqued by her description. That was good. He was falling for the story. She chewed longer than necessary, and said, ‘While you were entertaining those ladies in the lounge with stories of valour, Draganov attempted to recruit me as a double agent.’

‘His leverage?’ said Kamo. His blink rate had increased. That inscrutable property that nobody, not even his best friend, had fully divined—Kamo’s intellect—was dancing about her story.

‘As I recall,’ Saskia continued, in a casual tone, ‘he had no leverage. That is, he did not know the significance of what we were escorting, or that we were escorting anything. It was a routine action for a man who was used to turning agents. He offered me money and protection; a certificate of conduct should I need it; and enough money to retire on the Crimean.’

Kamo stroked his whiskers. His wounded eye was weeping but the other was bright.

‘I wonder at that, my dear. I do wonder. These men of the Special Section rarely risk announcing themselves.’

‘This one did.’

‘He wished to entrap you?’

‘No.’

‘But he must have noticed the absence of your hand. That is a particularly distinguishing feature. And let us also note that he told you his name.’

‘No. He told me a name, Ter-Petrossian.’

His expression frosted. ‘Say that once more and I’ll cut a second cunt in your neck.’

Touchy, thought Saskia. She was satisfied.

‘Tell me,’ she said, dividing her croissant again, ‘why you left the lounge to look for me that day. Surely the ladies had not tired of your stories?’

‘You had been gone for several minutes,’ he said. There was nothing defensive in his tone. This was the truth. ‘I was worried.’

‘I remember you knocking on the compartment door. Draganov pulled out his gun and told me to be quiet. I was. The rest you know.’

‘Not quite,’ said Kamo. He nodded at an approaching waiter and asked for black tea, bread and herring. ‘I find it unusually coincidental that Draganov should let his guard drop at the moment we three were moving from one carriage to another.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Can it be that Draganov invited me to attack him?’

‘That is preposterous,’ said Saskia. She thought, Kamo’s inscrutable intellect wins again. I admire him. ‘The man had just apprehended us. Within minutes, we would be in the custody of the police.’

‘It would be one way of removing me from the train.’

Saskia smiled. ‘But that plan would have the effect of removing him as well. You fell in each other’s arms, remember?’

‘I remember it.’

Saskia regarded him carefully. His demeanour remained difficult to read. She said, ‘What did you do to Draganov afterwards?’

‘What do you care?’ He looked at her plate. ‘But eat. You’re so skinny.’

Saskia paused. She ate another morsel, though she was less hungry than she had ever been. She kicked Kamo in the shin with the toe of her boot: she had the centre of the bone, and enough power to hurt her toes. Kamo did nothing to register the blow. His breathing, blink rate, and pupil dilation remained unchanged.

‘If Draganov survived,’ she hissed, ‘he will have informed the Petersburg office. He will have his surveillants loose. I need to know. What happened to him? Is he alive?’

Kamo yawned. ‘You are correct. We should be careful. Draganov did indeed survive the day. After I pulled him clear of the train, he repaid my kindness with a rock, which he applied to the base of my skull. Ungrateful man. Perhaps he remembered how easily I had overpowered him. Either way, he left me to sleep it off.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you?’ said Kamo, distracted. ‘Do you?’

They paused to watch a boy in a sailor’s uniform as he ran down the carriage. The waiters stopped, holding their dishes high, until the boy returned to his nanny at the head of the carriage.

Kamo turned to Saskia. ‘What about the others?’

‘What others?’

She thought once more of the man leaning from the train, struggling to hold his hat against his head.

‘Come. Do you think that the Boss would entrust the safe delivery of such a huge windfall to us alone? There were other agents on that train. You may be certain of it.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like Judjuna Mikhailovna. Remember her from Tiflis?’

In every detail.

‘Not especially.’

‘Curiously,’ said Kamo, and the coldness returned fully to his eyes, an icy precipitate, ‘just after the train pulled into the station, her body was found in a locker by one of our informers. She had been garrotted.’

Saskia thought of Judjuna. She had been a whore, a traitor, and a teller of interminable stories, but she had once washed the body of an unclaimed corpse because the man had, in life, taken off his hat to her. That had been in Gori.

‘And you think I killed her,’ said Saskia, as though supplying a line in a well-worn joke.

He smiled. ‘Did you?’

Saskia reached for a butter knife. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

‘It is conceivable that she saw me fall from the train and attempted to make contact with you, Penska. Plenty of time remained before the train reached St Petersburg. One wonders whether, in that period, she was taken.’

‘By the opposition?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Who, then? Don’t be conspiratorial.’

Kamo chuckled. Saskia kept her eyes on the plate, and she could feel Kamo looking at it, too. Did he see her reflected in the knife blade, just as she saw him? Was his uninjured eye that good? Saskia thought not.

‘There is something else you did,’ he said, ‘in those two hours before leaving the train in such a singular fashion. You bribed a guard to permit you access to the luggage.’

‘Did I?’ asked Saskia.

Damn. Don’t look up at him.

‘Once there, you changed the recipient and destination of the rose.’

The rose was their codename for two dressers, each with secret compartments jammed with cloth-wrapped roubles. The rose contained more cash than had ever been stolen in the history of Russian crime. It was enough money for Lenin to fuel the Party for years.

‘Why do you think this of me?’

‘Many investigations were conducted during your winter holiday, my dear. Some are still ongoing.’

‘That’s not what I meant. Why should I want to change the destination of the container?’

‘Leverage,’ he said, but his certainty was fading. ‘Fear that the situation was beyond your control.’

She looked at him. ‘Did you kill the guard after he’d told you about me?’

‘No. He cooperated. A worker is a worker is a worker. Fortunate that you passed him the new luggage label inside an envelope.’

‘So,’ said Saskia, ‘you want me to tell you what the label read.’

‘Ah, “want”,’ replied Kamo. He seemed to savour the word. ‘That word is not quite sufficient. I covet that knowledge. I long for it, Vailevna. So does the Boss. So does our friend in Finland. So does the Tsar, his police, and the newspapers. Does this surprise you? You know there is so much want in this world.’ He grinned. He had one less tooth than she remembered. ‘Workers, workers, workers.’

‘You understand that I am not interested in my immediate death,’ said Saskia. ‘So I will not tell you where it is. I want to live long enough to show you.’

Kamo sighed. ‘You are creating difficulties.’

‘Let us say that it is safe; it is undiscovered; and it is perfectly preserved.’

Kamo looked through the window. The movement of the train made his head rock perceptibly. It reminded Saskia of the nose of the drunk alpinist in Monte Carlo.

‘Vailevna, I trust you,’ he said. ‘I believe that’s why you’re coming back to Russia, is it not? Do not confirm my faith; it would undo it. I understand that this is an attempt to pay off your debts. You want to be a good person for us and for the Party.’

‘A good person like you.’

‘Do you remember when I found you?’

‘I’ve never forgotten it.’

‘Then you will tell me why it has taken one winter for you reach this decision to reunite the Party with its rightful property.’

‘In St Petersburg, I was poisoned. I needed to recuperate.’

‘So I heard. Are you fully recovered?’

‘No. My liver and kidneys are permanently damaged.’

Kamo pursed his lips. It was either sympathy or mirth.

‘And now, my dear, you have decided to return to the bosom.’

‘Events have forced my hand, but I had planned to return in the spring. I have gained the confidence of a Jewish lawyer called Ioffe. He has a house on Lake Geneva, from which he conducts business with the Russian émigré community. His daughter, in St Petersburg, needs a governess. For this, he was prepared to obtain a passport on my behalf and pay for passage. I intend to locate the container and give it to our mutual friend in Finland.’

Kamo yawned. He did not cover his mouth, which was a rare slip of character.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you will give it to me.’

‘We will give it to him together, as we had planned.’

Saskia wiped her mouth with a napkin. At once, Kamo gripped her gloved wrist. His grin was broad in deference to the onlookers but, up close, it trembled with the effort of clamping Saskia’s bones.

‘I wonder,’ said Kamo.

‘What?’ she replied, playing indifferent.

‘Did that agent, Draganov, turn you after all? Have you been telling lies to your old friend, Kamo?’

‘What do you think?’

Kamo held her stare for a long moment. Then he released her hand and turned to the menu. ‘To whom does one give one’s trust? That is the question of today, and every day.’

To whom.

That word, Кому, was the pronoun he could not correctly modify as a child. Kamo. Like camouflage, she thought, drinking him in. With it, an identity. Brigandage, murder and high talk. Those skirted coats. Laughter and piracy. Princes without money. Dust. Milk.

‘But, of course,’ said Kamo, ‘I believe you. That is faith, after all, and faith cannot be the preserve of the zealot.’

Saskia touched the band at her left elbow, one constant companion among so many. The train passed into a tunnel and a red gloom came to the carriage. The imperfect light of dusty bulbs could not match the sun.

Russia was there. It waited to open up and to drink her in.

Kamo leaned forward in the murk. His good eye wavered as though it had lost track of her. Criminal; master of disguise; bore. Par for the revolutionary course.

She raised her eyebrows and drank more of the wine.

Chapter Nine

After many countries and many trains, Saskia and Kamo were passing through the last of the taiga south of St Petersburg. Low sunlight flashed. Late Russian spring: water everywhere, the chill at ebb. Saskia stood at the window of her compartment and leaned against the slowing of the carriage. The hood of the station roof was grey-black through the dripping window. Saskia was in no hurry. She watched the platform fill with people. She noted that the speed of an individual was correlated to his or her class. The moneyed were slow; the poor like oil, greasing them.

Kamo looked at her from his bed. He was awake. A clicking in his throat suggested that he was choking, so Saskia rolled him onto his front and tipped his head. He coughed. One eye turned to her. Its pupil was a bloodspot in an egg.

‘I once knew another Simon,’ she said. She paused. There was a sense of repetition. Had she said this before, in a dream? ‘He was not real. Are you real?’

Moving with the air of an artist adjusting her work, she unbuttoned his jacket and shirt. She took some port from a cabinet and wetted his beard and throat. Then she poured his half-drunk, poisoned wine onto the centre of the floor, in case a servant was tempted by it. She put the bottle on the floor.

Let ten seconds pass. Do not appear to flee.

‘Bitter, is it not? The fungus is called the Destroying Angel.’

He could not speak, or would not.

‘You thought I needed you. I don’t.’

A train whistle, short, echoed through the station and spoke of other journeys. Saskia left the compartment. But at the steps, she paused, then returned to Kamo.

‘You saved my life,’ she whispered. ‘So the poison is not mortal. You will recover with no ill effects. I said it was the Destroying Angel, but that was a lie to finesse the trick.’

Kamo growled.

‘My dear?’ she asked.

He was unconscious. Resting at last.

~

Travellers came to Nicholaevsky Station from Central and South Russia, from Siberia, Eastern Ukraine, and the Crimea. Chains hung from its high arches like funeral crepe. There was something opera about this place. A dwarf approached Saskia with a tray of tea and chocolate. She shook her head. Corinthian, too: the columns. The dwarf raised his hat and continued along the platform. Behind her, a train whistle blew a minor chord. Old women bent like ships under full sail. Gents placed the points of their umbrellas as they walked. Others wore scuffed, tilted hats in great variety. A man must have a hat. A child dashed a zigzag, powered by flippers of torn newspaper. The wealthier children wore knickerbockers and cloth caps: English, but the cuts suggested Russian interpretation. Waxed whiskers. Gypsies selling honey and flowers. An old man, holding his bleeding nose, looking for a culprit. A younger man, offering the flat of his hand to the air, frowning at the ceiling.

Saskia was a quiet island. She sighed. The expansion strained at her corset.

A woman screamed. Saskia turned. The woman was spinning a boy in her arms, delighting in his weight, while an embarrassed father looked at both of them with a pleasure that made Saskia hurt. Her pain disappeared when she heard something almost below the threshold of her hearing.

Is.

It.

Her.

The head of the platform was intermittently obscured by steam. Something inside Saskia isolated a frequency band near the microwave spectrum and showed her what was beyond the steam: two men. One appeared to be looking at her, when he could only be looking at the steam. His expression was anxious. He was either a secret policeman, which made her a suspect for the attack on Draganov, or from the Party, which made her a traitor. Either way, she had to lose him directly.

Saskia beckoned to an attendant. He was an old fellow, stooped and with bad hips. She asked him to send her two hand-cases ahead to a hotel on the English Quay, which was some miles east. The man had a capable air. Saskia was glad of it. With luck, resources from her surveillance team would be diverted to the luggage. As for that, she did not expect to see it again, and did not care.

The attendant lifted each of her cases and began to walk along the platform. Saskia maintained a position three metres behind him. Her right hand and left wrist were covered by her muffler. She breathed steadily and prepared herself to administer a short, vicious attack. They passed through the wall of steam. If the waiting gentlemen were surprised, their training belied this. They communicated their confusion with a single look. Neither reached for her. Indeed, the four of them parted to let her through. Saskia lifted her head and gazed imperiously from left to right. In that instant, she made a catalogue of their every detail. One of them wore a green ex-army greatcoat, which was so obvious as apparel for Security Section employees that revolutionaries often called them ‘Green coats’.

The attendant turned left. Saskia turned right. The attendant had not seen her manoeuvre. He continued his wobbly gait into the crowd. Saskia mixed with the people on the concourse. It was heavy with foot traffic. Saskia walked randomly, as though looking for a friend. She observed the crowd in boutique windows, in unlit lamps, and patches of the floor made glassy by passing feet. From these observations, she identified three further Security Section agents: a young woman selling roses; a gentleman in a top hat carrying the Petersburg Gazette; a second man, dressed as a clerk. They formed a triangle that was pure Security Section. There was no sign of the two men who had watched her from the head of the platform.

Saskia emerged onto Snamensk Platz. She narrowed her eyes in the smog, which was curiously bright at this time of day, and looked through the traffic of omnibuses and horse-drawn carriages to a poster box on the far side of the square. She walked towards it. Her steps were swift and she passed through the intersecting vehicles and cyclists with the confidence of a full-blooded Petersburger. When she had reached the poster box, she pretended to inspect a flyer for a student performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, but instead watched the reflections of the Security Section agents in the windows of a jewellery shop on the corner of Ligowskaja.

They were conferring.

Saskia turned and walked towards the Kalashnikov Quay trolley car, which was approaching from the direction of the Admiralty. One glance confirmed that Gentleman and Clerk were following her. Saskia accepted the helping hand of an elderly gentleman at the rear of the tram. She thanked him and moved along the aisle. Through the smoked windows she saw Gentleman and Clerk separate. While Gentleman alighted the trolley car, Clerk jogged on towards the Alexander Theatre, where Saskia knew there to be a public telephone. These agents would know the location of all the public telephones in St Petersburg. Soon, he would spread the news of Saskia’s route to his confederates.

Saskia confirmed this ten minutes later when two more agents joined the trolley car on Konnaya Street while Gentleman stepped down. Both new agents were young men and costumed as students. They did not so much as glance in her direction, and this made them unusual among the male passengers in the car. For Saskia, this, together with the departure of Gentleman, marked them as the Tsar’s Own. The specimen on the left was built like a boxer; his colleague had a naturally sleepy expression. She lowered her chin and thought hard about their conversation. The sounds of the trolley car muted and their words became clear.

‘Who?’ said the one. ‘You mean Brockhaus? You overestimate her.’

‘He’s waiting, isn’t he?’ said the other. ‘She must be important, despite her sex.’

Saskia made a deliberate quarter turn and looked at the man, raising one eyebrow.

‘Oh, that face! I will marry her.’

‘She’s a bloody Bolshevik, Dmitri.’

‘Nobody’s perfect.’

Saskia stepped from the trolley car one stop before the quay. She was not surprised to see Brute Force and Ignorance leaving with her. There was a line of market stalls. Saskia moved towards them. Behind her, and beyond her followers, a trio of soldiers was approaching on horseback. Ahead, a class of schoolboys were laughing and pushing their way towards her. The schoolboys would intersect the soldiers near a fishmonger’s stall. Saskia walked between the barrels that marked the edges of the plot and asked the fishmonger for three tails of monkfish.

The fishmonger had one arm. He stacked the fish. He squinted against the smoke of his clay pipe and waved at a short woman behind him. She placed the fish on a scale. Saskia watched her every motion. She felt the nearness of Brute Force as though he were a draught.

The soldiers were close, too. She looked again at her memory of them. They were Chevalier Guards, and probably heading towards their barracks near the Alexander Bridge. These three were cuirassiers. They wore black boots, white britches and piped-red breastplates that shone.

And the schoolchildren. All boaters and garters.

Saskia paid for the monkfish and placed the package within her muff. The fishmonger’s wife blinked at this oddity, but said nothing and dug into her apron for the change. Saskia backed away with a perfunctory, ‘The rest is for tea,’ before the wife could give her the money. Saskia turned, stumbling as she did, and fell against the horse of the first Chevalier. In the moment, her left wrist slid from her muffler and gave the horse a sharp blow across its nostril.

The horse was not flighty; it recoiled with some grace. But its crossed sidesteps crushed the thigh of its rider against his colleague, who was immediately to his right, and the second man reacted with surprise. He wheeled his horse in a circle. Its shoulder struck Brute Force and pushed him into the crowd of schoolboys, who feigned outrage at the imposition, swatting him with their boaters. A boy shouted, ‘What’s all this! What’s all this!’ and his companions laughed.

Saskia replaced her wrist in the muff and met the eyes of the first rider. The bronze peak of his helmet made his stare imposing, but he asked mildly, ‘Are you injured, madam?’

Saskia smiled. Then, seeing that Brute Force had lost sight of her, she crossed the street, broke into a jog, and leapt onto the back-plate of the trolley car heading west, towards the Nikolaev Station, on the Nevsky Avenue. She saw a family of gypsies walking slowly behind a cart and shouted, ‘Hey, little paw!’ When the young girl looked up, Saskia tossed her the bundle of fish. She caught it with a delighted clap. Saskia shared a laugh with the receding face and turned back to the trolley car. Ignorance was sitting nearby, his legs crossed at the knee, and a copy of the St Petersburg gazette under one arm. He was applauding her silently.

Saskia scowled. She sat alongside him.

‘These trams are electric now,’ she said. ‘We can talk.’

‘What shall we talk about?’

He was immaculately shaved, but his nose had once been frostbitten, and there were inky dots of gunpowder embedded in his cheek. He was no older than twenty five.

‘That’s the irony. I have nothing to say. It does not bode well for any marriage, Dmitri.’

Ignorance lost his colour. He opened his mouth to speak. He said nothing. When the bell rang, Saskia said, not unkindly, ‘Nice try. If you do not mind, I will not applaud.’

She stepped from the trolley car. The man rose to follow her but he could not. His hand would not move from the metal armrest. He tugged once, twice, then examined the handcuffs as though baffled by their existence. He looked at the empty tube of his gazette, where they had been stored moments ago, and looked at Saskia. His expression of bewilderment did not change as the trolley car pulled away towards the admiralty.

Saskia took a breath and looked around. The smog was lifting.

Chapter Ten

In due course, Saskia presented herself at a fine two-storey building on the Moika Canal. Its exterior was remarkable even among these grand residencies. The Imperial flag stood at full mast against the clouds, which rolled overhead like the cracked floes of the Neva. Below it was a second flag: Tsar Ivan’s double-headed eagle. A flight of marble steps lined with statues led to the entrance.

She did not wait long for the footman to hurry down to the steps. He wore scarlet trousers, a gold-embroidered jacket, and a white turban. The costume echoed that of the Tsar’s Abyssinian guards.

‘I am Ms Tucholsky,’ she said with studied aloofness. She passed him a letter of introduction from her warmer. ‘I would be honoured to wait upon the Countess.’

~

Saskia sat with a straight back, her knees bent and her ankles crossed. She held her wrist inside the warmer. She was in a library on the second floor of the building. In reaching it, she had passed through chambers and halls that marked every caprice of Petersburg architectural fashion. In one drawing room, she had counted forty paintings of the eighteenth century French School. Another held glass cabinets of porcelain. As for rooms, there could not be fewer than fifty. Most were arranged enfilade, without hallways. Saskia liked to know her spaces, particularly confined ones. The library room, unconfined by any standard, overlooked the Moika. It had the air of a museum gallery and the collections to match.

She let her eyes move over the library’s grey, monochrome ceiling to the emerald-green wall hangings and birch panels. She was seated at the first of three distinct arrangements of chairs. A fire had been lit for her. Saskia took a deep breath and held it. Pine. She needed to see the Count directly. The pretence of her employment here—as a tutor for the Count’s sickly child, Pavel—was a constant discomfort. With luck, she would be on her way before any real test of her prowess as a tutor could be made.

The eastern door was opened and Countess Charlotte Nakhimov entered. Saskia stood.

The Countess was no older than thirty-five. She wore a décolleté gown of cyan velvet. Her eyebrows were plucked to hawkish lines. Her smile, however, was warm enough, and she held Saskia’s hand a breath longer than etiquette required following their brief meeting of cheeks. The Countess did not appear to notice that Saskia kept her left hand in the warmer.

‘May I speak French?’ asked the Countess.

‘Of course, Countess.’

‘Please,’ she said, settling on the chair opposite. Her laugh was false but artfully delivered. ‘You must call me Charlotte.’

Saskia sat on the edge of a cushioned sofa. Her back was quite straight. ‘And you must call me Mirra.’

The two women sat without speaking for a moment. Charlotte did not move her eyes from Saskia, who felt that—to use the phrase of a Georgian bandit of her acquaintance—there was enough ambiguity to be unambiguous. Saskia tipped her head a fraction. The gesture invited the Countess to speak with candour.

‘The truth is,’ she said, turning to the sunlit windows, ‘you are rather more beautiful than I had wished.’

Saskia felt relieved. The introduction of another woman into the family unit would explain the Countess’s unease. Saskia had been worried that the Countess suspected her for a revolutionary. She leaned across the table and took her hand.

‘Let me be indelicate,’ she said. ‘I’m used to it.’ She weighed the Countess’s expression. ‘My love and I are separated by an ocean greater than all the Russias. “Never to let this lose me grace / But rather bring you back to me—”’

‘“Amongst all mortal women the one / I most wish to see,”’ Charlotte said. Her eyes had reddened with tears.

A look passed between the women. It was understanding, or its approximation. Saskia felt the ghost hand of her former mentor on her shoulder, and could imagine the Caucasian congratulating her on this flourish.

‘You are the perfect guest,’ Charlotte replied. ‘And I am failing as a hostess. Would you like tea?’

Saskia’s reply was interrupted by the appearance of no fewer than three manservants. These were costumed in an English Georgian style. Saskia watched them approach along the central carpet. They wore slippers and walked in step. The tea they presented was English in style: ornate tea pots, a selection of scones, jams, fruitcake, and iced buns. They assembled this into an ornate mountain and departed the room as one.

‘I apologise for their clumsiness,’ said Charlotte. ‘We’re holding a ball tonight. My best people are scattered about the city.’

‘Not at all.’

The Countess poured Saskia’s tea. ‘The Count will have told you that Pavel Eduardovitch has troubled several of his previous tutors. He has troubled them to the extent that they have left our service.’

‘I see.’

‘He does, however, have an interest in mathematics and wishes to enter the Imperial University. He is a special case and must pass an interview in three days’ time.’

Saskia sipped her tea. Despite her preoccupations, Pavel Eduardovitch was beginning to interest her.

‘I admire the piano. Does your son play?’

‘It was a gift from my father to my daughter, Ludmilla. She died before it was delivered. It is never played.’ The Countess turned. ‘Here is my son.’

Pavel Eduardovitch opened the door himself. He wore a grey frock coat with embroidered lapels, and white broadcloth trousers. His collar-length hair was swept back. He approached the two ladies but did not sit down. Neither did he look at Saskia or his mother. His eyes were drawn to the windows. Saskia did not judge his indifference to be affected. She knew him to be seventeen years old, but he might have passed for fifteen.

Charlotte looked at her son.

In soft English, she said, ‘Introduce yourself, Pasha.’

‘I am Pavel Eduardovitch,’ he replied. His English made him sound like a ventriloquist’s dummy. ‘I am plissed to make your acquaintance.’

Saskia took his hand. He did not look at her. ‘Look at me.’

He did. His eyes were restless.

‘Once more,’ Saskia said. ‘Pleased.’

‘Plissed.’

‘Again. Spread your lips more and keep your tongue high.’

He tried not to smile. ‘Pleased. I am pleased.’

‘I am Mirra Tucholsky. I am also pleased.’

‘Will you teach me English, Madam?’

Saskia said nothing. She looked Charlotte, who seemed amused by the exchange.

‘Darling,’ Charlotte said, returning to French, ‘it is time for your walk now. Three times around the garden. I will have Ivan watch you.’

Chapter Eleven

Many hours passed before Saskia could meet Count Nakhimov. The hundred guests arrived at nine o’clock, precisely at sunset, and remained until four, when the sun returned. Not yet the White Nights; they were a month away. As though the dawn had fairytale significance, the gloved hands of the nobility parted and slipped into the day, their carriages ringing with conversation. Only then did Count Nakhimov appear. Saskia was left with memories of black, polished boots and epaulettes and earnest young men who wished to dance with her. But she never danced. She was content to let the evening progress before her: on a dance floor as large, it seemed, as the concourse of Moscow Station, sided with mirrors that projected the scene endlessly, repeating the themes of gold and ivory. She sat even as the orchestra played one of the Hungarian Dances by Brahms.

There had been, as ever, political discussion among the wallflowers. Saskia was surprised to overhear snide remarks about His Majesty. These guests were permitted by birth to enjoy the gilded life of the Russian aristocracy, and yet they seemed contemptuous of its source. Saskia had once spent two late summer months gathering corn in the Ukraine with anarchist friends. The peasants there had idolised the Tsar. They were happy with the Tsar’s ration; they thought that the Tsar would save them—in every sense. It had underscored Saskia’s belief in the operatic absurdity of Imperial Russia’s prolonged death. Those peasants were content to listen to Saskia and her friend Angela as they read from their copies of The Manifesto of the Communist Party. The peasants listened even as they lay in their lice-infested bunks. But, come morning, they had forgotten the message, and the men in the worker blocks muttered that they would sooner have prostitutes than these pious, polite readers. The peasants had settled on their life’s meaning: an ex-soldier called Nicholas, their Little Father. When Angela called him Nicholas the Last, the peasants rebuked her.

Meanwhile, at the ball, dawn had come. Saskia stood alongside the Countess and thanked the retreating guests. She spent a particular, friendly moment with an ancient Colonel called Yuri who had fought at Sebastopol. She was polite enough to accept a dozen calling cards from suitors. Later, she would drop them into one of the porcelain stoves that perfumed the air.

The Countess had told her about the intricacies of Petersburg social life. Each Grand Ducal court had its clique. The most regarded was that of Grand Duchess Marie, wife of the Grand Duke Vladimir. Saskia watched her as she spoke. Was there irony in her tone? Was she presenting a caricature of her life?

At dawn, the servant passed a note to the Countess, who read it, nodded, and said, ‘Sister, the Count has arrived. You will find him in his office. Follow Fyodor.’

Saskia was led through to the pied-à-terre. Once in the small drawing room, she waited for the servant to withdraw. The Count was standing at the mantelpiece of a hearty fire. He wore a beige, puff-breasted suit. His moustaches were voluminous and his beard short—both a tribute to his Tsar. He covered his baldness with a terrible comb-over that Saskia found at once distracting and charming. As ever, the air was ripe with Mouchoir de Monsieur.

For the first moments of their reacquaintance, he seemed uncomfortable. He did not reach to shake her hand.

‘I’m pleased to see you, Ms Tucholsky.’

‘Count Nakhimov,’ she said. ‘At last.’

He asked her to sit down. Saskia perched on the edge of a winged chair. She crossed her legs and looked into the fire.

‘Must we speak this language, even here?’ said the Count. ‘I feel I have forgotten all the words.’

‘I would prefer it.’

‘Are your quarters comfortable?’

‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘I arrived only this afternoon.’

‘I see. I apologise.’

‘What for? I had time to meet your son.’

‘That pleases me. Do you agree to tutor him?’

‘Count, you know that I must leave immediately for the Amber Room. I appreciate the cover story, but that’s what it must remain.’

‘Were you followed?’

‘From the station? No. But Soso’s men were waiting for me at your house in Zurich.’

‘And yet you successfully returned to the Empire with my help.’

‘I received the documents, obviously. Have you received word from Mr Jenner?’

‘The house is quite safe.’

‘I specifically ask after Mr Jenner.’

‘He is fine. Obviously.’

‘You’re angry with me.’

‘No.’ He touched his collar. ‘I am surprised that you survived the Georgian.’

Saskia closed her eyes. The connection, here, was clear. ‘You sent them, didn’t you, Count?’

‘The Georgian interrogated my go-between and discovered the location of my house in Zurich. That’s how he found you.’

‘That doesn’t explain how he located my garret in Aussersihl, does it?’

‘No,’ said the Count, worried. ‘It does not.’

‘What is your protection, Count? What keeps you safe? If they know your house in Zurich, they know your house here.’

‘My belief in the Party, of course. What keeps you safe?’

‘The edge of my wit. What had you given them?’

‘I told them I would bring you “in from the cold”, to use your phrase. That’s always been enough.’

‘Count, this is no longer about the money.’

‘Is it not? You’re talking about the greatest heist in the history of the world. Did you think they would have forgotten you?’

‘Once I enter the Amber Room, they will forget me.’

‘Is the money there?’

Saskia smiled. ‘Why do you ask me? You must be astoundingly incompetent if you have not already checked.’

The Count said nothing.

‘The Georgian nearly got me. You owe me. You’ve been playing double-agent with dangerous people, Count. The biter can always become the bitten. They almost killed me. They can kill you.’ She pictured sparrows falling from the sky. ‘I need the equipment I asked for and I need time in the Amber Room. Understood?’

‘If you get your wish, I must get mine.’

‘I will tell you the location of the money the instant my work in the Amber Room is done.’

‘Thank you. But, after that, what will keep you safe?’

‘Nothing.’

Chapter Twelve

The following night, Saskia lay in her bed. Her eyes were fixed on her ceiling. A hunting scene had been rendered in grey plaster. Hints of light moved through the antlers of the stag. Saskia listened. Two floors down, a watchman continued his round. She could hear the hinge on his lantern handle and the respiration-like sound of his slippers. Inhalations shorter than exhalations. A limp, then. She thought about Papashvily’s bad ear, the dog that killed him, and the strong jaw of the English alpinist. She thought about Pavel Eduardovitch. He had been too ill to attend the ball and had spent the rest of the following day in bed. Saskia had given him no thought until now, when a sorrowful note had carried down the corridor. Its youthful tenor was unmistakable.

A second note. Then a third. By the fourth, Saskia had drawn her blankets aside and lit her bedside lamp. Her bare feet passed without sound across the cold floorboards. She took a perfume bottle from her dresser. At the door to her room—locked by habit—she stopped to listen. The singing had stopped.

She unlocked the door and passed into the empty corridor. It was even colder than her room. She considered returning for a gown to cover her night-dress, but the notes were too important. She tucked the stump of her wrist into her armpit and stepped onto the rug that ran the length of the corridor. The flame of her lamp guttered, but held.

Ahead, behind double doors, were the rooms of the Count and Countess. Pavel Eduardovitch slept next door to them. She approached his door, extinguished her lantern, and pushed it ajar by the smallest measure. There was nothing to see in his room but an empty fireplace. She put the nozzle of the perfume bottle against the upper hinge and pumped vegetable oil out. She repeated the treatment on the lower hinge. Then she opened the door fully and entered, closing it behind her.

The night was moonless, but Saskia could see from the scintillas of light around the window. She put her cooling lamp on the untidy bureau and approached the bed. Pasha lay twisted in his bedclothes. His mouth gaped. Saskia was reminded of the image that had filled her mind upon waking those minutes before, of a moustachioed nightmare creature sitting on the chest of the boy, trolling a lullaby as Pavel Eduardovitch suffocated. Now, fully awake, she had not expected to find that creature; but neither had she expected to hear a song of revolution coming from his lips: there, another note, making it certain that this was the song she recognised.

She remained at the foot of the bed. She waited, eyes closed, for the rest of the song. When it came, the notes carried her back to the days after she had first fallen to Russia. Those days had been so bright and alive that the memories of her previous life—of 2003, of 2023—had been reduced to a dream, or a story that faded in the telling. She had forgotten herself.

It had been raining on the day she met him.

Soso.

The singing stopped.

‘Is somebody there?’

Saskia opened her eyes. The boy was sitting upright in his bed. His eyes roamed unseeing. He reached his bedside lamp and Saskia, remembering that she wore only the night shirt, said, ‘Wait, Pavel Eduardovitch. Don’t be afraid.’

‘What?’

‘The word you are looking for is “pardon”.’

‘Ms Tucholsky?’

He reached for the lamp again. ‘No,’ Saskia said. ‘Don’t.’

‘Why not? I can’t see you.’

Saskia could see everything. She felt his electricities. The heat on his forehead was unusually distributed. Was it a function of his epilepsy? No: sweat droplets, cooling.

‘Pavel Eduardovitch, you were singing in your sleep.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Tell me about your dream.’

‘No.’

Saskia sighed. She held her stump and thumbed the scar tissue. ‘You were singing in your sleep.’

‘I can’t sing,’ he said. His voice was louder. ‘Ask Mother.’

‘Be quiet. That song could get you into trouble.’

‘What song?’

Saskia rocked on her feet. She was cold and wanted to return to her bed. ‘Turn on your light.’

At first, Pasha did nothing. He frowned. There was an infantile petulance about him. The potential for manhood was clear in his lanky frame, but the adult qualities had not yet germinated. He was still a boy.

‘Do it,’ she said.

The electric light flickered. Pasha put a hand across his face, then slowly let it fall. Saskia was aware of his awkwardness. She waited while the boy looked at her. Then she raised her stump. The switch in his attention was palpable. His eyes fixated on the wrist.

Saskia walked around the bed. She crouched and held out the stump. ‘Touch it,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

As he felt the scar, Saskia watched his fascination.

‘I had the amputation reset by a butcher,’ she said. ‘He was no medic, but he knew how to tidy meat.’

‘You’re unusual.’

‘Pavel Eduardovitch,’ she said, ‘I will be honest with you. Then you will be honest with me. Do you agree?’

‘I don’t know. What do you wish to honest about?’

Smiling, she said, ‘I have a particular nightmare. Once, sometimes twice, each week, I open my dream eyes in a metal carriage. It is like a train, but it flies through the sky. I know this is the future. Decades from now. I’m sitting at the rear of this machine. Next to me is a little girl. She is dead, but I reach across and take her hand. I know that the flying machine is about to crash. It will crash in a forest. I’m sad because I love the forest, but this is a forest I will never see. When the flying machine does crash, I see its metals and plastics wash towards me like a great wave. Something fires down the aisle. It is a piece of an engine. There’s a bright pain in my wrist.’ She lifted her stump. ‘And I know that the girl has gone, and I have returned to the forest.’

‘It sounds horrible.’

‘It is.’

‘Do you think of it during the day?’

‘Sometimes. But, in daylight, it seems powerless. It does not scare me. At those times, I can hear the nightmare whisper in my ear: “tonight, then you will be scared”.’ Saskia put her elbow on the bed. ‘Do you know the English word for koshmar?’

‘Nightmare.’

‘Good. The word derives from mære, which was a supernatural beast thought to sit on one’s chest at night. Its pressure caused sickness and death.’

‘Is that why the English say, “Get it off your chest”?’

‘Perhaps. Tell me about your nightmare, Pavel Eduardovitch. Quid pro quo. What happens when you open your dream eyes?’

‘I don’t want to tell you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll tell Mother. I don’t want her to … apply her theory.’

Saskia smiled. ‘I won’t tell her.’

He looked at the ceiling through the open square of his four-poster. ‘I’m in a leafy place. It might be Alexander Park in the Tsar’s Village. It’s summer, but a rain is falling. I walk through undergrowth but my footsteps make no sound. I might be a ghost. I …’

‘What?’

‘This sounds strange, but I feel like this is not my dream. Someone real is dreaming me.’

‘I see.’

‘I feel lost,’ he said. ‘There are no memories of what I was doing just before I came to the forest. I struggle to hear birdsong. There is none. Then, just as I am about to call for help, I hear a beautiful song.’

‘Hum it for me.’

Pasha turned away. ‘I know that I should ignore the sound, but I can’t. I walk towards it. As the singing grows louder, and more distinct, I can make out the words.’

‘Which words?’

‘I can’t remember. But in the nightmare, I recognise them.’ Pasha turned to her. His eyes were wide. ‘Finally, I reach a clearing. There is a beaten track leading to a circle of stones. The stones are uneven. An iron mesh covers the top. The singing is clear. It’s too clear. It feels like the notes are needles that reach deep inside my ears.’

‘Think. Is the voice male or female?’

‘It has the qualities of both. A woman’s pitch; a man’s anger. Just as I am looking down, I see a flash of sky reflected in the pool at the bottom. It seems far away. Then I realise that the iron mesh no longer covers the well. It has been pulled away. Two dots flash in the darkness. They might be eyes. The singing stops.’

‘What happens next?’

‘It varies. Sometimes I slip into the well. Other times, I get pushed.’

‘But you fall in?’

‘I start to fall. Then I wake up.’ He looked into her eyes, judging her reaction. ‘What do you think?’

‘I have no theory, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Why are you worried about the song?’

‘I heard it a long time ago, when I was walking the Caucasus.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’ Pavel Eduardovitch touched her forearm. She had not expected it. The hairs rose and she tried to pull away, but he held on to her. ‘You’re not a mathematics tutor, are you?’

‘Let go of my arm.’

But he did not. He frowned at something he could feel above her elbow. He pushed back the sleeve to reveal a dark band. Saskia saw it through his eyes: unaccountably black, unreflective, and restless. It seemed to creep. And yet it was still.

There was a moment when Saskia thought the world had stopped, crashed, as his finger came within an inch of the device.

Then he grasped it.

Her mouth opened a little.

‘One,’ he said, closing his eyes.

‘One what?’

‘One. Zero. Zero. Zero. One—’

Saskia looked from his slack, empty face to the band. She was certain that the band was pulling something out of him. It was an illusion, however. The reverse entropic field was affecting his speech.

‘Stop, Pavel Eduardovitch.’

‘One. Zero. Zero.’

She tried to remove his hand from the band, but his grip tightened. Was the band doing this, too?

‘Zero,’ he said, emphatically. There was bubbling throat in his throat. He swallowed. ‘One, zero, one, one.’

Now she squeezed his hand to reassure him, even as his fingers dug into her elbow, throttling the blood.

‘Zero,’ he said. ‘Zero, zero, zero.’

His hand slipped from hers. Saskia felt the blood return to her forearm. She leaned towards Pasha and demanded of herself that she know his condition. With that imperative thought came pieces of a reply: Pasha’s brainwaves featured a pronounced alpha wave component, which suggested he was calm and alert. His breathing was normal for his age and weight. Odours consistent with the decomposition of stress hormones spilled from his pores and his breath. His head lolled to one side, and the electrical activity of his head and neck muscles briefly made his brain waves difficult to interpret.

‘Pasha?’

He opened his eyes. ‘I heard myself saying numbers.’

‘Do you remember them?’

‘It hurt to speak.’

Saskia rolled her sleeve down. ‘You hurt yourself. Don’t touch things you shouldn’t.’

‘There were twenty five in total.’

Coldly, she said, ‘Forget them.’

‘Ms Tucholsky…’

‘I said, “Forget them”.’

Pasha reached out to her. ‘I don’t mean that. It’s your arm. Something is happening to it.’

Saskia looked at the band. It was glowing beneath her night shirt. A new coldness bit into her skin and she gasped, clapping a hand over it. The room seemed to brighten for a moment. In alarm, Pavel Eduardovitch sat upright. His eyes were fixed on the light coming from the band. Then the filaments in Pasha’s bedside light flared and died. The band darkened, too.

The room was utterly dark once more.

‘I can’t see.’

‘It’s all right.’

Saskia stepped back from the reaching hands of the boy. Silently, she walked to the foot of his bed. ‘Good night,’ she said.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Tell me what the number represents.’

‘I don’t know what it represents.’

‘That’s a lie. Remember I was honest with you.’

Saskia sighed. She admired his curiosity and felt a duty to cultivate it.

‘It is a secret. Do you agree to tell no-one?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said brightly.

‘The zeros and ones make a sequence of twenty-five, as you guessed. They describe, I believe, a base-two number system known as binary notation.’

‘Precisely,’ said Pasha. His voice was hurried. ‘It’s of the form invented by Leibniz, yes?’

‘No. The system is the invention of Pingala, an Indian scholar who died several centuries before Christ.’ She paused. ‘If the binary notation is standard, then the number represented is large. I received the first number in the autumn of last year; the second I received slightly afterwards. Those two occasions gave me reason to understand what the large number represents.’

Saskia backed away.

‘What does it represent?’ Pasha stage-whispered.

‘Simply the time, in seconds, until a particular date.’

‘When?’ Pasha asked in Russian. Then, noting Saskia’s silence, he said in English, ‘What will happen?’

‘I have to leave.’

Saskia opened the door.

‘Who sent the message? Where do you need to go?’

‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night.’ Pasha lay flat and put his hands against the back of his head. ‘Please, don’t tell Mother about my dream.’

‘Of course, Pavel Eduardovitch. Likewise, don’t tell her about my band, please.’

‘You may call me Pasha.’

She held her arm as she left his room. The band felt cool. She had no idea why it had reacted to the boy. Its influence typically told on systems with chaotic properties. What was different about his brain? Was it linked to his epilepsy? Perhaps it would have reacted in such a way to anybody, had Saskia permitted another person to touch it. But why had she allowed Pasha? As if in answer, she heard, once more, the song. This time it was the idling of her memory.

As she closed Pasha’s door, she heard a squeaking hinge at the end of the corridor. She turned. The door to the master bedroom closed with a gentle click.

She returned to her room and took a heavy blanket from a chest. She threw this across the bed and climbed inside.

Immediately, she knew that there was something in the bed with her. She rolled out, pulled back the bed clothes and pawed once at the switch for the electrified chandelier. The room exploded with light.

She released her breath. There was crumpled note at the base of her pillow.

Ms Tucholsky,

I would be obliged if you were to accompany my son to the Tsar’s Village tomorrow morning for a tour, which forms part of our small efforts in the furtherance of his education. I do, of course, remain,

Yours,

Count Nakhimov

Chapter Thirteen

The next morning, a maid knocked at the door and entered with brass cans of hot and cold water. Sleepily, Saskia introduced herself, but the maid said little and left. Saskia slid from her bed and performed several sets of push-ups, squats and sit-ups. Then she put her forehead against her shins and slowed her breathing. She wondered if she could avoid taking Pasha to the Summer Palace that morning. She was not safe in St Petersburg and she did not trust the judgement of the Count. However, if the Count’s connections were using him, they would not wish to harm his son.

Saskia stood tall and closed her eyes. The traffic noise was loud. She considered the Monty Hall Problem of counter-intuitive probability, both as a method of emptying her mind and as a mathematics lesson for Pasha should the need arise.

When the maid returned with tea, pancakes, sour cream, hot kasha porridge and the Gazette, Saskia was fully dressed. Her right hand gripped her left wrist within the warmer. She waited for the maid to leave. Then she discarded the warmer to sip the tea. It was black and excellent.

In the Gazette, she could find no mention of Kamo being discovered on the train. Her eyes lingered on the date. The day to come, the 17th May, 1908, might be her last in this time. What would it be like to skip those coming decades? She already knew: physically, it would be as mundane as passing from one room into another. Tomorrow might see her reconnected. The future was home, and that was enough, but Saskia planned to rescue her friend David Proctor from whatever had befallen him. The plan was impossible without paradox, maybe, but she would try.

She looked at herself in the mirror and adjusted her frilly cuffs and collar. The impression of the outfit was appropriate to her role as tutor: a sensible, dark affair with an embroidered blouse. The Countess had provided a choice of three hats, each belonging to a previous tutor. They had been adjusted to accommodate Saskia’s head. She was glad that the fashion for wide, tall hats was fading. She was quite tall enough. She opted for a narrow, flat hat with two trailing ribbons.

Saskia smiled at the woman in the mirror; not her.

The circle is closing.

~

Saskia and Pasha walked alone towards Tsar’s Village Station. It was mid-morning and some of the urgency had left the streets. The day was light but chill. Pasha, who had wanted to take a coach, was sullen.

‘What happened to your previous tutor?’ asked Saskia, watching a horse bus. ‘Did she resign on account of your extended silences?’

The boy said nothing.

‘Come,’ said Saskia. ‘If you talk to me, I’ll buy you a lollipop.’

‘I’m not a child.’

‘Clearly. A child would lack the energy to keep up such a miserable façade. Your adult qualities are almost fully developed, I’m sorry to say.’

Pasha frowned over her words. ‘“Miserable”?’

‘Убогий.’

‘I’m not miserable. I’m tired.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve been walking less than ten minutes.’

‘Why are you so fit? Did you used to be an athlete?’

‘Did you use to be.’

‘Use to be.’

‘But, Pavel Eduardovitch, how rude of you to use the past habitual, and with a stative verb, for shame. I’m still an athlete. Present continuous.’

‘Prove it. Run and find us a taxi.’ Pasha took a cigarette from his waistcoat and gave her a sardonic smile. ‘Imperative.’

As he placed the cigarette in his mouth and patted himself for a matchbook, he noticed that Saskia was no longer beside him. He looked back. She had stopped under the awning of a jeweller’s shop. She was not, however, looking at the window. She was looking at him. He sighed and walked back to her.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Tucholsky. I didn’t mean to be rude.’

Without taking her eyes from his, Saskia drew her leg to the level of his face and swatted the cigarette from his mouth with the tip of her boot. She held her leg at this startling angle for a moment longer. Then she dropped it and, once more, she was just another window shopping lady. Her umbrella had never left the crook of her elbow. She adjusted her hat.

‘Imperative is mood,’ she said, ‘not tense. Now pick up your feet or we’ll miss the train.’

Pasha’s mouth still pouted around the missing cigarette. ‘What?’

‘The train.’

‘No, not the train. How did you do that?’

‘Yes, the train. Pasha?’

‘What?’

‘The word you’re looking for is “pardon”. Look, you dropped your cigarette. Pick it up and place it in a bin, please.’

By the time Pasha had found the cigarette and given it to a drunkard, Saskia had vanished. He looked up and down the street until her voice called from far away. She was riding the rear of a trolleycar. Pasha rushed into the traffic. He swerved around a coach and horses and intercepted the trolleycar on the corner, as it slowed. Saskia helped him onto the deck.

‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Athletic, even.’

‘I can’t breathe.’

‘Lean forward, if you must. Let your lungs inflate.’

Pasha’s bloated face stared up at her. ‘I think I deserve that lollipop now.’

~

On the train to the Tsar’s Village, once a grand Swedish estate, Saskia and Pasha ate blini sandwiches and a cold meat salad. They occupied a small but comfortable private booth. It seemed that Pasha had been told by his father to demonstrate his knowledge of local history, so Saskia had listened to a collection of facts and anecdotes about the Village.

‘Will the Tsar be at home?’ Saskia asked.

‘The Imperial family are resident in the Alexander Palace only over winter. Today, they are in Peterhof. My father has been making arrangements for their cruise on the royal yacht, Standart. If the family keep to their routine, they will visit Poland over the summer. Then they’ll return to their estate in the Crimea, and finally back to the Alexander Palace.’

‘Is the Tsar a good man?’

Pasha looked at her as though the question was unanswerable. It was, Saskia reflected, possibly treasonous. ‘Ms Tucholsky, he is the Tsar.’

‘I suppose his life must be a little dull.’

‘He is a private man. He wishes to keep a distinction between his public and private lives. Fatherhood is important to him.’

‘As Freud tells us, fatherhood can be a cryptic condition.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Cryptic; скрытый. Mysterious. Don’t you find your own father mysterious?’

Pasha took a bite of his sandwich and shrugged. ‘My father doesn’t speak to me about his business. But he’s brave. He fought in the Russo-Turkish War. When Kars fell, he was entrusted with bearing the news of victory to His Majesty, Alexander II. The Emperor made him an Aide-de-Camp. My father has been attached to the Imperial household ever since. One day, he might be Grand Marshall of the Court. Think of it!’

Grand Marshall, thought Saskia, of the Court of Nicholas the Last.

‘I will. Meanwhile, tell me about the Tsar’s children.’

‘I seldom see them. The Tsarina prefers to keep them away.’ He waved his hand seriously. ‘They are, so to speak, cryptic.’

Saskia smiled inwardly. ‘Sensible,’ she said.

At the Tsar’s Village, they alighted as rain began to fall. Pasha took Saskia’s umbrella and held it above her while they walked to the taxi rank. The face of the foremost driver was no more than a nose between hat and collar. He nodded at Pasha, who opened the carriage door, kicked down the steps, and waited for Saskia to ascend. He followed her inside. They sat opposite one another in the luxuriant gloom. Rain crackled against the roof. The carriage started off with a jolt. They rode in silence. Half way to the Summer Palace, Saskia felt Pasha’s ankle resting against hers. She moved her leg.

The cab stopped on Dvortzovaya Street. Outside, Saskia could see the gate to the palace square.

‘Do you agree,’ asked Pasha, ‘that it should be acknowledged as a wonder of the world?’

Saskia gave him a wry look.

‘Your question has an overworked quality, Pavel Eduardovitch. Much like the palace.’

Chapter Fourteen

A man descended the marble stairway of the atrium. He was bow-legged, middle-aged and wore polished shoes. He was dressed like a clerk, not a member of a grand household. When he spoke over his clasped hands, his Russian was slow and he had difficulty with the rolling ‘r’. Saskia knew he was German before he introduced himself.

‘Mr Mülheim.’

Saskia accepted his bow with a nod. ‘Tucholsky,’ she said. ‘I am the tutor of Count Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov.’

Mülheim looked at her handwarmer, and the two hands she appeared to conceal. The weather was wet, after all—not especially cold. Saskia wondered if he had checked the visitors’ book. She had not permitted Pasha to sign it. As for her own name, she had jotted something unreadable. But Mülheim wore only an expression of studied servility. If he had suspicions, he withheld them.

‘Good morning, your honour,’ he said to Pasha. ‘We’ll begin at the First Suite of Apartments.’

‘I hope we will have time to see the Grand Ballroom,’ said Saskia, ‘and its enfilade.’

Mr Mülheim nodded graciously as though its introduction would take a particular skill that he was happy to exercise. Then, he led them up the staircase.

Over the next few minutes, a peculiar tinnitus began to distract Saskia. Her first thought was that an insect, perhaps a fly, was trapped behind a hanging. But the buzz persisted as they passed from room to room. When they were standing in a small bed chamber that overlooked the park on the south side of the Summer Palace, Saskia noticed a growing clearness in the sound. The snowy component of noise was fading. It was replaced by an irregularity. It might have been a radio transmission.

Then it stopped.

Mr Mülheim led them through an illuminated door. This opened onto a church hall. Its walls were pale. Through one of the watery windows, Saskia could see the palace square. The horse guards were returning from their patrol to the main gate. She watched the second rider wheel his horse in a Caucasian flourish that returned her, with an ache, to the unchanging and endless days of her last horse-rides overlooking the Black Sea.

Saskia and Pasha exchanged a smile. The memory of the tinnitus faded.

At length, accompanied by Mülheim’s narrative, which was heavy with architectural terms, they passed through the apartment of the Empress Elizabeth Alekseyevna and came upon the choir gallery. The church of the Great Palace was, thought Saskia, a marvel, and outshone the somnolent words of Mülheim. She turned her head to the painted ceiling as Mülheim described the Te Deum sung on November 1st, 1768, in thanksgiving for the recovery of Empress Catherine II.

‘In the Sacristy,’ he said, speaking now to himself, ‘we find the Holy Cross, the chalice, and the Holy Gospel, which is made of pure gold. We also find a nine kilogram chalice of gold.’ Saskia sighed through her nose. Why did he prefer “We find” over “There is”, suggesting a doctor at an autopsy?

Some soldiers passed them.

~

There had been a fire in 1820, said Mülheim, but its cause remained unknown to her; his next words were rendered insignificant by the light and beauty of a hall whose length matched the width of the palace. Three windows at the north end overlooked the square; three at the south overlooked the gardens. Its style was modelled on that of Louis XV, Mülheim reported, almost to himself. The epic ceiling, representing Olympus, had been restored by an academic following the fire.

‘Fire,’ said Saskia. The word was an idle reflection of her thoughts, and neither Mülheim nor Pasha acknowledged her. They walked ahead. Their feet clopped like hooves on the parquet. The walls were crammed with pictures; a single glance lighted on hundreds. ‘Tell me,’ said Saskia, ‘is the Amber Room close?’

‘It is,’ said Mülheim.

Saskia remembered looking through the window at the rider who wheeled his horse in the manner of an arch showman. She turned once more to the window. The courtyard was empty.

A thread of fear twisted through her abdominal muscles. She could not be explicit about the source. Simply, her comfort was slipping away, replaced by dread.

‘Are you leaving?’ asked Pasha.

‘What?’

She blinked. Pasha’s expression was hard to interpret. It might have been reproach. Why had he asked her if she were leaving? Did he know something about the Amber Room? Arctic, she told herself. Cool as. This is no more than anticipation. Mülheim was about to admit them. She should not kick open the door, or rush, or do anything that might compromise the position of her tutee, Pasha. He, after all, would have a life when Saskia was gone. She did not wish to make it difficult.

Mülheim inclined his head to nearby door.

Is that the Amber Room? she thought. Am I this close, finally?

‘What’s all this?’ asked Mülheim. He frowned and turned to a horse guard, whose loud approach was spoiling the quietude. Saskia turned, too. She noted the rich black of the boots, the white tunic and its red cuffs, and large hat and the bearded face beneath it.

The soldier was limping. He had a familiar blemish in his left eye.

Here was the dread; here was disaster.

‘Run,’ said Saskia, shoving Pasha.

The boy stumbled and looked at her, ready to smile.

She took a deep breath.

‘Yes, what is it?’ asked Mülheim. His eyebrows were raised. They hardly fell when Kamo withdrew his sabre and pushed its tip through his waistcoat. Mülheim tried to turn but the sabre held him. Kamo slid it clear. The small German man, who was so particular on points of architecture, slumped against the wall with his legs tucked beneath him, neat for death, coughing and looking at Kamo as though his behaviour was the height of rudeness. Then his expression faded.

Saskia said, ‘No, you don’t need to—’

Kamo lunged at her. She half turned and the sabre passed her shoulder. It scored a portrait. Their faces met. Kamo’s head was tipped back and his eyes were wide. Within this berserk trance he had tortured and raped; it was a personal storm in whose eye he could stay calm, while the world spun around him.

Before Kamo could draw back for another strike, Saskia let her muff fall to the floor. Even now, in this moment, she had a flush of awkwardness as her amputation was exposed. Pasha stepped in to block the blow but Saskia planted one foot on his hip and pushed him clear.

‘I said, “Run!”’ she screamed.

Kamo checked his attack. He twisted a full turn, keeping the sabre in motion, and brought the blade towards the boy at head height. She flashed her elbow into Pasha’s midriff. Winded, he collapsed. There was time for Saskia to drop to her knee. The sabre struck the window frame with a resonating clash of metal on brick.

Kamo reacted as though wounded by the sound. He glanced along the corridor.

Saskia gripped Pasha’s arm, then scissored her legs through those of Kamo. She used the boy as an anchor from which to twist her body. Kamo’s riding boots had a poor grip on the wooden floor. He slipped onto his hip and gasped. The sabre came down with him.

‘Run!’ she shouted once more.

Kamo stage-whispered, ‘Do you want to bring the entire household, woman?’

‘You idiot,’ she spat. ‘You’ve ruined everything.’

He stared at her for a moment. His confusion was genuine enough to shine through his madness. Then the clouds came down on his eyes. ‘It’s here, isn’t it? Our money. Take me to it!’

Kamo lashed at Pasha with the sabre. Saskia had time to put her heel into Kamo’s forehead and spoil the strike of the blade, but the flat caught Pasha above the ear. Pasha screamed and put a hand to the wound.

Saskia kicked Kamo in the head once more. She drew a little upon his madness. Dazed, he spilled beyond her range. She released Pasha, rolled towards Kamo, and brought her fist down on his biceps. His flexing hand released the sabre. She grabbed the handle, put it against her chest, and let the point rest on Kamo’s heart.

They were both breathing hard. She could smell his breath. It was pure Tiflis, its milk bars, and the spiced food. She smiled. This was just like old times. Kamo, despite himself, smiled back.

The sabre was heavy. Powerful. She could prick the heart of this man and he would unwind. Instead, she turned to the great window overlooking the palace square and drove the pommel into one of the lower panes. The sound of splintering glass echoed along the Picture Hall.

Kamo bared his teeth.

‘Pasha,’ she said, ‘jump.’

The boy, in his agony, looked up. ‘What?’ he gasped.

‘Lower yourself from the window. We’re only on the first floor. Keep your feet together when you land.’

When she turned back to Kamo, he was holding the end of the blade in his clapped hands, as though in prayer. Her one hand could not prevent him twisting the blade free. He caught the handle neatly—another Caucasian flourish—and jumped to a crouch. She dropped her shoulder as he lunged, but the tip passed through the fabric of her corset and skipped across the whalebone. She cried out and fell to her knees.

‘Go,’ she shouted, hoping that Pasha had relinquished his notions of honourable duty, that he was capable of saving himself. As Kamo withdrew the sword for a final blow, she saw, reflected in the cabinet opposite the window, the silhouette of Pasha slipping from the palace.

Sense at last.

She closed her eyes.

Arctic. Cool as.

~

Pasha lay on the forecourt of the Summer Palace. Is this real, or a future imagined by a boy, tumbling? The rain hit him, cold. His fingers were curled and his mouth had opened to its fullest extent. He could not move. This was a spell, surely; he had to let it pass. And when he heard the thump of boots landing near his head, he remembered the man who ran through Mr Mülheim with his sabre. Pasha tried to move but his body was fighting something else. If only he could reach for a piece of glass.

Pasha felt himself lifted. It reminded him of his father carrying him to his room. Pasha’s cheek rubbed against the tunic of the impostor. He felt a metal button. He knew that he was being kidnapped. He was a valuable prize. To rage against his immobility was to rage against his body, which was now his enemy.

Then, with a growl of effort from the impostor, he was thrown across the withers of a sturdy horse. The animal snorted. It was unhappy with the load. Then the three of them were galloping across the palace square. Pasha could do nothing but watch the rushing surface. His puffed face bounced against the flank. The horse’s smell was nauseating.

With a flourish, the impostor reined back on the horse. Another horse, belonging to a real guard officer, trotted by. Pasha was desperate to call out, but nothing more than a choking sound left his throat. The impostor did not stop to talk. In a strained voice, he called, ‘The boy is safe. Raise the alarm!’

They galloped on before the guard could reply. Pasha heard the hinge of the gate to Alexander Park and they were through. The deception had worked; Pasha spat bitterly.

The impostor wheeled the horse from the road and, in moments, they had lost themselves in the silence of the wood. Pasha saw nothing but the passing ground. There was a greater silence as the horse slowed to a stop. She was steaming with effort. Foam had caked Pasha’s cheek.

The impostor turned to Pasha and lifted his chin. Their eyes met. Pasha watched as Ms Tucholsky tipped her head forward and removed her cap. Her packed hair fell free. His last impression of her before unconsciousness smothered him was one of rage. She kicked the tree, but not with the control that had allowed her to flick the cigarette from his mouth. She fought with the buttons on her jacket. When it was open, she took a full breath and said an English word that Pasha had never heard before.

‘Fuck.’

Chapter Fifteen

In the early evening, Saskia sat beneath an arch in the Beggars’ Market, an area in the Viasemskaya-Lavra quarter where the poor of St Petersburg gathered. She wore a boat cloak over her cape. There was ash on her cheeks. Parts of a trampled chicken, several days dead, were tucked into her boot-tops; the odour of putrefaction was sharp. Taken together, these precautions had deterred most of her tramp suitors, though one had suffered a fall and now regarded her tearfully from a newspaper nest not thirty feet away. Above the arches, it was raining, and the soot dripped blackly upon them all. She listened to the drops and parsed a structure there. The portal in the Amber Room would open once more, for the last time, at the midnight of six days hence.

Saskia remained still as a spider while the ladies from the night-shelter toured the poor, offering blankets and food vouchers. She watched them step around the vomit and broken glass. They ignored the unholy language and the fierce copulation. They only shook their heads. Saskia was impressed by them. She was less impressed by the St Petersburg police, who never thought to search for her among the filth.

Her thoughts moved to Kamo. Perhaps he had watched the house of the Count and followed her, that morning, to the Summer Palace. She shook her head at the thought because Kamo had been riding in the palace square at the moment Saskia and Pasha arrived. Kamo had been waiting, not following. He had arranged for a disguise and lost himself among the Horse Guards.

If someone in the Nakhimov house had betrayed her, how had Kamo guessed that she had hidden the spoils of the Tiflis bank robbery in the Amber Room? He had waited until they were on the threshold. Then he had attacked. His plan, as far as Saskia could work out, would have been to kill Mr Mülheim and the boy, for they were witnesses, and hold Saskia captive until the money was recovered. With the roubles located, he would improvise: take Saskia with him to Finland, perhaps for sentimental reasons, risking another betrayal; or murder her at once.

She didn’t think that Kamo could carry the money alone. Had he intended to keep Saskia alive and engage her as a helper? Perhaps he found it as difficult to kill her as she found it difficult to kill him. One night in Baku, that stinking oil town, Kamo had said he loved her.

There was another explanation. It was possible that Kamo was not alone in the Summer Palace. Perhaps another man had been waiting elsewhere. Watching.

Soso.

She could imagine him in the shadows. He would stand with one eye looking around the doorframe. He would watch Saskia and Kamo. Their fight would be no more to him than that of cocks in the pits, spurring each other to a ragged death. Yes, Saskia could imagine that shadowed man. She could even imagine his words should Saskia have killed his faithful Kamo.

‘Lynx! Leave him. Let’s run this loot into Finland. What do you say?’

~

At eight o’clock, Saskia saw a man hurry parallel to the railings that enclosed one side of the market. She tilted her head. Cartilage cracked. She held her breath and tugged out the rotting chicken. By the time the man had reached the entrance, Saskia was on her feet. She walked towards him. He backed away from her.

Robespierre had covered his mouth with a handkerchief. She pulled it away. His expression changed from disgust to hope. She kissed him once on the lips.

‘They’re the only part of me that’s clean,’ she said. ‘You could call the rest a disguise.’

His face contorted with wonder.

‘But you were bound for your far home and leaving our strange lands.’

Tears ran through the ash on her cheeks. Here she was, having failed to enter the Amber Room, covered in muck, and Robespierre was quoting Pushkin.

‘I’m not there yet. Will you still help me?’

‘With all my powers. I promised, after all.’

‘I was afraid my message got lost,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d given the urchin too much, or too little.’

‘We are both lucky. I am seldom in Petersburg these days.’

Robespierre took her arm and led her from the market. One woman called, ‘It’s buy one, get one free, your honour!’ and there was hearty laughter. Robespierre pressed the handkerchief to his face once more and moved Saskia along.

‘My carriage is outside. Are you in trouble?’

She nodded. She was thinking that a return to the Summer Palace, and its Amber Room, would be difficult indeed.

Kamo, she thought, where are you?

‘Listen,’ Robespierre said. ‘I have some identity papers on loan from a friend of a friend. I was saving them for a special occasion. A princess.’ He looked at her. As always, he was embarrassed, and a little upset with his embarrassment. ‘The friend, I mean. You may have them. There is a hotel near the Bouffes Theatre.’ He sneezed. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Actually, I just need a boat.’

~

Two hours before the dawn, Saskia was crouched in a rowboat on the Moika. She wore her liberty corset, bloomers and canvas slippers. All were dyed black. Rain crackled on the leaves and drummed in the boat. The sounds seemed to emphasise her impatience as she waited for the top of the hour. Then she ascended the quayside stairs to a padlocked door halfway up. She pulled at the slipknots that held her ten-piece picking set to her left forearm. She defeated the lock easily.

The passage led to a stone basement. It was dark, but images came to her nonetheless: it was stacked with wine, empty fruit crates, and luggage cases. Everything smelled damp. There was a wooden door. Its pin-tumbler took her six minutes to unlock using her picking set. When the door was unlocked, she found a staircase leading to a second door.

The door opened onto Count Nakhimov’s pied-à-terre. She was standing in an octagonal dining room with a simple table and high-backed chairs. The quality of the air suggested that the room had not been opened for several days. Through a frosted window, she could see streetlight. She closed the door behind her. It was designed to close flush with the wall and, once closed, seemed to disappear. Saskia walked around the perimeter with her fingers brushing the plaster. She felt a trace of moving air on the wall opposite the door she had entered through. Sure enough, there was another door. She pressed and it swung open.

It revealed a drawing room, not quite dark, separated into two unequal parts by pillars and a half-drawn curtain. Saskia concentrated hard on processing the image that fell on her retinas. In the smaller, raised part was a bed. The room was furnished in mahogany. Holland linen hangings covered the walls. Otherwise, the room was empty.

Saskia hurried through the house. She passed the Countess’s reception room. The paintings were dark, colourless smudges. The piano lid was closed and silent. As Saskia regained her breath, she listened for footsteps in the interstices between the steady click of the grandfather clock in the hallway. Other clocks, other clicks, rattled the house. Within her, a mechanism sampled those clicks, noted their regularity, and subtracted them from her perception. Now the silence deepened. She heard a servant blackleading a stove in the basement; mice; a cat; wood contracting; water lapping; a cough; a sigh.

As she moved to leave the room, a small glow scored a line on her vision. It came from a shelf near the chimney. She took the object, a pocket watch, and touched her thumb to the Imperial Eagle on the front of the case. The reverse indicated that it was produced by Pavel Buhre, Imperial Watchmaker, for the occasion of the Countess’s birthday. Saskia opened it. The dials and hands exhibited a fierce glow. Saskia frowned at the contraption and closed it. Radioactive luminescent paint. She slipped it into her waistband.

Saskia ascended the floors, keeping to an uncarpeted third of the marble staircase. Her footsteps were soundless. She passed a descending cat. It did not stop but slowed to give her a polite blink before moving on.

~

In the corridor on the second floor, Saskia paused as a clock reached the hour: something spun inside it as a prelude to a chime, but the chime did not come. It was as though a breath had been taken and held. Slowly, Saskia turned her head. She noted a line of brass samovars; a Bible with a metal clasp; a framed map based on the Draft Of Moscovia. The shadows rolled back under her regard.

Nobody there.

She opened the door of Pasha’s room and stepped inside, closing it behind her. This room was completely dark, too. For a moment, she had difficulty seeing. Then she moved to the edge of his bed and sat on the corner.

‘Hello, Pavel Eduardovitch,’ she whispered.

‘Hello, Ms Tucholsky,’ he replied. The words were precise, even rehearsed. In Saskia’s heightened vision, his eyes were black crescents in a milky face. He was sitting up against pillows and his fingers were laced. The thread of his initials, PAB, sparkled on the breast pocket of his pyjamas. ‘Thank you for saving my life.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘For an hour or so after one of my spells, I need to sleep. But then I’m fine.’ He paused. There was a measured aspect to his tone. Saskia guessed that he was unsure how to play their conversation. ‘Mother likes me to stay in bed, though, so I do.’

‘I’m glad you’re better.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now return to me what you have stolen.’

‘I’m sorry?’ he asked. The surprise was almost genuine.

‘Don’t apologise, Pasha. Just hand it over.’

Pasha reached under his pillow and withdrew a folded handkerchief. He held it out for Saskia to take. When she unfolded the handkerchief, she saw the band. In the darkness, its finish was marbled. She passed it over her stump and pushed it into the crook of her left elbow.

‘Why did you take it?’

His head tilted back. The pride of a nobleman was there, nascent.

‘Because I wanted to see you again.’

‘And yet the darkness here is complete, Pavel Eduardovitch. Bad luck.’

‘Yes.’

She yawned.

‘Turn on your bedside light, if it pleases you.’

‘The filaments are broken ever since Monday, when I had the bad dream.’

‘I see.’

‘Are you angry?’

‘Do I sound angry?’

Pavel swallowed.

Don’t tell me you want to marry me, she thought.

‘I stole the band as you carried me to the taxi in the Tsar’s Village.’

‘I thought you were unconscious.’

‘It comes and goes.’

Saskia said nothing for a long minute. Then she said, ‘Your English is excellent.’

Pasha sighed and said, exasperated, ‘It didn’t do anything, you know. It didn’t glow or buzz.’

Saskia removed the pocket watch from her waistband and opened the lid. Its green light reached her face.

‘Now you have your wish,’ she said. ‘You see me again.’

‘Hardly. What is that?’

Saskia passed him the watch. He closed it, then opened it.

‘But this is my mother’s watch. Did you steal it?’

‘English idiom: “Two can play at that game.” Yes, I stole it a moment ago. I advise you to dig a hole and bury it.’

‘Why?’

‘The luminescence is caused by the gradual decay of the material, a metal called radium. Each particle of radium comprises smaller particles. Some of these particles are called electrons. We derive the word electron from the Greek for amber, ήλεκτρον. The electrons, as well as some other particles, emanate away from the material. Some of this energy takes the form of visible light. This emanation is dangerous. It can cause sores and other, more serious diseases.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ said Pasha. ‘If what you say is true, she can decide what to do about it.’

‘She won’t think it’s true.’

‘Then I’ll tell her to listen to the scientists.’

‘They don’t know about the dangerous emanation.’ She paused for effect. ‘Nobody does.’

‘How do you know these things?’

‘I’m your tutor,’ said Saskia. The shape of the words betrayed her smile, and Pasha smiled, too. ‘It is my job to know things that will give you an advantage.’

Pasha placed the pocket watch in the pocket of his pyjama top. ‘I wish you still worked for us.’

‘So do I.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Ms Tucholsky, there are some things that a man must do even though they are difficult. Sometimes they are futile. I am not a man yet.’

‘Pasha—’

‘Wait. Yesterday, I would have died a man. I knew that the horse guard wanted to kill you, and I placed myself between his sabre and your—’ He flicked away a run of sweat from his forehead. ‘Yourself.’ He sniffed in that noble manner again. ‘One may earn the right to be called a man if one acts as a man.’

‘We have a similar expression where I come from. “Stupid is as stupid does.”’

‘Alexander Pope?’

‘Forrest Gump.’

‘Oh.’

Saskia leaned forward. She was still smiling. ‘Give me your hand.’

‘Ms Tucholsky …’

She could feel the heat from his body. His hand was clammy. She guided it towards her body. ‘Here.’

In a disappointed voice, Pasha said, ‘It’s a bottle.’

‘Yes.’

He paused, then repeated, ‘It’s a bottle.’

‘Are you taking any medication prescribed by a doctor?’

‘Some teas. Nothing else.’

‘Then I want you to take one of these tablets each day. Never, ever take more than one. They’ll take about a week to become fully effective. Stop taking them if you feel overly dizzy, if your eyes feel as if they’re moving randomly, or if you get excessively clumsy.’

‘What happens if I take more than one?’

‘You’ll die. It’s a poison; but some poisons can help in non-fatal doses. Your seizures should stop. Hide the bottle where nobody can find it. There is a scientist at the Military Medical Academy with a great knowledge of physiology and medicine. He’s called Pavlov. If you need to see him, tell him that Penelope sent you.’

Saskia lay across the bed, parallel to the foot rest, and put one arm beneath her head.

‘And now my last gift. What time is your viva voce at the Lyceum?’

‘Ten o’clock.’

‘You have six hours. Plenty of time.’

‘For what?’

‘Tell me how you will impress your interviewers.’

‘Well,’ Pasha said. ‘I will demonstrate my knowledge of mathematics. Euclid, and so on. That is the basis of my proposed study.’

‘Have you heard of the St Petersburg Paradox? It might serve as an interesting case of the failure of rationality in the light of mathematics.’

‘Ms Tucholsky, before we begin, I must finish my earlier thought. A man must speak his desires if he is to, so to speak, hold them.’

‘Put it away, junior.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘There are times when a man must accept the discrepancy between his wish and his reality. This is one of those times.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Now, imagine a roulette wheel. If you put your money on red and the wheel returns black, what would happen if you doubled your bet and placed it once more on red? Eventually, you are guaranteed to win at least the amount you put on red. Understand? This is the reason casinos have a maximum bet.’

‘I’m sleepy.’

‘We call the range of winnings the possible gain. Repeat that, please.’

‘I’m going to call for help.’

Saskia gripped his foot through the blanket. ‘They would never reach you in time.’

Pasha laughed. ‘The range of winnings is called the possible gain. But what does “paradox” mean?’

‘Парадокс. An entity whose components make sense individually but not as a whole.’

Chapter Sixteen

Kamo had been installed in the public viewing room of the Police Department on the Fontanka. It was a plain wooden hall with leather-backed doors at both ends. Kamo was standing on a chair in the centre. His feet were chained and his hands cuffed behind his back. Around him, a line of building superintendents, and their assistants, and the otherwise curious, passed by in a spiralling queue. Their expressions were by turns curious or indifferent. He might have been the Tsar in state. As one of them lingered, Kamo stamped his foot, and hissed, ‘There you are! Did you get the consignment of illegal pamphlets I sent? Come, don’t be shy!’

That gawker hurried on.

Outside, the sound of church bells carried through the traffic.

This abstract present carried wearisome generalities. Even the pain was boring. Kamo longed for the particular feel of forest earth beneath his felt boots.

~

In his memory, it is October, 1905. The weather is unseasonably cold. Tiflis could be warm in autumn, even sultry. The cold snap is a topic of conversation second only to the revolution.

Kamo is walking past the railway station in Tiflis. A crowd of workers stand near a derailed locomotive. The huge, metal eyelid of its smokebox is open. The workers look sorry.

Kamo, not stopping, glances into the smokebox. His thoughts have turned to his greater challenge. It has been decided by Lenin, Leonid Krassin, and Soso that Kamo should form a band of expropriators to secure funds for weaponry. Many agents in this fighting unit, or Outfit, will comprise individuals selected for their revolutionary attributes, which Kamo has interpreted as “attractiveness”. They will use their feminine characteristics to infiltrate those circles in which the transfer of State monies is discussed. They will romance State Bank and Treasury employees. Kamo will gather information about the movement of these funds and then take steps to expropriate them. Thus the money for the greater revolution will be deducted from the Tsar’s ration. Nobody in the Party believes the current troubles trigger the inevitable, beautiful revolution. That must wait. These ructions are the clearing of a throat. The money must see the Bolsheviks through coming days when the State will reassert itself.

Kamo smiles. He takes a pistol from his belt and fires it into the smokebox. The sound is futuristic and dreadful. It might be the cry of a mechanical man. One of the workers makes the sign of the cross. Kamo laughs and hurries on to the north-east of the city, where he is due to interrogate the traitor Saakashvili.

A boy runs up to Kamo. He is berry-brown, almost feral, and has a purposeful look in his eye. It is not unusual for Soso to use such boys as messengers. Kamo crouches. His skirted chokha fans out on the packed earth. In the distance, glass breaks.

‘What is your name, brother?’ he asks the boy.

‘You must help her.’

Kamo cocks his head. The boy has not given him a code phrase. ‘Who?’

‘The lady from the forest. She gave me food.’

Kamo stands and walks on.

‘Dmitri!’ calls the boy, jogging alongside him. ‘I am Dmitri!’

‘How old are you, Dmitri?’ asks Kamo. The question is automatic. Kamo has no interest.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Go home to your mother.’

‘The Tsar has her! Twenty men came out of the trees.’

Kamo turns his head to the boy, but does not stop. They pass a burning police wagon.

‘Who? Your mother?’

Dmitri, who is perhaps ten years old, but looks eight, reaches for the nearest of the two pistols that Kamo wears in his belt. Kamo claps his hand over the boy’s. They stop in the street.

The two stare at one another. Kamo is impressed by the fierceness he sees.

‘And how do we know she is not yet dead?’

‘She killed four of them. I saw it. She learned boxing from a Chinaman. It’s all true.’

The boy squints towards the smoke that covers the sun. It is cold. The great snows have not yet come, but they will come soon, and they will fill the cracks in the earth, bury the broken wood, and slow the quickening of the revolution.

~

While he was being presented to the building superintendents, Kamo occupied himself with thoughts of Saskia. He wanted to kill her. It had been a mistake to attack the boy. Her maternal instincts had been piqued by the gesture, and doubled her strength.

He smiled at an unpleasant-looking man, and screamed, ‘Watch the birdie!’

An urchin followed the man. Kamo felt his fear as though it were an aroma. ‘Down with the Tsar!’ Kamo shouted. If his arms had not been tied, he would have twiddled his moustache. ‘Come on, boys, be wolves, not sheep. Let us murder these cowardly instruments of oppression and take flight. Let the revolution be bloody!’

There was a Security Section case officer in the corner. He was overweight. Kamo had remarked upon this. The officer was sitting at a temporary desk that reminded Kamo of those used in school. The officer had been reading a novel. At Kamo’s outburst, he closed it.

‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘let’s take a rest from the identification.’

One gendarme ushered away the superintendents who had viewed Kamo. Another halted the line of newcomers at the door. Soon, Kamo was alone with the officer and four gendarmes. This was a different audience entirely. Kamo was still calculating how best to annoy them when two of the gendarmes helped him down from his chair and invited him to sit. As he did so, they pulled off his socks.

The case officer looked at him. ‘Why the performance? It will come to nothing when you are recognised.’

‘My own mother wouldn’t recognise me. At least, not as well as yours would. What a night that was!’

One gendarme offered his truncheon to Kamo’s mouth. Kamo grinned and bit. Then his legs were raised and a second truncheon was whipped across the soles of his feet. His neck twisted and his head snapped back and he gasped. The image of the unlit ceiling lamp fluttered with his eyelids. His tears mixed with his snot, and he wondered if there was some poetry in the strange contrast between this quiet office and the chatter, the telephone buzzers and the tapped typewriters that carried through the cracks in the old walls of this old police station. He fainted.

~

The Turtle Lake wet a thin slice of the northern slope of Mtatsminda. It was shallow enough to have frozen already. The surrounding woods were colourless with snow. Kamo and the boy found the woman hanging in a tree close to the shore. The boy cried out at the sight. Kamo assessed her death: arms tied back; hatless; unusually good boots. He removed his rifle, which hung across his back, and cocked it. He looked into the trees for the telltale clouds of exhalation.

The boy should not have cried out.

But there was no sign of movement in the trees. They were alone.

He looked at the snow beneath the hanged woman, and saw the traces of her executioners: cigarettes; matches; piss. The tracks led south.

He watched the boy tug at the rope where it had been made fast to an exposed root. Kamo saw something to admire in the ferocity and the desperation. Though the woman was dead, Kamo took a dagger from his belt and passed it to the boy, blade first.

The boy sawed at the rope. He used both hands and all his strength. The rope thrummed.

Kamo turned in a slow circle. He held his rifle in a casual grip. He took a bullet from the lapel of his chokha and pushed it into the corner of his mouth like a cigar.

He did not see the woman fall. The sound was muffled by the deeper snow close to the trunk of the tree. He turned to see her roll lifelessly through the powder until she was face down.

‘Does her heart beat?’ he asked. ‘Quickly, now.’

The boy pushed onto her back. He put his cheek to her chest for a few seconds. When he looked at Kamo, there were no tears. He shook his head.

Brave lad, Kamo thought. Maybe I can use him.

‘Say a prayer for her, if you wish. We will bury her. Then, Dmitri, I will take you to my sisters. They will help you.’

‘I want her to take care of me,’ said Dmitri. His tears were coming now. ‘Not your poxy sisters.’

Kamo sighed. ‘A poet wrote, “Know for certain that once / struck down to the ground, an oppressed man strives again to reach the pure mountain when exalted by hope”. If you don’t understand now, you will soon enough.’

The boy said nothing. They both looked at the woman. Her face was fat and red with death. The rope around her neck was thick, like a fur collar. Her death would have been prolonged. There had been no first drop to her execution. They had hauled her up like a black flag.

~

The gendarmes inserted a needle beneath the nail of his big toe. That woke him. They were experts, after all. These gendarmes, careful as nurses, put his socks back on and helped him stand on the chair. The case officer asked for the door to be opened once more. The superintendents filed in. Kamo watched them sleepily.

‘Remember,’ called the officer, ‘if you recognise him, there is no need to tell us this instant. Have no fear. Begin.’

Kamo barked. ‘I will dance for a penny, gentleman. Only a penny!’

He danced, though the flesh of his feet was crushed and lumpy. The gendarmes steadied him and the case officer, shaking his head, returned to his book.

~

Kamo turned towards the south, where the trees were thickest. He saw a sleek movement flicker between two trunks. It appeared again further up the slope. Kamo did not need another glance to tell him that this was a lynx. Unusual to see one so close to the city. Unusual to see one break cover.

Slowly, Kamo worked the bullet from one side of his mouth to another.

‘Dmitri, do you remember the boat shed to the east of the lake?’

‘Why?’

Kamo gave him a serious look. To his credit, the boy straightened his back. ‘I remember,’ he said. ‘The bicycle is there.’

‘It’s yours.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When I tell you, run as fast as you can across the lake. Keep to the edges. Don’t cross the middle. Run to the shed, get on the bicycle and ride back to the city. Go to the church of the Metekh near the old Royal Palace and ask for Papa Chiladze.’

‘But the bicycle is too big for me.’

Kamo smiled. His heart slowed as it always did on the cusp of a fight. The worst angels of his nature quietened and the dragging, sapping burden of his anxiety lightened. He looked at the sunlight on the mountain behind them and understood the privilege of the moment.

He tried to think through the nature of this trap. If a Tsarist group had hanged the woman and let the boy escape to return with help, how could they be sure that their net would snare revolutionaries? And why rig the trap so clumsily that their haul was so meagre? Kamo was, perhaps, a prize, but the Tsarists had no way of knowing that.

How important was this woman, whom he had never seen before? Why did the Tsarists believe her peril would draw out revolutionaries, and in number?

He put a second bullet in his mouth.

‘Dmitri, you run now.’

They called from the trees, a dozen men or more, ‘In the name of the Tsar!’ and fell upon them both.

~

Kamo counted six hours before they let him step down from the chair. By that time, his legs were bloated. He could not unlock his knees. His bladder was a tight, painful ball. The gendarmes helped him down through the building in a reinforced lift that—Kamo noted, one eye open—was unlocked by a key carried by each of them.

His cell was a concrete cubicle no wider than a horse trough. Its floor sloped towards a drain with a fist-sized hole that had no echo and stank of the worst human smells. Eight feet above him, an electric light flickered. Its mesh was bunged with dead flies. Kamo smiled. He’d seen worse.

They had taken his clothes. He moved to the rear of the cell and lay on his back. His feet, which he did not bother to inspect, throbbed somewhat less now, but the pain was growing. Even his cheeks ached where he had lost some of his beard to the thorough inspection of the sergeant, looking for razors or files or keys. He raised his legs so that they rested against the wall.

Kamo, inverted, sang a Siberian fishing shanty in a strong Armenian accent. That would confuse them. And, at last, he held his penis and let the urine out, steering it towards the drain. It was the colour of rosé. This did not worry him. The police in Georgia had played the same trick on his feet years before, and the blood was a temporary symptom. He sung the chorus of the shanty even more lustily.

Having relieved himself, he paused his singing for the answer of fellow revolutionaries. None came. Perhaps he had the wing to himself.

He acquiesced to sleep and the last of the shanty became a quiet slur. He did not relive the story of his defeat in his dreams, but parts of the episode flickered through him, as though on the pages of that book the case officer had been reading: Saskia, that spider, wearing that battle frown of hers; the boy with his fists raised like a proper gentleman; the smartly-dressed old man who had died with such surprise. Such surprise! Asleep, Kamo licked his lips. His hands twitched. Another image: the door to the Amber Room, opening.

The Amber Room.

An uncle in Alexandrapol had once shown him an amber pendant. When rubbed with a cloth, the amber could lift chicken feathers.

His hands twitched again, as though scratching.

~

Kamo had targeted one man and shot him. He picked his next man, who was loping through the high snow. Before Kamo could shoot, hot sparks struck his face. He growled and dropped to his knees. He loosed his next bullet blind. Seconds; seconds, he knew, until the group could close the distance and shoot him point-blank.

He needed to find cover. Still blinded, he scrambled towards the hanging tree but pellets struck him in the thigh and buttock. He tumbled forward, rolled twice, and lay in the snow with a foamy blood on his lips.

Distantly, a man shouted, ‘For the Tsar!’

Kamo brought his hand to his face. It had been pierced by wood splinters from a ricochet. He scraped them out, rubbed the blood from his eyes, and blinked at the empty sky and the branches that veined through it. He focused first on the birds that had taken flight from the gunfire. Then he saw something he could not understand.

It was a figure leaping with the ease of an acrobat through the trees. The figure crouched and launched upward again and again, using the bounce of the living wood, keeping to the hardier branches near the trunk, passing needle-like through the fir much as the lynx had passed through the forest less than five minutes before.

Kamo blinked away the blood.

He turned to his left, where the body of the woman should have been.

There was nothing but a pit of snow.

~

Kamo was awoken by a long, icy train of water that choked him and dragged his eyelids open. Hands hooked his armpits and lifted him to his feet. Now, with his weight and the pressure of blood, his soles burned again. He grinned through his pain at the men who held his shoulders. From their countenance, he could tell that they were prepared for the bureaucracy of a prisoner who has died under interrogation.

After blindfolding him, they took him to a chamber whose earthen floor had been sprinkled with sawdust. He was dropped into a wooden chair and tied with leather straps. The seat had been polished by the cold arses of a thousand subversives, criminals, and innocents. It stank worse than the open drain in his cell.

Somebody removed the blindfold.

Dull daytime glowed on a high, dirty window. The case officer was leaning against the far wall. His head almost touched the window, and the effect was to silhouette his face. Kamo shivered on the chair. His feet were tilted to their outer edges.

The case officer pulled back his overcoat and checked his pocket watch. ‘You are being held by the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order. You were found, disrobed and unconscious, in the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars having gained unlawful entry. You also impersonated a member of the Imperial horse guards. Would you like to tell me why?’

‘No.’

‘Mr Mirsky—’

Kamo strained at his leather straps. ‘Who told you my name?’

The case officer cocked his head, as though listening. ‘So. You wish me to think that we have guessed your name correctly. That only tells me that we haven’t. What is your name, my friend, if not Mirsky?’

‘I am the Tsar, you fool! But you may call me Nicholas—Nicholas the Last!’ Kamo laughed. ‘I demand to be returned to my estate in Poland.’ He assumed a serious expression. ‘There, I will apply myself carnally to the Tsarina.’

The case officer stared at him. He nodded to somebody behind Kamo, who walked around the chair: a short man in overalls. He did not look Kamo in the eye as he pushed Kamo’s legs apart, then tightened the straps so that they could not move.

‘The assistant will now remove your cock. It is a simple procedure, and you need not fear for your life. You just have to keep your legs crossed once the operation is complete. Is that not so, Jablonski?’

The man in overalls said nothing. But he took the bulb of Kamo’s penis between the index finger and thumb of his glove hand, nonchalant as a barber turning a chin for a close shave, and held a knife to its root.

The case officer held up his hand.

‘Only your cock will go, my friend. The rest of your equipment will function normally. Can you imagine a lifetime tormented by a growing desire but no outlet to satisfy it?’

‘No,’ said Kamo, ‘but if you are set on finding out, let us telephone your wife and ask her to describe the sensation.’

The case officer began to roll a cigarette. Midway through the procedure, he flicked his hand at the overalled man, who sheathed his knife and undid the straps around Kamo’s legs. Each leg was held until the straps were tightened once more, in case Kamo wished to kick the man in the face, which indeed he did.

‘So,’ said the case officer. ‘We have each spent many hours in such airless rooms. Let us dispense with the gambits and proceed directly to the endgame. You want, no doubt, to know whether I have the power to save you from Stolypin’s necktie. I do. I have assurance that your sentence will be considered for commutation if you supply suitable answers. You know what this means. We say to the magistrate, well, our friend is no criminal; he is a political. He wanted to avenge, say, the unlawful hanging of a dissident. Let him spend some years in Siberia, thinking hard.’

‘What kind of suitable information?’

‘I don’t care how you gained access to the Summer Palace. I don’t care where you obtained your handsome uniform. I want your identity. I want the identity of the woman who escaped, and the boy she was carrying. I want to know why you risked entry to the Summer Palace in the first place.’

Ah, Saskia, he thought. If only you had let slip the secret of that room. I would love to toss you as a scrap to these jaws.

‘You ask the earth, and I am a humble man with nothing but my beautiful smile.’

The case officer lit his cigarette, drew upon it, and expelled the smoke towards the sunlight. ‘There is such a small chance of your survival. Take it.’

Kamo said, ‘I am resigned to death, my friend. I am absolutely calm in the face of it. Already, there should be grass growing six feet high on my grave. One can’t escape death forever. One must die. But I will try my luck once more and, perhaps, one day, I’ll laugh at my enemies again.’

‘Is that your final word?’

‘You have it,’ said Kamo.

‘Then I must send you to a brutal individual. His name is Draganov and he has never failed to break a man.’

Kamo laughed. ‘Draganov!’ He strained at his straps. ‘Draganov!’ The laughter grew. Spit erupted and his throat convulsed. His snorts came high and low. Kamo howled at the high window and they struck the vault of his skull and his lights were out before the sensation reached that part of him that laughed, that bubbled with delight.

~

The Cossacks stood in a semicircle with their backs to the forest. They wore skirted coats and fur hats. Each was armed with a rifle, sword, daggers, and pistols. Kamo had dragged himself upright against the hanging tree and was resting his head against his shoulder, as though his injuries were severe. He hoped that his bloody face would aid in the illusion. His right hand was thrust beneath his jacket.

‘Who are you?’ asked Kamo, though he knew well. They were Cossacks of the Kuban Host.

The men said nothing.

‘Come,’ said Kamo. ‘Are you soldiers?’

He could not judge their mood. Were they disappointed that their trap had sprung on only one poor Bolshevik?

A man from the centre of the group said, ‘Your papers.’

Kamo smiled. There was blood on his chin. He could feel it cooling. His papers, such as they were, had been loaned by a school friend. Perhaps his confidence betrayed him; the officer did not repeat his request. In the silence, a little snow fell from the tree.

‘Who will search me?’ asked Kamo. ‘Will it be you, officer?’ He moved his eyes around the group. ‘You? Or you?’ He waggled the hand behind his jacket. ‘Maybe I have something for you.’

The faces of the men remained blank.

‘If it is a bomb,’ said the officer, ‘show us.’

Kamo spat, ‘If I were a revolutionary, would I give you your evidence so easily? No, friend.’

‘Choose your words carefully,’ said the officer. ‘I have the moral advantage.’

‘What moral advantage can you have when your trap is honeyed by a boy?’

The man raised his rifle to hip height and shot at the snow between Kamo’s knees.

‘That’s for your insolence,’ said the officer. ‘Look behind you.’

Frowning, Kamo turned. Dmitri had made it one third of the way across the lake before the ice had broken. He was floating, quite dead, supported by the air trapped beneath his jacket.

‘That is truly sad,’ said Kamo. ‘We should be ashamed of our times, and what our State has brought us to.’

‘Thank you,’ said the officer. He seemed relieved that their conversation was over. ‘We will hang you for that. Now, give us a statement and my friend Oleg will write it down.’

‘All this for me?’ asked Kamo. ‘You must be disappointed.’

For the first time, the Cossacks looked unsure. There is something in this, thought Kamo. If I were Soso, I could smoke this out.

‘Listen, fine and brave Cossacks of the Kuban Host,’ said Kamo. An unease was growing among them. ‘“Thrust out your chests to the moon / With outstretched arms, and revere / The spreader of light upon the earth!”’

‘That’s it,’ said the officer. ‘String him up for a fucking poet.’

A black shape fell upon the Cossack at the edge of the semicircle and the man collapsed in an explosion of snow. There was an instant of silence. Then, before could Kamo work out what had happened, the Cossacks were turning as one and the black shape, a hard contrast to the snow, seemed to spiral up from the ground like a dervish.

Kamo did not understand how a woman, or even a circus strongman, could survive such a fall without injury. Neither did he understand how she had returned to such conspicuous life after a hanging. But he did understand that death had moved one step away from him. Indeed, death had now taken the form of this creature. She knocked aside the rifle of the next Cossack in the line, struck his ribs with two hard elbow strikes, caught his rifle, and discharged it into his chest. The man was dead before he fell. Likewise the Cossack behind him, whose throat was burst by the same projectile.

The third Cossack swung his rifle towards the woman. It struck her shoulder and she dropped onto her side. The Cossack aimed at her face and tensed to shoot, but now Kamo had picked up his own instrument and played it with the satisfaction of a maestro. The Cossacks had, to a man, turned towards this black apparition, and Kamo would not waste his gift. He shot the next in the head, thumbed the bolt, the next in the chest, thumbed the bolt, missed the third, heard a hasty shot pass over his head, thumbed the bolt, dropped the officer with a gutshot, tossed away his rifle, and emptied his pistols into the final two.

He kept his arms outstretched.

It was over.

The woman stood up. She had the posture of a noblewoman. It made Kamo want to laugh. What was noble in this warm work? But she was beautiful. Her hair had fallen from its pins. Her face had lost its death bloat. Yes, there was beauty. Clear eyes green as the grass. The noose still looked like a fur collar, the rope a bloody pigtail. Kamo thought of Dmitri and the coldness of his death. He wanted to laugh again.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, gesturing to her left hand, which was concealed under her right elbow.

The woman walked over to Kamo, crouched by him, and touched his face.

‘You are hurt,’ she said, in Georgian. Her voice had the ring of a poem by Soso. She might have been a native of Gori, the town where Kamo had grown up. ‘You should see a doctor.’

He laughed.

‘I should see a doctor, says the woman who was hanged!’

He took a knife to the rope cuffs that dangled from her right wrist, and then parted the knot that held her noose. The striations on her neck were bloody, but she could breathe well. This done, he stood. The pellets in his leg stung.

He said, ‘I am at your service.’

‘No. I am at yours.’

Her eyes were empty. Kamo told himself that, given her thin frame, the thickness of the rope, and the absence of a drop, it was not impossible that she could survive the hanging. Not impossible.

He thought about this as he hobbled around the Cossacks, finishing them with his dagger.

‘Are you hungry?’

The woman was standing on the edge of the lake with her back to him. She was looking at the boy. The way she concealed her left hand gave her a forlorn quality that Kamo judged would endear her handsomely to the employees of the State Bank.

‘Call me Kamo,’ he said, moving in front of her to occlude the boy’s death. ‘What shall I call you?’

The empty eyes looked at him. In a man, this would have angered Kamo. In her, it made him curious.

‘I don’t have a name.’

‘Where do you come from?’

When she spoke, she used the words that Kamo would hear again and again, as though her short history was a litany.

‘I became conscious for the first time when I walked west from Lake Baikal. Before that, there is nothing. Sometimes I dream about the time before. The dreams make no sense. If they are true, they are not my truth.’

‘You drop on your prey like a lynx,’ he said. ‘How is that for a name, Lynx?’

‘Lynx.’

‘Will you listen as I tell you how the people will rise up?’

‘You saved my life. I will listen.’

~

The prison wagon rattled through the streets. It was night. Now he was bound by chain instead of leather. Kamo could feel the spirit of a dead lawyer in the stinking suit they had given him. The lawyer: that beloved tool of the bourgeoisie. The suit reeked of mothballs and shit and the acid tang of fear, an aroma Kamo had smelled on men before, but never himself. He never would.

His eyes dawdled over the wet canvas roof, down to the gendarme opposite. Their heads rocked in synchrony. The gendarme faced the direction of travel while Kamo faced backward. The gendarme smiled as though he knew Kamo’s secret. Because he did not, Kamo smiled too. His eyes continued to drift. He looked at the iron rods that covered the small, high windows. Counted them. He noticed the tough, canvas layer that protected the floor. His bench was wooden. In it, two circular holes admitted his hands, and these found heavy manacles whose weight threatened to pop his shoulders and collapse his knuckles with every pothole and bump.

Kamo had long ceased his routine of playful comment. His mind had moved to the next challenge. How would he get word to Soso of this incarceration? Doubtless there would be comrades in the remand prison, but many would be stool pigeons. Time would pass before he met someone he recognised. Then, he would make his connection to the informal postal system that webbed the incarcerated political underground, on the condition that he was fortunate enough to be placed among the politicals.

Into his mind’s eye came the cold, narrow stare of Soso, for whom the money was everything. It meant retaining his head. Expropriations had been voted down by the Party and it was a great difficulty for Lenin that Soso had continued his banditry. But there were other problems. Marked notes had been uncovered in Paris and Berlin, cities that suffered under active and enthusiastic foreign bureaus of the Protection. These sums were paltry, yes. They represented slivers of the cuts of middle men. But their leakage put Soso under pressure. Times were already difficult thanks to the stalled revolution three years earlier. For the gradualists, the new parliament was a path to power, and such criminal activities as those advocated by Soso had to be minimised. For the high-blooded revolutionaries, the failure to locate the bulk of the cash spoke to incompetence. The Party was suffocating without the sweet trade. It had to stage its grand meetings, like the one in London the previous year that so titillated the international Press, and maintain the irrigating work of propaganda. It had its underworld of couriers and agitators, none of whom could be expected to earn an honest living when Party business took them all over the Empire, made it impossible to acquire the legal paperwork for paid employment, and, most often, sent them on a slow train to Siberia and their ruin.

These thoughts settled on Kamo with a true weight.

The wagon turned a corner and halted. A rotten egg struck the window bars and a whoop of joy rose up from a gang of urchins. The sound made Kamo nostalgic for Tiflis. His mood was buoyed even more by the manner in which the gendarme picked eggshell from a magnificent side-whisker.

But before the wagon could set off, something heavy landed on the roof. Kamo watched it warp.

It was not likely to be a bomb. One threw a bomb beneath a carriage, not onto it, and such a bomb would come second to the first bomb, which should rip the life from the horses to prevent their flight. The weight of the object was spreading. Could it be person on all fours?

‘A wolf!’ said Kamo. ‘There’s nature for you, comrade. Red in tooth and claw.’

‘No, it’s the chicken who laid the eggs,’ said the gendarme nervously, referring to an old Caucasian nursery rhyme. But two more, softer sounds came from the roof. The gendarme moved from window to window. Red blotches stood out on his cheeks.

Kamo was certain that the two sounds were footfalls of a person moving forward

The gendarme fell into Kamo’s lap as the wagon juddered forward. Kamo watched him scramble back to a window once more. Above the street sounds, Kamo heard someone shout, ‘Yah! Yah!’ The carriage accelerated.

‘What do you suppose can be happening?’ he asked the gendarme. ‘A rescue? That must make me rather important. Do you regret being left with me in this carriage?’

The gendarme said, ‘Be quiet. Let’s see what happens.’

‘Do you wonder why a good fellow such as yourself should be killed so a person like me can go free? After all, you’re a good citizen. But there can be no good citizens in a corrupt society, comrade.’

‘I told you to shut up.’

‘I’ll ask my friends for leniency, assuming you’ll cooperate. What will you say if you are later presented with my face? Let’s practise.’

With a sudden jerk, the wagon’s speed increased. The gendarme collapsed into his seat and let his head fall into his grey-gloved hands. Whether this was a childish mime in answer to Kamo’s question, or simple despair, Kamo could not be sure.

Kamo strained to look through the window but the angle was too oblique. Street lamps passed in haste. He pictured the horses. He had a bad feeling. All of St Petersburg was being treated to a display of his botched escape. But, before that, the carriage would strike an errant bump, or attempt a corner, and a spill would be the result.

Then, in the next moment, the wagon flipped forward.

Kamo wondered if he were already dead. Perhaps the carriage had crashed minutes (centuries?) before and this experience was only an echo of his last moment, sounding again and again. But the gendarme was gripping his seat and asking for his mother to save him, and it became known to Kamo with a troubling certainty that the wagon had been ridden into the River Neva. Kamo had an image of the horses going over the bank; their drop would explain the sharp leverage needed to make the wagon flip.

The carriage struck the water with a tremendous crash. Kamo, facing backwards, was in a good position to meet the impact, but the gendarme was thrown forward. He managed to twist before striking the partition behind Kamo, however, and this saved his neck. As the carriage righted, he fell into the well between the seats, dazed.

Kamo felt water close on his hands. It was rising fast through the suspension holes. Soon it rushed across the floor, biting his wounded feet with cold. Then silver dribbles came through the cracks in the doorframe. The carriage tipped sideways and Kamo roared as his wrists accepted the weight of his body. Barrels of white, icy water burst upwards through the window. Kamo watched it swallow the gendarme. Then the water passed his head, blocking his eyes and pressing the air from his lungs as the carriage drifted down.

A hand gripped his ankle. The gendarme, then, was thrashing his last. Kamo kicked him. But a unexpected sensation spread from his wrists: release. The gendarme had freed him.

With a thump, the carriage settled on the river bed.

Kamo floated upwards. His face emerged into a pocket of air that shrank to nothing as he took a breath. He twisted left and right. He felt certain that his rescue had failed, that he would die here with the gendarme. However, he would not panic at the foot of the tower of Death. He would kick open the door of the carriage. Make the lazy tyrant come down to Kamo.

An elbow hooked his neck and he was drawn away from the bench. There was a perceptible change in the water around him. He was, now, outside the shell of the coach. He was in the river proper. The arm released him and Kamo kicked. He kicked at the darkness and rose through the black skins of filth until he roared onto the surface. Out of the silence, sounds returned: moving water, distant shouts, cheers, and clip-clop of traffic. The wild eye of a horse bore down, and Kamo had time to cover his head as its flank spun him aside. Only when the thrashing animal had passed did he think of riding it from the river.

The horse had deadened his shoulder. He moaned, went under, and when he emerged a second time, he saw a lantern blinking in the darkness as its cowl was raised and lowered. Kamo swallowed water. His shoes gave little to his flailing legs and his arms were loaded with iron manacles. Yet he thrashed towards the blinking lodestone and swore at the river and damned his burning muscles.

The lantern was extinguished moments before Kamo could reach for it. Arms took him from the darkness and hauled him across the stern of a small launch. Kamo collapsed with his head against the gunwale. Next him was a figure so wrapped in a blanket that only his red nose was visible. It was the gendarme. A second, red-haired man unshipped the oars of the launch and dug them into the black river. A third figure put a blanket around Kamo’s shoulders, who was too exhausted to raise his head. Instead, he lay looking at his manacles. How had he swum with these things? The calls and heckles of the shore grew dim as the launch pushed into the open estuary. The oarsman’s breaths grew fuller.

Kamo turned to the person at the tiller. He noted the small rubberised slippers, the canvas trousers tied with thong at the ankle and the knee—a familiar style—and the boat cloak. He looked closely at the eye slits in the tiller’s mask, which was better suited to the masked ball than a rescue. The hair that rolled like a black flag in the wind, abeam the boat, off the Gulf of Finland.

His eyes shrank.

‘Ahoy, comrade,’ Lynx said.

‘Why?’ he spat.

‘I need you to make me—us—invisible.’

His head thickened with icy thoughts of her demise, until the cold reached his centre, and he slowed, asleep.

Chapter Seventeen

Robespierre had found them rooms above an orthopaedic clinic. The rooms belonged to the surgeon of the clinic, but as he had bought a house some streets away, the apartment was officially unoccupied. The doctor’s son, a medical student, had taken the key to it, telling the concierge he would use the place to study for his exams. That key had found its way, during a meeting of the debating society, to the watch pocket of Robespierre’s only waistcoat. Now, Saskia had the key. She liked the apartment for two reasons. First, callers were required to pass through the rooms of Madame Zaslavsky, the sister of the doctor, who discouraged visitors. Second, there were no servants.

It was midnight when Saskia finished her exercises with the wooden man, an oriental training aid that the surgeon had commissioned from a drawing. She trained wearing a silk kimono with the belt tied at the front. It was the closest she could find to gym apparel. The head of the wooden man should have been bound by rope. It was not; it made a hollow sound when she punched it.

Robespierre knocked.

Saskia walked to the mirror and checked that the kimono was closed and tight.

‘Enter.’

Robespierre’s coat swung heavy with food. He took bread from his left pocket and ham from his right. Silently, Saskia lit the oil in the samovar and cleared away her books from the carpet in the centre of the room. She reached for a towel and patted her forehead while Robespierre arranged their picnic.

He nodded at the wooden man. ‘Why do you keep doing that?’

‘Precision. Stability. Speed. Power.’

‘Come and eat. It’s the other side of the coin.’

Saskia attended the spirit lamp. ‘Tea?’

‘Strong.’

‘It would take a particularly incompetent government agent to mistake your bulges for a pregnancy.’

‘He certainly wouldn’t mistake them for food. This ham is a week gone.’

Robespierre caught the delight in Saskia’s eyes, and they both chuckled.

~

They lay opposite one another, their directions reversed. Saskia had her eyes closed. A fire burned in the hearth.

Robespierre said, ‘Shall I take some food to him?’

‘He can eat tomorrow. I want him hungry.’

‘He’s dangerous.’

Saskia practised untying and tying her belt of her kimono. ‘You don’t need to tell me how dangerous he is. I’ve seen him.’

‘I hope you can control him, whatever your plan is.’

‘That’s not what keeps me awake at night.’

Robespierre turned to her. ‘What does?’

‘His boss. He is …’ Saskia stopped. She sighed.

‘Is he more dangerous?’

‘He is a poet. Another tea?’

Robespierre belched. ‘Not now.’

Saskia re-lit the spirit lamp and knelt before it. She warmed her hand. ‘Was your friend satisfied with his payment?’

‘Not quite. The role of gendarme comes naturally to him—being as he is employed as such—but the role of fish is a different matter.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. He prefers the company of men. I lent him my company for the evening. We suffered an appalling operetta at the Passage.’

Saskia smiled, watching the water. ‘You’re a good man, Robespierre.’

He sat and ruffled through his red hair. ‘I’m very good, apparently, since he didn’t want to take the money.’

‘I would prefer to have him in our debt.’

‘There are debts and there are debts. My friend the gendarme has double-crossed the establishment and the Party so many times that the enterprise has transcended mere intrigue. His case officer believes him to be a double agent. I believe him to be a double agent. What he himself believes, I cannot say.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What will your payment be?’

He flapped a hand.

‘Tea’s up,’ Saskia said.

Robespierre smiled. ‘Really, I would prefer not to.’

‘Not to what?’

‘Have tea.’

She shook her head at the slip in her concentration. ‘Of course. I forgot that I asked you.’

Robespierre embraced her from behind and kissed her neck. She laughed. The sound echoed between the cold surfaces of the apartment, touched the dust sheets, turned the ears of the mice, and sang in the crystal vessels of the closed, locked cabinets and even, she thought, entered the attention of the second most dangerous man she knew: the Georgian Ter-Petrossian, two rooms away. Her laughter faded and her senses shrank back to the reassuring pressure of Robespierre as he sighed into her hair.

‘Not now,’ she said.

‘Don’t say you prefer your wooden man to me. My heart could never stand it.’

‘Tell me your real name, Robespierre.’

He sighed. Somewhere, a child was playing the cello.

‘How real?’

~

The light of early morning found Saskia standing at the window to one of the balconies. She parted the panels of imperfect glass and stepped out. The apartment overlooked Nevsky Avenue, which ran almost four kilometres from the Admiralty to the Alexander Nevsky monastery. She looked at the sellers of the Petersburg Gazette, who congregated at dawn on the steps of the Passage Theatre, where Robespierre had entertained his informer the night before. Some blocks away, almost fogged to blankness, was the bauble that marked the top of the spire of the Singer building. Opposite, green-and-black taxis clattered into the rank beneath the arches of Gostiny Dvor, the scruffy oriental souk.

Saskia stepped inside and then shut the windows. She stepped over the sleeping Robespierre and proceeded to the room of their guest, Kamo.

The library was a small room crammed with couches, tables, low chandeliers, and books held in glass cabinets. Its fireplace was large. To its hearth had been tied Kamo, using the police-issue manacles. He did not move from his slump as Saskia entered. On her hip, she carried a bowl of hot water wrapped by a towel. She placed it on the table near the hearth and left the room. She returned with a leather pouch. This she put next to the hot water. Then she made the short walk to the curtains. She threw them open. Behind her, Kamo sighed. There was a clang as he tested his bonds.

He watched as she adjusted the fire screen and hung a mirror from it. Then moved into the fireplace, behind him. She took a long, straight razor from the leather pouch and began to slide it up and down a leather strop, which she held taut between her bare foot and her teeth.

‘I know I’m on Nevsky Avenue,’ Kamo said. ‘I heard the bell of the Armenian church.’

Saskia put the towel around his neck. Then she shook the badger-hair brush, wet it in the hot water, and worked the small cake in the shaving mug.

‘Do I get breakfast?’ he asked. ‘I want an omelette with chopped tomato, plenty of salt and pepper, and fresh bread.’

Saskia tipped his head back. Their faces were close. His breath stank. She lathered his chin.

Kamo said, ‘You think I’m afraid of him?’

She took the razor and thumbed it open using the tang. Then, holding the blade at a reflex angle between her fingers, she placed the razor across the point of his trachea.

‘I am,’ said Kamo, his voice hoarse. ‘And you should be, too.’

Saskia moved the razor. There was something like analogue static in the sound of the blade as it cut the bristles. Kamo’s breath quickened but he did not swallow. She could see that he had picked out a chandelier on which to concentrate his attention.

‘I’m sorry about the boy,’ said Kamo.

Saskia paused.

‘Really,’ he continued. ‘I just wanted to get him out of the way.’

She swept the razor upward. It scraped a note off the edge of his chin.

‘We are both agreed, my dear, that the money must be liberated?’

Saskia paddled the blade in the hot water. Bristles and lather and the smallest hint of blood spiralled out.

‘Are we agreed?’ he pressed.

She turned his head a second to the right and drew the blade over his left cheek. She saw the blemish in his rolling eye. The bomb fragment was still embedded, turning in the humours.

‘I can protect you,’ said Kamo. ‘And I won’t mention the boy.’

A clump of his beard had gathered on the blade. She rinsed it once more.

‘Let me go alone,’ he said. ‘Just tell me where it is hidden. Is it the Amber Room? The Chinese Room? A couch, a settee? A painting?’

The blade cut his cheek. He tutted.

‘Then come with me, witch. Bring your pleasure-boat friends. We can travel in convoy to Finland. Lenin will hear of our shared triumph. I will construct a story to explain your winter obrok. Why would I do this? Take it as a measure of my thanks for the rescue.’

Saskia emptied his right cheek of hair.

‘Saskia?’

Then his chin. Finally, his upper lip.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I will steal us both into the Summer Palace. Our disguises will render us invisible.’ He stopped as she towelled his face. ‘You need me, Saskia.’ With the shaving complete, a withheld anger began to harden his shoulders and twist his mouth. Saskia felt him coil. ‘If you didn’t need me, why are you still in this city? Why did you pull me from that carriage?’

‘What made you into this, Simon?’

‘Whore.’

‘I have your word?’

Kamo shrugged. ‘Yes. How about some breakfast for your prisoner?’

Using her foot, Saskia steadied the bar that held the two manacles. She unlocked both. Kamo groaned with relief and studied his hands. He turned to her. His eyes were half-closed, as though Saskia was an illusion whose defect he might discover by study. Then his hands—they were small, not thickened by work—drifted towards her throat. She let him encircle her neck and press. Throughout, Kamo’s eyes bulged as though it was him, not her, whose blood was gathering in the head, unable to drop. She maintained her look of scorn. After fifteen seconds, Kamo dropped his hands to her living, right hand and gathered it to his lips, lowering his head. He could not say sorry. Contrition was not a mode he had mastered, even as an actor.

Saskia took a long breath. She looked into the darkness of the flue.

‘See? You need me, Kamo. You always did.’

‘I want to trust you.’

‘You told me that you were suspicious of Draganov, the agent on the train. You thought we were in league.’

‘Well, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Why should I believe you?’

‘Because I’m going to kill him.’

He raised his head. The grin had returned. He squeezed her left breast and pushed his clammy, rancid mouth onto hers, but there was sufficient elbow room in the fireplace for Saskia to punch him sharply behind the ear. She laid his unconscious body on the floor of the library and went to wake Robespierre.

Chapter Eighteen

The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, or Protection Department, is seen as the immovable object of the Tsarist government by the irresistible forces of discontent. It is from the words Okhrannoye otdelenie, Protection Department, that the contemptuous diminutive Okhranka is formed. Protection Department affairs are supervised, along with all police matters throughout the Empire, at the headquarters of the Department of Police on the Fontanka canal. The majority of Protection Department officials are not involved in secret police work; they work in non-political, non-secret Secretariats. Those charged with clandestine matters comprise a group known as the Special Section, which is so covert that one enters it by passing through a padded door in the fourth-floor office of the Police Chief. One must bow beneath its lintel because the door is stunted by an attic beam. The office is busiest at night, which is the preferred time for arrest, and thus work. The moustachioed case officers seldom attend the arrests because they cherish anonymity. They further protect themselves with assumed names. They rarely wear uniforms.

Two Special Section Officer, Mr Alexei Draganov and Dr Naum Kaplan, are not at their desks because they are talking under circumstances of absolute insulation. They are seated in the tiled chamber of a nearby bathhouse, at 27 West 24th Street, an establishment owned by the Imperial Russian Bath Company.

While ladies enter directly at the stoop of the bath house, gentlemen use another entrance: steps that take them below the level of the street. Inside are twenty-six dressing rooms. Each is furnished with carpet, stools, couches and is valet served for assistance in disrobement.

The baths are moderately busy this morning. In the vapour-bath room, which is spacious, tube-ventilated and fitted out with Italian marble, men recline, laugh, or slip into the central plunge pool. This is fed by a constant stream of filtered water through the heads of nickel-plated lions.

In one private room can be found our secret policemen, Naum Kaplan and Alexei Draganov. Kaplan is from the Ukraine, though he has forgotten which village. He is handsome, five years from retirement, quite secular, and unpleasant to those he deems less capable than himself. Into this category he places the majority of the tobacco-addicted high-flyers at the Special Section, but not Alexei Draganov, who meets the monolithic arguments of Kaplan with the patience of a mountain climber considering an ascent. Draganov is around forty-five years old, taller than Peter the Great and equally broad-shouldered, and wears his red beard in the manner of the Tsar. He maintains his fitness through cricket, which he plays along with British expatriates in the Petersburg XI during the green winter.

The two men are continuing a conversation that has occupied them since their cab ride from the Fontanka. It was sparked by a comment from Kaplan, who, as mentor to Draganov, wishes to instil in him the peculiar difficulties facing a secret police service in modern times. Given the traffic of valets, the conversation is conducted in Latin as an imperfect but basic obfuscator. It continues along the worn lines of an argument that Kaplan enjoyed with Draganov’s predecessor, Grossman, who was thrown from Trinity Bridge by politicals not two years before. Still, the valets come and go, carrying towels and shampoo in carafes and vodka at ten degrees centigrade. Draganov interrupts one of the men and asks him to collect some theatre tickets for this evening’s performance of Boris Godunov at the Mariinksy. Unnoticed, another valet collects an empty glass and carries it, alone on a tray, to the back rooms of the bath house.

He opens a door onto a courtyard. There stands a nondescript gentleman dressed for an afternoon walk. The valet leans towards the gentleman, though he does not wish to get too close. There is something of the thug about this man.

The gentleman turns. Offers his ear.

‘Mariinksy, tonight,’ says the valet.

The gentleman has a roll of roubles in the pocket of his waistcoat. He sheds one. The money amounts to a week’s pay for the valet, who returns inside the bathhouse, somewhat grateful to have escaped further attention from this cold gentleman.

~

Night, which has fallen six short hours following this payment, is the medium through which Kamo moves as a planet between stars. Saskia is his moon. She is dressed as a princess and he as a prince. They approach the Mariinsky Theatre and look at its electric waterfall of light. Kamo squints at the sign. So the performance stars the celebrated Feodor Chaliapin. He smiles at Saskia.

They remain on the pavement until a private coach arrives. The middle class theatre-goers make way for Draganov as he steps once, twice on the pavement before entering the theatre. Kamo hates that instinctive deference to nobility; he is still seething at it when they enter Draganov’s private box unseen. It is late in the performance, as the Fool for Christ sings his lament.

The words, ‘Flow, flow, bitter tears,’ soar from the limelit face on stage.

The arrangement of the boxes is such that theatre-goers in the box behind can see Draganov plainly. To block him from others in the theatre, Saskia moves to his side. She smiles down. She feels Kamo, only feet away at the rear of the box, urging her. This is the instant. This is the murder of Draganov. Through a folded handkerchief, the knife slides into him by the coward’s route: between the ribs of his back.

Draganov has no time to react. He can only contort and grasp the air. Already, blood is spooling from his shirt. Kamo wants the knife; he wants to make a final cut across the neck, for safety and to make his mark. Saskia refuses and the seconds move and the audience applauds. Kamo, at last, looks away. He motions towards the door of the booth with his head. Saskia follows him out. She drops the knife on the carpet, along with her handkerchief and their theatre tickets.

To kill Draganov is to possess his nobility, Kamo thinks, to take the thing that made those people step aside as he entered the theatre.

This is the whetted edge of revolution for Kamo. This is the steady unmaking of the State. There is a calm at last in his mind. For some, the killing is a fevered action, one part panic and two parts desperation. For Kamo, the calmer the moment, the colder his blood. It is with reptilian indifference that he looks across at Saskia. He is satisfied. His suspicions of her duplicity have burned down to little more than embers.

Kamo blinks. His left eye hurts. Ever since that accident, shrapnel floats in its humour. Can he even be sure that Draganov is dead? Perhaps he should check; perhaps he should wait for the dazzle of the limelight to fade, then check the face of the man they have killed.

Kamo thinks of the gas jet striking the lime. There are tears—flow, flow, bitter tears. He misses Tiflis.

When they emerge on the street, Kamo is a calmer man.

The calmer the moment, the colder the blood.

They are too distant to hear the screams when the body is discovered, if indeed there are screams at all in these troubled times.

Chapter Nineteen

Robespierre had prepared them a soup and placed it in the centre of the library to cool. He was no longer in the apartment. Saskia cut some bread with a book knife and gave it to Kamo. They were sitting on the rug between the couches. The light was minimal: two candles. Upon an alarm, they could be extinguished quickly.

‘Another man is dead,’ said the Georgian, scratching his bald chin. There was a sadness about him that contrasted with the gaiety Saskia associated with the aftermath of his previous crimes.

‘You travelled too quickly from Tiflis. Your soul has yet to catch up with you. Eat this.’

Kamo snorted. He put his bread into the soup and, folding the dripping hunk, pushed it into his mouth.

Saskia brushed at the dried blood on her dress.

‘They die so differently,’ Kamo said. ‘Each one. Don’t they?’

‘We needed to do it. Didn’t you say so? You must know that Draganov and I were never in league. There you have your proof.’

‘Understand me, Lynx. We have assassinated one of the okhranniki. The echo of this bullet—’

‘It was a knife,’ said Saskia, abruptly angry. ‘It was my knife and I killed him and we had to.’

‘There are many police,’ Kamo continued. His eyes were lowered. ‘They divide like worms when cut. I do wonder at my wisdom. Soso would know what to do.’

‘Don’t be afraid.’

He looked at her. ‘With each utterance, you grow stupider in my eyes. We have murdered, but this is not some petty official.’

‘Why must I keep telling you?’ Saskia asked. She plunged her cup into the cauldron of soup. Sipping the sharp, vinegarish liquid, she lay back against a couch. It moved a little, feet groaning on the wood. ‘I read Draganov’s name in the visitor book of the Summer Palace,’ she lied. ‘He knew about us. Maybe he was following me. Do you want to enter the palace and be arrested in the act of retrieving the money? We won’t talk any longer about the necessity of it. Why are you talking like a woman? Eat.’

Kamo tipped his head to one shoulder and sighed. The gesture was absurdly adolescent. He was thirty years old by his own claim, the same age as Saskia, and yet he carried daylight in his eyes and might have passed as a student of the seminary. ‘Where were his guards?’

‘He had no guards. He had a private taxi outside the theatre. There was no reason to suspect that he would be attacked during a performance.’

Kamo pulled off his boots. ‘I am uneasy. Even the mention of his name in the visitors’ book of the Summer Palace makes my whiskers—what is left of them—twitch. Why would such an officer of the Protection Department provide his name?’

‘Everybody must provide their name.’ She gestured to Kamo. ‘Except those who enter in fancy dress.’

‘But why give his own name?’

‘He doesn’t need a pseudonym. His identity is unknown.’

‘It is known to you, Lynx.’

She nodded. ‘Of course. But it was given to me under special circumstances. He wanted to recruit me, remember?’

‘There are elements of your train journey last year that I am not happy with.’

‘Happy? So what?’

Kamo grinned. The soup had darkened his teeth. ‘Tell me once more the story of your journey to St Petersburg last autumn, following my fall from the train.’

Saskia closed her eyes. Her voice, weakened with fatigue, drew her thoughts on. The quiet thumping of the antiquated rolling stock. As her voice continued, marking her first encounter with Draganov in that shuddering train corridor, a great sorrow opened within her like a relaxing fist. She wanted to leave for the future. She wanted to go home.

~

The traffic on Nevsky Avenue was a slow stampede. A fog came from the Gulf of Finland and paled everything. Saskia was standing near a pie seller outside the Ministry of Justice building. The meat smelled good. She stamped her thin boots and when an automobile back-fired noisily, she pictured a runaway phaeton in a dusty town square. After that, the smell of meat was too much. She drew her finger along the wall, collecting soot, and smudged it beneath her eyes. She smacked her lips as though her mouth held no teeth. Finally, she turned her right foot inwards and walked, slowly, to a fishmonger. There she waited within the stink until a man walked past holding a bouquet of purple and lilac carnations.

A bud dropped at her feet. The man stooped for it but the bouquet made the action too awkward to complete. Saskia, grunting, snagged the carnation with a trembling hand and replaced it in the bouquet. The man tilted his hat forward in thanks, then continued his journey down the street. He was one man among hundreds once more.

Saskia swayed. Her eyes looked at nothing as a policeman passed with a dog. When a minute had passed, she limped into a block of shadow and read the message on the paper that had been concealed in the folds of the flower. Then she ate it.

It tasted like carnation.

Follow me, the note had read.

She looked down the Nevsky Avenue and saw the flower man. He was almost one hundred metres away, opposite the Kazan Cathedral. Saskia watched as he entered the great, granite block of Singer House.

With her limp, she took long minutes to reach the building. Its door reminded her of a golden clock in a glass jar. An elderly clerk was walking down its steps. Saskia passed through the door before it had closed.

The foyer was thick with sprays of flowers, palm trees, and wicker screens, behind which she could hear the low voices of a dozen conversations. She crossed the empty floor. Black and white chequerboard. Her limp had gone. There were seven carnations in the sand of the ash tray next to the elevator. Saskia stepped into the car. The attendant was a boy of sixteen, not older. He wore his hat at a severe angle and his chin strap was frayed, but his black uniform was otherwise impeccable.

‘Don’t worry, madam,’ he said. His accent placed him somewhere in the northern peninsula, perhaps Murmansk. ‘It’s as safe as a fine old horse.’

Saskia smiled. The boy had detected discomfort as she stepped into the elevator. She did not like them. The technology was still experimental. This car was new, like the building, and like the boy.

‘The top floor, please. I’m expected.’

‘Right away, madam.’

As he closed the door and turned the winch handle clockwise, Saskia sat on the velvet couch and inspected herself in the mirror. She licked a thumb and removed the dirt beneath her eyes. Again, she wondered who she was. She undid her neckerchief. She scratched her hair and shook her head. When she looked away from the mirror, she noticed that the boy was studying her with the attitude of a man who has cracked the simple code of a prostitute’s apparel.

‘Chocolate?’ he asked, offering a brown paper bag.

‘No, thank you.’

She felt the moment die within him.

The floors passed. Their doors were dull, frosted glass, and each pane read “Singer”.

The car stopped. The boy opened the door on a large room. Saskia stepped out.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

She heard the doors close behind her, and the slow descent of the car. Her senses keened for the smallest warning note: man whispering to man; a cork leaving the end of a knife; a light switch twisted.

The floor was an immaculate rink of red, white and black tiles. Potted palms softened the corners and arched windows looked onto the Nevsky Avenue. Electric chandeliers buzzed with the intensity of twilight. Elegant tables and chairs were arranged throughout the room. A silver service had been placed on the table in the centre. Saskia’s bloodstained handkerchief was on one of the plates. At the table, lounging over a chair in adolescent, bored repose was the man Saskia had recently murdered before the eyes of Kamo.

Alexei Draganov saw her and stood up. He wore a long fur coat, which opened as he moved. Saskia noticed the details: the bouncing chain of his watch; the blue-gold tie beneath his red beard; a comma of ash on his lapel from a recent cigar. Her eyes lifted to his as he gripped her cheeks, hard, and kissed her three times. And he hugged her like a big brother. Her heels rose in her felt boots.

‘I got your message,’ he said.

‘Evidently.’

‘Did it work? Was it worth it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so. We can go ahead.’

Draganov released her from the hug but held her elbows. His eyes were Baltic blue.

‘We can talk of current matters here, but not about the name I first used for you in Sukham. Do you follow?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘You understand too, I hope, that being dead puts me in a difficult position. Silences must be purchased. The simple-minded people need to be told stories. But they talk. They always do. And there are good relations with the theatre management that our organisation must maintain. That was put in jeopardy.’

Saskia said, teasingly, ‘If you won’t help me get into the Summer Place, I need someone who will. That man is Kamo.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I take it that you do not wish to publicise your death?’

‘No more than I wish to publicise Kamo’s daring escape yesterday. With colleagues, I have taken the decision to erase these incidents from the troubled public mind. Kamo is convinced? You will go ahead with the retrieval?’

‘He is. We will.’

Draganov strode towards the table. ‘I demand that you eat something. I have ice-cold roe and bread and butter. And vodka, for your health. Come.’

He settled her into a padded chair. ‘Eat this.’ He placed a cracker filled with roe on her tongue. She shuddered as the eggs burst. ‘And for goodness’ sake, put this on.’ He removed his coat and threw it across her like a sleigh fur. ‘Then tell me why you look like a panda, and why you wear your hair down. Are you sad? It means sadness where I come from.’

‘Let me look at your back. Did I hurt you?’

‘As for my health, there was a tickle. Nothing at all to worry about.’

Saskia replaced her half-eaten bread on its plate.

‘I don’t consider it attended to unless the person doing the attending is me.’

Draganov glared at her. Then he sighed and leaned forward. Saskia took the vodka and, with a practiced action, tipped some over her palm. Draganov groaned between his knees. ‘It’s not worth spilling vodka, as my father used to say.’

‘Come closer. Put your waistcoat up further. I can’t see.’

She tugged up the waistcoat, the shirt and the vest. For a large man, Draganov had little fat. Saskia located the puncture wound and let the vodka dribble across it. Draganov hissed.

‘You are unusually trim,’ she said.

‘I run. It is the English habit. Have you finished filling my trousers with vodka? I remind you that, only hours ago, you poured sheep’s blood down my back.’

She touched the skin around the wound. There was no redness or swelling.

‘I’ve finished. The wound is clean for now.’

Draganov sat up. His stomach, though muscled, expanded as he tried to pull down the waistcoat, and Saskia, reaching for her cracker, noticed more puncture wounds on his abdomen. ‘You’ve been living dangerously.’

‘I am living. It amounts to the same. The important things for us is that Kamo believes I am dead.’

‘That he does. And he is prepared to make a second attempt on the money.’

‘Where is he?’

‘With me.’

‘And where is that?’

‘Where do you think?’

‘How much does he know?’

‘Less than me. Not as much as you.’

‘Has he made contact with his boss, Ulyanov?’

‘Ah.’

Saskia remembered Lenin as a short man with an unusually feminine voice. He was, perhaps, the most gifted orator she had ever heard. Lenin held men in thrall. It was difficult to find a worker who had not read Lenin’s pamphlets. And he was the only man to whom Soso considered himself inferior.

‘My dear,’ said Draganov, ‘it is important that we allow Kamo to contact whomsoever he wishes. There is a golden thread that runs all the way to our friend in Finland. I want the money to flow. Then we will follow the river. Krasin, Lenin, wherever.’

‘Are you going to arrest Ulyanov?’

‘That depends. We will do whatever it takes to damage the Party. Bolshevik or Menshevik, I’m not fussy. But these organisations are best cut at the neck, not the ankle. Even the old anarchists knew that principle.’

‘Revolution,’ said Saskia, tonelessly. ‘There’s no mistaking their ambition.’

‘Or mine.’

‘What would you give to see the future, Draganov?’

For the first time during their meeting, the secret policeman seemed uncomfortable. He rubbed his red beard.

‘A wit will answer: “I would give nothing, because I intend to make it”. However, more honestly, I would give everything. Who wouldn’t?’ His expression shifted from challenge to hope. ‘Do you trust me? Wait. I should not ask that question. Let me say this. You may not understand my motivations at this moment. But they are true. They connote the best of my actions. I do what must be done.’

Saskia stared at him. This cryptic admission compelled her to ask a question that had been building, rising within her, since the moment she stepped into the Summer Palace.

‘Why did you go to the palace, Draganov?’

‘I was looking for the money.’

‘Did you find it?’

‘No. Would you care to solve the mystery and tell me where it is?’

She frowned. ‘It should not matter to you where it is, if you are only interested in tracing its route back to Lenin.’

‘Not true,’ said Draganov, smiling. ‘If I were to snatch it, mid-flow, its loss would be as damaging to the party as the arrest of Lenin himself. The sum is greater than any ever stolen, my dear. It would keep the Party solvent for years.’

Saskia turned to her view of the stars in the windows.

‘What do you see?’ he asked. ‘There are no stars. The lights of the city are too bright here.’

‘There are always stars. Even in the daylight there are stars.’

‘You should have been a poet.’

‘Lo que será. Nothing can change, not really.’

‘My man will take you home.’

‘No.’

‘One last thing,’ said Draganov, removing his coat from Saskia so that the chill stole across her. ‘Kamo, if his sources are good, will discover that a favourite of the Empress will be permitted to hold his annual masked ball at the Summer Palace tomorrow evening. There will be an army presence. We live in troubled times when the army is called in to do police work. Do you know how many mutinies our reliable old army has enjoyed in the past three years? Almost eight hundred.’

‘I didn’t know that. But it makes no difference. Can you get us tickets?’

‘No. Let Kamo get them for you, and be sure to let him know that only a man of his skill can perform this indispensable service. That will help quieten any concern that lingers about why you risked so much to rescue him.’

His kissed her hand. His lips were cold.

‘Draganov, I need you to promise that Count Nakhimov and his family will be granted protection.’

‘From whom? Kamo?’

‘No. A man called Soso.’

‘Who?’

‘A Georgian cut-throat. Koba. Sometimes Soselo. Ivanov. David. The Milkman. The Priest. Real name Josef Visarionovich Djugashvili.’

‘Ah, I know him. Don’t be worried about. After all this, I will pull his claws personally.’

‘As for tomorrow, if I call you, you will come?’

‘Of course.’

Saskia remembered her bloodstained handkerchief. It was crumpled. She took it. Inside there was a cigarette paper with the pencilled message: Find me outside the Ministry of Justice.

‘I can get rid of that for you,’ said Draganov.

‘No. I will, thank you.’

~

Within the hour, Saskia had returned to Kamo. He had not moved from his position in centre of the room. Her dress still draped him. Saskia settled alongside and closed her eyes on his greasy hair and dreamed that she was once more in the Alexander Park, carrying Pasha from danger.

~

She awoke on the balcony overlooking the department store Gostiny Dvor. It was silvered with streetlight. She was breathing heavily. Had she sleepwalked? She still wore her shift, but nothing else. The wind hurt. She looked down at her hand. It was gripping the iron rail.

She noticed a pain near her collarbone. She probed it with her finger and found a mosquito. It flickered into the night before she could kill it. The bite itched.

Another gust of wind struck her.

Someone lit a cigarette across the street.

“The flames of victory light our country.”

Dawn commenced.

She watched the dust shift in wavelets. Two winds met in St Petersburg. One came from the Gulf of Finland, across which Lenin, so Saskia imagined, looked from the stoop of a villa. The second came from the south, direction Novgorod, and was too local to have stirred the reddish hair of Soso in Baku, or Tiflis, or whichever Caucasian town he was ghosting through.

There was a language where sky was “the sea above”.

She felt Kamo behind her.

‘The future is a mountain, is it not?’

Kamo was in a philosophical mood. Perhaps it was a facet of the character he had adopted as part of his disguise. She wondered how he would answer that question, since he had crossed the calendar line many times himself, sailing under the trade winds of anarchy.

‘Kamo,’ she said, feeling the hair moving at her temple, ‘I want you to obtain tickets for a masked ball tonight at the Summer Palace. I’ve tried and failed. I want you to pay back my effort in rescuing you.’

Saskia thought about the mosquito, which carried her blood.

‘How did you feel,’ Kamo asked, his voice quiet, ‘when you crossed the border from our calendar to the Gregorian?’

‘One travels in time thirteen days. Thirteen days into the West. It is nothing more than moving from one salon to another. A door opens. One walks through. There is a new sky.’ She realised that she was cold. ‘Mountains.’

‘A new sky,’ said Kamo. Saskia did not flinch when she felt his rage radiate. One hand gripped the hair at the back of her head and pulled. The other clamped her mouth. She gritted her teeth and breathed through her nose, which felt too narrow for the job. ‘You want me to pay back your efforts? You talk of mountains, whore. The debt your owe me is the mountain. Do not dare to suggest I am obligated to you. Is that clear?’

Saskia nodded.

Kamo held for a moment longer, then relaxed. His hands slipped to her hips and he rested his chin on her shoulder.

‘My sweet Lynx,’ he said, ‘you bring out the worst of me. Who will pull out your claws, I wonder?’

~

Saskia and Kamo used the main staircase to leave the building. Saskia held Kamo’s arm. Their steps were slow. Kamo wore smoked spectacles and a homburg that was low on his brow. Saskia had acquired a grey wig. As they crossed the foyer, Saskia looked at the frosted door of the superintendent’s office. It was closed.

Outside, on the Nevsky Avenue, Saskia made eye contact with Robespierre, who was across the street. He glanced at something to her left. Saskia did not turn, but watched the passenger window of a cab as it passed. She saw the reflection of a man leaning against the telephone pole on the corner.

In Armenian, she said, ‘Okhranniki, twenty yards on our left.’

Kamo grunted.

Saskia made eye contact with Robespierre again. With his eyebrows, he indicated a taxi near the Gostiny Dvor rank. Before she could smile, he looked away, stepped on his cigarette, and stepped onto a horse bus. Saskia longed to tell him, for the last time, that he was a good man.

‘The taxi with the white sash.’

‘I was beginning to get worried.’

Saskia felt her scalp sweat beneath the wig.

~

The coach’s interior was luxurious, which satisfied Saskia because the coach and its driver had cost the remainder of her money. Kamo sat on the rear-facing seat. He did not help her lower the blinds or, in shadow, pull the cases from the small rack. He watched her.

‘When we’ve merged into traffic,’ she said, ‘open the rear window and pull the sash inside.’

‘As you wish.’

‘Are you going to change?’

‘Directly,’ he said, tasting the arm of his glasses. ‘Directly.’

With her legs braced on the rocking floor, Saskia opened her case and examined the costume. It might have been a huge, red parachute. The metaphor suited her vertigo. She stripped to her corset while Kamo rubbed his left eye, the one that had been damaged by the bomb.

‘Does something worry you?’

‘Silence, woman.’

‘Very well.’

The new costume had a fitted corset. Saskia removed her own. At this, Kamo said, ‘You’re not like the others.’

‘Who?’

‘If you were lost, a hundred ships would be launched to your rescue.’

She smiled crookedly. ‘Don’t you mean a thousand?’

Kamo stood. He could not reach his full height, and he bent over her. His humour had gone. ‘I have never forced myself upon you.’

‘Should I thank you?’

He pursed his lips. ‘Some men have laughed at me because I would not.’

‘If laughter is so important to you, perhaps you should.’

Kamo put his hand to his wounded eye once more. As he kneaded the lid, Saskia felt an absurd pity. Once, he had been a spoiled boy in a seminary, bewitched by the older student assigned to help him pass some exams. And now this: brigandage, escapology, and casual talk of hurt.

Softly, he said, ‘How are we meant to get the money out of there?’

‘You’re standing in it. Now get dressed. I don’t want these blinds to be down for much longer. It will draw attention.’

As Saskia completed her transformation and sat down, she discovered a note in her hand warmer. She could read it in the gloom, but she lifted the window blind and turned the paper against the light. Its words had been written in a trivial substitution cipher.

The boy passed his viva voce, and will become a student at the Lyceum. His examiners were particularly impressed by his discussion of the St Petersburg Paradox. His father thanks his tutor. I remain,

Your good man.

Saskia did not weep. It would have revealed too much to Kamo.

‘Give me that,’ he said, taking it. But his eyes moved haphazardly over the text. ‘What language is this?’

She looked through the window at the people. In one hundred years they would be dead, but she would be alive, if being alive meant anything.

Chapter Twenty

As a woman who had overheard a thousand conversations about St Petersburg throughout the Russias, she knew that no commentator passed through St Petersburg without remarking, with the pomp of private insight, that the city was an attempt to impersonate the face—and, by association, the bone structure—of its European cousins: the polyglot, intellectual Vienna; the lynchpin Berlin; Peter’s favourite, Amsterdam; and Paris, which could never be bettered for taste. Last of all, Saskia thought, there is Venice, as she passed her invitation to a footman who was dressed in white, clownish pyjamas, a stove-pipe hat, and black mask. Her invitation read, Carnevale Veneziano a San Pietroburgo, 1908. Tonight the cliché would be celebrated.

‘Goda del nostro carnevale, signora,’ said the footman, opening an arm towards the façade of the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars. It was lit with theatrical lime-jets and oil fires and the last of the spring sunshine. Its northern square, through which Saskia had galloped not four days before, throbbed with activity.

Saskia took a breath to correct his Italian, but held it. Instead, she looked upon the crowd and let Kamo take her arm and move her into its swirl. Most guests were costumed in the Venetian style. Others were dressed as courtiers from the reign of Catherine the Great. One short man was dressed as a Roman centurion, though his cloak was golden. Another as a pirate. There was a highwayman. And the clowns. Clown after clown.

‘We will go immediately to the Amber Room,’ said Kamo, pulling her.

‘We will not.’ She scanned the crowd. ‘Midnight is our time, not before.’

‘Is it clockwork? Do we meet someone there, is that it?’

Kamo’s face was obscured by his mask: a skull missing its jaw. She could, however, see him biting the inside of his cheek.

‘You could say that,’ she replied. ‘We will wait until dinner is called, eat, and recover the money. Smile.’

Kamo squeezed her arm. ‘How will we move it? Money is heavy, worse than books.’

‘It has been arranged. Relax. Enjoy yourself.’

‘What is my role in this, Lynx?’ he asked.

Saskia turned to him. His tone was so soft, the question placed so wearily, that she wondered whether he had guessed her true plan.

‘You are the finest infiltrator in St Petersburg,’ she said. ‘How else would we have made it to this ball?’

‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘Perhaps my presence is a bulwark against further interference as you proceed to betray the Party.’

Saskia looked at him.

‘You overestimate my cunning.’

‘I remember a comment the Pockmarked One made after I told him the story of our first meeting on Turtle Lake. “Perhaps,” he said, “she is a witch who seeks the wisdom of the dead.” He found that funny.’

To this, Saskia did not reply.

Polished, black masks complemented the bone white. The latter were commonly gilded, their beauty spots gold in the touches of sunlight. The black masks were seldom without precious stones. Below those masks that covered only half the face, lips were licked. Many half-masks sported probosces that recalled that perfect English expression—Nosey Parker. The full masks were still as skulls and their fixed smiles defiant: lips red and full. The men liked to wear these masks with a headband below their three-pointed Venetian hats. The women tended to carry them on stalks. Their skirts were shorter than usual and their necklines lower. Many wore long, thin gloves with a hook at the elbow in which to hang the hem of the skirt, and they expanded as they spun.

All about fluttered the whispers of fans, laughter, and conversation. Only the palace servants, who wore no masks, were silent as they carried trays and lit cigarettes and delivered small notes, precise as jewels in clockwork. The occasional flutter of a juggled torch led to an appreciative gasp. Young ladies giggled. It was no difficult task to locate the courtesans. They were slower and employed the conspicuous posture of the huntress, not the prey.

The evening already smelled of sweat, perfume, cooking meat, and fireworks. The air itself might have been a cocktail mixed to the perfection of collective anticipation: that this night to come, this Petersburg cliché turned authentic, would be somehow unforgettable and unique. This evening might represent the apogee of the season. The Tsar, sadly, was not present. But in his absence there was release. These aristocrats were set for an occasion during which their good names, hidden by a temporary Venetian pall, could not be impaired by mistakes romantic or otherwise. It limited the damage to a level below that of disaster. There might be mishaps and distant shakes of the head. That was the attraction of the masked ball.

Saskia had a sense of smell beyond that of her fellow guests. She knew that the women were wet and the men hard. She put a finger to her nose and frowned.

She turned to Kamo.

‘Get me a drink,’ she said.

Saskia stood there, incognito, in a dress of blackcurrant velvet and furlined pelisse and a half-mask that fringed her eyes in gold. Her hat was a sloping disc. Her shoulders carried silver epaulettes and threaded telephone cords that trailed down her arms to her wrists, which disappeared inside her hand warmer. Her choker was black and at its centre was a lobe of amber. She could feel it when she swallowed. The pitch of the merriment was reaching a height, as though the connections between the revellers—their hands, their lips—were tightening to the perfection of gut on a stringed instrument.

‘Here,’ said Kamo, putting a glass of white wine in her hand. ‘To courage.’

‘To courage.’

As she lifted the glass to her lips, Kamo stopped her. He linked his arm in hers. Eye to eye, they drank. It was the Bruderschaft, the rite of brotherhood that had become popular among the Outfit since the introduction of its German-born member, Saskia, who never liked the gesture and considered it a poor Caucasian joke at her expense.

They emptied the glasses.

‘Brotherhood,’ said Kamo. In his mask, his eyes were as unreadable as the marbles of a doll. ‘Does the word offend you, sister?’

‘Your manner offends me. As for sexist language, we all pick our battles.’

A blazing arch of fireworks left the roof of the Summer Palace. Saskia had never seen fireworks in twilight. The magnesium light took away colour for an instant. She turned to Kamo, who seemed puzzled by the sudden light.

‘The first house has been called to dinner,’ Saskia told him, walking backwards and away. ‘We should eat something.’ In Phrygian, a dialect that the Armenian speaker Kamo would understand, but which would be difficult for eavesdroppers, she added, ‘You’ll need your strength for the money. Think of it.’

Kamo stared at her. The lower half of his face provided no clue to his mood. ‘I am,’ he said in Russian, and that was an end to their conversation. The spaces within the crowd had compressed as the guests moved towards the many formal doors that permitted entrance to the Summer Palace. A dozen conversations repeated the same thought: that the evening proper was about to begin. That is, it was set to transform once more. Then the talk stopped. Saskia was pushed left and right. The crowd compressed still further until Saskia and Kamo drifted apart at the foot of the Summer Palace. The bass register of an orchestra groaned from its doors. Flames burned with a honeyed intensity from the tall windows. Above, the Tsar’s flag moved in a weak wind.

At once, they were inside the palace, as if on a tide into a sea cave. The main stairwell rose the full height and depth of the palace. Two flights led to a central landing. From this, four more flights sprouted to the first floor. The risers were marble and the banisters finessed with vases.

Behind the sound of a polonaise, played by musicians on the landing, she could hear the beating of the candles in the chandeliers. There was a principle, this evening, of natural light. Conversation recovered. Saskia stretched out for Kamo until his fingers—unmistakably the fingers of Simon Ter-Petrossian—locked with hers. The sounds reflected and thundered in her diaphragm. Even the giggles seemed basso. Kamo moved to her shoulder. He might see this as a battle, she thought, and their entry a charge. They exchanged inscrutable looks.

They passed the chamber orchestra. Each musician was dressed in evening wear, and lacked a mask. Not one musician returned the stares of the guests. The air was perfumed. The porphyry pillars sparkled wetly. Beyond them, at the top of the stairs, an emerald flash captured her attention. The intensity of its light was such that she tripped on the next riser. She allowed Kamo to steer her upwards. The emerald light was gone; but Saskia thought about Pavel Eduardovitch and his successful entry to the Lyceum as they passed through a room with mirrored walls, walked around the edge of the Great Hall and entered an anteroom whose fireplaces were covered with green glass. Apropos this light, she thought, Colourless green ideas sleep furiously, but could not source the phrase, despite its familiarity. Saskia tried to think of this as her farewell party. It was difficult. A persistent worry ebbed at her. She glanced at a passing clock. It was nearly nine.

Here, in the witching light, they approached an oval dining table. Saskia allowed Kamo to seat her in a velour chair. His mouth did not betray his frustration. Her place was laid with many sets of silver cutlery. The crystal glasses were frosted with the Imperial arms. Silver ice buckets held wines of all shades and sugared fruits were arranged in tiers. A pole rose from the centre of the table and upon it was a Venetian mask, trailing red ribbons from its eyes. It reminded Saskia of the bloody tears she had cried in a border town the previous autumn. Kamo took the seat on her right.

‘You and your partner make thirteen,’ said the woman on her left. She was dressed as an angel. Her wire wings were draped with goose feathers. Her carmined lips suggested an older woman of fifty or so. Playfully, she said, ‘The first to stand will be unlucky for a year. What have you come as, young woman?’

‘She is the Allegory of the Future,’ said Kamo, ‘where superstition will have no role.’ His tone suggested he wanted to end the conversation there, but Saskia did not intend to remain silent throughout the meal. No doubt Kamo feared that she would reveal herself. It was, however, more likely that the guests would find their silence conspicuous.

‘Do you see the wires on my arms?’ asked Saskia. Her Russian had never been more perfect, and she was aware of the beauty in her voice. Several of the nearby conversations ceased as guests turned towards her. ‘They carry electricity.’

The woman smiled as she poured. ‘I’m from heaven,’ she replied. ‘Tell me about your place and I’ll tell you about mine.’

‘In the future,’ said Saskia, speaking to the covered faces, ‘we have buildings so tall they reach the clouds. The sun shines on their spires and there is plenty to eat and drink for all the people.’

A servant’s arm entered her view and put a champagne flute next to her plate. Saskia was distracted by the thought that the narrow glass and the champagne, with its delightful tint, had come together in this moment with the elegance that only existed with transience. The two would separate soon and never meet again. On the surface of the glass, she saw the greenish reflection of the fires, and the curled fists of Kamo.

‘At least,’ she continued, ‘there is plenty for those who live in the tall buildings. Others live underground.’

‘My dear,’ said Kamo, in the belittling tone of a husband, ‘you will overplay your part.’

‘I want to hear about them,’ said the Angel, and several of the other guests motioned for Saskia to continue.

‘Their faces are dark and hidden,’ Saskia said. She had turned to Kamo. ‘They walk treadmills and operate huge dynamos. Every movement of each body is captured, transformed, and used for the betterment of their superiors in the sky, where the sun shines.’

‘Darling, you are drunk,’ said Kamo. He addressed the table: ‘She is drunk.’

‘Nonsense,’ replied a man in a black hat. ‘She is lucid and entertaining. Tell me, madam, how might one travel from St Petersburg to Moscow in your future?’

‘In ships that sail through the air.’

‘Winged ships?’ asked Angel.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Flapping wings, then,’ said the man in the black hat. ‘Like birds!’ He followed this with a bellowing laugh that drew glances from the tables around them. Kamo added his own, quieter laugh, and put his hand on Saskia’s thigh.

‘Fixed wings,’ she said, addressing the man but looking at Kamo. ‘Unless one wishes to travel by balloon, for which no wings are required. These air ships dock on the spires of the skyscrapers.’

‘Of course,’ Angel said. ‘Heavier-than-air machines.’

‘We dance,’ said Saskia, smiling. ‘We dance to music produced by machines.’

‘Automata?’ asked the man in the black hat.

‘And the automata are so indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood humans that men lust after them.’

‘What powers these automata?’

Saskia laughed. ‘They are electric, of course.’

‘Electric!’

As table laughed with her, the moment—all of them, with the exception of Kamo, laughing at the idea of electric automata—was clear to her with such brightness, such sharp meaning, that she lost the desire to talk any longer. She put a napkin to her mouth and coughed. The sound covered the fibrillation of her breath. The mask, likewise, hid her tears.

~

At sixteen minutes to midnight, Saskia and Kamo were waiting in the chamber between the dining room and great hall. An ivy arch had been installed near the tiled stove. Beneath it, a wooden bridge, painted silver, was intended to recall the grace of Venice. The entire scene had been created by a photographic company to produce souvenirs of the event. The camera and its tripod were, however, unattended, and there were no more than a dozen people in the room at a given moment. Saskia and Kamo moved behind the ivy arch, which partially concealed them.

‘That was stupid,’ said Kamo. He put his lips against her neck. Her skin shuddered as though his tongue was a settling mosquito. ‘There will be no further delay. We have fifteen minutes.’

‘Sixteen. By that time, most people will be outside to watch the midnight fireworks.’

‘How will we escape?’

‘Through the private apartment of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna. There is an iron staircase that will take us to the park at the rear of the palace.’

‘I don’t like waiting,’ he said. She could smell the acid on his breath. It made her think of the green flames. Kamo opened his doublet. Inside, an apple grenade hung from his belt.

She curtseyed a little, as though his lips had weakened her.

‘Where did you get that?’

Kamo drew his lips back. It was the smile that had always been prelude to murder. ‘Are you frightened for your delightful dinner companions, Lynx?’

‘They are people,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t abdicate your responsibility to forces behind your control. Don’t see them as already dead.’

As she kissed his ear, she noticed that Kamo had his weight on his right leg. The bomb, fist-sized, looked heavy. Saskia had clocked Kamo’s reaction to a visual stimulus at 280 milliseconds. Unusually fast. Given the amount of wine he had drunk, his weight, and his age, she estimated his blood alcohol to be one tenth of a percent. Its relaxing effect would improve his simple reaction time but impair his judgement.

She withdrew her hand from the warmer. She made a fist to help flex her biceps.

‘He gave it to me.’

Saskia tried to swallow, but could not. She felt the room darken.

‘Are you saying that he is here?’

‘You’re scared.’

She was. Saskia struck Kamo’s heart with a sharp, penetrating blow that almost tore her biceps. He coughed and fell against the wall. His mask remained jolly but his mouth was downturned. She looked hard at his throat, slowed her vision, and saw the subtle, blooming redness of his pulse. It was weak and irregular. His mouth opened, gulping silently. His lips became cyanotic as his heart misfired. The strike had been placed well.

Saskia looked around the ivy arch. Nobody had noticed her attack. She reached inside his doublet and removed the apple grenade. There was no obvious method of disposal. She could not think of a place—laundry chute, punch bowl, stove—where any noble or servant would be safe.

She put it into the fabric bag at the base of her back and buttoned it with an expert pinch of her fingers.

The eyes behind Kamo’s mask were bloody. Saskia put her lips upon his in a passionate, open kiss; turned his head away from the hall; reached up and pinched his nostrils closed. He had barely the strength to lift his arms. Saskia could hold her breath for six minutes. Kamo would not manage thirty seconds. She stared into his huge, blurred eye, and saw the wadded skin of his cheek shake. She could bring him the gift he had given so many others.

The room flashed white.

Saskia withdrew her mouth. A gossamer of spit strung between their mouths for a moment, then was gone. A couple, their arms linked, were standing beneath the arch and looking at Kamo, who had leaned backwards, as though he were trying to brace the wall. The bluish cast to his lips was purpling, returning to red.

Saskia stepped from behind the arch and apologised to the couple. The gentleman asked her, curtly, if she was a feature of the background. Saskia smiled. She slipped from the room with a last nod to the photographer, who was still holding his L-shaped flash-lamp aloft. She walked with studied confidence. In all the mirrors, all the polished surfaces, and the half-bright crowds in the windows, she looked for the man towards whom the compass of Kamo’s mind pointed, like a false north: the poet Soselo.

Chapter Twenty-One

The size of the Grand Ballroom was emphasised by gilded mirrors between its double tier of windows. Saskia judged physical spaces in terms of their capacity for exploitation: attack, distraction, concealment. As she stepped onto the parquet floor, she understood that it would take more than eight seconds to sprint its length, though on this evening it was crammed with guests. Only six of the dozen chandeliers had been burned. The great windows to the west looked across the torchlit palace square, while those to the east had a view of the gardens. It felt as airy as a quadrangle despite the thunderous scenes painted on the ceiling. Soon, midnight would pass through this room. An orchestra played a rich, soaring piece. Saskia had entered the ballroom at the finale to a quadrille. The guests froze, then bowed as the music completed. There was a sizeable audience about the periphery and their applause echoed. A man wearing a blue fountain of peacock feathers—the nominated dance master—approached the conductor and made a circular motion with his hand: keep going.

In the moment before the music returned, Saskia looked round. She saw Kamo stagger into the room. His appearance drew smiles and shakes of the head. He seemed the worse for drink. Saskia look ahead, towards the main staircase, and saw the same greenish glow that had captured her attention upon entering the Summer Palace. Then a reveller passed through her sightline and the green shine, or whatever produced it, had disappeared.

A Strauss waltz commenced. At once, there was general movement towards the dance floor, like a flower closing. Tension had been released. Saskia felt bodies carry her forward. Ladies laughed and men laughed along with them. Couples formed and spun. The whirlpool carried Saskia anticlockwise. As ever, her height made her conspicuous, and her blackcurrant pelisse billowed as she turned, tracking Kamo.

‘May I?’ asked a man.

‘With pleasure.’

She danced, but kept her left wrist held within her warmer. This seemed to please her dance partner, and the two waltzed without touching. The man kept his hands behind his back. Saskia, in deference to his politeness, made sure that their synchrony was absolute. Nearby dancers saw them and, laughing, adopted their remote style. But the dancers could not match Saskia for her ability to anticipate.

‘The piece is ending,’ she said.

‘Where may I take you?’

‘The far end of the floor, towards the staircase.’

They spun and spun. In the turns, Saskia saw Kamo as he struggled to follow her through a thickening of the audience near the orchestra. Saskia’s dance partner did not follow her glance. He only looked at Saskia and, on occasion, those around him.

‘How can I not have seen you before, in society? You are the most beautiful woman here.’

‘I’m wearing a mask.’

‘The mask hides nothing, says the proverb. But here we are.’

The man bowed. He wanted to kiss her glove, as was the custom, but Saskia did not offer it. So his smile was crooked as he reversed into the slow storm of dancers. Saskia nodded to him, then moved on. She was at the far wall of the Great Ballroom. Through the open door, she could see seven rooms of the enfilade. But she did not step through.

She approached a short, nervous-looking man who had been observing her. His pocket watch, which dangled carelessly outside its pocket, had the greenish glow of radium. She confiscated his wine glass.

~

‘You’re not old enough to drink this,’ she said.

Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov smiled beneath his Nosey Parker mask and bowed. In the mirror behind him, Saskia saw Kamo shouldering a path through the crowd. She thought of threatening him with the grenade, but knew the bluff would not work.

‘I’m seventeen today.’

‘Many happy returns,’ she said sourly. She drank the wine.

She passed the glass to a footman, who appeared and disappeared for the purpose. ‘We have about fifteen seconds before my friend reaches us. When he does, he will probably try to kill you. Happy?’

‘Of course,’ Pasha replied. His words were slow. ‘It’s my birthday and you’re here.’

‘How did you know?’

‘When we parted, I made sure to touch the band and listen for the countdown. Zero is tonight, at midnight. My father told me of your interest in the Amber Room.’

‘And the pocket watch?’

‘You can see it, can’t you? Like you saw me in the dark?’

‘Pavel Eduardovitch, you would be conspicuous enough without it. Gump teaches us that clever is as clever does.’

Saskia looked into the mirror. Kamo’s journey across the dance floor was drawing consternation, particularly from the gentlemen. ‘Pasha, I have been beaten only once at chess, because I cheat. At any given moment in the game, I calculate many possible board states, starting with the most probable. The man who beat me employed an irrational, unpredictable move.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You, my dear boy, are the unpredictable move. You have complicated my evening beyond my powers to predict its next iteration.’ She touched his cheek. ‘You cannot have me. You may not even have your life.’

Pasha straightened his back. ‘I will protect you.’

‘It’s too late. Pavel Eduardovitch, my name is Saskia Maria Brandt. Say it, please, so that I know you heard it.’

‘Saskia Maria Brandt.’

Kamo pushed between them. His right hand was still on his heart and his eyes were narrow with pain. But he showed them his left hand, which held a palm pistol. Its barrel protruded between his second and third fingers. He pointed it at Pasha.

Quietly, he said to Saskia, ‘Give me the apple.’

‘Take it yourself.’

‘No. Place it within my jacket. Inside, right pocket. Don’t try anything.’

Pasha shook his head. She moved until she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Kamo, their backs to the crowd, and placed the grenade inside his jacket.

Kamo said, ‘Do you recognise me, boy?’

‘You’re the man with the spoilt eye. But I would smell you anyway. If you hurt Saskia, I’ll kill you.’

Kamo laughed. ‘Not everything is as easy as jumping from a window.’

‘Then perhaps I’ll throw you through one.’

‘A poor response. Look at this, Little Hero.’

Kamo put his gun to Saskia’s ribs. With his free arm, he pulled her close. Saskia felt the muscles in her abdomen quiver. It was not beyond Kamo to shoot. The report would be no louder than glass breaking on the carpet. Gutshot with a small-calibre bullet, Saskia would be more amenable.

‘As long as you both cooperate,’ said Kamo, ‘you will come to no harm. Let us proceed directly.’

The three of them moved through the open doorway into a silvered dining room hung with streamers. Guests either stood or were seated at one of the three tables. Every few steps, Pasha looked back at them. In his eyes, Saskia saw Pasha’s wonder that she did not despatch Kamo with a high kick, knocking the sense from his head just she had knocked the cigarette from the his own mouth on the second day of their acquaintance. Indeed, she had been capable moments ago. She thought once more of the long kiss behind the photographer’s arch. She remembered the desperate suction and his failing, darkening blood. The magnesium flash. Now, with Pasha here, and the eyes of the crowd, she had lost it. Beneath the curve of Kamo’s collar were pipes bearing blood and air. She could throttle them using the wires along her forearm, which would mean death by an Allegory of the Future.

And yet, when she had opened her blood-filled eyes on the trees above Turtle Lake, and seen Kamo, her rescuer, confronting the Cossacks of the Kuban Host, she had known that some part of him was worth rescue. They had looked at each other over the bodies of the Cossacks. He had said, ‘I am at your service.’

‘No,’ she had replied. ‘I am at yours.’

They passed through the landing of the main staircase, another dining room, a room decorated with panels of crimson under glass, a portrait gallery, and arrived at the Amber Room. It had three floor-to-ceiling windows with gilt mirrors between them to double the light. Every other surface, excepting the floor and the painted ceiling, was a monument to amber. The centre of the room was occupied by a model of the Berlin monument to Frederick the Great, while its perimeter was filled with white chairs and furniture. Standing around the room—paying particular attention to the model in the centre and the showcases of amber collectibles near the windows—Saskia counted five men and three women. Her eyes stopped, however, on her own reflection, which was reflected in the tall mirror to the right of the far door.

‘Well?’ said Kamo.

She ignored him. Her reflection was impossible. Instead of the Allegory of Night, she saw a woman wearing a sennit hat, a white blouse with puffed shoulders, and green-smoked eyeglasses. Though the virtual distance was considerable, she was certain that the face—and its expression of surprise—was her own. Before she could approach the apparition, Kamo pushed her deeper into the room.

‘Look here,’ he said, gesturing to a clock in the corner. It was a bronze clock with porcelain flowers and leaves. ‘It is two minutes shy of midnight. Now, where is the money?’

Pasha said, ‘I’ve been here before.’

‘I’ve little doubt of it,’ Kamo replied. ‘Hold your tongue. Now, Lynx, where is it?’ He looked at the model of Frederick, whose base, which equalled the height of a man, was the best candidate for the hiding place of the stolen roubles.

Saskia had waited long months to enter this room. She felt a mixture of peace, resignation and stage fright. The threat of Kamo’s gun was a note in the margin of her mind. It did not concern her directly. She found herself more interested in the blank, slackened expression on Pasha’s face. The boy had demonstrated a special connection with the band on her arm. Now, it appeared, he had made a similar connection with this room.

‘Pasha,’ she said, ‘did your illness come to you shortly after your first visit to this room?’

‘Yes,’ said Pasha. For a moment, his eyes were clear. He stared at her. ‘I had my first seizure a month after my tenth birthday. My father had taken me here as a birthday present.’

‘Silence,’ said Kamo. He ground his teeth and put his arm across his chest. His heart had not yet recovered. ‘If you know of the mechanism that reveals the money,’ he whispered, ‘activate it. Now.’

The bronze clock chimed midnight. Saskia knew that it was running fast, and so did two of the guests. They removed their pocket watches and murmured at their dials. Saskia took this as a sign that her band was affecting the time-keeping mechanism inside the clock. She did not understand why the watches of the guests had remained unaffected, but suspected it had something to do with the difference in mass. She considered Kamo. He was tense. Any touch might release his anger. Then he would be impossible to predict.

She decided to tell Kamo that the money was in the base of the model. But as she moved to speak, Pasha interrupted her.

‘“For all ages,”’ he sang, ‘“with his heroic deeds / Stalin has glorified our own people …”’

Pasha was swaying. His eyes were closed and his recital was mechanical, as though the words had been learned by rote by a non-native speaker. His tenor was, however, true.

‘“Over the world waves the Leninist flag / It summons to the path of battle and valour.”’

Saskia saw, at the edge of her vision, a figure enter the room from the direction of the main staircase. The guests put away their pocket watches and listened. Kamo was enthralled, too. The word “Stalin” had not unsettled him to any extent that Saskia could detect. She doubted he had heard it before. His gun arm relaxed and the grimace of pain softened.

‘“Sunny expanses are open to us / The flames of victory light our country.”’

With the slow, inexorable movement of a figurine turning atop a music box, Saskia turned towards the man who had entered the room. It was the photographer. How like a funeral director he looked; all but the black veil on his top hat. He wore a morning suit and simple, black mask. His collar was winged. Only his shoes were flawed: they were dusty. As she watched his soft steps, the hairs on her arms rose. She took a long breath. There was a stiffness in his walk, and his left arm was motionless.

‘“For our happiness lives Comrade Stalin / Our wise leader and dear teacher.”’

The photographer, who had saved Kamo’s life with a flash of magnesium, but had allowed the situation to play out, approached Pasha and looked into his mouth, close enough to kiss.

‘What a wonderful lyric,’ he said. The Russian was fluent but curiously emphasised. It marked him as a native of Georgia, that land of poets and wine. ‘Sing on.’

Saskia said, ‘No.’

Pasha stopped. He remained entranced. His eyes were closed and his body swayed. The photographer turned from Pasha to Saskia. She swallowed. It was pointless denying her fear; the feeling seemed to begin at the soles of her feet and climb to her crown. That was the effect of his look.

The photographer walked to her. Behind him, the remaining guests chuckled at this unusual musical interlude and drifted from the room in the direction of the main staircase, not to miss the unparalleled fireworks display in the square.

Soso, the Georgian bandit who had not until this moment used the name Stalin, reprised a line from the song in his own, exceptional tenor. ‘“Stalin has glorified our own people.” A good name indeed.’ His gaze moved between Kamo and Saskia. He bowed, then gripped Saskia by the scruff of her neck and kissed her three times. He repeated the same gesture with Kamo but added a small touch of their foreheads, during which both closed their eyes. Kamo seemed to shrink in Soso’s presence.

‘I always preferred The Staggerer,’ said Saskia.

Soso grinned. He seldom laughed, as she recalled, and preferred to hear jokes when they came from his own mouth. Once, Soso had been addressing a secret meeting at the Avlabar People’s Theatre when Saskia, who was on lookout, ran inside with the news that the theatre had been surrounded by police. It had been too late to escape, so Soso ordered the Bolsheviks to burn their papers. When the police entered the building, Soso announced to the inspector that they were rehearsing a play and would be delighted if the policeman could help them out with the role of a swine. Delight abounded among the conspirators. The embarrassed inspector said that he knew what kind of actors they were—but was forced to let them go. Soso had made pig noises as he left. That was the night Soso married Kato. That was two years ago.

‘Lynx, mythic beast who sees through falsehood to the truth beyond,’ said Soso. He grinned again. ‘A long time since our last meeting.’

In a business-like tone, she said, ‘Look what happened in the meantime. You shaved your moustache.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘How is Kato?’

‘I once wrote a poem for you, Lynx. I compared you to the moon.’

‘Why are you here, Soso?’ she snapped. Since their first conversation, she had judged him to value assertiveness. Now, she wished to provoke him. ‘It is dangerous to spread yourself so thinly.’

He touched his chin. ‘Life was ever dangerous. Do I need to tell you why it is, at this moment, particularly dangerous for you?’

Saskia looked down the enfilade. She wondered where Draganov could be. ‘Tell me.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you tell me.’

She knew that Soso had a talent for appearing in control when he was not. So doing, he unbalanced his opponent until the reality mimicked its appearance. The technique had worked with informers, magistrates, and girlfriends alike.

‘You are here for the money,’ Saskia said. ‘Without it, you will be expelled from the Party. You think I know where it is.’

The curve of Soso’s grin flattened by a degree. ‘But you do know where it is. Here, Saskia? In this room? Beneath this model?’

Saskia shrugged.

He turned to the panels. ‘Behind this, an allegory of touch? Shall I break it? We can dance on the pieces. What do you say, Kamo?’

‘We can dance on the pieces,’ said Kamo. He kept his eyes on Saskia. ‘We’ll have our own little quadrille.’

‘Or,’ said Soso, ‘to keep fuss to a minimum, we can take your boyfriend instead and break him, dance on his pieces.’ The grin had gone. Now, only narrow eyes regarded her through the slits of the mask. ‘Kamo?’

Saskia did not move as Kamo put an arm round Pasha and pressed the gun into his ribs. Pasha was still entranced. Tears had fallen down his cheeks, though his eyes were not swollen, and his breathing was even. Saskia glanced around. The guests were no longer near the model. They had opened the tall windows to stand on the balcony for the fireworks.

‘Be careful,’ Saskia said. ‘You are handling the key to your future.’

Kamo looked at Soso. Perhaps because their masks made their natural rapport difficult, Soso said, ‘We can kill him. If she put the money here, she can take it. She simply wishes to spare the boy. Kill him and loosen her tongue.’

‘I will tell you,’ she said, removing her hand from the warmer. Its sight drew the attention of both men. ‘Where does a lynx store its spoils?’

Both Soso and Kamo looked around the room. Saskia watched them, smiling.

‘I am becoming impatient,’ said Soso.

She lifted her hand, and when she was sure that the men were looking at it, she raised her index finger and pointed at the ceiling. Kamo said, ‘Of course,’ and both of them looked up.

Saskia slowed her vision. She willed her mind to accelerate, to appreciate the small moments between the seconds. Kamo and Pasha were closest, and to her left. Soso was at her right. She crouched and swept her heel into the back of Soso’s legs. The impact lifted him from the ground. He was still falling when she moved into Kamo, punching down on the back of his hand. The gun clattered to the floor. She stepped aside as Kamo toppled Pasha’s body into her path. With the point of her boot, she punted the gun into the adjacent corner of the room and, keeping her weight on her left leg, leaned back to snap her foot against Kamo’s head. She was able to land the blow across his ear. She had time to catch Pasha and fall with him. He was a dead weight, as though he had fainted. They spilled against the floor, Saskia grunting with pain as she took the impact on her shoulder.

She rolled Pasha aside. Kamo was already running for the far corner, where the small gun lay beneath a cabinet. Soso was sitting upright, clutching his shoulder. He had lost his top hat. Saskia slid on her knees towards him. She clung to his back like a turtle and wrapped arms and legs around him. She reached across to her left arm and tore away the threaded telephone cord that formed part of her costume. In one movement, she looped it around his neck, crossed the ends, and pulled one end with her teeth and the other with her hand.

She grinned at Kamo to show him the cord. At the same time, Soso held up a warning hand.

‘Stop!’ he gasped.

From the corner, Kamo pointed the gun at them. Saskia knew he had personal experience of the garrotte. One strong tug and there would be no saving Soso.

Saskia could say nothing. With care, Kamo placed the gun on the ground. When he made to reach into his jacket for the bomb, Saskia shook her head. The movement made Soso cough.

‘You always were impressive,’ said Kamo. He smiled, and Saskia saw that he was in that trough of post-battle excitement, the point at which he was the most human he could be. ‘I missed you.’

Soso relaxed. His head, which was already close to hers, tilted against her cheek. She could smell his aftershave and the perfumed cream in his hair. She could feel the cartilage in his ear and the coolness of its lobe. How long ago had she shaved Kamo? The hours had passed like minutes.

Saskia looked at the clock in the corner of the room. It had stopped. At that moment, Pasha sat up and said, ‘Zero, zero, zero,’ and the clocks of the Summer Place struck twelve. The fireworks split the air and a reddish glow lit the room. She felt the band on her arm grow cold, cold like the lobe of Soso’s ear.

‘Zero, zero, zero,’ continued Pasha.

The band became icy.

‘Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.’

It felt like the band was burning through her arm. She remembered a travelling apprentice in Siberia who had once told her, ‘Hell is cold.’

‘Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.’

She pushed away from Soso. In her pain, she saw him scuttle towards Kamo, his hand outstretched for the gun. She hooked her fingers around the band—burning them—and worked it from her arm. The band did not bounce when it fell. It struck the floor with a crack. It rolled for a moment, then collapsed into a spin.

Saskia looked up. Soso and Kamo were together. Kamo stood. Soso was crouched. His left hand gripped his left wrist to steady the gun, which was pointed at Pasha. Saskia had time to scream and reach towards Pasha. Then the shot was loose and Pasha flexed into a foetal position against the model. His cry was outraged, as though he had emerged from his trance with the impact. Saskia had no time to reach him. With a deft movement, Soso turned the gun towards her.

It was clear that there would be no more questions. Soso was limiting the damage of the evening preparatory to his escape. Perhaps he would return for the money at another date. Perhaps he would abandon it altogether.

Saskia placed her head directly in front of the gun. In one sense, she was staring at the barrel; in another, she was staring at the black eye of indifferent physical forces. Every effect must have a cause, as she knew, and as the unthinking eye of the universe could see.

Pasha whispered, ‘Zero.’

Saskia heard Soso’s index tendon contract.

As one, the doors of the Amber Room slammed shut.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The band flashed brighter than the magnesium preparation that had illuminated Kamo and Saskia; brighter than the fireworks opening above the square. Saskia covered her eyes with her forearm. She heard grunts from Soso and Kamo. The gun discharged and its bullet roared harmlessly past her neck. She felt the nerves tingle.

In her blindness, she scudded across to Pasha, blinked at the thundercloud of an afterimage on her vision, and hauled him around the base of the model until they were sheltered from the view of the revolutionaries.

She slapped his face.

‘Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov.’

Another bullet struck the wall.

She braced her knee against his chest and ripped open his doublet. It was already sticky with blood. She blinked again, desperate to see, and tried to examine his wound with her peripheral vision. She could not.

Saskia closed her eyes. She understood that the blindness was a temporary saturation of the light-sensitive cells on her retina. Other structures, planted by the i-Core, had grown there. These structures supplemented her vision at wavelengths above and below the human band.

Help me, she thought. Let me see.

She opened her eyes on a curiously monochrome world. The vasculature beneath her hand was visible: glassy, slimy, quick with blood after blood. She looked at Pasha’s waistcoat and saw that his pocket watch was twisted open. She smiled with the hope that the watch had saved his life. But the smile failed; the watch had disintegrated. Parts had travelled, with the bullet, into his abdomen. She tore open his shirt. The wound was hard to identify in the welling blood. She pressed upon it.

Pasha coughed. His breath steamed. He was bleeding from his inferior vena cava, which would cause his death long before the septicaemia.

Why was it was so cold?

Saskia leaned around the base of the model. Soso had not moved. He was holding the gun at his hip, like a gunslinger. Kamo gripped his shoulder. It was clear from their hard blinks that both were still blind. Perhaps the blindness was permanent. Who knew what energies were radiating from the band? Perhaps none of them would see naturally again.

The band spun on.

Saskia slowed her vision to look at it, but the rotation was too fast. It had dimmed to a glow. She told herself that the rotation was part of its normal operation, but this was not consistent with its behaviour on board flight DFU323. Jennifer had used it to escape from the fuselage of that falling aircraft. The band had not lowered its temperature then. Neither had it rotated so furiously. Yes, Saskia thought: there was anger in its spin. Was it alive in some sense, like her former companion, Ego? Did it realise that Saskia was not Jennifer? Did it view her as a thief?

A corona of white grew on the floor around the band. The dark and light woods of the floor began to buckle. Saskia felt a sharp pain in her ear. She swallowed and the pain cleared, but a stealing dizziness weakened her muscles. Her hand slipped from Pasha’s belly wound. Frowning, she put it back. The emptiness of the air reminded her of that pilotless aeroplane.

A note was gaining volume. It had an unsettling quality, like a wet finger on a crystal rim.

She took a breath and held it, trying to force the oxygen into her blood. Her heart was loud. Her breaths reminded her of drumming fingers. Impatience.

The circle of ice expanded until it passed beneath her and Pasha. The cold reached her knees. She tried to jump into a crouch. She lost her footing on her underskirt and fell across the floor.

Another shot was fired.

She pushed herself upright and looked around the base of the statue. Outside, a group of fireworks exploded in an irregular series. Their light caught the huddled shapes across the room.

No, she thought. That is Soso. And Kamo. They have collapsed.

The ice wave reached the edge of the room, where the chairs, tables and cabinets had been placed. She heard their woods crack. The ice seemed to grow up the walls. It rose to the mirror pilasters. The glass shattered, falling like sand to the floor, leaving rectangles of dull wood. The amber panels creaked but held.

The note of the band increased in pitch and volume.

Saskia realised that she was panting. The periphery of her vision darkened. She looked once more at the spinning band and smiled. Its fury had defeated her. Her last sensation before falling unconscious across Pasha was not the note of the band, or the distant glow of the fireworks, but the crackle of her saliva as it boiled on her tongue.

~

In the dream world, Saskia walked along the shore. Where the edge of the water withdrew, the wet sand bubbled. These reminded her of something that touched the edge of her memory. This dreamed world could be her death; the last reality conjured by a dying brain.

A distant comma of sparrows turned to an exclamation point in the sky and Saskia said, ‘Ute?’

‘Don’t shout,’ said Ute. ‘I’ve been here all the time. Couldn’t you see me?’

‘I don’t remember what happened,’ said Saskia. It disconcerted her to see Ute walking at her shoulder. The woman wore jeans, white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket: the simple outfit Saskia had worn so much at the beginning of the twenty-first century that it had begun to seem like a uniform.

‘I remember pieces,’ said Ute. ‘Something happened in the Amber Room.’

‘Yes—I couldn’t breathe.’ Saskia stopped. She let a wave wash over her feet. It felt neither cold nor wet. ‘Did something happen to Pasha?’

Ute put her hands on her hips. Her face was firm, but motherly.

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘The birds need you.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Let them talk to you,’ Ute said, gripping Saskia’s shoulder. ‘Or we’ll never go home.’

Saskia remembered nothing about birds. She remembered suffering from an illness, long ago, in whose fever her words were not her own.

‘Birds?’

‘The sparrows.’

Keeping Saskia’s gaze, Ute pointed at the sky. Saskia looked up. In the sunless blue, the flock whirled in a question mark.

‘Let them talk to you,’ Ute said. ‘Through you.’

Saskia closed her eyes. She listened for the sound of bird call through the surf. There was nothing. But she did feel an urge to speak; the words were not her own.

‘“Tyrants,”’ she said, feeling her mouth move automatically, ‘“conduct monologues above a million solitudes”.’

~

As Saskia blinked, her lashes fluttered against Pasha’s waistcoat. She sat up. Within a moment, even as the dream of the beach faded, she understood that something was wrong with the Amber Room. She turned to the tall doors that opened onto the square. Through one pane, she saw a masked gentleman looking inside. He had begun to turn the door handle. Neither the hand nor the gentleman were moving. Saskia might have interpreted this as hesitation. But the red fireworks in the sky over his shoulder were motionless as bloodstains on a dark wall.

By their light, with her unaided vision, Saskia saw that Pasha’s chest was still. She touched his cheek with her fingertip. It was cold and hard.

Saskia stood. She felt dizzy and her joints hurt. Her saliva had frozen in her mouth. She could hear nothing but the blood in her ears, the movement of her clothes, and the tiny sounds that betrayed her musculature and joints.

She walked around the model of Frederick the Great and saw her once-friends, Soso and Kamo. They had stopped in a dramatic posture. Kamo, faithful as a dog, was holding Soso by the shoulders, giving him strength. Soso had narrowed eyes and an expression of disgust at Saskia’s betrayal. Not anger. Even in the red dimness, she could see that Soso considered her dead already. A wound to stitch, and then move on. His right arm emphasised this: he was pointing the gun. The sharp lines of his tendons suggested that the gun was about to fire.

Saskia stepped aside.

She looked down at the band. It was dark. It had stopped turning. It lay in a bed of wood shaved from the floor.

She tried to say, ‘I don’t understand,’ and when she could not speak the words, she understood that she was not breathing.

An answer to her unspoken question appeared in the form of a memory that felt like a moment she had experienced only seconds before. But this was impossible for two reasons. First, the memory was her fall through the sky above Siberia. Second, an element had been added: dozens of tiny birds had clawed at the buzzing edges of her clothes and slowed her descent.

Saskia understood. The i-Core was helping her. This was not a memory; it was a metaphor constructed from her memory.

Then she saw a laboratory bench with a beaker of water on top. Two electrodes had been lowered into the water. Around the first gathered bubbles of oxygen; around the second, hydrogen. Just so. The i-Core had found a way to give her sufficient oxygen for consciousness.

Why haven’t I returned to the future? What happened to the band? Is it malfunctioning?

Another image brightened in her mind: an old sycamore that had been split halfway down its trunk during a forgotten lightning storm. Then: a trampled pocket watch on a St Petersburg street.

OK, it’s malfunctioning. What do I do now?

The answer to this question was a memory that might have been true: kicking towards the faraway surface of Lake Baikal, digging upwards at the water as through scrambling from a grave, and achieving the surface, pulling down a great breath.

I don’t understand.

Saskia stumbled against the model. The pain in her knees was sharp. It hurt to blink, and when she looked at her hand in the firework light, she saw the mottled pattern of bruising.

Again, the i-Core presented her with that memory of the trampled pocket watch, which was followed by the penetration of her head through the surface of Baikal.

Not helpful, she thought, leaning more heavily on her arm. She felt sleepy. Dead already. She wished to die next to Pasha, so she moved towards him. His eyes were half open and amber light reflected there. Saskia frowned. She turned in the direction of the main staircase. In the mirrors either side, and in the pressed gold and in the amber, she saw what could only be the blue-grey light of day. Was this another metaphor? Her failing mind struggled to understand what the reflection meant. She fought to concentrate, and with a childlike flash of achievement, understood that the light was coming from behind her.

She shuffled around. Her muscles quivered and burned with pain.

The door to the enfilade was open. Through it, where the next room in the suite should have been, was a second Amber Room. Snow was falling.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Saskia stepped onto a soft ramp of snow and took a breath. She did not step further. This Amber Room had been open to the weather for months. Its windows were smashed and overlooked a palace square that was strewn with tents, burned vehicles—automotive—and flaming drums. It was the invading German army. The sky was smoke-stained. She looked at the snow around her skirt. It was dirty. The walls of this Amber Room were naked brick. The floor had been ripped down to the underboards. The ceiling was torn and hanging. No amber remained.

She heard distant motor traffic and the tap-tap of a pistol. Overhead, an aeroplane droned, engines ill.

As Saskia stepped into the room proper, she looked back through the enfilade. There was no sign of the original Amber Room, only an empty doorway whose door had long become firewood and through which the wrecked enfilade continued. She crouched in the snow-rubble and looked, from under her purple hat, at the German soldier who tended a stove in the centre of the floor. He wore white trousers over his jackboots, a dirty, pale jacket that wrapped him like a tunic, and a peaked cap. His shoulder boards indicated that he was a sergeant. He held a white mitten in his mouth while his hand moved a ladle in the watery broth. His stirring motion continued as Saskia crouched.

In German, she asked, ‘Can you hear me?’

The soldier moved his ladle a quarter turn. Only then did he look at her. His brown eyes were dark and his cheeks recessed and mottled. His stubble had not yet spread from his upper lip and chin to the rest of his jaw. On the basis of this, Saskia put his age at twenty years.

‘I remember you,’ he whispered. His voice sounded as though he had been crying. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t? Have you forgotten me? Your Michael?’

‘I’m far from home, Michael. I need your help.’

His eyes stayed towards the soup. ‘Do you want some?’

‘No. That’s for you.’

‘It’s stone soup,’ he whispered, and that was enough for Saskia to feel all his pains, the waste of him, the unstructured and unstoried deaths of his friends, and the cold. The snow fell onto the lid that half-covered the soup. ‘Do you know the story?’

‘Of stone soup? No, tell me.’

‘I can’t. The boys will think I’m mad. Ssss. Quiet.’

‘Who am I, Michael?’

‘You are my Katrin from home.’

‘Home in?’

‘Schliersee.’

Saskia smiled. ‘Yesterday, I walked on the banks of the lake with our friends.’

Michael’s jaw shifted to the right. His moustache shook. When the tears gathered in the edges of his eyes, they did not fall. Saskia reached towards him—wincing at the pain in her shoulder—and thumbed them away.

‘Is this the Great Summer Palace?’

‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘It’s the Catherine Palace.’

‘What happened here, Michael?’

‘We finished stripping the amber,’ he said. His eyes were unfocused. ‘Today, it’ll go home.’

‘No, not the amber. What happened to the palace?’

Michael looked at her, as though into bright light. ‘I’m not mad. You’re not Katrin.’

‘No,’ she said, smiling.

‘You need to leave before the boys come.’ Michael nodded towards the door that led to the Apartments of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna. ‘They haven’t seen a woman like you for months.’

‘I will.’

He nodded, then said, ‘What happened to your face? Did someone hit you? Was it one of us?’

Saskia touched her cheek. It was swollen.

‘No, Michael,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t.’

He breathed deeply and looked at his stone soup.

‘Don’t cry, Michael.’

He sniffed. ‘Then what?’

Saskia rose. Her blackcurrant skirt drew in. She took careful steps towards the open throat of the enfilade and stepped into the doorframe. Beyond it was a third Amber Room. As she passed, there was no sensation of travel through time. Only the physicality of her environment changed. From cold to warmth; steady to unsteady; quietude to noise. Her heel wobbled on a loose board as she

~

tipped into herself, a young woman in the back seat of a police car. It was night. Her seatbelt cut into her hip as the car undertook a queue of stationary traffic, groaned across the rumble strip, and continued along the hard shoulder. The car slowed. Its siren muted, but the blue lights flashed over the parked cars, flashed across their curious passengers. Next to her, a tall, fifty-something man wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Sweat collected against his collar.

Where am I? Saskia thought. She recognised the man next to her as a British police officer called Jago. She had last seen him at Heathrow Airport in the year 2023, where they had chased a criminal called David Proctor. Jago had collapsed at the terminal while Saskia boarded Proctor’s aeroplane to Las Vegas, to a US government programme called Project Déjà Vu, and backwards in time to the year 2003.

‘Jago?’

The man turned to her. ‘It’s Jago now, is it?’

I call him Scotty. Something about Enterprise. A joke.

‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘I’m fine. But there’s an accident up ahead.’

The car tipped forward as the driver braked to avoid the edge of a wide vehicle. Saskia took Scotty’s hand. He smiled.

‘You’re not still worried about the driving?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m worried about

(Whether we’ll reach Proctor in time)

you.’

Scotty smiled. The expression seemed unsuited to his face. ‘Why do I always get the daft ones?’

‘Sorry.’

Now he’ll say the pain is indigestion due to the sausages he ate on the way from Edinburgh.

‘You know what it is. It’s those—’

‘Scotty?’

He sighed. ‘Yes, pet?’

‘You’re a good man.’

As he turned towards her, his seatbelt creaked. He squeezed her hand once. ‘And you’re soft as shite.’

A new light flashed on the dark, glittering dashboard. The co-driver reached over and touched the light. She turned and

(A woman. Her name is Teri.)

said to Scotty, ‘Sorry, Guv. A lorry has shed its load. We’re the closest unit and we’ll need to secure the scene.’

Saskia was overwhelmed by a sense of desperation. It was difficult to rationalise the feeling. Wasn’t this a dream? Wasn’t she an observer? Nevertheless, she gripped the co-driver by her upper arm and shouted, ‘I don’t care

(They’re dead anyway; they’ve always been dead.)

about lorries and their loads. We need to get to Proctor. Do you understand? It has to take priority. Otherwise, otherwise …’

Her voice weakened, then cut out. The anxiety faded. Saskia looked at the puzzled face of the co-driver. The driver, too, was looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

Saskia whispered, ‘Scotty, have you ever had one of those dreams when you’re back in school and there’s an exam—’

‘Shush, pet. All the bloody time. What you looking at, Teri? Tell control to send us another unit.’

‘It’s not the same,’ said Saskia, half to herself. Her worry grew again. This was not a dream. Neither had she dreamed of the German soldier in the palace. He, perhaps, had dreamed of her. Here, in the car, the blue light flashed over the queuing motorists. She felt the vibration of the chassis. Scotty smelled of cigarettes and sweat.

‘We won’t make it, then,’ he said.

This was not a dream. This was a repeat of a moment in her life. Something in the band, whose technology was decades ahead of 2023, and unknown to her, had snapped. It had bounced her into memories.

No. This is different.

Scotty and I got to Proctor in time.

She could see a slice of dashboard between the seats. It might have been a cityscape at night. A view from a pitched, plunging aeroplane.

Like—

(Yes)

Like DFU323.

This is

~

‘DFU323 to anybody. I am a qualified pilot who has taken control of this aeroplane following an emergency. We are experiencing altitude control problems and I request clear airspace while I investigate the extent of our manual control.’

I shouldn’t be here.

Saskia released the push-to-talk button on the yoke.

If what happened in the car was true, then I never reached David Proctor. I never travelled in time to 2003. I never boarded this aircraft.

The daylight through the misted cockpit window was dazzling. Dazzling? Then her eyes were not light-adapted. They were same eyes that had, the instant before, been staring at a gloomy dashboard.

She looked at the young woman in the co-pilot seat and

(Vicki. Her name was Vicki. The last surviving flight steward. It’s the year 2003. This aircraft is going to crash and only I will survive.)

was struck by her resemblance to the co-driver in the police car. Like Saskia, Vicki wore a headset and oxygen mask.

Before she could voice an urge that was building inside her—an urge to tell Vicki that this moment was gone, in the past, only a memory, and nothing could change the outcome—the yoke began to move. It drifted towards her and rotated anticlockwise as the 737 reached the crest of its sickening, shallow corkscrew, then pitched forward, rolling right. She looked at the instrumentation panel and noted the warnings: the cabin altitude was too high, hydraulic pressures read zero, and the aircraft was losing height.

Suddenly, a siren bleated. The sound matched a blinking button on the panel that read ALT HORN CUTOUT. Saskia almost touched it, hesitated, then pressed. The siren stopped.

Hadn’t I already silenced that alarm when I entered the cabin?

‘The flight management computer cannot begin a controlled descent,’ Saskia said. She spoke for the flight recorder, for the benefit of air crash investigators. ‘I will do so now.’

I’ve said that before. The aircraft will crash regardless. What if I remember the experience of the crash this time? What will it feel like?

Saskia disengaged the automatic pilot and counted ten seconds. The behaviour of the aircraft did not change. Its slow corkscrew continued. Weeks after this event, Saskia would research the phenomenon and come to understand it as a Dutch roll. It was a natural aerodynamic behaviour that should have been dampened by the autopilot.

She tried to push the yoke forward, but it was immovable. She exchanged a look with the stewardess.

‘Help me, Vicki. Push.’

It’s pointless. There is no hydraulic fluid left. The aircraft cannot be—

‘It’s moving,’ said the stewardess. Her eyes crinkled. ‘Are we flying it?’

Saskia pressed the push-to-talk. ‘DFU323 has limited response to manual control. I am descending to 10,000 feet. Anyone please respond. Anyone respond.’

‘They still can’t hear us.’

And they never will, thought Saskia. The force that took the hydraulic fluid took the radio, too. Only the trace of Vicki’s voice would remain, etched on the solid state memory of the flight recorder.

Saskia re-engaged the autopilot.

‘I will now instruct the autopilot to descend to 10,000 feet.’

‘No need to tell me. Just do it.’

‘I am speaking for the benefit of the flight recorder, not yours.’

The stewardess sank into her chair and tightened its harness. Saskia held her left thumb for luck and, with a hand numbed by cold, punched a new altitude into the flight management computer. There was no auditory feedback. Saskia cupped against the display against the sunlight. The numbers were there.

That didn’t happen last time. It stayed blank all the way to the ground.

The nose of the aircraft began to drop.

That shouldn’t happen. Why is this happening?

A horn whooped.

‘Overspeed warning!’ said an American voice. An actor speaking from the past. ‘Overspeed warning!’

The aircraft began to rise. Its angle of bank flattened. She reduced thrust and deployed the wing spoilers to increase drag. The horn stopped.

‘Vicki,’ Saskia said. She removed her own mask. ‘I need you to speak to the passengers. Get them ready for a crash landing. I can’t risk turning the aircraft. The best I can do is dump the fuel and land along the Danube.’

‘Fuck it all, the Danube? Are you crazy?’

‘No.’

To herself, Vicki said, ‘Perhaps we can radio for help.’

Saskia turned to the uneven horizon. It was a clear, cold day and a silver thread—the Danube—was visible on the plain.

‘Vicki, help is here, and it’s me. Tell the passengers to adopt crash positions and listen for my signal, which will be “Brace, brace, brace”. We’ll be down in three or four minutes.’

It took long moment for Vicki to decide that Saskia was her best hope. She pulled off her headphones and removed the oxygen mask. Its grey buckles swung. Then, squeezing Saskia’s shoulder, she was gone.

Saskia held the yoke. The pilot had been exsanguinated in his seat, and the blood, no longer warm, soaked through her trousers. There was more blood on the flight plan pinned to the centre of the yoke. She could hear the air blasting across the hole in the fuselage where the forward passenger door had once been. The rushing sound was louder at low altitude. Her gaze made a slow inventory of the controls. How extraordinary that she should know every switch, setting and dial from a desperate search of the Internet only minutes before: piggy-backing the mobile phones of the passengers, collecting electronic manuals of maintenance, pilot checklists and avionics, as well as air safety reports. She knew everything about this aircraft and what it could do with only partial hydraulics and full control over its thrust. The knowledge was not unlike her command of chess. She understood its state: it was a system that, knowable at time one, should be knowable at time two.

She did not have the strength to put the aircraft through S-turns, so the approach would be fast. She took a flight manual from the stowage bin on her left. Because the electronic fuel displays were dead, she had to guess the weight of the aircraft, and from that guess make another about the angle to set flaps.

The Danube loomed.

She set the flaps and held on until her last minutes were gone. The grey water expanded, but the river was much smaller than she remembered. The nose of the aircraft rose as she reduced the thrust.

There were two whoops from the cabin speakers. The same American voice: ‘Pull up! Too low—terrain! Pull up!’

Saskia felt the thickening air through her hands, which shook on the juddering yoke. She swallowed and pulled back as hard as she could. She pushed the intercom.

‘Brace, brace, brace!’

She watched sunlight move across the ceiling switches. Behind her, screams overcame the volume of the alarms and the rushing air.

This won’t hurt. I’m not really here.

She looked at her hands.

At her left hand.

Maybe this time I’ll save them.

She was wearing Jem’s ring.

Maybe this time—

Chapter Twenty-Four

The alarm had stopped. So too had the American voice. The sun no longer swung across the ceiling. There was no vibration through the yoke or the seat and the jet engines were silent. Everything had stopped.

Saskia took her hands from the yoke. She unbuckled her harness and leaned forward until the ground was visible through the window. The Danube was fifty metres below, and real enough, but unmoving. The wavelets were still.

Her mouth hung open.

She rose from her seat and moved to the rear of the cockpit, where she could stand. Between her feet was the body of the pilot. His dry eyes stared into the shadows beneath the seat. Saskia stepped over him, up the slope to the flight deck door. Her trainers squelched.

The door was shut. She imagined the stewardess with the intercom handset pressed against her head, the free hand raised at the terrified passengers. Those passengers would be folded against their knees. Above them, yellow oxygen cups and plastic snoods would dangle.

Saskia opened the door and made

~

two bloody footsteps across a wooden floor. It was an open landing at the rear of a milk bar. She dropped to one knee, looking through a balustrade across the heads of a dozen men. Daylight sank narrow shafts through the smoke, which was wafted back and forth in the wind of a heavy cloth by a boy with a pulley. The men wore long coats. They looked penniless. They were princes.

Saskia looked at the door behind her. It showed the edge of a cot, a dirty mirror and a window covered in wire mesh. The aircraft had gone, along with her bloody footsteps.

‘Come down,’ called the owner of the milk bar. He sat on a high chair near the door. Next to him stood the wrestler called Papashvily who would come for Saskia in Switzerland two years later.

Following the owner’s call, which was friendly enough, the customers, standing to a man, ceased their conversation and stared at her as she took the steps all the way to the earthen floor, soft in her fur boots. She was dressed like a school teacher but for her canvas skirt and hand warmer, in which she hid her amputation.

The silent, staring princes were decked variously in blouses, peasant smocks, and long coats bristling with bullets in lieu of buttons. Some wore bandoliers. Most carried rifles. Fur hats. Fezzes. Luxuriant moustaches. They looked like a theatre troupe. The richest of them wore puffed trousers and leather boots. It was summer and they stank. During her summary inspection, a boy entered the bar; he was steered back to the rocky street by Papashvily.

I know them. All their names. Which are faithful to their wives. Which will die in the bank heist: shot by militiamen or gendarmes, trampled under horses and carriage wheels, hunted down in the weeks to follow.

I know why they have come here this morning, why they wait in the heat, armed, not one of them drinking.

They’re scared.

Scared of him.

There was a creak from the rail above. Saskia, like the men, turned to look.

Simon Ter-Petrossian—Kamo—emerged from the same door as Saskia. Sweat had gathered on his forehead. His eyes were clear.

He hasn’t yet had his accident with the bomb.

‘Come down,’ said the owner of the milk bar. He, alone, seemed insulated from Kamo’s superiority.

Kamo took the steps two at a time and walked into the crowd with his arms wide, ignoring Saskia. He gathered the men to him and kissed them and knocked their caps off and pinched their cheeks. They responded in kind. There were roars and much stamping.

‘Where have you been? Don’t you know the Kuban Host is in town?’

‘When did you arrive in Tiflis?’

‘Why do we have to meet here, at the Adamia, for all love?’

‘What is the name of your beautiful woman?

At this, Kamo’s ebullience winked out. The men saw this change and quietened in a moment. Nobody wanted to be the last to stop laughing. They could read his moods precisely. They were Kamo’s Own; they were to become the core of his notorious Outfit.

‘Who?’ Kamo asked, turning to Saskia. ‘Lynx?’

He laughed.

Nobody laughed with him any longer. They knew his habit: upon a return, he would claim knowledge of a traitor, and conduct the murder personally.

This is it, thought Saskia. I was standing here at the stairs, wondering what to say, when I first met him. The Milkman came to the milk bar.

When Soso entered, admitting cold October air, the men drew back from the doorway and made a channel towards Kamo and Saskia. Soso walked through the gap. He wore a skirted chokha coat and white Caucasian hood. His face was clean-shaven, pockmarked and his hair reddish. There was an imbalance to his gait.

He was struck by a cart during his childhood. Tamaz will tell me this later, over the chessboard.

Soso fixed his amber eyes on Kamo. They hugged. The rubbing of their cheeks struck Saskia as a peculiarly feline greeting. Soso looked at Saskia. She stepped back.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Kamo.

Saskia was burning.

Why do I feel the surprise a second time? So this is Joseph Stalin. Deal with it. Old news.

Kamo continued, ‘This is—’

Soso put two fingers to his lips. He shook his head. Then, turning to the crowd, he said, ‘Hang around.’

The men were galvanised. They shook hands with each other, not Soso, as though a crucial deal had been concluded to their advantage. Indeed it had. With these two words, Soso was telling them that another expropriation was in the wind. They did not know the day, the time, the target, or the plan. But they would receive a cut. They would hang around.

Half of the men left the milk bar. Saskia watched them leave. Nobody passed through the line of Soso’s stare, which was centred on her.

‘You regard me with a particular expression, my dear. Could it be that I look familiar to you?’

His Russian was perfect. It lacked the Georgian flavour.

He’s hiding himself. He thinks I’ve recognised him from a mugshot. He sees me as a threat to his liberty. He wonders whether I should be bought off, raped, or dropped from one of the many rocky heights in Tiflis.

The remaining men had dragged tables and chair from the walls and sat on them. Their conversations were gruff and empty. Saskia saw the boy enter once more. This time, nobody stopped him. The ceiling sail began to move. Hot air moved down to them, between her and the man who would become Joseph Stalin, and she said:

‘No.’

‘No?’ He smiled, showing his teeth. Again, the feline, feminine aspect of this man was undeniable. ‘Who is this one, Kamo?’

It didn’t happen like this. I was alone in the milk bar and Soso noticed me. It was the owner who told me never to refuse a drink from a gangster.

‘I can talk for myself,’ said Saskia.

Kamo put his hand on her shoulder. The gesture was companionable, but she knew he had strapped a spring-loaded knife along his forearm after rising from the cot. Saskia looked down at the sawdust.

‘I found her swinging from a tree above Turtle Lake.’

As Kamo related the story, Soso watched Saskia. He seemed to be judging her reaction in turn. She maintained a blankness in her mind. She let Kamo talk.

‘The instant she was cut loose,’ said Kamo, ‘she attacked them.’

‘And?’

‘They’re dead. She fights like a Magic Boxer.’

Both the men looked at her as they spoke. It was an uncomfortable analogue of the conversations between those Cossacks before they hanged her.

Soso asked her, ‘How did you come to be there?’

‘I made the mistake of trusting someone.’

Soso made the characteristic Georgian sharp inhale that meant she should continue. She did not. She remained there while her balanced mind struggled with the counterweight of adolescent distaste for this man.

‘She’s a Prussian,’ said Kamo.

‘From where?’

‘Berlin,’ said Saskia.

‘I know it. Where were you before you met our Tsarist friends?’

‘I spent some time in Siberia,’ she said.

‘That does not make you exceptional in our company,’ said Soso. He took a cigarillo from his jacket, pinched off the end, and sucked it alight against a tallow candle, which Kamo held towards him. ‘What do you want in life?’

‘I need papers to get home and money to spend on the journey.’

‘Berlin?’

‘That’ll do for a start.’

Soso laughed. The sound was not loud, but it carried through the room. Heads were turned and milk cups dropped to their tables. Soso raised his Caucasian hood and offered his hand to Saskia. After a glance at Kamo, who nodded, Saskia took it.

‘She can fight, like I said,’ added Kamo, as the three emerged onto a sloping street, but Saskia and Soso had already moved ahead of him.

~

The sky was clear enough to see the snowy peak of the Kazbek. The snow on Golovinsky Avenue, however, was thin and would not last. As they walked, Soso was waylaid on a dozen occasions by family friends, street sellers, and people asking for money. Soso always let these people speak themselves out. The ambiguity in his language was masterful; he left no trace of his intention or agreement; he was polite and kissed them in greeting and farewell. Ten paces behind her, Saskia noticed the Outfit trailing in a loose pack. Kamo said little.

She saw no policemen. There were Russian soldiers, however, and women and children. Porters hurried past with burdens as disparate as a carpet, an iron bedstead and a piano. The road traffic comprised cabs, bullock-driven carts, and donkeys. A common cargo was wine in animal skins. Saskia heard ten languages, identifying Hindustani and Sart. The Georgians and the highlanders wore tall fur hats and colourful outfits Soso called tcherkesska. Those in skull caps and long cotton or woollen tunics were Tartars. Persians were to be recognised by their kaftans and their dark red hair, beards and nails. Those dressed in a Tartar-like manner or in European clothes were likely as not Armenians.

They passed the Viceroy’s palace and several government buildings: a museum; theatres; all the while, in contrast to Kamo’s silence, Soso explained the importance of Tiflis to the Trans-Caucasus. Here was the conflux of two great trading routes. First, the railway to Batum on the Black Sea connected Tiflis to the west, while the eastern line took one to Baku on the Caspian, and from there to Russia, Central Asia and Persia. Second was the northern military high-road across the frosty Caucasus to Vladikavkaz and European Russia; southwards, it gave onto North-Western Persia.

At the southern end of Golovinksy, they entered the Dvortzoyvaya, which led to Erivan Square. Soso indicated the town hall and the Caravanserai opposite. The latter was a building whose purpose was business—from the fruit stalls at its base to the high offices of the Armenian merchants.

‘Isn’t that right, Kamo?’ said Soso.

Kamo said nothing.

Soso nodded with contempt. ‘Remember this place, Lynx,’ he said, and they moved on.

Here, in Yerevan Square, eighteen months later, Saskia would help steal almost half a million roubles.

~

By the close of the day, a dry wind got up and fired the sand and snow from the stone roads. Saskia was sweating beneath her furs when they entered a three-storey building on stinking Freilinskaya Street and rose through its passages to a rooftop patio. Next to the low wall that marked the edge, a teenage girl sat next to a brazier. A baby slept in her lap.

‘My beautiful wife, Ekaterina,’ Soso said, ‘and my nephew, Shura.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Saskia.

Ekaterina looked up. One eye was closed with an infection. She nodded, but emptily, as though Saskia was not somebody she expected to meet again. Then Ekaterina stood and walked to the weather-beaten door that led to the stairwell. She carried the child on her hip.

Saskia was alone on the rooftop with Soso and Kamo.

Soso had turned to face the sun. Saskia was unsure of her role and questioned Kamo with a glance. She was surprised to see that he was scared. Kamo, a man whom she had seen blasé in the midst of the greatest physical danger, was afraid: here, on the sunny rooftop.

Soso wants to kill me.

No; he wants to recruit me.

Then why is Kamo afraid? He wasn’t afraid the first time this happened. Remember. Kato stayed in her chair; we spoke about the baby as Soso held him towards the sky and spun, laughing, while Kamo watched.

Soso drew his Mauser pistol and gestured along the street, moving the sights from tavern to milk bar to cobbler to tailor to haberdashers. Along the street, thin dogs trotted along scent trails. A carriage blasted through, driven by laughing children.

‘We have the go-ahead, Kamo. This is a big one.’

‘Perhaps we should talk about this when Penelope is absent.’

Soso regarded Kamo with surprise. ‘Why? Don’t you trust her?’

‘Trust has nothing to do with it.’

‘Trust,’ replied Soso, looking at Saskia, ‘has everything to do with it.’ He beckoned to her, and when she came to him, Soso put his arm about her shoulders. ‘See this, Lynx?’ He gestured with the Mauser. ‘This is mine. If I fired this pistol, its report would be heard by my mother, my school master, and my childhood friends. We call it a city, but it is a village of stone, built on stone and uneven mountainsides. Everything is within walking distance.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘What do you say about the Tsar?’

‘Joseph—’ said Kamo.

Soso turned to his friend and, releasing Saskia, struck him across the collarbone with the pistol. Kamo fell to his arse. He looked at Soso like a dog whose master has kicked him: he looked for a way back into his world.

This didn’t happen. What’s changed? Have I acted differently? Perhaps. The first time round, I was a woman who thought her past was a lie. Now I believe it to be the future. Soso can see that.

‘Lynx,’ Soso said, returning, ‘what do you say about the Tsar?’

She said, ‘“Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes”.’

Soso waited a moment before he replied. His eyes, electric yellow, seemed fused in their sockets. ‘Wonderful. Beautiful. Is it Prussian?’

‘French. Albert Camus.’

‘I must read Camus.’

‘Good luck. He’s difficult to find.’

‘Kamo tells me that you are a woman of particular skills. I will trust you. If I said that fate has sent you to me, would you believe it?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled. ‘Kamo, the lady is standing and yet you are seated.’

As Kamo stood, slowly, Soso watched for Saskia’s reaction. She tried to remain expressionless. Soso returned the Mauser to his waistband and put a finger beneath her chin. He turned her head upwards. Above Stalin, clouds were gathering against the mountain.

The curls at their edges mean rain. That is what I will come to learn in the months ahead.

‘The organisation I work for needs money. I have just returned from a meeting with my boss. He has given me the go-ahead for a criminal spectacular. Tell me, how much do you want your money and papers? How much does it mean for you to go home?’

‘Keep talking,’ she said.

‘You see that building there? It is the military headquarters. Beyond it is Yerevan Square, the square I asked you to remember. Off that square are the premises of the State Bank. Before long, a stagecoach bearing enough roubles for lifetimes of excess will enter that square. I intend to take it.’

Kamo looked down.

‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Saskia.

‘There is a man who works within the mail office. A Georgian called Geno. We went to school together. He is, it transpires, an admirer of my poetry.’

‘You write poetry?’

‘Despite this admiration, he stops short of giving me the information I need. That is, the date and precise time of the stagecoach’s arrival. Do you understand?’

‘Soso,’ said Kamo, ‘she is only—’

‘What do you say, Lynx? Geno is an ugly man. You are beautiful. What defence can he possibly have?’

If I fail, there will be no heist. Does this mean I can stop it?

Soso caught something of her thoughts. He took her to the edge of the patio. They both looked down onto the heads of pickpockets, the water-carriers and the pimps, thirty feet below.

‘If you are, or intend to be, a traitor, you will regret it. Is that understood?’

Saskia counted to five, slowly. ‘I understand.’

‘Fearless!’ shouted Soso. He smiled at Kamo. ‘Where did you find her? Find more!’

A ghostly, answering smile appeared on Kamo’s face, but he seemed distant from the moment. Was it because he had lost his limited control over Saskia? Or did he hold genuine friendship for her, a friendship that did not sit well with the notion of Soso pimping her services like a common flower seller?

Soso disappeared through the wooden door. Saskia and Kamo lingered for a moment. They did not speak. They had not spoken since she had denied Kamo’s oddly formal request for sex the night before. When Soso returned, he wore a scarlet shirt and black Fedora and carried three glasses of wine, red as roses.

‘From this point,’ he said, ‘I am Soselo the Poet. Where did you find your name?’

‘Kamo gave it to me.’

‘No, not ‘Lynx’. I mean the name you have assumed for your travels.’

‘Penelope?’

‘Yes. On what basis did you choose the name?’

‘It is consistent with some papers I acquired. Additionally, it recalls the Odyssey.’

Soso nodded. ‘Of course. Please, take this.’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘You must,’ said Kamo. ‘It is a tradition.’

‘Please,’ said Soso. He gave a shy smile. ‘You would hurt the feelings of your host.’

Saskia and Kamo each took a glass of wine.

Soso raised his. ‘“One who journeying / Along a way he knows not, having crossed A place of drear extent, before him sees A river rushing swiftly toward the deep, And all its tossing current white with foam, And stops and turns, and measures back his way.”’

From the Iliad, thought Saskia, not the Odyssey.

‘To journeys, Penelope. And, at the close of many adventures, to coming home.’

‘Coming home,’ she said.

Kamo muttered, ‘Home.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

Saskia opened her eyes on a pie-crust horizon moving in the heat. Nine months had passed since that meeting with Soso. She and Kamo were sitting on horses. They overlooked Tiflis from a ridge in the slow, loose foothills of the Holy Mountain. Saskia was dressed as a cavalry captain. Her moustaches had been applied with stage glue. Her boots and jodhpurs were fine quality and a Circassian sabre lay against the withers of her horse.

Kamo turned to her. His left eye was swollen shut.

‘Well, do you see them?’

This is the day of the robbery.

She remembered her morning ride into the foothills, where she had reconnoitred the approach to Tiflis. Everything was ready. Her job was to brandish the sabre once the stagecoach was identified. The lookout on the roof of Prince Sumbatov’s house would see the flash and alert the Outfit.

Not again. Will there be all that blood? The screaming?

Her thoughts were interrupted as Kamo pressed his knuckle against her moustache. ‘It will do,’ he said. ‘Is your corset too tight, Penelope? Can you breathe?’

‘Call me Lynx,’ she replied. Her eyes were fixed ahead, straining for the telltale dust.

Kamo’s horse settled its footing. ‘Don’t be afraid. You handle a horse better than anyone but me. Everything will be fine. And they need you.’

She ignored his glance. ‘You exaggerate.’

‘In the morning, you cannot ride a horse. At lunch, you watch me ride. In the afternoon, you can ride. At supper, you see me performing tricks. By nightfall, those tricks are yours.’

‘You exaggerate,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t do your tricks.’

‘No tricks today. Unless you call your eagle eyes a trick.’

‘Your friends suspect me of collusion with the authorities.’

‘When it comes to it, they suspect everyone. Don’t speak of it.’ He added, peevishly, ‘They’re your friends, too.’

Saskia watched the threads of chimney smoke. She could stop this. She could ruin the robbery and destroy the promising career of Joseph Stalin. There would be nothing left for him but exile from the Party—if he was lucky. More likely, someone would come for him. A trusted man like Kamo, for example, could get close enough to carry out the orders, reluctantly signed no doubt, of that man waiting in the north, of Lenin. But whereas her spirit had felt fully shackled to her body in the Amber Room of the Second World War, and during her first meeting with Stalin, she now felt like a ghostly passenger.

‘Do you still have your dreams?’

‘Which dreams?’

‘When we first met, you told me that you could remember a time before you walked out of the east, but that you did not trust those memories. They came to you in dreams: lighter-than-air machines, panaceas, food in abundance.’

Saskia rubbed the shoulder of her horse. Yes, she remembered those dreams. Their edges had cut her and the blood was sanity. She had denied herself as a protective measure. She had untied the knot of 2023 and let it float away. The blank slate of her mind had been set for ideas: Marxism, brigandage, the very drive to change the world.

She saw a distant, turning worm of dust, larger than the others on that busy highway, and outpacing them.

‘It’s time.’

‘How fast?’ Kamo gasped.

‘It’s difficult to tell.’

‘You said you’d be able to tell.’ Kamo leaned forward, but the movement disturbed an unseen wound in his neck. He hissed. ‘Fuck my carelessness.’

‘It’s difficult to see,’ she said, holding her voice low. ‘We have ten minutes. Maybe longer, if they slow.’

‘They won’t slow. How many?’

Saskia concentrated on the black dot. She felt an expansion of the percept, though she saw no magnification. There were two Cossack guards in front of the stagecoach and two behind. Another two galloped alongside. She saw a rifle inside the carriage, and at once she understood that there was a soldier inside, along with the cashier, Kurdyumov, and the accountant, Golovnya.

‘As many as we thought.’

‘Make the signal.’

Saskia withdrew the Circassian sabre and held it high. She caught the sun on the blade once, twice, three times.

‘Well?’ asked Kamo. ‘Did they see it?’

‘There’s nobody on the roof of the palace.’

‘What? Damn him, the traitor. Give me the sabre. I’ll make the signal. Go.’

Saskia spurred her horse down into the switchbacks. Grit and scree loosened beneath the hooves but the steady warmblood had her trust and soon they entered a rhythm where her balance spoke to the animal. Moments came when she almost fell from the saddle, but she relaxed, with a sure concentration, and the rapport was re-established. The heat grew as they descended. Sweat ran into her corset and rubbed her forehead raw beneath her plumed cavalry hat.

As the slopes flattened, she entered the city through washing lines and fields. Then she was into the streets. The crannies and turns were foetid with spice, urine, horse shit and dust. Its people were, too, a Caucasian miscellany of Georgian, Russian, Armenian and Azeri. Saskia still labelling. Still counting like the doomed accountant Golovnya.

Saskia pulled the horse through a corner and trotted down Golovinsky Avenue. There were gendarmes and militiamen on every corner. They knew something was afoot. Saskia kept her back straight. Her jaw twisted a little to the left. She rode with the airs of a captain to suit her stolen clothes and her glued sideburns. Outside the opera house, Patsia Goldava stopped the horse and twirled, girlishly, a parasol. Saskia saw that her parasol was open. It was a signal: Nothing yet. Saskia corrected her by touching her cap.

‘They’re coming?’ Patsia whispered, shocked.

Saskia grimaced at her stupidity. Within hearing distance were four blue-uniformed gendarmes and a Cossack. Saskia gunned the horse and passed Patsia before the girl could apologise and double her mistake.

Yerevan Square, which Soso had indicated to her on that first day, was a sun-beaten flatness spotted with water carriers, carts, prostitutes, and lazy men watching the world. Saskia noticed Cossacks and gendarmes looking out from the protection of the Caravanserai, whose shadows cut deep in the bright sunlight. Beside them, some urchins were playing rough-and-tumble in the dust. She recognised them as Soso’s message carriers. She had seen them only that morning outside the Adamia tavern, as, inside, Kamo repeated the plan to his crew of roofless princes, the poor, the adventurous, and the political: the Outfit.

She glanced back to the Military Headquarters. Patsia Goldava had joined with Anneta Sulakvelidze and they made a pretty pair. Both had parasols. Both carried Mauser pistols, hidden.

In moments, the square would become a scene of turbulence, noise and blood. Saskia could not take a full breath because of the corset. She focused on a young woman crossing the square. Her expensive dress suggested that she was the wife of one of the army officers. Behind her stumbled a crying child. Saskia wondered what the

(10:32 and eight seconds)

time was and she stood high and

(nine)

could see the roof of Prince Subatov’s palace and, leaning on the balcony rail, the poet Soselo—or the Milkman, or the Pockmarked One, or Joe Pox, or Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili—who was not yet calling himself Stalin as far as Saskia could tell. Had he seen the signal? Was Kamo still brandishing the sword? There Soso stood like a man set to deliver a monologue over the coming sorrows.

At the corner of the square, Bachua Kupriashvili folded his copy of the Georgia Arrow. That was signal that the stagecoach had been sighted. When it approached, he would lower the newspaper. Saskia trotted towards the street that led to the square. There were too many people. They would be trampled when the stagecoach came. Water-carriers rested near the gutter covers. A white-robed trainee priest crossed the street eating bread. Saskia growled at Kupriashvili. It was his job to limit civilian casualties. She drew a pistol and fired it at the sky.

‘In the name of the Tsar, clear the street!’

Her scream—highly pitched for a cavalry captain—was met with indifference by the citizens of Tiflis. Only the gendarmes and policeman—and the members of the Outfit who marked them—looked at her. Those in the Outfit did not care to hear her instructions. She was just the Prussian favoured by Soso. They had seen Bachua Kupriashvili fold his newspaper, and they were set to liberate a good deal of money.

She pulled her horse into a rear and fired another shot.

‘Clear the square!’

She looked at Kupriashvili.

He lowered his newspaper.

So she dug into the horse and trotted along the boulevard, scattering the people. They shouted and cursed. A young man reached for her reins but she kicked him aside. A great rumbling sound rushed to her ears and, before she could rollback the horse, the convoy roared into the square. Two Cossacks made the vanguard. Then came the carriages. The first contained the state cashier and accountant. The second bore policemen and soldiers. Last, two Cossacks formed the rear. Saskia shared a look with the nearest Cossack through the dust. He looked at her hair and her uniform and her chest. She spurred her horse after them.

As the carriages began their turn into Sololaki Street, Saskia looked for Soso on the rooftop of Prince Subatov’s mansion. Now. He threw a fist-sized object that scudded across the square, a perfect lob, through the spokes of the first carriage, where it rolled and exploded with a punch that Saskia felt through her horse and in her chest. At once, there was a cloud in Yerevan Square. Before it could clear, Anneta Sulakvelidze ran past Saskia, pulled the fuse on her own grenade, and tossed it, too, under the carriages. It detonated with the same simple thunder. Three more, from three nameless men, followed it.

Saskia looked at a Cossack who slid towards her through the murk. He had no legs. Her horse backed away.

She counted each of the bombs and reached ten before her horse lost its calm and shrugged her off. She fell onto wooden splinters and bent nails. Rolling, she stood and pulled the bows on her coat and let it fall open to her pistol. She approached the hopeless Cossack. He nodded for the bullet and she put it through his head.

Sand was falling from the sky. The cloud began to disperse. She walked in a circle. Where was her horse?

Her left shoulder-board disappeared in a puff of fabric. Saskia turned and shot a rooftop policeman through the arm. Then she walked through the dust, spitting it and still deaf, and alternated fire into the three maimed Cossacks. The first carriage had lost its windows and its shape. Its horses were gutted and still. She shot them. In the second carriage, all the soldiers and policeman were dead. They had exploded where they sat.

A footman walked around the edge of the carriage. Saskia did not kill him but Kupriashvili dropped him with an executioner’s shot to the ear and shouted at Saskia, but she could not hear him.

He was pointing behind her.

She turned to see the first carriage—and the money—disappearing down the hill to the Soldiers’ Bazaar. How? The horse had lost its belly and carried one of Saskia’s bullets in its head. She aimed another shot at its flank but the eager crew of the Outfit, tantalised by the money satchels, danced after it and spoiled the shot.

Saskia ran to her horse. Short moments remained until the soldiers and gendarmes posted around Tiflis converged on the square. Her horse refused to move smartly through the debris until she kicked it on. Kupriashvili overtook her at a sprint. She saw him reach the carriage. He was too close to toss his bomb but he did. The explosion threw him against a railing and injured several crouched bystanders. The gut-blown horse toppled and the carriage trundled into the wall of a saloon, where it stopped. Kupriashvili rolled on the cobbles, screaming, holding his ears, calling for Saskia as she now cantered past him.

Datiko Chibriashvili jumped into the rear of the carriage and lifted a money bag. He paused. Stared at Saskia. Police whistles carried through the air. Rifles were being fired in the pattern that called all gendarmes and militiamen to arms.

Chibriashvili said, ‘What shall I do with this?’

Saskia’s reply was interrupted by a familiar voice from the square behind her. She turned to see Kamo circling the smoky, ruined carriage in a stolen phaeton. He held the reins in his left hand and, with his right, emphasised his shouts with shots from a Mauser.

‘Here!’ she called.

The phaeton almost toppled as Kamo swung into the street. He clattered to a halt next to Saskia. His horses nodded against their harnesses.

‘To me,’ he said.

Saskia jumped into the carriage and helped Datiko fling the satchels at Kamo. Each was half the size of a man. Kamo fired his Mauser at approaching militiamen and Saskia landed aboard, pushing Kamo so she could sit alongside him on the driver’s bench and they cantered away. The gendarmes shot at them but their bullets told and the sun was brighter and Kamo told Saskia that he loved her, even with the whiskers.

She smiled.

They took the first street at a canter and the second at a trot. She hid her face as they passed the Viceroy’s Palace. Cossacks were mounting their horses and turning under conflicting orders barked by their commanders. The Deputy Police Chief, Balabansky, stared at Kamo and raised his gun, but Saskia, remembering her role of cavalry captain, pointed to the insignia on her shoulder and shouted, gruffly, ‘The money is safe! Secure the square!’

The Police Chief paused. Then he waved them through.

He will regret that. In a few days, he will shoot himself through the heart.

Kamo drove to the joiner’s yard on Vtoraya Goncharnaya Street. The old woman who owned the yard, Babe Bochoridze, closed the gate and called to the gendarme across the street that it was over. Captain Zubov nodded and walked away without firing a shot. He was due a share of the spoils.

In the darkness of the stall, Kamo took Saskia’s hand and kissed it.

~

They forced themselves to eat a small lunch. Shots and fire bells could still be heard. Later, she walked through a house and swapped hats with Patsia Goldava. She crossed the street by hopping a small gap between one second-floor window and the next; accepted a cloak from the sombre Kupriashvili, and two kisses of congratulation; and re-emerged on the steep cobbles without the agents on her tail, still moving, always moving.

~

At midnight, she joined Kamo in the house of Bochoridze and his wife, Maro. The three were sewing the stolen money into a mattress. She led Kamo to the Kura and they both washed. It was icy and good and reminded Kamo of the high mountains. His wounded eye wept and she covered it with a palm and shushed him. When they returned to the house, Bochoridze and his wife did not look up. Revolutionaries might die now or later. They took the mattress to the high, quiet observatory where Soso had once worked and laid it on the couch of the director. Then the dawn came from the tops of the mountains down.

~

Saskia found a samovar in the kitchen of the Tiflis Physical Observatory and made coffee. She wore a skirt and a loose blouse. Her clothes would shock, but the observatory was unstaffed. The Director and his students had been paid off. The coffee was syrupy and black. She put a covered cup next to Kamo—he had slept on the money mattress, and still dozed—and walked onto the balcony. There she stood at the overlook in the few, short hours of cold before the heat came with the brightening sun and confined climate of Tiflis.

She took a full breath of Caucasia. The bare mountains were cut by the Kura, which in turn divided the city. She was too far to see individuals without concentrating. She considered Yerevan Square, the gardens, the handsome bridges and the cathedrals. One of the cathedrals was Armenian. A steam engine slid into the city. It was bound for Baku on the Caspian. Already, the striking of anvils had begun. Plate, guns, swords: easy births each one.

When Soso arrived, she did not hear him. She hardly felt his lips when he kissed her cheeks and called her his brave Lynx.

‘You’ll miss your train to Baku,’ she said.

Soso leaned on the balcony rail and looked down. He was dressed for travel. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No. How is everyone?’

‘They are well.’

‘And the civilians?’

Soso removed his Fedora and knocked its brim against the edge of the rail. It might have been a signal. His feline, amber eyes turned on her.

‘A wise man said that public opinion has the same importance for the authorities as a topographical map has for an army commander. We have ceded some ground, nothing more, but have extended the reach of the Party.’

Saskia looked at him. Extended the reach? It would buy some bribes and support the trinity of inventions that had so catalysed revolutionaries around the world: the high-speed printing press, rail travel, and dynamite. The dead people in the square could hardly be worth that.

There was no direct challenge in her eyes, but Soso would not fail to perceive her mood. Abruptly, he smiled, and said, ‘Kamo tells me that you cannot die.’

‘That’s foolish.’

‘But you told him.’

‘I was joking.’

‘Tell me the story.’

‘I will not.’

Soso shrugged. ‘Perhaps you have a destiny.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ she said, though the remark turned her cold. ‘That’s an empty statement.’

‘You are an intelligent women. We can discuss destiny.’

With an ironic smile, she said, ‘You first.’

He gestured towards the grey mountains in the north-west. ‘I was born in Gori. Have you been there? It is a superstitious, backward place. Once a year, the smiths strike their anvils deep into the night. This prevents Amiran from descending to the village from his mountain.’

‘Who is Amiran?’

Soso cleared his throat. For the first time since she had known him, he appeared uncomfortable.

‘My father. Let me tell you about him. He was a drunkard who beat me every day and opposed my induction in the seminary. He hated me. He did not care that I was first in my class of rich kids. He beat my mother as much as me. When he left Gori, however, the lesson was learned. She assumed the role of beater and bruised me from head to foot.’

Saskia said, ‘The Russian verb “to beat” sometimes means “to educate”, comrade.’

‘I want to change the subject. Did you read my pamphlet on Darwin and Marx?’

‘Actually, I have,’ she said. It would not do to antagonise the Boss, but her direct involvement in the heist had given her a distaste for his wordy, poetic abstractions. ‘I’m surprised you see them as compatible.’

‘Why not? Remember Linnaeus, who wrote, “Nature does not make leaps”. Darwin has inked over the pencil sketches of Linnaeus. For him, the process of our development from the simple ancestor to our current form is one of gradual realisation.’

‘Adaptation,’ said Saskia, ‘not improvement. There is no distant ideal for an evolutionary process. There is only the random variation of present generation and the non-random method of its selection.’

‘That is beside the point. Darwin saw the process as gradual, despite the gaps in the fossil record. It could equally be true, however, that those gaps are not merely the absence of gradual development, but evidence of great leaps.’

‘You are forgetting Linnaeus.’

Excitedly, he said, ‘But what if there come moments of rapid change?’

‘Revolution, not evolution?’ Saskia sipped her coffee. ‘That sounds rather like the theory of punctuated equilibria. Flim-flam, comrade.’

‘But you agree that the evidence currently fits both interpretations.’

‘Currently. Now what of Marx?’

‘Marx?’ He opened his arms to the view. ‘Nothing less than everything. A change in the quality of things from one instant to the next. A lost equilibrium, to use your phrase, and the collapse of the world order. You disagree?’

Saskia did not look away from the smoky rooftops.

‘Does that make revolution a natural consequence?’

‘Plato teaches us that natural government cannot be democratic, because the crowd is a mob, and a mob is unthinking. And yet when we consider non-democratic alternatives, the issues become equally intractable. Who is selected to govern? Why? And who does the selecting? You, Lynx? Me?’

‘You have not answered my question.’ She added, quietly, ‘And you can read what you like in Plato.’

‘Do you know why Plato was so-named?’

‘Of course,’ Saskia said. She was tiring of his fervour. ‘He was a strong sportsman with an admired musculature.’

‘There is always a dialogue between strength and knowledge.’

‘Would it be simplistic to say that all the meanings of strength are linked to all meanings of knowledge?’

‘How like Socrates you are, Lynx. Ready to question an idea but slow to answer with your own.’ Soso shook his head. ‘There is always a dialogue. I tell you, it will take a strong man to rise above the trappings of the sheep and assume the role of shepherd.’

‘Who will that be? You?’

‘No,’ said Soso, laughing. ‘Other men. Like my friend in the north. He is the superman.’

Saskia sighed. ‘Do you remember what I replied when you first asked me about the Tsar?’

‘Word for word,’ said Soso. ‘“Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes”. From the Frenchman, Camus, whose work I will seek out presently.’

‘What do you say to it?’

‘I refer you to Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman’. In that story, a cleric, suffering a state of aberration, believes himself to be the King of Spain. That is the fate of all megalomaniacs.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The superman must remain of the people. He must place them first in his thoughts. Even if he is to rise above their pettiness and compel them towards actions they find disagreeable. He must stand on their shoulders.’

Twenty-five million people will die beneath his boots, she thought. Saskia looked over the rail. The first rocks were sixty feet below. She considered whether she should kill this man. It would be her first true murder. She had shot Cossacks the day before, but they were maimed and dying: that was euthanasia, a topic on which Plato was not silent.

And yet there was a particular future. She had seen it. Stalin would stand while his contemporaries fell. He would inherit the revolution. How could she stop him? He was as immortal as she was. Nothing could touch him.

Soso smiled. ‘It is a long way down.’

Saskia said nothing.

‘Does it bother you? Your wrist?’

‘No.’

‘Poor Lynx. I, of course, can’t move my left arm at the elbow.’

‘Small world.’

They sipped their coffees. A vulture turned in a thermal.

‘One Epiphany in Gori many years ago,’ said Soso, calm once more, ‘there was a great commotion. Mourners entered the village carrying the body of a young boy. People came to stare on Tsarskaya Street. The women muttered that there was a curse on Ekaterina Geladze, who had now lost her boy as well as her husband. Friends of the boy gathered. ‘What happened?’ was the question. Well, they replied, the dead boy had been hit by a runaway phaeton over at the main bridge. Look at his matted, bloodied hair and his pale skin!

‘As the procession reached the house of the dead boy, his mother ran out. She was wailing. She picked up the boy and screamed at him. She wept with lost love. But at her tears, which fell upon his cold face, the dead boy woke up. Though he never regained the full use of his arm, he lived.’

‘That’s quite a story.’

‘Now do you see, Lynx? You cannot kill me.’

Saskia frowned at him. Her fingers dug into the coffee cup. She decided to replace her serious expression with a smile. ‘Your jokes sometimes escape me.’

Soso looked behind her.

She turned as Kamo swung the samovar. It struck her forehead with an absurd, gong-like sound. Blood ran into her eyes and she raised her hand to clear it. Soso and Kamo took a leg each. Saskia twisted but she had no purchase.

I cannot die.

‘Sorry,’ said Kamo, as she was flipped.

She screamed long enough to empty her lungs.

If I can die, then he can die too.

Before she could draw air again, her body struck the rocks and shattered.

Chapter Twenty-Six

There is a realm, perhaps only imagined, of many Amber Rooms. Their walls are translucent. Through them, Saskia can see the outlines of still more Amber Rooms, overlapping into infinity. This place is a great building of buildings: a matrix whose Amber Rooms are connected by enfilades in six directions. Saskia is not a person here. Instead, she is a wisp that threads these enfilades. She knows that each Amber Room is a world. On its walls are not allegories of touch, smell, and vision but windows upon landscapes, dreams, and meaning.

This is not a museum, or a mausoleum, or an ark. Its proper word does not exist in any of the human languages that Saskia knows. This place is an equation. Certainly, it holds the beauty of an equation and the unfolding power of permutation.

A permutation might be the collective noun for this building of buildings.

Saskia appears to be alone, but there is another, unnamed something that speaks to her. Curator is not the word; neither is ghost. But it has no substance and it has all knowledge. It has told her that each Amber Room protects—or grips, or preserves, or marks the boundaries of—a reality.

She drifts on. The instants pass like the erosion of mountains. Millennia might fit between her blinks. Her thoughts are yoked to this slow time, however, and she feels no difference in her being, apart from a distant worry that she has become separated from what it means to be human.

The tour continues.

In one Amber Room, Saskia Brandt was born with fair hair. There are six exits here: the four walls, as well as the floor and ceiling. If Saskia were to float upwards and continue through the infinite suite, those other Saskia Brandts would be born with fairer and fairer hair. If Saskia were to float down, the hair of those others would darken.

Everything is here.

If this is not an ark, or a museum, or a tomb for reality, what can it be?

She drifts towards one of the small pictures, surrounded by a broken paving of amber. The artist has rendered a pastoral scene of the steppe. Close, the chimney of a farmhouse grows a lock of smoke. Its flat roof is loaded with fodder. Winter is close. On a far crag, a wolf in silhouette pulls back to howl. How distant is the tang of the Caspian? In this scene, the air would be dry. The poplar leaves are butter-coloured. They are falling in concert with a particular music known only to those who live season to season.

On the steppe, Saskia thinks, as she floats in a slow barrel turn, there is time to spare.

The wolf has been rendered mid-howl. Saskia thinks of the elements of this vast, uncountable world. She cannot know them all. She cannot predict them. It is this thought that conjures movement in the image of the steppe and the immensity of its time, small rivers, caravans of traders on battered pathways.

In the grass, there is a mark no more detailed than the brush-tick that represents a nameless bird in the middle distance.

But Saskia knows it is her body lying there.

When she opens her eyes, she understands that the floor is not grass but a parquet of exotic woods, and all her memories of these infinite Amber Rooms are taken from her, not unkindly, by something that is neither creator nor ghost.

~

When Saskia opened her eyes, she was once again in the Amber Room. She must have fallen on the floor. Her cheek throbbed and the base of her skull hurt, but she was otherwise uninjured. Her body recorded nothing of her fall from the balcony of the physical observatory. It was a memory. But she had no doubt that the memory was real. That Saskia had been murdered; somewhere, her body lay broken on rocks.

Slowly, Saskia gathered her skirt and stood. The room was empty. Its windows showed a night sky over the square and the palace was quiet. Her yellow-tinted glasses were crooked on her nose, and she could discern no use for them in this candle-lit chamber with its spells of darkness and sudden light, so she removed them and tucked them into her collar. The model of Frederick the Great had been pushed over and split in two. She peered into its base, which was hollow and large enough to conceal a man.

Like the room, it was empty.

She examined her reflection in one of the mirrors near the door to the staircase. The woman there was familiar, even down to the black scarf and sensible blouse. Gone was the ostentatious Allegory of the Future. She had seen this outfit before, when entering the room for the first time. She had become that reflection. This was not the reality she had left. This was a parallel version.

In the fragments of wood near the base of the model statue was a business card. Saskia crouched to take it. The card had the appearance of a business card but was too heavy and its surface rather smooth. The typeface was unusual.

It read:

Ms Tucholsky, Tutor

Mathematics; English; Physical Education

References upon request

Messages received at Hotel de l’Europe, Nevsky Avenue and Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa

The card grew hot beneath her thumb. She dropped it. A black outline of her thumbprint lingered on the surface, then vanished. The words on the card scrolled aside. An icon of a clock face appeared and its hands raced clockwise.

She smiled.

The icon disappeared.

‘Saskia,’ said the card, ‘I am back.’

His voice tantalised her with a release from the loneliness that only a taste of her own time, the twenty-first century, could bring. She put the card to her lips and closed her eyes.

‘Ego,’ she said. ‘My old friend.’

‘Saskia, we have just experienced an entanglement event. It forced my shutdown and might have caused you dizziness or loss of consciousness.’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Before we discuss the matter, I must report that there are two men approaching from the main staircase. You need to leave the palace directly. I suggest using the Private Apartments of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna.’

Saskia unbuttoned her collar and tucked Ego into her bosom. She hurried towards the door set in the wall adjacent to the enfilade. She grasped the handle but the door would not open. Before she could force the lock, the door to the enfilade opened behind her. She skipped across the room and concealed herself in its lee.

‘… something inside,’ said a man, perhaps the junior of the two. They had stopped on the threshold.

‘Has the alarm been raised?’ said the other. His voice was at once familiar and strange. Saskia was standing with her back to the mirror. She tilted her head to the right, hoping to glimpse the men without revealing her presence.

‘I believe so,’ said the junior.

‘You believe so?’ The senior’s voice had cooled. It became less familiar. Saskia could not yet see him and did not dare move any further. ‘Why don’t you go and check?’

‘Yes, sir.’

She listened to the fading footsteps of the junior guard, which were accompanied by the soft rattle of armour. There was no sound from the senior guard other than an impatient sigh expelled through the nose. Saskia leaned over again, but the mirror was too small to reveal the man. Why was he waiting in the doorway? Did he see her? Her cheek throbbed. A dull ache grew at the back of her head; to be sure, someone had struck her there. The injuries to her cheek and the base of her skull were the only impressions, in the absence of memory, that she could use to reconstruct the moments before becoming aware in this version of the Amber Room. What had Ego meant by an entanglement event?

A flash lit the room. Her first thought was fireworks. The afterglow, however, was white and unaccompanied by the sighs of spectators. She turned towards the mirror on the adjacent wall. By tilting, she could see the reflection of the window that overlooked the square. She demanded answers from her vision and the slice of night reflected there swelled to a grey rectangle flickering with false positive shapes. Within the shapes were two constants: bold lines that described two horses, each with a rider, and all lit in the magnesium of a signal flare. Soso and Kamo were cantering into the night. As Saskia looked, Kamo’s horse tipped into a perfect levade. There was a bundle slung across the withers. This had to be the first Imperial Mail satchel from the Tiflis heist. The other satchel would be draped across Soso’s horse, which was now too far away to discern.

Saskia thought once more about the events of the evening, here, prior to her arrival. She constructed a likely version: The satchels had been hidden inside the base of the statue. Soso, Kamo and Saskia had gained entry to the Amber Room; the statue had been overturned; Saskia had been knocked unconscious, and her two companions had escaped. And yet it was not certain she had been a companion. She might have intercepted the pair and tried to stop them. In another scenario, she was a hostage.

Saskia reduced the intensity of her vision. Her perceptual world shrank once more to the confines of the Amber Room. She tensed to see the back of the senior guard—a Hussar. He was crouching, oblivious to her, at the base of the overturned model. The candlelight created pools of shade. Saskia moved through these until she was behind the man. As she shifted her weight to her right leg and coiled her left, ready to kick his neck in the unprotected gap between his helmet and his back, he turned.

‘Fuck,’ she said.

‘Ms Tucholsky?’

‘Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov.’

She dropped the leg and stood up straight.

This Pasha was taller than the Pasha she had failed in the original Amber Room. But of all the Amber Rooms, and all the people she might meet in them, why Pasha, here? He wore the full uniform of a Hussar of the Imperial Guard: a white, dolman jacket with gold piping, sable epaulettes, and a bearskin helmet. His whiskers, however, were too thin to complete the impression of masculinity.

‘You’re a Hussar,’ she said. There was pride in her voice.

‘And you are under arrest,’ he said coldly.

Saskia put her hands to his cheeks and kissed him three times. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’ She kissed his shocked face again, thinking of the dead boy. ‘So glad.’

‘What are you doing?’ he said, taking her wrists.

Saskia stared at her hands as Pasha removed them from his cheeks. She looked at the veins and the sudden bumps of her tendons as she rippled her fingers.

‘Ms Tucholsky, you will come with me.’

She ignored him. She made fists, then put her palms together in prayer, watching the whiteness where the fingers pressed. Pasha did not release her.

‘Ms Tucholsky?’

‘My hands,’ she whispered. ‘How could I not notice until now?’

‘Never mind your hands. Ms Tucholsky, there has been a breakin at the palace this evening and we must account for your presence.’

Saskia decided that her hands were perfect in their symmetry. She looked for the long-forgotten mole on the palm of the left one, not far from the life line. It was there. As, for this body, it had always been.

Pasha took her upper arm. He leaned into her vision and said, ‘Enough. My corporal witnessed you enter the palace along with two men. Clearly, the three of you quarrelled. They abandoned you here and escaped with stolen property. I was surprised to see you, but when I consider the events of the last few months, everything makes sense.’

‘Which events?’

Pasha gave her a disappointed look. He turned towards the door and pulled her arm. ‘You will come along.’

Saskia considered him. He was off-balance and tense. She fell into step as he walked her. At the door to the enfilade, she barged him with her hip. Pasha was heavier but she had tuned her movement to precision, and she had the surprise. He stumbled and released her arm. She watched him turn back—his mouth twisting down in irritation—and she lifted her forearm, which provided an unconscious cue to grip her wrist. He did so. Saskia trapped his hand against her wrist and, using the remainder of his turning energy, and a little of her own, steered his arm in a windmilling action. Pasha’s elbow rose until his hand had passed over his head and come to rest against his shoulder-blade. He gasped and teetered on the balls of his feet. His cheek was against the door jamb.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Quiet, Pasha.’

Still holding him, Saskia sniffed the fingertips of her left hand once more. She had it: Guerlain’s fragrance Mouchoir de Monsieur, favoured by Count Nakhimov.

‘Don’t call me Pasha.’

‘Where is your weapon?’ she asked.

‘It is within the armoury, woman,’ he whispered, as though embarrassed. ‘Where else?’

‘Get it. Then come with me.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Your father is in danger.’

He stopped struggling. ‘Danger? What do you know?’

‘I was with him this evening. He helped organise the breakin.’

Pasha stopped struggling. He regarded her with total horror. In that moment, as he looked at her blank expression, and she watched him, each understood that Saskia had told the truth. It had been a weighted guess on her part. For him, she reasoned, it resolved certain ambiguities in his father’s behaviour, or spoke to a truth that he had always known.

‘I will tell you everything,’ she said, ‘but only if you arrange my immediate escape from the palace.’

‘Father is truly in danger?’

‘He is.’

~

Saskia was crouching in the shadow of a staircase on the side of the palace that faced the square. Between the chimes of countless clocks, which reached her through the windows above, she heard the calls and footfalls of palace staff and, beyond them, the greater confusion of the night: shouts, horses at a trot, and alarm bells. It would not take long to mobilise the troops in the barracks around the Tsar’s Village. In the meantime, police carriages had stopped at the main entrance to the palace, and its other entrances, to deploy uniformed and plain-clothes men. The confusion did not diminish. Lanterns were dropped and subordinates cursed. Saskia caught rumours of a full-scale social revolutionary attack on the palace; of chemical gas released into the Grand Enfilade by crack German troops; of an explosion within the Amber Room itself, melting the resin to burning pools. In the blackness next to the external staircase, Saskia listened to the night and its signatures. Meanwhile, she continued her whispered conversation with Ego, which was itself a confusion: the computer did not trust her and would not speak plainly in answer to her questions.

Those questions were gears that ground teeth-in-teeth. Why could Ego not talk directly to her brain, as it had done before? Another guess: because her mind was different; the encryption was undone. Why had the time band sent her to different versions of the Amber Room instead of moving her through time? Because she had been a fool to assume that the countdown had been sent by a friend. Why wasn’t she wearing the band now? Because this Saskia had not used it to travel in time; or the revolutionaries had stolen it.

‘The date,’ she said. ‘At least tell me that.’

‘I must repeat that I will provide as much help as I can, consistent with my confidence in your identity. To help you fully would constitute a risk to the mission. At present, I cannot be sure that you are Saskia Brandt.’

‘I am certainly Saskia Brandt,’ she whispered. ‘My problem is that I am one of many.’

‘The connectome of the neural network is quite different, taking the standpoint of a Euclidean distance metric, from the identifying connectome of your network that I sampled earlier this evening. In short, you are not Saskia.’

In the quietness, Saskia tried to work through the implications of her voyaging mind. She could not. Though her knowledge of physics was thorough, no theory, from 2023 or before, could explain how a malfunction in the dark band would usher her through a brief series of experiences: the soldier in the Amber Room from World War Two; the flight deck of DF323; and her time in Tiflis.

What did those moments have in common? What was there to learn? In each, Saskia had felt a growing sense of control. She had lost her sense of futility. If each moment was drawn from a universe parallel to her own—that was, a universe in which she did not come to save David Proctor—then she was freed from the bounds of her paradox. The future of that alternative universe would be unknown to her. She could have choice. Since her first experience of time travel, her will had struggled beneath the weight of the notion that certain effects had occurred; it was her duty to speak her line at the place and hour appointed.

What if the malfunctioning band had freed her from that constraint? She could act. She could do good and claim the goodness.

A second thought cooled her excitement: if she had no choice in her original universe, who said she had choice in this one? Its future must still be constrained by its past. The difference, if one existed, was that its future was inscrutable.

‘Ego, the quantum entanglement event you spoke of earlier coincided with my awareness that I had transferred to this universe. Isn’t it possible that the quantum event and this transfer are linked?’

‘Put your glasses on.’

Frowning, Saskia took the tinted glasses from her collar. Their frames were thin and the arms tipped with ivory. She put them on and her world became yellow. Shapes were immediately clearer as though the dawn had risen.

‘I’m wearing them,’ she said. ‘Now what?’

‘You will find the technology useful.’

Saskia remembered wearing smart glasses during her first investigation for the FIB. They had responded to her blinks.

She blinked twice. Nothing happened. She tried a slow, single blink. When she opened her eyes, geometric shapes and text filled her vision. The overlap was stable on the real world. It did not move with her eyes. The geometric shapes looked like those triangles and dashes that were painted on runways to help pilots judge distance and speed. The shapes painted the side of the Summer Palace and the frontage visible between her and the far wall of the square. Other polygons targeted objects: trees, doors, and people. Beneath these polygons were trivial data, such as the genus of the tree, but also more important information such as whether a door was locked, and whether a soldier was moving away or towards her. As Saskia looked around this blazing constellation of information, the shapes and text juddered to match the scene. There was a date floating near the corner of her eye. As she struggled to focus on it, the date grew larger: 1st January, 1970.

‘A useful technology,’ she said, ‘but crude in comparison to i-Core.’

‘What is i-Core?’

‘A nanotechnology that infests my blood. It repairs me and works for my benefit—or perhaps its own. At the moment, these benefits amount to the same thing.’

‘I am not aware of any technology by that name.’

‘Were these glasses provided by the Foderative Investigationsburo? In this universe, do I still work for them?’

Again, Ego said nothing.

‘Ego,’ she said, ‘given my behaviour and the quantum event, don’t you agree that there is a chance I’m telling the truth?’

‘Every possibility has an associated probability.’

‘Ego, please. Let’s start with the date. My glasses tell me it is January, 1970. I don’t believe that.’

‘In all likelihood, the quantum event has reset their fastware. The same thing almost happened to me.’ Ego paused for the length of a human sigh, but no sound came from the little card. ‘Look for the constellation Cepheus. Face north. Look directly up and a little to the east. Do you see it?’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘Within Cepheus, we find the Mu Cephei, a runaway star with a peculiar velocity of approximately eighty kilometres per second. Your lenses can use the relative position of this star against its neighbours to calculate the date.’

The portion of sky acquired a yellow rectangle. It throbbed once, turned green, and the superimposed date changed to 23rd May, 1908. Exactly the same date as the masked ball.

‘It worked. Thank you.’

‘My Saskia,’ said Ego, ‘let’s call her Saskia Beta, never thanked me.’

‘Ego, meet Saskia Alpha. Thanks.’

She blinked hard. The heads-up display faded to a ghost, then was gone. She took a long breath and raised her scarf until it covered the bridge of her nose. Tying it behind her head, she touched a tender spot, where there was a swelling. She was frustrated by the absence of any memory for this life, this body, but she had two hands. She felt doubly powerful. No longer did she need clever combinations of her teeth and right hand to conduct the basics of her life: dressing, eating. She remembered an incident two years before, when she had wept at the close of a theatre play. Kamo had been with her. He asked why such a jolly production should leave her in tears. The truth was that, while she anticipated and steeled herself against those moments when the absence of her hand would sting her, she had not concerned herself with the habit of applause. She could not clap. Ever again.

Saskia looked at her hands. She gathered her skirt at the knees and wound its edge into a knot. She tucked her glasses into her bosom. This dash—to fit within the circuit of the guard at the north-east entrance—would be a useful test of the fitness of this body.

She took a breath, held it, took another, and sprinted across the facade of the Great Palace. She relaxed as her legs extended and her arms swung. This body was fit. She was faster with two hands. Perhaps it was the balancing effect. Her stride length increased and she flew on her toes until her speed was ten metres per second. Whatever this version of Saskia had done so far in life, she had maintained her fitness. Window after window of the palace telescoped by. Fast enough. She slowed as she reached the chapel and looked for the guard, who was pacing less than fifty metres away. She focused on him. She broke down to a jog. Her long strides fell on the gravel in perfect synchrony with his. At the outer wall, the hoof-falls and wheel scrapes of the road covered her movements, and as the guard turned the corner, she skipped into shadow.

The magnificent outer gate was locked.

She looked at the wall. There were thin grooves in the cladding and a chimney gap between the chapel and the outer wall. She took a breath and dropped her shoulders and dashed into the gap. Her right foot kicked against the outer wall and she surged upward. She twisted, scuffed against the chapel wall, twisted again, and gripped the ledge of the outer wall. She paused to check the progress of the guard. He had not heard her.

She tumbled over the wall and landed on all fours next to a fine horse. After brushing the grit from her palms, she checked that Ego and the glasses were still in place. Pasha was holding the horse. He looked at her with a sour expression.

‘It’s been a while since I saw your acrobatics. You could teach my men a thing or two.’

‘Did you telephone ahead?’

‘Yes. There was no answer.’

‘Do you trust me?’

He slid a travelling cloak from the horse.

‘Put this on,’ he said, shaking it. ‘Quickly.’

Saskia allowed him to put the cloak across her shoulders. It was heavy, black velvet with a hood. She inclined her head and put her hand over his. ‘Then you trust me.’

‘I do not, Ms Tucholsky.’

~

Saskia sat opposite Pasha in their train compartment as they entered St Petersburg. She was counting her radial pulse. For the duration of the journey, it had not peaked above forty-five beats per minute. That satisfied her. She used the steady wash of blood to discipline her thoughts. Her mind turned to the day when she had taken Pasha—that is, she thought, Pasha Alpha—to the Tsar’s Village. Her escape through the Amber Room had seemed so trivial in prospect that she had considered it done. How horrifying that Kamo had appeared to ruin the day. She remembered the fight, the pain, and the dash from the Summer Palace. How much of this overlapped with the reality where Pasha Beta had become a Hussar? She needed to find out. But Pasha had been as reluctant as Ego to answer her questions, and now that the train was drawing close to St Petersburg, she feared that the pace of events would accelerate beyond her capacity to react rationally. She made an explicit promise to herself that she should exploit this opportunity. Her voyaging mind had taken her to a reality whose future was perhaps undetermined. She would do here what she could not do in her own reality: undo the work of Soso. She must stop him from becoming the man to conduct monologues over Russian sorrows. Her years-long goal—that of a return to the future, to 2023—would come second to this.

She tried to inventory her disadvantages: no i-Core, which meant her wounds could not heal quickly. The future of this reality might not require her actions as an older woman. She could not, therefore, count on the protection of a paradox.

She had one advantage. It swept all disadvantages before it.

She could choose.

In the compartment, rocking, electrically lit, Saskia watched Pasha. He still wore his bearskin. He was not permitted to alter his uniform in public. She said, ‘Your father will tell us where the thieves have taken the money.’

‘They can have it,’ said Pasha, spitting out the words as though the silence had been working on him. ‘I’m helping you only because of Father.’

‘You want me there to draw him out,’ Saskia mused. ‘So you can see for yourself whether he is involved in seditionist activities.’

‘I recall your medical expertise, too,’ Pasha replied. ‘You told us that you studied medicine in Zurich. Or was that a lie?’

Saskia sighed. She shaded her eyes from the bulb, which buzzed in its shade.

‘This is a great risk for you, Pavel Eduardovitch.’

‘It is not,’ he said, with an artificial smile. ‘I am an Imperial officer in pursuit of suspects. I have arrested number three in the hope of finding numbers one and two.’

‘And yet you have left your post and told no-one.’

‘That will hardly worry my superior, to whose daughter I am betrothed.’

Saskia grunted. She looked at her left hand. She put it through closing, opening, furling.

~

It had not occurred to Saskia that the parallel residence of the Nakhimovs would be other than the house on the Moika, but Pasha gave the taxi driver an address on Apothecary Island, where the houses were isolated, grand structures rather Swedish in style. They stopped at a gate whose white columns were grey shapes in the night. The courtesy lantern was unlit. That put Saskia in mind of the Swiss villa. The taxi rolled away and Saskia and Pasha stepped to the gate. In the low starlight, Pasha gasped at what Saskia had already seen: the gate was ajar. No St Petersburg house left its gate open overnight, even up here. Pasha swore and reached for his sword, but Saskia pressed on his hand.

‘No. They’ve gone already.’

‘Who?’

‘Whoever forced the gate. Come.’

The drive wound through an apple orchard. As he jogged, Pasha’s regimental paraphernalia jangled and his fur-edge cape flowed. Saskia matched his pace. They emerged from the orchard to see a long, three-storeyed house in the baroque style. Its shape was little more than a dark outline against the stars.

‘We should check on Pyotor,’ said Pasha, gesturing at a small building near a knoll on the seaward side of the grounds. ‘There should be a light burning in his cottage.’

Here, on the exposed hill, a wind from the Gulf of Finland cooled Saskia’s skin. She bowed her head against it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The observatory.’

‘If anything has happened to my father because of you, I won’t answer for the consequences.’

‘I would not expect you to.’

They walked hillward, east of the house, to the grove beyond. An owl moved silently across their approach. There was no moon but starlight and the familiarity of home allowed Pasha to stride into the trees. The path was a pale cataract. Saskia listened to Pasha’s breaths, which came hard. It took a fit man to move with haste in the uniform of a Hussar. The Pasha she had left behind, dying, on the floor of the Amber Room matched this Pasha for height and strength of spirit, but not muscle. This Pasha had thrived in a richer soil.

Soon, the observatory appeared at the end of the path. It was set on a concrete base twenty feet high. The dome was open to the sky. Starlight reflected from the dome but it was otherwise dark.

‘Wait here,’ Pasha whispered, drawing his sword.

‘I was about to say the same to you.’

Pasha turned to her. Even with the darkness adaption of his eyes, Saskia knew he could not see her expression. His, however, was perfectly readable as one of determination and intelligence. He was the model of the man her own, dying Pasha would have wanted to be.

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked. ‘Is there a password?’

‘There is no password.’

He frowned. His eyes searched the shape of her face. Then he seemed to give up on her, or remember the danger to his father. He charged on the observatory. There was something absurd about the paraphernalia of his uniform, and Saskia was doubly afraid for his life. She hurried after him.

The interior of the observatory was too dark even for Saskia. She slid her glasses from her collar and put them on. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth.

‘Near your left hand,’ she said, sadly. ‘There are matches and a lamp.’

Saskia sighed and removed the glasses. She turned to face the starfield in the doorway and considered the silence of space. Behind her, she heard Pasha strike a match. He gasped. The match went out. She heard the squeak of a lantern, another match striking, and then the light held. She watched her shadow yaw around the doorway.

A moment later, Pasha said, ‘You can turn around now.’

She did. She saw by the lantern light what her glasses had shown her. The Count was dead. He lay sideways, still tied to his chair. Much of his blood lay about him in an oily melt. The barrel of the brass telescope, which occupied the greater part of the observatory’s volume, had been dented and split open. Elsewhere, almanacs had been ripped from the shelves and scattered. The worktable had been upset and their tools spilled. Leather cases holding precision parts—screws, levers, tubing—were ripped and gutted. On one shelf, Saskia saw the glow of the radium pocket watch that the Countess had once owned. She took it.

Pasha crouched by his father and held the lantern near his face. As he sobbed, he removed the bearskin helmet and placed it on an unrolled chart.

‘What happened here?’ he said, without turning. ‘You claimed you’d been at the observatory this evening.’

Saskia worked through the possibilities. The Count looked as though he had died some hours before. It was likely that Kamo had tortured him while Soso looked on. The information they desired was, in all probability, the location of the monies from the Tiflis heist. But that made little sense if Saskia Beta had been present. Surely, she, too, had known its location.

‘I honestly don’t know.’

Pasha looked at her. His eyes streamed tears. But even as his body expressed its grief, Saskia could feel the mind coming to an assessment. This Pasha was more than worlds different from the Pasha who had died in her company.

‘What do you think, Ms Tucholsky?’ he said. His mouth was downturned and trembling.

‘This will not be easy to explain.’

The Hussar stared at her for a moment longer. His physiology showed signs that he was preparing to attack her. Instead, he looked down at the star maps, and then his forehead dropped to the shoulder of the dead Count and he wept.

Saskia watched him for a minute. In that time, she considered all those dead, all those in fear, and all those grey lives extended into a cold, waking hell beneath the amber eyes of Soso.

‘I can show you who killed him,’ she said, quietly, ‘and who broke into the Great Palace tonight.’

Pasha pressed his sleeve against his eyes.

‘Why would I believe you?’

‘You don’t need to believe me.’

Saskia blinked. She had made a mistake in her reasoning. Soso and Kamo had not tortured the Count to discover the whereabouts of the money. She already knew that because Saskia Beta knew. The Count had been killed for the secret of his contacts: the remaining participants in the game of double-cross he had been playing since his sojourn in Switzerland. To Soso, that would be equally valuable.

‘Pasha,’ she said, ‘you once told me that a man must voice his desires if he is to come to hold the object of them.’

‘If I did, I don’t remember. Speak plainly.’

‘What is your chief desire at this moment?’

‘To bury my father.’

‘And justice?’ she asked.

‘Yes, the true kind,’ he said. ‘The impersonal; the fair. I will not have revenge, if that’s what you want me to say.’

He truly is noble, she thought. Title or no title.

‘The murderers fly to Finland,’ she said, investing her voice with a passion it rarely contained. ‘Tonight. We can stop them.’

‘What revenge could you have?’ he said. ‘Why do this? Did you love my father? We all thought you laughed at him.’

‘Because …’ she began. There was no true end to that sentence. ‘Because I can.’

‘Enough,’ he said, standing. His sword remained against the wall. He did not reach for it, but his hands were loose by his sides. ‘You will come with me, and answer for your whereabouts tonight.’

Saskia stepped backwards into the night.

‘Good bye, Pasha.’

‘No,’ he said, leaping for the door.

Saskia watched from the wood while Pasha raged through the long grass around the observatory, his night vision stained by the lantern, swinging his sword and calling her name. He saddened her. He looked like the boy he was, perhaps dressed as a Hussar for a fancy dress ball, playing at soldier.

As the minutes drew on, Pasha staggered with fatigue and sheathed his sword. He searched for her with the lamp alone. Silently, she ascended a tree and held her breath. Pasha had lost his enthusiasm for the search. He returned to the observatory.

Saskia considered. Soso and Kamo would be bound for Finland. Her priority was to give chase. But without Pasha, or help from someone like him, that would be almost impossible.

‘Ego, do I have a field kit hidden somewhere, or a cache containing items like these glasses, and certificates of conduct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you tell me where it is?’

‘Certainly not.’

Saskia dropped from the tree and left Pasha in the observatory beneath the pale scintillations. She thought of Mount Tupungato in the far Andes, whose name meant “a place to observe the stars” in the Quechua language. Somewhere, she was certain, Kamo was looking up at the Runaway Star. She leaned into the growing wind and hurried down to the river. There, she found two Hacker motorboats. If she hurried, she could make the last train to Helsinki.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Within the hour, Saskia found herself in the perfect dark that occluded the west side of the Finland Station, not far from its Royal Pavilion. The motor boat had been a wise choice of vehicle. There were many soldiers on the roads. Their activity had disturbed the habits of nightwalkers such as footpads and prostitutes, as well as curious onlookers fresh from the theatres. The first architects of St Petersburg had intended the waterways to serve in lieu of roads, and Saskia had taken the motorboat east along the Karpovka to the Neva, and then to the mainland Vyborsky District with no great trouble beyond some shouts from the St Sampson Bridge. Along the way, she saw emergency lanterns hung outside government buildings.

Now, she heard the night train to Helsinki disgorge vapour with a monstrous sigh. If she turned, she would see the mist spill across the extreme of the platform, beyond a fence. The train would leave the station in four minutes. Saskia intended to catch it by vaulting the fence, running alongside, and snagging a handle using a bundle of three crooked walking sticks, which she had stolen for the purpose from the hospital to the west of the station.

It was a poor plan. She might be able to board the train as it left the station. She might even succeed in overcoming the guard in the baggage compartment. But the train and its passengers would receive the closest attention at the border. Her attack on the baggage guard, or whatever method of incapacitance came to mind when the moment presented itself, would be noticed.

She stamped her feet to warm them.

‘Ego,’ she whispered, ‘I need to get aboard that train and remain on it until Helsinki.’

‘That,’ said Ego, ‘will be exceptionally difficult.’

‘Any suggestions?’

‘No.’

‘And there was me thinking we’d made friends.’

Ego did not reply.

Saskia hugged herself against the cold. She still wore Pasha’s cape, but the air was damp and the warmth of her brisk walk from the hospital waiting room had left her.

Doors were slammed along the length of the train. Saskia swore. She prepared to release the cloak, which would encumber her dash. She held the three walking sticks in her left hand. One should be able to bear her weight, even if the train tugged her more violently than she anticipated. Three was for certainty. She looked at the fence. It was too high for a clean jump. She would need to vault it, putting her weight on a post. To be thorough, she should walk over and test the strength of the post, but she had no more time remaining. In less than twenty seconds, she would need to burst from the darkness and board the train.

She closed her eyes and rehearsed the plan once more. Her window was ten seconds plus or minus two. She had to run alongside the train until it was far enough from the station to be obscured by the dark; only then could she approach the rear, with its vestibule and other prominent holds, and climb aboard. The speed would be too great for her hand grip to bear. The walking sticks would serve in lieu.

Saskia heard the platform guard blow his whistle. She prepared herself. The train, snorting, began to pull out. She watched the locomotive and the first carriage slide past her. Eight carriages to go.

‘Ms Tucholsky!’ called a man.

Saskia recognised the voice. For a moment, she looked at the train, and decided to let it pass. The brute-force approach had never appealed much anyway. She moved to the edge of the pavilion and peered around the corner, dazzled by the smoke-scattered light of the platform. There was a dozen people. Two of them might have been Tsarist agents. Pasha was standing half way along. He wore a long coat and a workman’s cap. As she watched, wondering why he did not wear his uniform, the smoke obscured his despondent face, then his form entirely.

She dropped the walking sticks and hurried along the platform before the smoke dissipated. Her eyes were closed. She found Pasha by dead reckoning, took his hand, and led him to a quiet place on the platform near its southern extreme and beneath a basket of flowers.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

As Pasha’s mouth widened into a smile, Saskia felt an answering relief at her core. The loss of his trust had wounded her more deeply than she realised. Now, at the prospect of its return, she felt overwhelmed.

Pasha took an oilskin diary from his pocket.

‘Father once said that nothing is unknown to Plato,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I found this beneath Plato’s bust in the observatory. It tells me that our friend has not been at home for many months. People wanted to see him there, and you know he doesn’t like crowds.’

It took her several seconds to understand that Pasha was telling her Lenin had left Finland. She had almost caught the wrong train. She threw her arms around Pasha’s neck.

‘Follow my lead,’ she whispered. ‘Hug me back.’

They were both bundled against the cold, but she held him until their warmths met.

‘I haven’t fallen asleep,’ she said into his collar. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘Where can our friend be?’

Saskia felt more than heard Pasha chuckle. ‘The same place every Russian goes for some peace, quiet and sedition.’

So Lenin was in Switzerland. Soso and Kamo would take the money there. Behind her cold reception of this information, she noted that her mistake resulted from rash analysis. Kamo had always claimed that the money was destined for Tampere, Finland, but what did Kamo know of Lenin’s whereabouts? He knew only what he was told, and he was given information by a person even more paranoid than himself: Soso. In future, she must be more thorough in her analysis.

‘How do you know this?’ she asked, releasing him. She checked the platform with a glance. It was empty. But she maintained a concern about the two gentlemen she had identified as potential agents. St Petersburg was being locked down following the Summer Palace burglary. It made sense that the train station would be surveilled. They continued to hold hands.

Pasha swallowed. His effort to avoid tears made his mouth thin. He leaned towards her and said, ‘I must say one thing about my father, Ms Tucholsky. I had no idea about his connection to the socialists. I knew he was a free thinker, but that was the extent of my knowledge. To think how well the Tsar treated him, and us, as a family. His Majesty sent me a personal note of congratulation on my appointment to the Imperial Guard. What can I make of all this?’

‘You read his diary already? We parted less than an hour ago.’

Pasha gave her a disappointed look. ‘Ms Tucholsky, you are talking to the only person to have turned down a mathematics fellowship at the Menshikov Lyceum. Father’s code is complex but systematic. After a few minutes, I had it. Should you like to know it?’

‘Later, perhaps. We need to leave.’

‘Of course.’

He offered his arm. She took it and they moved with particular slowness into the station building.

‘And as for your role,’ he continued, ‘in the … difficulties experienced between my father and my mother, I am afraid that I have misjudged you. I know now that your course is a true one by your own compass—though not mine.’

‘I’d like to see what your father wrote about me. It could be important.’

‘Perhaps that is something you should read for yourself,’ said Pasha, ‘as we travel to Geneva.’

‘We?’

Pasha’s reply faded from his face. He looked to the right of Saskia and smiled coldly at a group of three men who were moving to intercept them. Saskia kept her expression neutral. The middle of the three was an officer of the Protection Department’s Security Section. That was obvious from his demeanour and the practised relaxation in his approach. He was flanked by two monolithic creatures dressed in the blue frock-coats and parade helmets—complete with horse hair in a sultan spike—of the Special Corps of Gendarmes. Saskia understood that she and Pasha were trapped. The gendarmes were physically fit, armed, and experienced. She had already surveyed the hall. Its muted lighting illuminated thirty-five more men, arranged in successively larger groups. A dozen soldiers from the nearby barracks joined them as she watched. The competitive divisions between the groups of men were emphasised by indiscreet coughs, raised eyebrows, and long exhalations of smoke.

Saskia turned from them to the officer who now blocked the route to the arch of the exit, and the bustling square beyond. The man wore a charcoal suit beneath a skirted coat not unlike the Georgian chokha. He was middle-aged, and this gave his eyes a paternal cast. Saskia took this as a deception.

‘A good evening to you both,’ he said. ‘I am Inspector Berezovsky and these are my associates. As you can see, there has been some trouble tonight. You will not object to an inspection of your papers.’

Earlier, Saskia had been carrying a certificate of conduct for the German alien Frau Mirra Tucholsky. These were now in the Neva. She had not dared risk being caught with them, since the identity would be on the Protection Department watch list.

‘I understand entirely,’ said Pasha. Saskia wondered if he understood the proximity of exile or execution. In a conversational manner, he said, ‘This isn’t a repeat of the recent troubles, I hope.’

‘Nothing in that line,’ replied Berezovsky.

‘These are my papers,’ said Pasha, taking an expensive wallet from his jacket pocket, ‘as well as those of my sister, Ludmilla.’

With a gloveless hand, Berezovsky pinched the end of his tongue and opened the passport.

‘As a Nakhimov,’ said the Inspector, casually, ‘your family has a long history in the Hussars.’

Pasha accepted the compliment with a nod.

‘That is correct.’

In the same casual tone, Berezovsky continued, ‘And yet you are not on duty tonight, I find.’

‘I injured my back last month. I hope to resume active duty by Ascension Day.’

‘Ah.’

Berezovsky turned to the passport in the name of Ludmilla Nakhimov. He ran his thumb over the Imperial eagle on its cover. Saskia noticed that the larger of the two gendarmes had stopped blinking. His companion was relaxed but alert. It was clear that all three were veterans of these stop-checks. Something in the body language of Berezovsky had communicated unease to him. Saskia was not surprised at his next question.

‘You were born in 1884, Countess Nakhimov?’

In all likelihood, he was lying. The date was plain to him, but he had misread it deliberately. He smiled at her. It was an acknowledgement that the game, if this conversation were a game, had begun. Saskia smiled back. She did not know what to do. There was not enough light to see the date reflected in Berezovsky’s pupils.

‘I believe it is 1882, Inspector,’ said Pasha. He shared a man-to-man look with the Protection Department officer. ‘My sister has had a long day. We are travelling home directly.’

The Inspector had the grace to bow. ‘Thank you for that correction. But now I must ask the Countess for her middle name and place of birth.’ After a pause, he continued, ‘I will press you for that, Countess.’

He never asks, she thought. He only states.

‘I feel ill, Pasha,’ she said. ‘Let us go home.’

The Inspector feigned concern. ‘With a blessing, Countess. There is no sense extending these proceedings. Do you not agree, Count?’

‘Of course,’ said Pasha. There was a false note in his voice. Added to this, the conviviality of the Inspector’s approach had transformed from courtesy to play. The gendarmes were black doors poised to slam on them both. ‘Now, Lidka. Answer the gentleman and then I can take you home.’

‘What was the question?’ she asked quietly.

‘Come,’ said Berezovsky, as though to a reluctant child. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘It is the simplest thing.’

‘Inspector,’ said Pasha. ‘Allow me to explain. My sister had a fall earlier this evening. She is feeling unwell.’

‘Did she?’ The inspector looked from Pasha to Saskia. ‘Perhaps we can have one of our doctors examine her. They are the best, or so I am informed.’

Saskia looked at him. She did not blink.

‘I asked you to repeat the question, sir.’

Berezovsky turned to the taller of the gendarmes.

Just then, there was movement inside her blouse. Saskia thought of a trapped bird, then the sparrows of the absent i-Core. The flutter slowed to a series of taps not unlike the percussive palpations of a doctor, but ghostly.

‘Your middle name,’ said the Inspector, growing firm in his tone. ‘Your date of birth, and place.’

The invisible taps came like a second heart, fast-slow: lub-dub. Saskia smiled. Lub-dub. Dub-lub-dub-dub. Dub-lub-dub-dub. Lub-dub.

It was the simplest of codes: Russian Morse.

А.

л.

л.

а.

Ego, she thought. Thank you.

‘Aliya,’ she said. Before she drew her next breath, the taps accelerated through a new sequence. The movement was as fast as a card sharp ruffling a deck. But Saskia understood as though the words had been whispered in her ear. ‘1st August, 1882. Rakitnoe.’

The face of the Protection Department agent did not change. But the gendarmes seemed to feel that the tension had eased. One of them offered a bored look to the ceiling. Saskia followed his gaze to the vaulted darkness and heard the quiet but echoic conversation of the men around the terminal hallway. St Petersburg might have been a toy city, with Saskia and Pasha no more than miniatures trapped in its pretend streets, stalked by imaginary forces of a revolution that was itself the idle fiction of a spoiled child.

They bowed to the frustrated Protection Department officer, and his gendarmes, and Saskia let Pasha lead her from Finland Station into the night. They joined a crowd heading north. Saskia sagged against him. As they walked, she tied a kerchief around her head.

‘Lenin is in Geneva,’ he whispered. ‘That is as much as I know.’

‘When can we leave?’

‘Tomorrow morning. In the meantime, my family keeps rooms at the Grand. I’ll take you there and return for breakfast. Tonight, I have some business explaining my absence to my superiors at the Palace.’

‘What about your father?’

‘Lidka will make the arrangements and tell everyone that I have taken to my bed with auras. You recall that I was incapacitated often as a child. No-one will doubt the story.’ He sighed. ‘I only hope I can return in time for the service.’

‘What about the inquest?’

‘There we are lucky. Our foremost investigating magistrate was an unsuccessful suitor to my sister. During their courtship, we became fast friends. If he is assigned the case, which all but certain, I will ask him to give me leave to collect evidence. I will tell him that it would be better for the family, and for Lidka, if I were to make some initial investigations.’

‘You have done excellently, Pasha.’ Saskia watched her feet. Her plum-coloured skirt seemed to wash over the pink pavement. ‘For my part, I’m so tired I can’t think straight. Are you sure you wish to help me?’

‘It is not revenge,’ he said, and the boyish haste in his voice made Saskia smile inwardly. ‘My father and I agreed on little. Reading his diary, I see we agreed on even less than that. I do not hold with these Marxist or anarchist ideas, and I consider it my duty to prevent these monies being spent on revolutionary activities. The sum is mentioned by my father in his diary: 250,000 roubles hidden in the base of the Frederick the Great model in the Amber Room, which is now missing. They have stolen a sum greater than the annual salary of the Tsar.’

They continued in silence until someone in the dispersed crowd began a hearty recitation of Pushkin’s poem “Thoughts”. As though this was something he did not wish Saskia to hear, Pasha said, ‘How did you know my sister’s date of birth?’

‘A little bird told me.’

‘Well, thank goodness for little birds.’

‘Yes,’ said Saskia. ‘Thank goodness.’

Ego fluttered against her chest, Morsing: You are welcome.

The man reached the line in poem, “And where will fate send death to me? / In battle, in my travels, or on the seas?” before he faltered, and stopped with a laugh, accepting the backslaps of his companions with the modesty of the quietly victorious. Saskia nodded. As one of her last memories of St Petersburg, it would do well.

~

Some hours later, wrapped in the luxury of the Grand, Saskia twisted in her bed. She could feel the silk sheets but also a breeze. She knew her eyes were shut but she could see the growing brightness of a shore and, beyond, a forest of birch. She could not move but her feet took her on a line parallel to the wood. Its interior was impenetrable. In this dream, despite its lucid nature, she could not command her vision to improve.

Here I am again, she thought. Saskia Beta can communicate with Ute, too. Even the way the bark peels on the birch trees is the same. But no sparrows, this time.

Saskia came across a girl building a sand castle. The girl was no more than twelve years and dressed for the beach: a black swimsuit with baggy blue shorts on top. She had a yellow, plastic spade and ignored Saskia as she put the last touches to the sand castle. It was a moated hummock with crude crenellations around the peak. Saskia smiled as she watched. The girl was recognisable as herself—that is, the body she saw in mirrors—and this scene had the pleasing nostalgia of a memory. They might have been on one of the islands to the north of Germany.

‘I like your castle, little heart,’ said Saskia.

Ute looked up. The concentration on her face lingered for a moment. Then the inevitable fear swept across her. She jumped onto the castle and balanced on it, holding the spade like a sword.

‘You can’t get me here.’

‘I don’t want to get you,’ Saskia replied. She raised her palms.

‘No,’ said Ute. She screwed her eyes shut. ‘No spells.’

Saskia frowned and looked at her hands. From her own perspective, they were identical to the hands she saw while awake, if a trifle pale and with longer nails.

‘What do you see, little heart?’

Ute did not open her eyes. Wobbling, she said, ‘What I always see. A witch. Except …’

Saskia spoke with a quiet voice. ‘Except?’

‘Today, you don’t have your awful cat.’

‘Which cat?’

Ute opened one eye. ‘Ego, you call him. Sometimes he sits on top of your moving house and says unpleasant things to me.’ She opened both eyes. ‘Where is your house?’

‘Tell me about my house.’

Ute lowered the spade and cocked her head at Saskia. She was the picture of suspicion. ‘Why should I need to? It’s your house. And an ugly house to boot.’

‘Ute, I want you to listen to me,’ said Saskia. She tried to invest as much kindness and beauty in her voice as she could. ‘Today, I’m different. The person who sometimes visits you looking like me … that person is gone.’

The girl dropped to a crouch. She hugged her knees. ‘Is this a trick? Are you going to hurt me again?’

‘No, little heart.’

Ute seemed to consider this. ‘I understand that some things can look the same on top but be different underneath. I’m not stupid.’

Saskia smiled. ‘Of course not.’

‘Your house has chicken legs and walks behind you. Some nights I hear it walking through the forest of birch.’

Baba Yaga, Saskia thought. The witch of Slavic and German mythology.

‘How long have you been building that sand castle?’

Ute shrugged and looked away to the horizon. There was weariness beyond twelve years. ‘It seems like forever.’

‘I like to pass the time with stories,’ Saskia said, sitting down cross-legged. ‘Why don’t you tell me one?’

‘I can’t,’ Ute said in a despondent tone. ‘I don’t know anything. I couldn’t tell you what’s in the forest or in the sea. Sometimes, I feel like this is the first time I’ve been here. But, other times, it seems like—’

‘Forever.’

‘Yeah.’

Saskia let a moment pass by. They looked at the waves. She was certain they would never retreat or encroach. This shore was tideless. The castle was safe.

‘Why don’t you tell me about your dreams?’

‘They’re boring. They’re always the same.’

‘The same how?’

‘I always dream I’m the same person,’ said Ute, clenching and unclenching her toes in the sand. ‘In the dreams, I’m sad.’

Saskia felt a sparkle of grief in her throat. She tried to swallow it down but soon her breaths were juddering. Tears collected in her eyes. She looked at Ute and opened her arms. The girl hesitated, but curiosity seemed to beat fear. She stepped from her castle and sat in Saskia’s lap so that they both faced the sea. Saskia put her arms around her.

‘I need to look at the sea,’ said Ute. ‘It’s easier than looking at you.’

Saskia coughed. Then she said, ‘I understand.’

‘So you’re different on the inside but not on the outside?’

‘Yes. Tell me about Saskia.’

‘Who?’

‘Your dreams, little heart. Who do you play in your dreams?’

‘I’m a spy, I think, or something like that. I do dangerous things for them.’

‘Who?’

‘Meta.’

Saskia frowned at the word. ‘Meta?’

‘Meta,’ said Ute. ‘M. E. T. A. They want me to travel in time and I do. I have a helper who whispers in my ear.’ Ute laughed. ‘And I can speak to foreigners! And I climb things, jump over things, and …’

Saskia loosened her hug. When she turned to look at Ute’s face, she saw shock.

‘And what, little heart?’

‘Kill people,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not a nice person. Please, whoever you are, I don’t want to talk about my dreams any more. How long can you stay?’

Saskia dropped her chin to Ute’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

‘Until the tide washes us away, little heart.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Saskia had never believed she would leave St Petersburg in so archaic a device as a steam locomotive. She had longed for the Amber Room to be her rescue. Yet here she sat, at a private table in one of the more comfortable cars, watching the retreat of the busy platform while Pasha handled the last of their arrangements. She wore a genuine Countess Ludmilla Nakhimov dress, which was a gift made at the insistence of Pasha’s sister. The layered honey silks made a cumbersome ensemble. The hat was a particular burden. The skirt was also a trifle short. She had, however, moved with some satisfaction through the Petersburgers and tourists in the baroque foyer of the Grand, regal as a swan at dusk.

Saskia withdrew a book from her handbag and slit open its first ternion with a knife. She checked the carriage. It was furnished as three drawing rooms laid end-to-end. Paper screens separated her ‘room’ from those front and rear. She sat in a red velvet winged chair near the window. The remaining seats—two chairs and a sofa—were unoccupied. Hidden from view, she heard the polite conversation of new acquaintances behind the aft screen. There was no-one behind the fore screen. Her eyes moved down to her book—imperatives on the comportment of a lady in a series of dining scenarios ranked by number of guests—and she meditated on the ingredients of explosive charges. That might be the fastest way to destroy the money. A second part of her mind considered appropriate places along their route to Geneva for jumping from the train.

‘Ego,’ she whispered, as though noting an important directive on doily configuration, ‘I have become acquainted with Ute. She told me everything.’

Ego vibrated to say, I doubt that.

‘It’s true. I know all about the meta.’

For a moment, Ego did not move. Then he said, And yet you’re not aware that Meta never takes a determiner.

Saskia turned a page and looked at a diagram of a dinner table. Its arrows indicated the preferred distribution of conversation between guests.

‘You helped me when I needed to tell Berezovsky Ludmilla’s middle name.’

It was difficult to do nothing as you risked arrest.

‘I was doing fine,’ Saskia said, raising her voice. She settled herself and whispered, ‘Ego, I will need your help soon.’

You will receive it only in exceptionally disastrous situations.

Saskia looked out the window at a wood. ‘I enjoy our conversations.’

Really? That surprises me.

Saskia remained in the lounge carriage for another hour. Then she went to join Pasha in their private compartment. Two large windows gave the room plenty of light. There was a sofa, two chairs and a table. Pasha was reading a month-old Swiss newspaper on the sofa. He wore a charcoal suit with a bow-tie and a winged collar. His frock coat hung near the door to the washroom.

‘I’ve just thought of an English expression,’ said Pasha, standing up. His smile was undermined by his tired, vacant eyes. The absence of his moustache made him look too young for the task in hand. ‘“The die is cast.”’

‘Indeed,’ said Saskia. She was about to sit down when there was a knock at the door. She exchanged a glance with Pasha.

‘Come,’ he said.

The door opened and a steward entered. He was a young Swiss of about fifteen years. He looked at the ceiling when he introduced himself and gave them a quite unnecessary tour of the compartment. He seemed particularly proud of the electrical lights. His gloved hands flicked every switch. When he had explained the schedule of the journey to Switzerland, including stops, he left with their lunch order.

They planned to take meals in the compartment. Despite having shaved his moustache, Pasha did not want to risk identification in a chance encounter with a friend or family acquaintance, the circles of St Petersburg society being so small. The acquaintance might know about the death of his father and ask how he came to be travelling abroad when, as first son, his duty was to his household. At the least, those who knew him as an Imperial Guard would be perplexed by his civilian clothes.

‘Can we trust our new Swiss friend, Beat?’ asked Pasha.

‘I think so,’ said Saskia. She reached for one of the lilies on the table and brought it to her nose. ‘Still, it couldn’t hurt to imply that we are willing to pay him well for a certain privacy. Hints about an illicit affair should do it.’ She looked at Pasha over the flower. ‘Perhaps he should discover us in an embrace.’

‘It is a curious thing,’ he said, somewhat loudly. ‘That …’

‘What?’

‘Please excuse me.’

‘No, go on.’

‘It is a curious thing that my sister’s dress suits you so well.’

Saskia looked at the darkening forest beyond the window. ‘It’s too short,’ she said.

‘The colours are fine.’

‘That they are.’

He swallowed. ‘What do you see in the forest?’

‘Little of note. But it reminds me of a book.’

‘Which book?’

Saskia had been recalling the scene, word by perfect word, in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina where Count Vronsky’s racehorse dies beneath him. But because this did not seem appropriate, she said, ‘It is A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway. Have you heard of it?’

‘I have not.’

‘The story is set some years from now.’

‘Ah, a scientific romance, like the books of Jules Verne.’

Saskia smiled and sat down on one of the chairs before the window. Pasha returned to the sofa.

‘Scientific romance,’ she said, pondering the phrase.

One hour of silence followed.

Then Pasha said, ‘Our lunch will soon arrive.’

‘Very well.’

‘Ms Tucholsky?’

‘Yes, Pasha?’

‘Do you think that the two men who killed my father are on this train?’

‘No. Their priority was to leave the city.’

‘Do you really intend to kill these men?’

‘Yes. I mean to erase them utterly. To make up for my past wrongs, and theirs.’ She looked down at the hem of her skirt, which ebbed and receded across her shoes as the carriage rocked. ‘Does this worry you?’

A curtain of rain crossed the window. Saskia stood up in the murky compartment. Pasha turned on his reading light. Saskia’s dress, some inches too short, scintillated like fool’s gold. An Allegory of the Future indeed. She looked at Pasha. His upper lip was reddish. His eyes were unfocused, staring through the rain. If he heard stories in his head, she could not tell which.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I am a soldier.’

Pasha left the compartment.

Saskia considered searching his belongings for the diary. Instead, she turned to the window and watched the weeping diagonals of rain.

She could still see the hatted shadow of Papashvily in the window of her attic apartment. She thought once more of her flight in the taxi and her arrival at the Count’s villa, empty but for the butler, Mr Jenner. How had that moment played for Saskia Beta? Without the i-Core, she must have defeated the Georgian hitmen without recourse to the strange infection that had allowed Saskia to control the actions of the dogs. That experience still sickened her. In one moment, the dog had locked its teeth around her forearm; in the next, she was seeing herself through its eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Before dawn on the fifth and last day of their journey, when the train was quiet and still rolling at its slower night speed, Saskia Maria Brandt wrote her message to Pasha on the reverse of the previous day’s weather report, placed it on the table beneath the window, and weighted it with a silver spoon. Two hours remained until the train reached Geneva. Soon, the steward would enter with breakfast. Saskia stood in the darkness, fully clothed, one shadow among many. She wanted to kiss Pasha goodbye, but the touch might wake him. She wanted to wake him as she had once woken Yusha, her lover, those months ago in Zurich. No doubt a version of her, and a version of him, were somewhere one. Saskia Omega and Pasha Omega. Her mind coasted. In the event, she watched him for ten, final minutes, then opened the door to the corridor, stepped out, and closed it behind her. She put the bridge of her nose to the door and sighed. She had no tears left.

The note had read:

Return to your sister. Be a good man among bad. I will finish it. Thanks for the dress & everything.

Your friend.

Saskia reached the end of the first class corridor and checked the open vestibule. It was empty. She stepped out into the cold. The air carried steam and smoke. Saskia looked to windward. As the train rounded a bend, she saw the furious coupling rods of the locomotive. Then the train straightened. She closed the button of her collar, tightened the straps on her canvas rucksack, and jumped.

~

When she had been walking uphill for six hours, and as she was passing a berry into her mouth, Saskia looked down at the plate of Lake Geneva. She turned to follow the sound that she had been tracking for the last two kilometres. She walked higher, through the pines and towards the quiet, steady peal of cowbells. The animals were seven in number. She smiled at their incurious eyes. Beyond them, there was a boy in a black blazer and canvas trousers. Twelve years old, no more. He was leaning against his hookless staff and reading a leather-bound book. Saskia was twenty metres away and approaching when a flash of sky reflected on its embossed cover: Imago. Clever boy.

She called to him in French and moved between the drifting cows, touching them as she went.

He called back, ‘Good morning, madam.’

Saskia smiled. ‘I walked a long way today.’

‘How far?’

‘I got off the train at Nyon.’

‘That’s a long walk,’ he said. His eyes resumed their pleasant disengagement and returned to the book.

‘Do you have any food?’

He looked up. There was a studied amusement in his voice when he said, ‘I have my lunch, madam.’

Saskia had reached him. He was a head shorter than her. His spine was a little curved and his blood flushed arrhythmically through his neck. He had a heart problem. Saskia popped another berry into her mouth. She smiled.

‘Don’t be scared.’

‘I’m not scared.’

Saskia reached inside her jacket. She withdrew the pocket watch with the radium dial that she had stolen from the Count’s observatory.

‘This is yours if you will give me your lunch and do me a favour.’

The boy scratched his head with a fast, practised gesture that betrayed his lice. It made Saskia think of the i-Core. He licked his lips and nodded.

‘It’s lovely.’

‘It is a rare example,’ said Saskia, ‘and you may have it. But not yet. I need a rifle. Do you see the hut on the ridge above?’

He laughed. ‘Of course.’

‘Bring me a rifle and your ammunition at midday.’

‘Midday. One hour.’

‘Oh, and some milk.’

‘Two bottles?’

‘One is fine.’

~

It was gone midday when Saskia stood in the cool of that hut, higher still on the mountain. The hut was earth floor, timber and mottled glass held together with moss. She looked through the window to the meadows and snow-fields on the mountain opposite.

The boy was in the doorway. He held the rifle against his hip. This close, he smelled of his animals.

‘The rifle belongs to Carl. You need to be careful with it.’

Saskia opened the window. A breeze offered the comfort of cool air. She licked her lips. She looked into the bluish air between the meadow and the far mountain. Her breath slowed. Yes, it was warm in the hut. She scratched away a droplet of sweat from her chin.

‘Madame,’ he said, formally, ‘will you tell me your name?’

Saskia did not turn from the window. She said, ‘Do you want to know? Trentenaire.’

Thirty-year-old.

‘Oh,’ he said.

She took string from her pocket and retied her hair. Then she turned and accepted the rifle. It was a modern Mauser with a bolt action, ramp sight and shoulder strap. She tested the action. It slid easily. The rifle cocked on opening, not closing, which meant that the rate of fire was slower than a Lee-Enfield rifle, a weapon she had once used in Tiflis.

‘Trentenaire,’ he said, ‘do you want to hurt me?’

Saskia blinked. All the threads of her mind wove to here, now, and the yielding eyes of the boy. She put the gun on the table. Then she took his head in her hands and kissed his forehead.

‘Never in life,’ she said. ‘Never in life. But you have to do one more thing for me. Do you know The Garden of Swans near Bastions Park?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want you to knock on the door. Wake the neighbourhood if you have to. But tell the landlord to take a message for Soso.’

‘Soso.’

‘Clever boy. The message is: “The Lynx wants her cut”. Can you remember that? Take the watch. It’s yours, but it is unlucky. Sell it quickly.’

‘Will I need to buy Carl another gun?’

‘It’s a distinct possibility.’

~

During the afternoon, Saskia waited on the porch. The high woods seeped with life. She had used string to tie her skirt into half-trousers, and she had drunk the cowherd’s milk but was too anxious to eat any of the cheese. Later, she raised and swung the rifle to gauge its weight and balance. Then she practised the bolt action. Each repetition scored her brain a thousandfold until the working of the mechanism was an automatic behaviour that followed naturally from her heft of the rifle. She placed the butt in the pit of her shoulder and tracked birds left to right across the empty space above the meadow. She tested the shoulder strap beyond the force it would need to take if she unslung it aggressively. The cowherd had provided her with two stripper clips of ammunition. There were too few bullets to fully test the range and accuracy of the weapon, but she walked one hundred metres from the hut, turned, aimed at a whorl in the wood of the door, and fired. The rifle had little kick. Inspection revealed that the bullet had struck the centre of the whorl. It had not passed through the door.

She waited.

~

A man approached the hut at the close of the afternoon. Saskia heard his footfalls and his breaths and saw birds rise ahead of him. Unseen, she entered the hut and removed her skirt and blouse. Then she thumbed the rifle’s safety catch and waited behind the door. The minutes passed. The man approached the hut and called for Ms Tucholsky. Saskia blinked. She heard him try the window. It was lashed shut. Finally, he opened the door and walked into the hut. Saskia struck the back of his head with the rifle and closed the door beneath him.

Grisha lay in the dust and showed her his empty hands. He wore a tweed outfit that spoke to greater wealth than he had known the year before in St Petersburg, when he was the master of a illegal press, and the would-be killer of Judjuna Mikhailovna, alias of Saskia Brandt, but his impression remained that of a school bully.

‘It’s you,’ he said. The horror of his surprise twisted his face. ‘They said down in Caucasia that you could not be killed. They said …’

Saskia remembered the unusual taste of the beef that Grisha had fed her, and the fever whose dreams had seemed to grow behind her eyes, and the satisfaction this man had taken in her murder. But how had this happened to Saskia Beta, with her two hands and her toys like Ego and the yellow glasses?

‘You’re as lucky as me,’ she said. ‘Robespierre shot you, didn’t he?’

‘Who is Robespierre? A codename for someone?’

Saskia scrutinised his expression. Grisha had truly never heard that name in a contemporary context.

‘We don’t have much time,’ she said, covering him with the rifle. ‘You’re going to take off your clothes and put on my dress.’

‘I don’t understand.’ His hair, which was parted and oiled, had fallen to one side. His cheeks were red. ‘Why are we meeting again? How did it come to this?’

‘It’s someone’s idea of a joke,’ said Saskia.

‘Who?’

‘Soso.’

‘I don’t know him.’

This time, he was lying.

‘Put the dress on.’

‘Listen to yourself,’ he said. His temples ran with sweat. ‘You were once with us, were you not? You want to undermine the coming dictatorship of the proletariat. We’re fighting for that. You’re fighting against it.’

‘Don’t tell me what I’m fighting for,’ she said. ‘Now, get up.’

Grisha was slow to rise.

‘If I go out there …’

Saskia raised her eyebrows. ‘What? What would happen if you go out there?’

‘Judjuna …’

‘Let me ask you something,’ said Saskia. ‘Am I to be interrogated, or shot out of hand?’

Grisha’s mouth bent with anger.

‘Cry, Grisha,’ she said. ‘See if your tears run red, as mine did when you tied me like a pig.’

Saskia struck him in the groin with the rifle. He gasped and clamped his legs to his chest.

‘They only want to talk to you,’ he said.

‘What could I possibly tell them? Something of philosophy or mathematics?’

‘I don’t know.’ Grisha collapsed to the floor. He pressed his palms into his eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

Saskia could not wait while he composed himself. She dug the barrel of her rifle into the dress and dealt it across Grisha’s shoulder. Sobbing, he removed his tweed jacket.

She watched him.

‘All of it.’

~

The evening had not yet come to the mountainside, but Saskia could see, through the barricaded window, a dull cloud shadow approaching the hut. Its edges haloed in the moments when the last of the sun shone. Within the hut, Grisha had completed his transformation. He was hunched and pitiful.

‘Don’t make me do it,’ he said.

Saskia made a sympathetic noise in her throat. ‘But they only want to talk to you.’

‘What if they don’t?’

Saskia considered his lanky, angular body and his crooked back. He had not buttoned the dress evenly. His jaw no longer trembled but his eyelids were raw where he had rubbed them dry.

‘Is Kamo out there?’ she asked, softly.

Grisha looked at his bare feet. He said nothing.

‘If,’ she continued, ‘it is indeed Kamo, then he will take a full breath when he sees you. He prefers to shoot on the exhale. Are you listening?’

‘Yes.’

‘That means you might make it if you run fast. He likes to shoot in the back. Don’t look for him ahead of you. He’ll be somewhere behind the hut. My advice is this: Run as fast as you can downhill. If you make it to the town, I suggest you find another method of employment. Your present boss would look upon these two failures—one in St Petersburg and one here—as poor reflections on your abilities.’

Grisha swallowed. He looked from the door to Saskia and back.

‘Don’t do this,’ he said.

Saskia raised the rifle and indicated the door with her chin.

‘I could shoot at your feet, but that would only warn him. Go.’

Grisha offered her a last look of horror before he charged at the door. When it opened, the brightness was sudden. His silhouette stumbled onto the bald earth where the countless travellers had worn away the grass. Then he was sprinting in a zigzag towards the closest thicket of trees.

Saskia closed her eyes. She thought of Kamo and imagined looking out through his eyes at herself, sprinting, making a desperate escape. She pictured the barrel as it swept towards her.

Kamo inhales through his teeth.

He exhales and—

Nothing.

No shot.

She opened her eyes to see Grisha reach the thicket and dive into the undergrowth.

Chapter Thirty

Saskia touched her top lip with her tongue. She had the same feeling that had overcome her during those first steps into the Amber Room: numbness, stage fright, and detached frustration of playing a role in someone else’s plan. Why had Kamo not fired? He was out there. Had to be. Grisha would not have feared for his life otherwise. And Grisha had shown that glimmer of recognition when Saskia mentioned Kamo by name. It could be none other than Simon Ter-Petrossian.

Above her, a beam creaked. She looked up. A drizzle of dust played into her eyes.

Was Kamo on the roof? No, that is a mistake he would not make. He valued stealth too highly. If he was not on the roof, what had made the sound? Second person perhaps. Why the second person? The conclusion of her thought followed before she had truly derived it. Kamo wanted her to think he was on the roof. Why? Because it would preoccupy her while he—

She remembered herself saying to both Kamo and Soso, ‘Where does a lynx store its spoils?’

The tempo of her thoughts doubled, doubled again, and she lived a slow minute in the quarter-second it took for her eyes to saccade on the silhouette, the inevitable silhouette in the doorway, of Kamo. He was dressed as a clerk from bowler to boots. She had time to blink before his pistols flared—left, right—and one bullet roared past her cheek. The echoes washed around the hut as though the space were a church. It was when she had blinked again, and seen that Kamo wore a lopsided smile, that she understood one of those echoes had been the discharge of her own rifle. She had shot it from the hip.

‘Simon,’ she said. She gave the word its English pronunciation, which turned her mind to the English boyfriend, Simon, whose memory had been implanted within her mind those years ago. How trivial a thing to recall now.

‘Lynx.’

His word seemed to lengthen in the failing light, in the tang of cordite.

His smile continued. It might have been a cue from one actor to another. There was a patience and expectation in his eyes. As though they had been playing a game and it was over. As though they were old friends recalling a high time.

Saskia frowned at the rifle in her hands. She removed her finger from the trigger and watched her hand open and close the bolt action. A spent shell was ejected.

Kamo, still smiling, slumped against the doorframe.

Saskia pulled the trigger.

His jaw disappeared in a flare of blood.

She moved towards him, thinking of a fog bank she had once seen at the shore of the Black Sea. Her tuned nerves felt even the cracks of the earth. When she reached him, there was no last moment of confidence. He was dead. Her first shot had passed through his heart, and the second had exploded his jaw. Pieces lay on his shirt and the ground behind him. He sat with his back to the doorframe. His head sagged on his chest. He was no longer Kamo. He was an empty body, spent like his pistols.

She put one hand over his but made sure that she remained fully in the darkness of the hut. The solution to the trap of her surroundings, and the dangers they contained, lay in sound. She heard a distant cow bell, the purr of a woodpecker, the wind in bending branches, and a thousand diminishing signatures of nature. One of them was human: a growl of thoughtfulness.

Hmm.

Saskia thought about the advantages of the hut. They were few. She skipped over the body and sprinted into the meadow, holding her rifle by the stock and the barrel. Before she had taken four strides, a bullet passed her ear. The clap of pain reached her a moment later. She rolled in the grass. The sound was pure enough for her to identify the location of the shooter within a degree. As she completed her roll, she rose in a crouch. Her finger tensed on the trigger, then eased; framed in the ramp site of her rifle, and not twenty metres away, was a young man in a trench coat. He was fussing at the action on his rifle, which had jammed.

Saskia ran towards him. She drove the stock of her Mauser into his thigh. His leg flew out and he landed on his back. Saskia looked left and right to see if the movement had flushed out more men, but the clearing was empty and still. She took the collar of his jacket and heaved him into the longer grasses where the meadow met the first of the pines. He had not released the rifle, so she put a boot on his chest and tugged it from him.

‘Are there any others?’

His expression moved from shock to fear. Not of her, she guessed, but the men for whom he worked. She waited for his attention to return to her. Then she raised her eyebrows.

‘I speak not German,’ he replied in stuttering, thick French.

His accent was muddy patchwork of Finnish, French and Danish. Saskia began to speak in the dialect used in the southern part of Finland. She found the phonemes difficult to articulate at first. ‘Kamo is dead,’ she said. ‘Art thou the last man?’

His eyes, which were grey and weathered beyond his years, shrunk with suspicion. He frowned at her clothes, then at her face.

‘I know Kamo is dead, Comrade,’ he said. ‘You killed him.’

She put the barrel of her rifle to the cleft in his chin.

‘Art thou the last man?’

He shrugged, as though this was obvious. ‘Yes, Comrade. Three times yes.’

As Saskia considered this, she listened once more to the sounds of the mountainside. The volume was building with the dusk. There was not, however, a human note to be heard.

‘Tell me where Lenin lives.’

The Finn stilled the muscles of his face. That told Saskia enough.

‘Who?’

Saskia spoke her next three words as though to a child.

‘Vladimir. Ilyich. Ulyanov.’

The Finn looked away. The movement reminded her of Grisha, who was even now running down the mountainside. That worried her. Grisha was running for his life and Saskia would find overtaking him difficult.

She brought the barrel of her rifle to the Finn’s cheek.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘or I will put a hole in you.’

He remained looking away. ‘I will die for him.’

‘I don’t doubt it. But not today.’ She paused, then asked, ‘Am I a woman?’

The Finn looked at her, surprised and suspicious. ‘What is this?’

‘Just answer me.’ Saskia put the barrel against his black neckerchief. ‘Am I a woman?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Are you a man?’

He frowned. ‘I think—’

‘Try not to,’ she said, smiling. ‘I won’t hurt you if you cooperate. Now, art thou a man?’

He sighed and said, ‘Yes.’

‘Good. And two and two is five.’

He gave her a confused half-smile. ‘It is four, miss.’

Saskia remembered how Soso had greeted her in the Amber Room: ‘Lynx, mythic beast who sees through falsehood to the truth beyond.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now tell me this one thing: art thou the last man?’

As he replied with one Finnish word, ‘Kyllä,’ Saskia called upon her talents. Automatic, inscrutable processors recalled all his behaviour since the beginning of their conversation. His voice was examined for stress complexes. His breath for micro-hesitation. His eyes for blink rate. She attended to the blood in his lips and the conductivity of his hand, which she had taken in a soft grip. ‘A sorceress,’ he whispered. Those automatic processors parsed his behaviours and plotted them in a non-Euclidean space, within which emerged two attractors: the truth, and falsehood. Saskia could offer his subsequent behaviours to that statistical model and observe which attractor captured them. Scylla the truth. Charybdis falsehood.

Kyllä.

His reactions were aggregated to a data point and fell into that non-Euclidean space, orbited the truth, them tumbled into it unambiguously.

So he is the last man.

‘You have met Lenin.’

‘Who?’

Falsehood; he knows who Lenin is.

‘He is here, in the city. Correct?’

‘Who is?’

Again, the sum of his physiological responses were presented to the model, returning truth.

The Mountain Eagle is here.

She cocked her head. ‘Lenin lives in Colgny.’

‘I have never heard of that place.’

Truth. He has not.

‘In Chambésy, then.’

‘Where?’

False. He knows it. We’re getting closer.

‘Near the train station?’

‘Which?’

Truth. Yes, near there.

‘Lenin lives on Chemin de Valérie?’

He said nothing. There were little data for her model, but his thoughts were plain enough. Lenin did not live on that street.

‘But near there?’

The Finn looked glum.

Truth.

‘He lives on … Chemin de la Pie?’

The Finn looked defeated. Truth. He sighed and said, ‘You will not be able to reach him. He is guarded by better men.’

Saskia nodded. She released his hand. He took it, as her touch had burned him, enclosed it in his other hand against his chest.

‘This place reminds me of the highlands of Georgia. Do you know them?’

The Finn shrugged. Saskia smiled at him and stood. The edge of evening had fallen on the meadow. A quietness had settled. She glanced at the body of Kamo, which filled the doorstep of the hut, and was surprised by a sparkling in her chest and a note of sorrow in her thoughts.

‘I want you to bury him.’

The Finn leaned so that he could see the hut. ‘Kamo, is it? Told me his name was Alexei.’

Saskia clipped his head with the rifle stock. The weapon connected with a louder sound than Saskia had anticipated. Perhaps the temporal plate of his skull was thinner than normal because of a developmental abnormality. She crouched and touched the bone. It was firm; intact. She laid him on his side. She took his rifle, then returned to the hut, where she took Kamo’s pistols from the dirt. She put them in her rucksack. There was a tall pine behind the hut. She climbed it, carrying all the weapons, until she had risen into the last of the sunlight. She jammed the rifles there and returned to the hut. Its snow shovel was hanging at the rear. She unhooked it and dropped it near the body. Finally, she removed Kamo’s dagger and cut ‘Simon’ into a piece of blackened wood. As she cut, she realised that the name echoed that of her boyfriend, an Englishman, for whom she had pined in the night hours following the inception of her first case for the FIB. The boyfriend had been fictional; a picture to hang in the empty room of her identity. What residue of truth remained in his given name, Simon Ter-Petrossian, after the long years of his disguise, Kamo? But if she had ever held affection for Kamo, or loved him to even the smallest degree, it was not this Kamo. Hers was, in some parallel reality, still held in the Amber Room, entombed mid-movement.

Kamo’s trouser leg had ridden up his calf, exposing a dirty sock. She tugged it into place before turning to Lake Geneva. It was wholly dark but for the lights of its shores and boats. There was still time to overtake Grisha. She began to jog.

Chapter Thirty-One

Saskia followed the trail of roughened grass and broken branches and reached Grisha within an hour, on a rocky cowpath not far from a small hermitage. He did not have her night vision advantage or her sense of direction. She retrieved the dark dress and put it on over her clothes. It was ragged but would serve her better once she was around people. Grisha she left naked and lost. She thought of breaking his neck as he scrambled away into the pines, thinking it a kindness, until she told herself that those kindnesses led to the sorrows over which the dictator conducted his monologue, and she would not be kind in that way, even merciful, even thinking of what the Party would do to Grisha.

Two hours passed before she reached the shore of Lake Geneva. She was in time for one of the last ferries to the western side. She sat on deck, in a dark spot behind the paddle, and ate fondue with a group of middle-aged British wool merchants on a walking tour. She explained that she was a nanny from Bradford and allowed one of the younger walkers to tell her about his time as an usher in the Panathinaiko Stadium during the first Olympiad. The man offered her his straw boater because the wind was freshening. Saskia took it.

At the shore, Saskia thanked them for their kindness and took a taxi through Chemin de la Pie, though it was a short walk. The early night was a quiet time in this quarter of Geneva. She inspected the street as she passed. It was tree-lined and spotted with villas whose splendour did not fit well with the conception that Saskia had formed from stories of Lenin in exile. She had heard of his preference for cheap, anonymous and often seedy establishments in which he and his wife Nadezhda mixed with the downtrodden and the passionate. These villas, however, reminded her of the residence of Count Nakhimov on Lake Lucerne. She tried to identify lookouts. She could see none.

Saskia thumped the roof of the carriage and asked to be dropped near a streetlamp on the next corner. When she had paid the driver, she doubled back. She kept her boater tilted forward and strained to overhear voices. Midway down the road a piebald ginger-white cat moved towards her. Saskia heard its footfalls. Then she heard the scrape of a chair and the dry clap of book being closed and, far away, the laughing of a child. A voice (female, Russian, upper class accent, probably from St Petersburg) admonished the child.

Saskia did not stop, but she turned her head. Here, then, was the house that held Lenin, perhaps the money from the Tiflis robbery, and Soso. It was a three-storey building with a hipped roof, blue walls and white beamwork. The surrounding garden was hedged and expansive. The iron gate was ajar.

She walked on to the next villa. It was unlit and shuttered. She entered the gate with deliberate confidence and walked into its rear garden. She climbed the rear hedge and landed on gravel at the rear of Lenin’s house. The shadows were deep. She waited, crouching, for sounds of alarm, or the inquisitive patter of an approaching guard dog. She heard none. It was as she expected. Grisha, the Finn and Kamo were likely to have formed Lenin’s complete bodyguard. He did not like a retinue.

Saskia looked around the garden. On the brick support of the iron gate, the ginger-white cat was sitting. Its eyes looked past her. Slowly, Saskia followed its stare.

There was nothing but wind mussing the branches of the high trees separating this property from the one behind.

Saskia moved beneath an unlit window near the back door. She removed her rucksack and withdrew Kamo’s guns. Their barrels were pitted and scratched. There had been a time when Saskia thought she could change his direction with the application of a little loving force. She remained troubled by the smile he had worn when she shot him.

Still meditating on the revolvers, she heard footfalls within the house. She put her ear to the bricks. There was a commotion. The front door swung open. There was no mistaking its sound. Meanwhile, boots made soft crunches in the grass. Saskia closed her eyes and let the sounds mix and merge; let the meaning come to her. In a moment, she understood that the Finn she had left on the mountainside had returned. Saskia was not surprised that he had failed to bury Kamo—who had often boasted that the birds and were welcome to pick at his meat—but she was surprised by the speed of his arrival, considering the blow she had dealt him.

Breathlessly, the Finn said, ‘Kamo is lost. I’m sorry, truly.’

The next voice made Saskia’s eyes open.

‘I fucked your mother,’ said Soso. ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘She overpowered me.’

‘Catch your breath. Did she follow you?’

‘I ran as fast as I could.’

A third man, quieter than the other two, said, ‘Never mind your belated efforts. Does she know this address?’

‘Not,’ said the Finn, ‘not exactly.’

The quiet man: ‘Yes or no, idiot.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry?’ said Soso. ‘When I shit in your mouth, you’ll be sorry. Make up for your mistake by securing a carriage this instant.’

‘No,’ said the quiet man. ‘You go, comrade. I will not put the safety of myself and the solvency of the Party in the hands of this idiot. Take him with you and pay him off.’

There was a pause. Saskia imagined the strained faces. The Finn anguished, Soso anxious, and the quiet man—who was surely Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov—unreadable. Then the silence ended in a series of footfalls that signalled the departure of Soso and the Finn as they hurried to make arrangements.

She crouched in the darkness with her head cocked, trying to picture Lenin. Was he scanning the street for shadows shaped like her? There would be a ruthless cast to his face. Saskia was in no doubt what the instruction ‘pay him off’ meant for a man like Soso, who was renowned for carrying little money about his person.

But Saskia had noted another phrase of Lenin.

‘I will not put the safety of myself and the solvency of the Party in the hands of this idiot.’

The proceeds of the Tiflis bank heist were in the house.

Saskia put the rucksack on and tightened its straps until they cut into her shoulders. Then she pushed the guns under the straps barrel-first. This made the handles high but reachable. She cocked both the revolvers and moved towards an open window on the corner of the house. The room beyond was gaslit but unoccupied. She jumped onto the sill and braced herself with a foot against the frame. The room was full of toys. A doll’s house had been left open; it was filled with marbles, a paper windmill, and a drum. In a heap by the door lay costumes—a sailor, a Red Indian—and tiaras and sparkling slippers. A chest, with its drawers pulled into steps, sat beneath a hanging mobile on which wooden children rode moonbeams.

The plucked notes of a music box filled the room.

All around the mulberry bush.

Saskia looked at the floorboards to better identify where to step. Then she lowered herself gently into the room. She crouched. She marked off thirty seconds. At the twenty-fifth, the pile of costumes moved.

The monkey chased the weasel.

The monkey stopped to pull up his sock.

Saskia approached the costumes and pulled them away.

Pop! goes the weasel.

There was a girl, perhaps nine years old, in a blue dress. She was turning the handle of a small jack-in-the-box. There was a resemblance between this girl and the girl Ute who had played on the sand in Saskia’s dream.

Saskia smiled. She whispered in French, ‘Hello, little weasel. Are you playing hide and seek?’

The girl said nothing. Her expression was petulant.

‘It takes a special girl to fool my special ears. I’m Penelope. How do you do?’

Still the girl said nothing.

Saskia feigned seriousness, and in Russian, whispered, ‘Have you been told not to speak to strangers?’

The girl nodded.

‘I see you have found an accomplice, young lady,’ said Vladimir Ulyanov. He was standing in the black doorway. He looked at Saskia. ‘I was speaking to my student. We were practising our German verbs when I was called to the door.’

With all the grace she could gather, she rose from the child.

Lenin was shorter than Saskia. His premature baldness emphasised his forehead and his steady eyes, which took in the pair of revolvers. The sharpness of his eyebrows and his neat Van Dyke beard made him rather more caricature than real, and his short neck seemed to lift his shoulders, but there was nobility about him. A nobility not like that of the Count, who was gentle and intelligent. Lenin’s airs were colder. He counted himself among the superior examples of humanity.

‘You must be Comrade Penelope,’ he continued, ‘which makes you an extremely resourceful individual. May I treat you as an intelligent woman and not introduce myself as a Finnish chef?’

‘What’s in a name?’ Saskia said. Her voice was measured. ‘In Tiflis, they call you the Mountain Eagle.’

Lenin smiled. It was the smile of a lawyer about to cross-examine a witness. ‘The money is here, of course. We packed it inside encyclopaedias. I can show you. There would be no dishonour in leaving this house with some volumes. Shall we say A to D?’

‘I don’t want the money.’

Taking the hand of the girl, Saskia pulled her towards the window, then pushed her behind her skirt.

Lenin snorted. ‘You should not underestimate my will on the matter of our coming socialist revolution, Penelope. Kamo told me that you are a sentimentalist. What do you intend? To burn the money, no doubt, and kill me. So what of the girl? How do you think she will live with the memories of my murder, and those murders to come?’

Saskia withdrew one of the revolvers and pointed it at Lenin. He frowned at her, as though astounded by her failure to understand. ‘You wish to aid a regime that lies, kills, and robs those who are born within the cage of slavery. Think on it. If you are not convinced by this scientific explanation of the ills of the world, then your imagination fails you. You don’t see every possibility. You are condemned by your own stupidity.’

Saskia thought about the girl. Saskia could never show her the millions dead who might live by this bullet. Given the freedom of escape from a universe in which she was destined to perform an action many years hence, the decision to kill this man felt like the first choice she had ever made.

‘To change the future,’ she said, smiling, ‘all it takes is one good man. Since he’s not here, I’ll have to do.’

Before she could squeeze the trigger, Saskia felt the girl hug her leg. Saskia looked down and smiled. It had never occurred to her, walking towards the house, that Lenin would have a pupil. Was the girl the daughter of a friend? Was Lenin funding his exile through private tuition, just as Saskia had done in St Petersburg?

Saskia watched her return the smile. The little mouth opened to reveal a missing tooth.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Saskia said. ‘Just stay …’

There was something on the floor. Saskia blinked at it.

She tried again. ‘Just stay behind me and everything will be …’

Her eyes seemed to lose their focus. She concentrated on the shape on the floor. It was not her shadow. It was a deep, red pool whose edge moved like fire on the steppe, and it had almost reached the doll’s house.

Lenin was speaking, and Saskia needed all her concentration to catch the meaning of his words. Unimportant, peripheral trivia occupied her mind: he could not pronounce his ‘R’s correctly, and she lost the sense of whether or not it would be rude to correct him, just as she had corrected Pasha those weeks ago upon their first meeting in St Petersburg.

‘Plissed to meet you.’

‘I warned you, Penelope, that you should not underestimate my will on the matter of our revolution.’

A fog of euphoria seemed to settle about her. She looked at the man.

‘What,’ she said, ‘did you …?’

The girl released her leg and Saskia, losing that little support, stumbled backwards. She stood on the hem of her dress and tripped, falling heavily on her bottom among the toy soldiers. The pain brought a spell of clarity. She looked once more at the shadow and saw her death in the deepness of its red.

‘I will quote Prime Minister Stolypin: “The punishment of a few prevents a sea of blood”.’ Lenin then called behind him, ‘Krupskaya, it’s done!’

The girl was still smiling. She held a long knife, one edge of which was bloody. She wiped the blade on the face of a teddy bear and ran towards the door. There, she was gathered up by a tall lady. The lady wore an elegant dress with rolled sleeves. Attached to her lapel was an upside-down nurse’s watch.

‘Oh,’ said the woman, looking at Saskia with bulging eyes. ‘Nina, find your best coat and wait for us in the parlour.’

The woman stepped over the growing blood pool and pulled the revolver from Saskia’s hand.

‘I am Krupskaya,’ said the woman. She had the manner of a physician. ‘Are you English?’

For moment, Saskia’s chin fell to her chest.

‘Help me.’

‘Let me see.’

The woman took the knife, which the girl had dropped, and cut a line in the span of skirt on Saskia’s lap. Krupskaya pulled back the cloth and slit the underlying bloomers to reveal a curved, deep cut near the groin. It ejected a mouthful of blood with each tick of Saskia’s heart.

‘Apply …’ Saskia gasped. ‘Pressure.’

She tried to put her hand across the wound but Krupskaya gripped her wrist.

‘Shh,’ said the woman. She studied the wound and seemed satisfied by it. Turning, she called, ‘It will do for her. I’m sure.’

‘Then come along,’ Lenin called back. ‘Where on Earth is Gorky?’

Saskia hissed and gathered all her strength, but Krupskaya held her knees apart and steered the weakening hands away and, still watching the wound, made appreciative noises, as though comforting a child.

‘I’ve heard stories about you, Penelope,’ she said. ‘When you’re gone, I’ll have one to tell about you.’

Saskia tried to give her a defiant look.

‘They’re here,’ said Lenin, returning to the toy room. He looked around, as though for the last time, and then crouched alongside Krupskaya. He too inspected Saskia’s wound. ‘Nina is our little saviour, I find.’

‘She is,’ agreed Krupskaya, standing. She lifted her nurse’s watch with two fingers, as though taking its pulse. ‘Has Joseph returned with our carriage?’

For Saskia, the pain had come and gone. Now even her anxiety faded to a ghost. She let her head rest against the doll’s house. A sleep settled upon her. Her thoughts transformed from one thing to another in an unbroken chain of associations. She remembered the feel of Jem’s blue hair between her fingers. Sclumpfchen. These thoughts became soundless images of Pasha. She had loved him from the moment he blushed at her correction of his English.

Pliss.

She remembered Kamo performing tricks with his horse, Rooster, on Golovinsky Avenue. He had wheeled it in the dust. The horse had kicked out and stepped high. The two had danced. Kamo had winked for the children and laughed at the blushing ladies before departing with the shout, ‘Die, but save your brother!’

She remembered Soso in the Adamia milk bar. One time, he had held court not long after an escapade that left his Fedora with a bullet hole. Gun cartridges had lined the chest of his long, chokha coat as he related the story to the penniless princes. His amber-coloured eyes had burned. What had been the escapade? That memory had faded.

Her mind returned to the dark band that had punctured the skin of time. Saskia had screamed when she tumbled into the frozen air of 12th April, 1904, but the impact with Lake Baikal, or reaching its surface, had silenced a part of her. She was immortal. Even the vertical crash of an aeroplane had failed to kill its chosen passenger.

Her eyes opened once more. There, among the toys, she could die. There was no sanctity of time paradox in this universe. Here she was, dying, proving it.

Saskia considered the blood that soaked the boards and her skirt.

‘There,’ said a voice. ‘So you were undone after all.’

Saskia squinted. The handsome face of Soso came into focus as he lowered himself. She envied him his lithe movements and the quickness of his smile. He held an oil lamp in his hand.

Saskia fumbled for her revolvers. They were gone.

‘Lynx,’ he said. ‘Your fangs have been removed. Now, where is he? Where did you leave Kamo?’

Saskia smiled. She felt as though she had run beyond her endurance, where even the muscle of her heart was burning. She took a long breath and sang in a whisper:

‘Sunny expanses are open to us.

The flames of victory light our country

For our happiness lives Comrade Stalin

Our wise leader—here comes my favourite bit—

and dear teacher.’

Her life had almost left her. It took an effort even to blink.

She shook her head. ‘What could anybody, ever, learn from you, comrade? Listen: My name is Saskia Maria Brandt.’

Soso stared at her. She saw in his face something quite foreign to its lively muscles: the slackness of despair. She raised her hand to his cheek and slapped it softly.

‘Remember me,’ she said.

Soso turned from her. He opened the lamp and poured its oil over the roof of the dollhouse. He dropped the smouldering wick down the chimney and closed the door. Then the dollhouse was burning and he was gone, and she knew that Krupskaya, Lenin and girl were gone, too. She was more alone than ever.

~

The floorboards might have been a wall of rock. She placed her hands with care, hauled, and hauled again. Each drag of her half-dead body seemed a year coming. She crossed into a dark passageway and turned towards the front door. She looked back. A smear of blood led towards the glow of fire. She could not see the fire itself, but the dollhouse was loud with clicks and pops as it burned. There was a greyness to the air and her throat felt dry. Fortunately, she was low to the ground, and the bleeding had reduced. Either her blood volume was so low that her blood pressure had dropped, or lying on her front helped to compress the wound.

The front door was open. Saskia thought this a mistake until a cool slice of night air chilled the sweat on her forehead and she heard a doubling of the fire-sound behind her. The house was going to burn fast and hot.

Something vibrated against her chest. Saskia groaned.

‘What do you want?’ she whispered.

Keep moving, said Ego. I am attempting to augment your body’s physiological response to the wound.

‘If it’s help you want to give, you’re too late.’

She reached the jamb of the front door and, from the concealment of this darkness, looked into the street. Soso and a coachman were loading an automobile with a trunk. Its weight made the suspension drop. Saskia thought of the encyclopaedias inside. She tried to shout, but her airway had narrowed to a dot. Krupskaya and the girl, Nina, were looking back at the house from the rear of the carriage. They wore hooded travelling cloaks. Lenin, smart in his bowler hat, appeared from the far side of the car and helped the driver and Soso fasten the bindings for the trunk. Then Soso and Lenin entered the automobile and the driver climbed to his high seat. The automobile was away with a clatter of cylinders.

Saskia made fists in despair. Failure in the reality she had come from, and failure in this.

The first neighbours began to arrive before the vehicle had turned the corner of the street. A man on a bicycle slowed, shouted, ‘Fire!’ and rode on. A family of six, dressed for dinner and still wearing napkins, appeared at the front gate. The father opened it and approached the house. His face was more curious than apprehensive, but he gagged on the smoke and put his napkin to his face.

Saskia reached out with her fingers. She became aware that she had stopped breathing.

A second man ran through the gate, passed the father, and continued up the steps. It was Pavel Eduardovitch. Saskia gasped as he rolled her onto her back and pulled her across the threshold by the straps of her rucksack. On the steps, he put an arm around her back and another beneath knees, and shouted at the onlookers—now a dozen—to make way. He carried Saskia into a waiting automobile. It was Count Nakhimov’s Peugeot Bébé and the man in the driving seat was Mr Jenner, the butler with the famous ancestor.

Pavel laid her on the back seat. He pushed himself underneath her head and shoulders and let her head rest on his lap. His finger pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘My God.’ Then, ‘Jenner, drive on.’

The car lurched forward. Saskia tried to reach for Pasha’s cheek, but her arm would not move. A darkness, truer than the night, passed over her eyes and she saw nothing. She could not speak or move. There was a weariness in her mind as though she had travelled a thousand years, been many people.

The last senses that remained were hearing and touch. She still heard the car and still felt the fingertips of Pasha as he tidied her hair.

‘Pavel Eduardovitch?’ asked Mr Jenner. His voice was urgent. ‘Count? How is she? I know a doctor two streets away. We’ll be there directly.’

‘There’s—’ Pasha began, but his voice cracked. He swallowed. ‘“Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.”’

Saskia wondered if her expression was peaceful. In truth, the expression was no longer hers. It belonged to Ute. Those connections between Ute’s musculature and Saskia’s mind—as it lived, dead, on a chip—were failing.

‘“Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; In You I take shelter.”’

The pitch of the engine, which had lowered, and the stuttering sobs of the man holding her head, began to fade. Saskia felt as though she were floating.

Ego vibrated against her chest.

I know you are not Saskia, he Morsed. Once, you thanked me. Your mission to kill Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin is not sanctioned by Meta. However, I am permitted some operational independence. I will complete a modified form of your mission using the help of Mr Jenner and the Count. I overheard Lenin make a telephone call to a man called Gorky. The money will be held overnight in a disused section of the Jungfrau railway, inside a mountain called the Eiger. Tonight, it will be destroyed, though Stalin will live. This is how I thank you, whoever you are.

Saskia felt angry at this dilution of her plan. She had focused on killing Soso. True, she had understood that another monster, greater than him, could turn the energy and luck of the Party to a still more murderous direction, but it had always been him, his face, the grin of Stalin and avuncular, amber eyes that represented that monologue deadening greater part of the twentieth century, and the Russias, and her future. Perhaps there was wisdom in Ego’s decision. With this money gone forever, the intrigues and weapons and bribes that the Party needed would be gone, too. Might this embarrassment, traced to Lenin and the Georgian Highlander, be the true end of the Party? What might take its place?

She would never know. Her body had died, and she was condemned to limbo until her chip was destroyed in a crematorium, or trickled out of power in a grave.

Quite distantly, she felt Pasha unbutton her collar.

‘Something is here,’ he said. ‘It buzzes like a bulb.’

‘Be careful, sir.’

‘It’s a business card for a Ms Tucholsky. Silly girl must have kept it from her time in St Petersburg. On the back it says, ‘P—If something happens, the money is going to the Eiger, JF Railway. Talk to BRYULLOV @ Embassy in Berne. Yrs, M T.’’

Saskia felt as though she smiled.

‘Clever,’ said Mr Jenner. ‘I wish I’d known her.’

‘Me, too,’ said Pavel Eduardovitch.

The silence came like cold water closing above her head. She opened her eyes in the airless gloom to see scintillas of light on the sea floor: amber, the resin of antiquity.

The last words of Pavel Eduardovitch reached her as thought, not sound.

O Lord, revive me, for Your name’s sake. For Your righteousness, deliver my soul from danger.

She might have felt lips in the centre of her forehead.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Saskia knew she was in the Amber Room—her room, on the night of 23rd May, 1908—before even she felt the absence of her left hand, or the scent of room perfume and gun smoke, or the approaching crackle of fireworks. She did not wake slowly. Her consciousness returned in full bloom and she snapped upright, gorging on her surroundings in a sweep that rekindled the sense of despair and failure she had felt only heartbeats ago in a parallel Geneva, in the flames of a burning house. She understood, without knowing why, that her return here was final. If the malfunctioning time band had caused a crack in reality—wide as a doorway in an enfilade—that crack had been sealed. But the meaning of those other Amber Rooms was inscrutable. Had another person, perhaps a time traveller, deliberately interfered with the band to trigger a malfunction? If so, Saskia could not think why her transmigration might advantage that third party. Her struggle with this produced another question: Had this person been working against her, or for her? To answer that, she needed to know what the outcome of the transmigration had been. The outcome remained elusive. Perhaps it was better to think of her journey as a meaningless trip little different from being swept down a street by a flash flood. She might feel lucky that there was solid ground beneath her once again.

The room was lit by its chandeliers once more. The air remained dry, but the floor was wet with dew. There were piles of broken glass beneath the dark rectangles where the mirrors had been. The band, which Saskia remembered being in the centre of the room, was gone. Only a scorch mark remained. Soso and Kamo had gone, too. The door behind them, which led deeper into the enfilade, was open. Masked guests were standing there. Where mouths were exposed, they were agape. The doors to the balcony opened and guests entered. They began to talk in a mixture of English and French. Behind her, Saskia could hear a furious thumping on the door that led away from the enfilade. Men were shouting.

Pasha lay with his head against the base of the statue. He might have been the younger, sickly brother of the Pasha who had been cradling Saskia’s dead head, rather than his twin. This Pasha had his doublet torn open. The wound to his abdomen was worse than Saskia remembered. Blood had soaked his trousers and much of the floor beneath him. Saskia knew he was dead, but she put her hand to his cheek and looked for something in his half-open eyes.

There had been a moment when she had died, too. Not in that parallel Geneva, but in this reality, in a hut somewhere in the Bavarian National Forest. Her saviour had been a transfusion of i-Core. She considered giving Pasha such a transfusion. There was a risk that the i-Core would destroy his identity and rebuild it in a form closer to itself and further from Pasha. What would it do to him? Her thoughts stopped on the unsettling experience of becoming the dog that had killed one of her attackers the night she left the Count’s villa in Zurich. She had smelled using its nose; tasted the blood with its tongue. She feared the dehumanising force of the i-Core. Could she make that choice for Pasha? Would he prefer to be dead? His orthodox faith might be troubled.

The door behind her gave way with a loud crack. She had time to hear the stamp of booted footfalls before she was lifted bodily by tall men, each holding an upper arm. They were Hussars of the Imperial Guard. Like the doors to the Amber Room, their dolman jackets were white but ribbed with gold. Sable fur hung across their shoulders. They wore flat-top bearskin hats that seemed to connect with their waxed moustaches and curled side-whiskers.

Another four hurried into the room and took station at the door to the Picture Hall, the door to the Apartments, and each of the balcony doors. The two at the balcony lifted their rifles and tracked through the crowd in the square. Saskia watched them with some anxiety, as did many of the guests. The Fourth Squadron of the Hussars of the Guard, based in the Tsar’s Village, had mutinied the previous summer, not long before the heist in Tiflis. The rebellion had been a reaction to the strict discipline imposed on them since the military reorganisations.

Alexei Sergeyevich Draganov stepped into the room and turned to Saskia. Even taller than the Hussars, he was conspicuous in the long, scarlet cherkesska coat and white beshmet vest worn by the Imperial Convoy. Draganov nodded to the Hussars, and they ushered the remaining guests from the room and closed the doors, until only Draganov, the Hussars, Saskia and Pasha, remained. The air in the room seemed to thicken. The smell of perfume and polish grew stronger and the chandeliers flared with an electrical spike.

It would not do to show any recognition of Draganov. Saskia could not know whether his Hussars understood the complexities of this situation. With that came the wry thought that Saskia might not have fully grasped those complexities either. Draganov’s expression was a study in ambiguity.

‘He tried to stop them,’ said Saskia. Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘My beloved, there, against the statue. Why don’t you chase after the murderers!’

She felt the grip of the Hussars lessen. That was good.

‘Unless they can become the night itself, the two won’t reach the end of the square,’ said Draganov. ‘Well?’ he called to the two Hussars at the balcony doors. ‘Do you see anything?’

‘No, sir,’ replied both men.

‘Keep looking,’ said Draganov.

‘Let me go to my betrothed,’ Saskia said. She wriggled weakly at the men holding her. ‘For what he has done, he is a hero of the Empire now.’

Draganov gave the body of Pasha a look of disgust.

‘That is as maybe. But we are here on the matter of a gross insult to the Treasury, and there will be no delay in justice.’

Even as he spoke, Saskia winced at the jingoistic tone. She wondered whether the Hussars knew, or cared, about the act he was putting on. But his order was obeyed. Saskia was released by the two Hussars. She fell to one knee and crawled to Pasha. His face was cyanotic and no air moved through his lips.

Saskia pulled away her silver mask and dropped it by his body. Then put her hand around the nape of his neck and lifted his head. His eyes opened like a doll. Before she kissed him, Saskia bit away a wedge of flesh from the inside of her cheek. The pain was lesser than she expected but the volume of blood greater. She had to swallow a mouthful before she could put her lips onto his. When she did, his skin was cold and dry. Gently, so as not to break the seal, she angled her head and took a small bite from his lower lip.

She knew that the i-Core communicated with her using a base form of language comprising metaphor alone. She did not know if the channel worked both ways, but she invested every effort in imagining a scene.

It is the fifth season, those few days between autumn and winter, and the Russian evening wanes. A widow stands above an open grave. It contains a simple coffin whose plaque is dull and unreadable in the darkness. The clouds gather to form rain, but sparrows, not water, pour from the sky, swirling towards the grave as though it were the base of a dark tornado. As the grave brims over, their wings buzz like black flames. The birds thrash against each other, crunch, fall, until they breach the coffin and gather beneath its body. Slowly, the body lifts. Though the sparrows have cast a gloom over everything, the widow sees two flashes of whiteness as the eyes of the corpse open.

Saskia fell away from the body and sobbed hard. She held her hand against her cheek. Blood flowed from the wound. She did not know whether she had passed enough into Pasha. Neither did she know how the i-Core would be able to infuse his tissues, particularly his brain, without vascular action in his body.

‘That’s enough,’ said Draganov. ‘You are the only witness to the crime, and you will now come with us.’

Saskia allowed herself to be brought upright. The Hussars were gentler this time. She kept her mouth shut and her tearful eyes open. Draganov did not give her a secret look, or anything of the kind. He regarded her with the same disgust he had shown Pasha’s body. He sneered, and was about to give an order to the Hussars when the door to the Portrait Hall was shouldered open by a gendarme. A second gendarme entered. He was followed by a young clerk in a brown suit.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ shouted the clerk.

‘I have taken control of the situation,’ said Draganov. ‘Calm yourself.’

‘You have done no such thing.’ The clerk looked with dejection around the damaged room. From the corner of her eye, Saskia saw a small, but clear change in the body language of the Hussar near the door to the Apartments. He had turned to look at the two Hussars on the balcony. It took little effort to imagine that they had become uneasy and were communicating this to one another with a glance.

‘I wish to know the situation,’ said the clerk. He looked from Draganov to the gendarmes as he said this. ‘Identify yourself, Colonel. Why are you and your soldiers here?’

The gendarme raised his pistol and pointed it at Draganov.

‘Yes, something strange is happening here,’ continued the clerk, as though confirming his intuition. ‘I suggest that we wait for more officers of the Fourth Squadron who can verify your position.’

Draganov folded his arms and approached the clerk. There was a considerable difference in their height. The clerk was still looking up in anger when Draganov headbutted him. The small man crumpled. Draganov turned towards the shocked gendarme and struck him with a haymaker punch to the side of his head. Saskia guessed that he was unconscious before he spilled across the floor. Draganov had not finished. Still turning, he kicked out at the open door to the Portrait Hall, closing it on the masked faces of the guests who had gathered there. He wedged a chair beneath its handles.

The Hussar near the door to the Apartments aimed his rifle at Draganov and said, ‘That’s enough, sir. I, too, would like to know your role here. You are not with the Imperial Convoy.’

‘Listen to me,’ Draganov replied, reaching inside his jacket. ‘I am an officer of the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, Special Section.’

The reply of the Hussar was interrupted by a movement from the middle of the room: Pasha’s foot kicked. At the same time, Saskia almost collapsed with dizziness. Her breath shuddered and there was a sharp pain behind her left eye. She looked hard at Pasha and noticed black dots on his face and chest. His chest expanded, held, then shrank as an inhuman, sibilant breath escaped his mouth. The breath was white.

‘Mother of God,’ said one of the Hussars holding her. His grip weakened and he fell forward, unconscious. The second Hussar fell a moment later.

Saskia nodded. Her message to the i-Core had been received. The last words of Pavel Eduardovitch in the parallel Geneva had been: O Lord, revive me, for Your name’s sake. For Your righteousness, deliver my soul from danger.

She fought to remain upright. She swayed as she looked around the room. All the Hussars had collapsed, though the Hussar near the door to the Apartments was kneeling and still held his weapon. His eyes were narrow but not closed. Only Saskia and Draganov could stand. She staggered towards him.

‘What happened to my men?’ he asked.

‘Oxygen, heat, everything, is being pulled into Pasha so that he may live. We’re being spared the worst effects.’

‘Come,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her towards the central door, ‘we’ll get out through the Maria Fyodorovna Apartments.’

He opened the door onto a sumptuous room. Saskia was glad to find it empty. The next breath she took was like the first after breaking the surface of Baikal those years ago; her mind resumed its edge, and her back straightened. She allowed Draganov to steer her towards a second door, which was simple by the standards of the Summer Palace. It opened onto a light-green room richly ornamented with wooden wainscot. In the corner was the metal staircase. As they hurried down, the shouts of alarms, bootfalls and whistles grew louder. No doubt the soldiers of the many barracks in the Tsar’s Village were being mobilised, not to mention the police—both secret and ordinary.

The stairs ended in a storage room. Draganov pointed to a brass bucket near the door. Saskia looked inside and saw the neatly folded uniform of a cleaning maid: a navy-blue dress and white pinafore. She wasted no time. She pulled away the telephone wires from her costume, slipped the dress from her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. Draganov, meanwhile, removed his scarlet coat and took a second uniform jacket from beneath a dust sheet.

‘You are my patient. Understood?’

Saskia nodded. She fastened the dress and pulled the pinafore over her head. Draganov buttoned the back. When she reached for the left sleeve of her dress to tie it up, he said, ‘No, leave that.’ He took a jar from a shelf, unscrewed the top, and smeared its contents on her stump. ‘Food colouring.’

Saskia looked at him as he worked.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Thank me when you’ve left Russia for the last time. Understand? Stop for no one once we’re underway. Leave Russia somehow and don’t come back.’

He put the jar back on the shelf.

‘Who are you, Draganov?’

The man smiled, as though the answer was a private joke. He reached for the doors to the garden and opened them. On the gravel path was an ambulance. Its horse shuffled at the noise of their approach. A boy in a travelling cloak pinched out his cigarette, tucked it behind his ear, and climbed to the driver’s seat. Draganov and Saskia climbed into the back as the ambulance pulled away.

‘Answer my questions,’ said Saskia. She laid herself on a canvas stretcher while Draganov opened a compartment at the head of the carriage.

He replied using a language that Saskia had never heard before. She felt a part of her mind seize its sounds, mark the phonemes among its phonetics, compute a likely morpheme or two, and place it in a multi-dimensional constellation of all languages. Then the meaning was hers.

Draganov had said, ‘If I speak this way, do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Old Frankish, though we always called it Lingua Franca.’ Draganov smiled as he took Saskia’s wrist and dressed a wound that was years old, and long healed. ‘First, you want to know about the countdown. It is an automatic behaviour that the band is designed to exhibit. There are specific, known points of escape. The Amber Room is one of them.’

Saskia frowned. It disturbed her to think of a network of exits connecting this time to the future, and perhaps the past.

‘Under what circumstances would the band enter such a mode?’

Draganov shrugged. He tied a reef knot over her wound. For good measure, he took the jar of food colouring from his jacket pocket and smeared redness over the bandage and her forearm.

‘Loss or capture,’ he said. ‘A sense that the wearer is in danger, perhaps.’

‘But the band works on its own. I’ve seen it used in that way. If its senses danger, why not make my …’ She trailed off, not finding a word in Old Frankish for “evacuation”. ‘Why not take me home directly?’

‘My dear,’ said Draganov, patiently, ‘the band was damaged. Some of its functions still worked. Some did not. I would not mourn its loss if I were you.’

‘Its loss means I cannot go home.’

Draganov sighed. He relaxed against the side of the carriage. ‘What is home?’

‘A time more than one hundred years from now. As for the place, I don’t know. I have a good friend called David. It will come to pass that he will disappear. I wish to prevent that, or find out why.’

The ambulance rocked. Saskia heard a gloved palm slap its side. A shouted threat to shoot at the ambulance faded as they turned a corner. Saskia and Draganov looked at one another. There was something abstract about his expression. It lacked fear.

Saskia asked, ‘What makes the Amber Room useful as a point of extraction?’

‘Some places are like that.’

‘Let me speak plainly,’ she said, leaning forward. The ambulance rattled over cobbles and she raised her voice to ask, ‘Did Jennifer Proctor send you back in time?’

With a playful smile, he said, ‘Who?’

The frustration was a cramp in her chest. It compounded with her knowledge that the remainder of this journey, and perhaps her liberty, was dwindling.

‘How can a man from the future not know Jennifer Proctor, the inventor of time travel?’

Draganov’s smile only broadened. Something in her question had amused him, and she saw her error with such clarity that when Draganov corrected her, no surprise remained, only wonder.

‘I’ve come here across centuries, my friend, across lifetimes of change. I’m not of your future, but your past.’

Saskia gasped.

‘That is …’ but she could not finish the sentence.

‘My story is long, but there is not much time to tell it. I was born into nobility near Languedoc in the south of France on Christmas Day, 1098. My family had ties to the Cathari, a learned sect going back generations. I joined the Order of the Temple in my twenty-fourth year. In Jerusalem, something happened to me that took away my faith. Then I learned of the road through time. I took it.’ Draganov inclined his head and made a looping gesture with his palm, the parody of a courtly greeting. ‘Sir Robert of Chappes, of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, at last.’

‘You are a Templar Knight,’ said Saskia. As she spoke, she listened to the words. The statement was extraordinary. A trick on the part of Draganov? She did not think so. It suggested a justification for the risk he had taken on her behalf. It explained his fluency in Old Frankish. It would be beyond the powers of an actor to affect the irony in his tone as he introduced himself; to see the hurt underlying his confession that he claimed to be part of a myth, more a fool in motley than a knight.

‘The present tense is hardly appropriate,’ he said. There was pain in his eyes. ‘I have broken my vows too many times.’

‘Does your Order have anything to do with Meta? Is Meta a synonym for the order?’

Draganov laughed. ‘That would be preposterous. We were betrayed by a weak French king six hundred years ago. We no longer exist.’

‘It doesn’t matter if the Order exists now, does it? The important thing is that it existed at all.’

‘Good, Saskia. I was right to help you.’

‘Tell me, what is your age? How do you travel in time? What technologies are available to you?’

‘Slowly, slowly, my dear. My age is as you see it, but my family was always youthful and long-lived. I travel in the Gnostic manner: through meditation and the secret given to me in Jerusalem by a mendicant beggar. Do not ask me for the secret. I am bewitched and may not tell it. Technology? I’m just a man. I have nothing more than my physical powers, my wits and what remain of my vows before God.’

Saskia let her head drop against the folded blanket pillow. She longed to spend time with Draganov. It was not physical attraction. She yearned to speak to a man who was truly an agent in the sense beyond the limited use of the word in revolutionary circles. Draganov was of now, not then. He and she were the same. She felt, despite her rational rejection of the notion, that they alone were capable of choice in this world of clockwork, predetermined movements.

‘Why do you work for the Protection?’

‘I like to know what’s going on. As one of the okhranniki, I can do that.’

‘When we first spoke in the Caucasus, you told me my true name. How did you know these things if you lack future technology?’

Draganov looked at her sidelong. At length, he nodded.

‘Bravo. Yes, there is a device within your body that radiates this information silently. I have what I call my Good Angel, who often whispers in my ear.’ He withdrew a leather wallet from his waistcoat and showed her a black business card. Its text was white, curlicued Cyrillic: Alexei Sergeyevich Draganov, Fontanka 16. As Saskia watched, the letters flattened to a long string. The string swung like a skipping rope for an instant before new letters knotted along its length.

Guten Abend, Frau Kommissarin.

Saskia felt unease at this. Slowly, she passed the card back.

‘It’s better that the card stay with me,’ he said. ‘That is why I didn’t speak of it.’

‘Will it do me harm?’

‘Quite possibly.’ He reached towards the tight drapes that blocked the rear window and parted them with a finger. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said. ‘At the hospital, we will part. A doctor called Leontiev has been paid. He will escort you to one of the larger St Petersburg hospitals. From there, you will be on your own. Remember my advice: don’t come back.’

‘Thank you, my friend,’ said Saskia. ‘Or do I have your Order to thank, for avowed protection of pilgrims?’

‘The Order,’ continued Draganov, ‘is no more. Is it connected to Meta? I doubt it.’

‘That is disingenuous. You must work for Meta in some capacity.’

‘Meta is not an employer, Saskia,’ said Draganov, in a warning tone. ‘Nor is it a gentleman’s club. Meta is a way of thinking.’

Saskia gave him an expectant look. She remembered the suspicions of Ego in that parallel universe. Her physical predecessor in that reality had been on a mission.

‘What is the Meta way of thinking?’

‘Simply, the belief that change is possible.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Saskia said, but her thoughts turned to that yearning for connection once more. She wanted this conversation to continue not only because Draganov had answers, but because he was special among the men of this time. All her conversations for the past three years had been with automata.

‘Tell me about a time when you wanted to change something but could not.’

‘That describes my whole life,’ she said. His request felt too vague to answer, but still her reply came, surprising her with its confessional cast. ‘There are events in year 2023 that have already taken place. They involve me as an older woman. Whatever happens between now and then, whatever tortures or pains I endure, my life must continue. I am protected by the time paradox that might result in my death.’

‘And when you tried to go home, the time band took you through realities where the time paradox did not exist.’

‘Yes,’ she said. Her mind coasted. The physical presence of Draganov, and the shaking ambulance, seemed to bleed out of her perception. ‘I felt that I could make a difference in those places.’

‘Do you think it is possible, rationally, that you could make such a difference?’

‘Some days I think so. Other days I don’t.’

‘There,’ said Draganov. He smiled and this broke whatever spell had distracted her. ‘You would not make a good associate of Meta.’

The ambulance stopped. It rocked as the driver climbed down.

‘And now,’ said Draganov, ‘we are here.’

As he buttoned his dress shirt, Saskia put her hand over his.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Does Meta send agents through time?’

‘Think of them as soldiers of a special regiment.’

‘Or soldiers of God like you, Sir Robert of Chappes.’

Draganov pushed her hand away and finished buttoning his shirt.

‘As I discovered to my cost, my dear, God has little to do with it.’

‘Did God send me through those parallel universes?’

‘Why would He do that?’ asked Draganov, closing the doors of the medical cabinet.

‘I don’t know. As a lesson in hope, perhaps.’

‘I thought you might say, “Faith”.’ He looked down on her. His stern expression changed to one of fondness. ‘My dear, listen to me. If someone at Meta deliberately manipulated the behaviour of that time band, you should be worried.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they want to recruit you.’

‘They have already recruited me. One version of me, at least. The one that died in the back of a Peugeot Bébé.’

The doors of the ambulance opened on a dark courtyard. The driver stood there. He was no more than a boy.

In Russian, Draganov said, ‘See to it that she is taken directly to Dr Leontiev.’

The boy nodded and clapped his mittened hands against his thighs.

Saskia said, ‘How do I repay you?’

Draganov grunted as he stepped from the ambulance. He scratched his red beard and gave the courtyard a searching look. Satisfied, he turned back to her.

‘Payment, pilgrim? You forget my vow of poverty.’

A whistle was blown in the distance. The sound of trotting horses and clattering body armour reached the courtyard. The last that Saskia saw of Draganov was his tall form, perfectly at home in itself, charging as though a lone vanguard, moving to intercept soldiers as they entered the hospital grounds.

Chapter Thirty-Three

The Gulf of Finland: Autumn, 1908

The last hours of the Baltic approach to St Petersburg were renowned. Many of the first class passengers gathered on the unsteady private deck to watch the Imperial City rise from the troubled sea. The morning was bright and its sky gulled. The east wind smeared spray from the wave crests but this reached neither the high deck nor the muzzled figures surrounding Saskia Brandt, who had the truest balance of all the passengers.

The mouth of the River Neva opened and the many islands of the Gulf of Finland took shape. Over the next minutes, the vast naval fortress of Kronstadt passed to the north and the palaces of Peterhof moved by on the south. The gentlemen pointed cigars and pipes at the golden tower of the Admiralty. Appreciative noises filled the deck. Then a warm gust carried salt water into the air and Saskia turned against it.

She overheard one of the passengers speaking Hebrew. The words had the monotone of prayer. He would be placed in a category of close inspection when they arrived at the Russian customs on Vasilyevsky Island. The slightest irregularity would ensure his entry was refused. She thought of Yusha, her once-lover in that Zurich garret.

Pasha was somewhere on that horizon, impossibly small against the infinite line of Russia. She wondered if he had forgiven her. The boy lived, that was sure, but the i-Core lived with him, too. What had the parasite done? Saved the host for itself? Saskia did not know who, or what, would look out through his eyes. Pasha might hate her.

Thoughts on the consequences of his resurrection had followed her since that night when she had ridden from the Great Summer Palace in the ambulance, and burdened her through months alone in Finland and Norway reading about Draganov’s arrest and his court martial, and they slowed her steps from the crowded, blaring customs room to the noisy quayside. There, no fewer than five taxi drivers competed for her fare. They wore padded blue coats despite the growing warmth. Each claimed to have met her before and rendered an excellent service. Saskia selected the largest of the bearded men. Robespierre had always claimed that the larger the beard, the better the driver. She negotiated a rate that was half of his proposal, citing his torn collar. His fellows laughed at this out-smarting, and as she waited, watching for Green coats, anxious to be gone, the driver loaded her trunk. A moment later, she was once more moving through the streets.

Where there were people, there were spies. The pink Petersburg stones had always been unquiet with the tectonics of revolutionary forces. To attract the attention of the Tsarist variety would be problematic, while to attract the revolutionary variety would be disastrous. Saskia sat in the rear of the covered compartment. It was darkest there. She let the faces impress upon her instant by instant, as if each were a word in a book, and tried to discern errors in their grammar. The spy as error, as a dropped stitch. She smiled. No, she thought, no matches yet. But there will be a price on my head not much smaller than the heist expropriation. Do they still look for me in St Petersburg? Probably.

Saskia needed to be lucky.

Her cabbie took her across the Nikolayevsky Bridge, which joined Vasilyevsky Island to the mainland near the western corner of the Winter Palace. The red paint on the government buildings was peeling. Saskia watched the birds wheel above squares and the canals. The cabbie stood to bow towards the Orthodox chapel in the centre of the bridge. He did not slow his horses.

They passed the Hermitage, the golden spire of the Admiralty, and entered Nevsky Avenue, its buildings elegant as a parade, their styles countless.

At the hotel, Saskia checked in using her Danish passport. Her trunk was carried to her room. She asked for tea and the most recent edition of the Morgenbladet while she rested in the reading room. The best the waiter could do was the Financial Times, and one third of that had been obscured using black ink by the imperial censor.

Later in the day, she received a note from a waiter. It had two wax seals. When she opened the note, the paper was blank. Saskia did not stop to finish her tea. She went upstairs to her suite. There, she held the note over a candle and watched as the paper darkened to reveal white letters. It reminded her of Draganov’s business card.

Calamity! Execution date brought forward by bureaucrat. Knight died bravely last Wednesday at midday along with fifty more comrades. I am so sorry. Assume plan is cancelled. Will make arrangements.

R.

Saskia lowered Robespierre’s note another centimetre and watched it burn. She recalled a poetaster in the Outfit called Yevgeny who was fond of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Yevgeny was forever reciting the words until they passed into cliché and dulled. But their brightness returned now, as Saskia pondered them in FitzGerald’s translation.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety, nor Wit,

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

When the paper was ash, she brushed her hand clean and went to her trunk. Inside she found the dark costume of a Finnish doorway woman, enough roubles to bribe all the guards of the Prison for Solitary Confinement twice over, the prison’s blueprints, and contacts for the river men who were to transport Saskia and Draganov down the Neva once they had escaped the outer wall. Now these things were for nothing. Saskia had failed him.

She reached to the bottom of the trunk and took out a bottle of vodka. There was a shaving pot in the bathroom. She put some vodka in that, drank it, and buzzed for a boy. She took a sheet of headed paper from the bureau and wrote:

Dear General,

I was instrumental in the robbery of the State Bank of Georgia, which took place on 13th June last year. While transporting the spoils to St Petersburg, I had a change of heart and diverted the money to the School for the Blind as a charitable donation: twin dressers, each with a false compartment at the rear. There you will find the money satchels.

In haste,

A friend

This note she placed in an envelope addressed to General Aleksandr Gerasimov, Fontanka 16.

She drew a second piece of paper and wrote:

My dear, I am disconsolate. Don’t wait for me.

Yours,

T

This she addressed to Max—Robespierre’s current cryptonym—at a hotel in the north-east of St Petersburg. She gave both envelopes to the boy when he came. Then she loosened the buttons on her blouse and lay on the bed. She wondered what it would feel like to die. Would it be like going home? Her memories of those parallel universes, and the two deaths there, were half-formed, as though they had happened to someone else. Would it be like rebirth, into nothing?

The stump of her wrist itched. She scratched it, thinking, Not yet.

She wondered if her Plan B was going to work. She felt like a fool; the jingling, irritating complement of a knight who highlights the virtues of the knight through contrast.

~

After sunset, the house on the Moika was glorious beneath floes of cloud, and dramatic with electric light and its rolling flags: the Imperial and Tsar Ivan’s double-headed eagle. Saskia stood across the street. She had adopted the costume of the Finnish doorway woman, rolled in some dust and old manure, and bought the stock of a nearby abacus seller. Now, as a downtrodden abacus seller herself, late in a hard life, she rested with her shoulder against a telegraph pole. The electric traffic within the pole fell upon her as a cascade of whispers.

She waited until midnight. Then she left her abacuses in a pile, set fire to it, and ambled across the road. She watched the flames grow from the anonymity of shadow next to Nakhimov residence. Passers-by stopped to look. A shopkeeper came down from his flat and struck at the blaze with his nightcap. Finally, a policeman approached and created a perimeter. These dozen people, including the duty footman of the Nakhimovs, waited for the arrival of a horse-drawn fire engine, whose bell could already be heard from the direction of the Admiralty.

The light reflected in the eyes of Saskia until she turned away, expressionless, and climbed the Nakhimov house using the drainpipe and the gaps between its stones. Because she was a dark shape against the light facade, she did not stop when she reached the Imperial flag. She made a risky grab for its base and swung her foot onto the small balcony behind it. She slipped onto the balcony and crouched, panting. Her heart rang like the bell of the fire engine.

She pushed her way inside. This was the library. Here, she had waited to meet the Countess and Pavel Eduardovitch those three months before, when she had hoped to journey home through the Amber Room. The piano, bought for the birth of Ludmilla, was still there. There was a reality in which the piano was indeed played by her; but not this one.

The library was lit by floor lamps near its three closed doorways. The books seemed to watch her. Saskia shook her head at this notion; it was the lens of her fear warping the room, nothing more.

I will lead my fear, she thought.

She waited for the clocks to strike the half hour. Then she hurried.

~

At midnight, when Pasha had been sleeping in his bed long enough, Saskia opened her eyes. She had been hanging upside down in a dark corner of his room for two hours, unnoticed. She turned her head until the cartilage in her neck loosened with a click. She unwrapped her legs from the chain of the chandelier and lowered herself into a vertical position. Her legs were numb but not lifeless and she dropped onto a bear rug and crouched until the burning of the blood passed.

‘Good evening, Ms Tucholsky,’ said Pasha. He was sitting upright in his bed. Trunks and suitcases had been stacked behind him. As ever, the monogram on the lapel of his pyjamas made a constellation in the darkness.

‘We’re beyond that,’ said Saskia. She did not move from her crouch. ‘You know me now as Saskia Brandt.’

‘I see you as well as you see me, my friend.’

‘Do you see me now?’

‘Yes.’ Pasha moved so that he was sitting cross-legged on his bed. He smiled. ‘Are you scared?’

Saskia rose. Her plimsolls were quiet on the floor, but the wood popped. Street sounds could be heard through the open window. She reached the end of the bed.

‘What do you see?’

‘A young woman in black clothes. Your eyes are black but your skin is white, patterned darkly.’

‘The pattern is my vasculature. You see not only past the darkness, Pasha, but deeper. You are now sensitive to wavelengths of light above and below that of other people.’

‘Wavelengths?’

‘The spatial period of a wave. The waves in this case are those of electromagnetic radiation. The wavelengths can be very short, or very long, and we plot all lengths on a dimension known as the electromagnetic spectrum. The majority of what you see at this moment is derived from the near-infra red, which you can think of as wavelengths slightly longer than what normal people label as red.’

Pasha looked at his hands. ‘I can see further into myself.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Saskia, carefully.

‘What else can I do? I am stronger, of course. Yesterday, I tried to lift my bureau. It was impossible at first, but then I felt a second strength combine with my own, and the bureau rose.’

‘Did your arms hurt afterwards?’

‘Yes. Tremendously. Is that the cost of this power?’

‘Cost,’ said Saskia, ‘is not the right word. Your muscles and skeleton, and all the connecting tissues, are designed for a given capacity of work. When you exceed that capacity, you hurt yourself. But the thing that gives you strength also gives you the capacity to recover more quickly.’

‘Can I die?’

Saskia looked at the black handkerchief around her amputation. ‘That,’ she said, ‘will be difficult.’

‘Yet this is not a gift?’

Saskia sat on the edge of the bed, put her elbow on her knee, and cupped her chin.

‘Pavel Eduardovitch, I could not leave you to die. I didn’t think about your future, or mine, or that of the thing I put inside your body. I’m sorry.’

‘This thing—is it a spell?’

‘At one level it is a spell. At another, it can be explained in the language of science. You can choose which.’

‘I choose science.’

Saskia raised an eyebrow and looked at him. He expected her to be proud of that statement, but she was not.

‘What about your faith?’

Pasha smiled. ‘“O Lord, revive me, for Your name’s sake. For Your righteousness, deliver my soul from danger.” Is it not so?’

There was a new strength to his voice. Saskia wanted to believe that it was not the i-Core, an alien addition, but a hint of the parallel Pavel Eduardovitch.

‘You are a strong person,’ she said. The lower lids of her eyes brimmed. ‘Stronger than me, I would say.’

‘When I dream,’ he said, ‘the spell talks to me through the mouths of dogs. What about you, Ms Brandt?’

‘Sparrows.’

Pasha nodded. Saskia felt his eyes on her for long seconds. He was deciding whether or not to ask a question.

‘Speak, Pavel Eduardovitch.’

‘Please, don’t be sad. You have given me life, and other things. I dreamed that the dogs formed a team and pulled my sled across miles of snow until I came to a place not unlike the Great Summer Palace but made entirely of ice. Inside, I found the Amber Room. Its walls were transparent and it had no ceiling. A woman was sitting there, at a piano, playing while the snow fell.’

‘Me?’

‘No, my sister Ludmilla.’

Saskia turned to him.

‘Go on.’

‘She played me a beautiful piece on the piano. She had … she had,’ Pasha swallowed and looked down. In a wavering voice, he said, ‘She had Mother’s eyes.’

Saskia reached across the bed and embraced him. His frame felt lanky and weak. Pasha wept on her shoulder and Saskia cried, too, remembering the bloody tears that she had once shed. She pushed his cheek against hers and felt the warmth of his neck. She could not avoid the dark thought that within him, inside that warm blood, was the i-Core.

He sees the technology as dogs, Saskia thought. Can he infect other animals? Could he see through the eyes of a dog as it locks its jaw around the neck of a man? Is that my gift?

‘Come with me,’ said Pasha, when his breathing had slowed. Saskia relaxed her grip but Pasha still held tight. ‘I’m going on a Grand Tour. It was my idea and Mother agrees.’

‘What about your position at the Lyceum?’

‘Mathematics no longer interests me.’ His voice had grown younger. ‘I want to know about science.’

Saskia looked at the suitcases behind his bed.

‘You’re taking most of the house with you.’

‘Only the essentials.’

Saskia, still holding him, looked once more at the black handkerchief around her amputation. She understood that accompanying Pasha would be a great risk for him. Yet there was a youthful power in his body, and it spoke to her.

‘I cannot come with you,’ she said. At his disappointed sigh, she continued, ‘At least, not as you know me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

They were looking at one another now.

‘I am going away,’ she said, ‘but not in the manner you think. Do you remember when you were shot in the abdomen?’

‘Yes,’ said Pasha, fiercely. ‘They told me there had been no wound and that the blood belonged to a revolutionary, but I know this is nonsense.’

‘The way in which your wound disappeared is the way in which I am about to change.’

‘You’re talking about the person inside you,’ said Pasha. ‘It relates to what Dr Freud says about the unconscious, does it not?’

Saskia nodded. ‘In a way. And it reminds me of the ship of Theseus. Do you know the conundrum?’

‘Yes, it is told by Plutarch.’

‘Then tell me now.’

‘There was a ship that was preserved by Greeks. In preserving it, they replaced all the oars, and all the planks, and everything that rotted over the years, until it was no longer the ship of Theseus.’

‘And yet it remained the ship of Theseus,’ said Saskia. ‘Just as you remain Pavel Eduardovitch, even though the years pass and the atoms that made you are replaced by new ones.’

‘What will happen to you?’

‘I don’t know. I will sleep, and when I wake up, my name will be Ute. I will speak only German.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Pasha. ‘I speak German very well.’

‘Good. My name, then, will be Ute, and I will remember you only as someone dreamed. I will recognise you, I’m sure, but our friendship will need to begin again. I might look different.’

‘How?’

Saskia thought of the night she woke in the Swiss barn, not long after the Georgian Papashvily had tried to kill her. Her left hand had been quickening.

‘People who recognise me now will recognise me no longer.’

Pasha’s expression was one of delight and puzzlement. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I can’t be sure. But the sparrows have spoken to me in my dreams, just as the dogs speak to you in yours.’

‘Will the transformation happen quickly?’

‘As soon as I will it.’

Pasha took Saskia’s head in her hands. He moved to kiss her, and she worried about spoiling the moment with a rejection of his advance, but his lips did not touch hers. Instead, he kissed her forehead.

‘You’re my friend,’ he said. ‘We will leave tomorrow for one of our Crimean estates. I insist: I use the imperative tense.’

‘Mood.’

‘Do you agree?’

‘I agree,’ she said. His joy concerned her, but warmed her, too.

‘Will it be like dying?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it will.’

~

Later that night, in her room at the hotel, Saskia sang herself a nursery rhyme:

‘Sleep-sleep-sleep. Don’t lie on the edge of the bed or a grey wolf will come and bite you.’

~

Saskia opened her eyes on the dream world. Its simple shore was gone, replaced by a range of black cliffs against which slammed grey waves higher than the tallest building in St Petersburg. On those cliffs stood a castle of ice. From Saskia’s perspective halfway up a staircase cut in the cliff, the walls of the ice castle reached more than one hundred feet above the rock. She gasped as a wave hammered into the gully below her. The shock of the noise made her stumble against the cliff. Then the water fell down and it was all she could do to breathe and ride out the sudden cold.

She took the steps one at a time. They zigzagged up the sheer cliff without a hand-rail or any barrier to the heights. She reached the top of the cliff and, breathing hard, touched the wall of the ice castle. It looked like dirty blue marble, yellowing at the base where the salt water had piled against it over the years. She could not enter the castle here. Instead, she would need to cross an ice bridge. The bridge looked like the one that the smuggler Yacov Emmanuilovich had used to help her cross the border. It was wide enough for a cart and had trellised ice rails.

Ute was standing on the far side of the bridge. Behind her was the dark mouth of the portcullis. As always, this was the person Saskia saw in mirrors: A self-possessed, beautiful and sad woman aged about thirty. She was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and black trainers. Her rucksack was slung over one shoulder and her left hand—whole, fingers drumming—was hooked under the strap by a thumb. Her sad expression became watchful when she caught sight of Saskia.

What does she see when she looks at me? thought Saskia. A witch? A gathering of sparrows in the form of a woman?

Saskia stepped onto the bridge. It was firm underfoot. She made sure to keep to the centre. A fall to the dark waters below would be a long one. She stopped on the shallow apex as the uncountable mountains of water spent themselves on the rocks below.

Ute approached Saskia and stopped, too. She seemed taller than usual. Ute’s hopeful expression changed to puzzlement.

‘Where is Saskia?’ Ute asked.

‘I don’t understand. I’m here.’

Ute’s voice held no challenge, only wonder. ‘Saskia? But you are not made of sparrows today.’

Saskia frowned. On an intuition, she reached for a lock of her own hair and pulled it before her eyes. It was blonde. She looked at her hands: the fingers were different—pale, smooth—and there was an unfamiliar, fresh scar across her left palm.

‘What do I look like?’ said Saskia.

Ute reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and produced a compact mirror. She passed it to Saskia, who looked into her own eyes for the first time she could remember.

The girl looked no older than the one who had killed Saskia in the parallel Geneva. She had blue eyes, a large forehead, and a freckled button-nose. Twelve years old? Thirteen? Saskia angled the mirror to see a grey hooded top and blue bodywarmer. Then she turned back to her eyes. Those eyes were ringed with fatigue. They looked scared.

The despair seemed to hollow her out. She sobbed, ‘Who am I?’

Ute gave her an affectionate smile, the kind an adult gives to the child who must be brave. She gathered Saskia in an embrace, and Saskia cried against the black leather jacket with shuddered exhales that boomed within her body, still hollowed by that despair, louder than the erupting waves.

‘I don’t know why I see you as a child today,’ said Ute. Her mouth was muffled against Saskia’s crown. ‘Perhaps there is some meaning in it. Like why am I standing on a bridge made of ice? It would be funny if it weren’t so real. Am I meant to cross the bridge? What’s on the other side?’

Saskia did not look up. She could not. All she could manage was a nod.

‘Alright,’ said Ute. ‘And you’re to go inside the castle. Is that it?’

Again, Saskia nodded.

A tremendous wave made landfall around them and a short, salty rain fell.

‘Am I going home?’ asked Ute.

‘Yes,’ Saskia whispered. Her throat felt sticky and engorged. ‘You are to live. I am to …’ Saskia could not say the word. Her voice, now she listened to it, was that of a girl. How could she have not noticed before? That explained why the steps up the cliff had seemed so large, and why Ute was so tall. ‘I am to go in there.’

‘Shhh,’ said Ute. ‘Everything will be fine. You’ll dream of me.’

Saskia prepared herself for her next question with two long breaths. ‘When they killed me to take my mind,’ she said, ‘was I just a girl?’

Ute kissed the top of her head and turned them both so that Saskia had her back to the castle of ice. Ute crouched, brushed away the tears from Saskia’s swollen cheeks, and tapped her nose once. They both smiled.

‘You’re more than just a girl,’ she said. ‘Now, I have to go.’

And then Ute was backing away from her, shrugging the rucksack a little higher, walking to the cliff edge at the end of the bridge.

Ute turned back.

‘You need to dismiss me,’ she called. ‘That’s how this works.’

‘Go, little heart,’ said Saskia. ‘I dismiss you.’

Ute became glass, then dissolved. The last part of her to disappear was her waving hand.

In time, when a true rain began to fall along with the rising spray, Saskia turned towards the castle. She could see a sheer-walled tunnel of dark ice vanishing in a turn. She wondered how cold it would be in there.

‘Ice cold,’ she said aloud. The juvenile edge to her voice was still there, but it did not crack, and Saskia felt strong enough to continue. She had faced the waters of Lake Baikal. She could face this.

I am more than just a girl. I will lead my fear.

Saskia passed into the iceworks. In the quietening gloom, she turned to the wall and saw the warped reflection of a lost girl walking alongside her. She carried a pink rucksack on one shoulder. She might have been walking to school. Saskia zipped her bodywarmer and put both arms through the straps of the rucksack. Her jaw trembled with the cold and the thought of coming dreams, but she lifted her head.

‘Arctic,’ she told herself. ‘Cool as.’

Epilogue

The Future: Met Four Base

Beneath Nevada’s Valley of Fire, in a twist of a vast helix bored by a nuclear subterrene tunneller, Professor Jennifer Proctor felt the first intimations of tiredness. She commanded a neural script to sharpen her concentration.

Proctor was two days out from an academic conference in Boulder, five away from a periodic review of Project Déjà Vu, and a month clear of her divorce from Sara. She looked through the transparent wall of the control room to the floor of the tunnel, where the centrifuges were turning even now. She credited her neural scripts with giving her the strength to stay on top of this mess. True, there were colleagues with whom she could confide. But there was none, apart from one man, she could trust.

She walked down the long flight of steps that led to the blast wall. Technicians nodded as she passed. There had been a time when she knew their names without recourse to the data overlay that enhanced her vision. These days, the importance of those personal connections seemed to have diminished.

She carried the chill of paranoia always: Which of them knew that she had sent the solider, codenamed Cory, through time and to his death? She had been careful to erase all trace of the operation. Logs, after all, could be deleted, and technicians paid off. But the potential for discovery remained.

And none of this changed the fact that she did not yet know why her father had been murdered.

She opened the metal door in the blast wall and entered a short corridor. Luminescent motes glowed. The corridor ended in a larger, deeper chamber about the size of a school bus. There was a rack of outdoor suits. She put one on and waited for the gases in the material to expand. The young technician at the door nodded to indicate that he had begun the priming.

Proctor stood by the technician until the priming was complete. He muttered something about a football game. She noted this attempt at small talk and smiled, but could not summon enough interest to engage with him. There was a visual overlay of his name floating near his chest. She didn’t bother to read it.

The door opened with a hiss of equalisation and Proctor stepped into Kaliningrad.

A level concrete walkway had been laid on the sloping floor of the underground bunker. It spanned the sealed chamber in a lazy sigmoid that reached all the way to the far end, where vertical panels of amber stood in the arrangement they had once held, almost a century before, when the German army had evacuated them from St Petersburg.

Proctor pulled up her hood to cover her white hair. She approached the three sets of amber panels. They were silent as monoliths. Parts of the panels had been damaged in transit, scorched, or cracked by the team who had supervised the restoration, before being encased in carbon nano-mesh.

The panels surrounded a time band, which had been placed in the centre of the floor. Touching one side of the device was a transparent tube filled with ball bearings. A electromagnet at the top of the tube turned on and off, lifting the column of metal balls only to let them drop against the band.

Proctor watched the sequence for a minute. She felt great regret. Saskia had been a friend. She sighed, then passed a command to the electromagnet.

It stopped.

She remained among the panels for another half an hour. She touched them and thought about the implications of the data she had collected from Saskia. Those implications struck her with enough force to wake her from the apathy that characterised her life. Years before, she had felt the same way about gravity: there had been the smallest glimmer of possibility in those equations, a possibility that spoke to time travel under low-energy conditions.

Something creaked above her head. She considered the weight of the reconstructed Königsberg Castle. It did not matter to her that the room was deep underground and sealed. She liked confined spaces. Always had.

She felt the movement of air as the door to Met Four Base was primed and equalised. She did not turn to see who had joined her because she had given instructions to refuse all but one individual.

‘Pass me your report, please,’ she said.

Before her next cold inhalation, Proctor’s brain had accepted the imprint of tens of thousands of moments, each of them a slice of Alexei Draganov’s life. Sudden new memory. She became a subtly different person.

‘So Saskia thinks you are dead,’ said Proctor. ‘That’s just as well.’

Draganov stepped alongside her. He was clean-shaven and had gelled his hair. He wore jeans and a checked shirt.

‘If she digs into the circumstances of my execution, she might become suspicious.’

‘What was it? Firing squad?’

‘Hanging.’

‘Must have been painful.’

Draganov gave her a sour look. ‘Did you collect the data we needed?’

‘There are certain facts now established.’ Proctor smiled despite herself. She had data, and that was always a joy. ‘We cannot yet pass any great quantity of matter from one universe and the next, but we can send information. If that information happens to be the digital consciousness of a dead mind, like Saskia’s, then we have a method for…exploration.’

‘So it seems,’ said Draganov. He crouched and took the transparent tube of ball bearings. These he poured into his palm. ‘She claimed that Meta is rather more advanced in the reality we sent her to.’

Proctor had to smile again. Their own Meta had precisely two members: herself and Draganov.

‘I believe her,’ she said. ‘You and I also exist in these alternative realities. In some, I guess we started earlier.’

Draganov did not seem amused. ‘Has it occurred to you that they might be more advanced in passing matter into our universe? I wouldn’t want to meet my doppelgänger.’

‘Yes,’ said Proctor, quietly. ‘It has occurred to me.’

‘Jennifer, I made it clear, months ago, that if we are to find a method of shaping the present through changing the past, it should not be for personal gain.’

Proctor rubbed her forehead. She was getting a headache. ‘A better world? What could be a more exalted aim, and still lead to personal gain?’

‘It will not bring your father back.’

Proctor watched him take the time band and break it.

‘That’s expensive,’ she said. ‘Especially in these troubled times.’

‘What shall we do with all this?’

‘The charges are laid.’ She indicated plastic yellow boxes in each corner. ‘We just need to set the timer.’

‘Do we know what happens to Saskia after 1908?’

‘There’s nothing in the records. Those of Nakhimov are scant. She will have adopted a new identity. Why do you ask?’

Draganov stood. ‘I’m going back to get her.’

‘For the data on her brain chip? Don’t trouble yourself.’

‘No,’ said Draganov. ‘She’s done something for us, so we can do something for her. The time paradox that protects her stifles her, too. I’m going to find her and bring her to 2023. Once she has played her role in those events, she will be free.’

‘Free to die? Personally, I wouldn’t rush to thank you.’

Proctor and Draganov walked to the door and used the low-frequency transmitter to signal the technician in Nevada. As the door opened, Draganov gestured with his hand.

‘Ladies first,’ he said.

Proctor looked at him. She knew, now, his background as a former Templar Knight. It explained much about him.

Before she stepped through, she commanded the charges to blow.

‘Ten seconds,’ she said.

They closed the door. As Proctor thanked the technician—this time using his name—she counted down from ten. The door did not so much as tremble. For those near Königsberg Castle, Kaliningrad, there would be a distant rumble as the last of the Amber Room was destroyed.

Canterbury, UK; November 2007 to January 2013

Saskia Brandt will return.

~

I’m an independent author. If you would like to help others find The Amber Rooms, please consider leaving a review at the Kindle store.

Do you want to know when my next book will be published? Email me at ihocking@gmail.com and I’ll let you know. You will also find me on Twitter: ian_hocking.

Acknowledgements

Phew. That was a long book. I’m knackered just thinking about it. Knights Templar, eh? Cheeky monkeys.

As you can probably tell, I had my nose in a few books before and during the writing of The Amber Rooms. It would not be cricket if I were to forget all about them.

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore provided background on the early days of the dictator. The wonderful film Russian Ark gave me a sense of the enigma of Russia—not enough to solve, but enough to fascinate. Parts of Count Nakhimov’s house on the Moika are borrowed from the Petersburg residence of the Family Yusupov, described by Prince Felix Yusupov, together with episodes in which he—wait for it: dragged up—and sang in jazz clubs, in his book Lost Splendour. (This book is hosted by alexanderpalace.org, itself a fantastic multimedia resource on Imperial Russian history.) Other eyewitness accounts include Thirteen Years at the Russian Court by Pierre Gilliard, which includes the death of the Tsar and his family, and The Real Tsaritsa, written by a close friend of the Tsar’s wife called Julia Dehn. I have also drawn upon the top-notch Fire and Sword in the Caucasus. This book was published in 1906 by the Italian historian and diplomat Luigi Villari and describes his travels around Russia, most particularly the Caucasus. He enjoyed himself alright. Mustn’t forget the books Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar (edited by Barbara Engel and Clifford Rosenthal) and A Life’s Music by Andreï Makine.

I discovered the quote from Albert Camus while listening to the audiobook of Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia. Thanks, Clive. Nobody says “Margarita Pracatan” like you.

I want to thank my Russian teacher, Наталья Тарнягина, for her understanding and patience, even when I came late to classes and shouted the Russian, ‘Goodbye!’ at everybody as I walked in. They might have been laughing then—but they weren’t laughing later as they waited for me to finish reading Russian sentences letter by letter. Neighbours Janet and Michael Berridge, plus friend Viktor, helped polish some of my translations herein and generally give the impression that I understood a modicum of Russian. Lies! My friends Ed Genochio and Aliya Whiteley gave me feedback on the final draft. Ed even used Google Docs, which was brave. Olivia Wood, my editor, kept me entertained with mots bon even as she tidied up and generally prettified my English.

And, for the cups of tea, optimism and faith, and for putting up with my absences: my partner, Britta.

Finally, thanks for reading, Comrades.

I endeavour to remain

Your most humble and obedient writer,

Ian Hocking

Canterbury, UK

March 24, 2013

Looking Glass (Book Four)—Draft Preview

Chapter One

The Mid-21st Century: Krk, in the Bay of Kvarner, Adriatic

When Beckmann awoke in the darkness of his bedroom, he touched his heart. He had flown to China the previous winter and paid a military doctor for an illegal medical nanotechnology called i-Core. The doctor, though bought off with an Edvard Munch, had grumbled during the procedure. He described i-Core as a parasite. He cited the death of America as a side effect of humanity’s love for technology. Beckmann had a notion that he would sit on a fucking tapeworm if he thought it would smooth the jagged beats of his heart. He was an old man, could afford the i-Core, and gave not a damn about international regulations on automaticity.

He remembered the ampoule of golden i-Core on the workbench of Dr Hsieh. Outside, it had been snowing darkly.

Beckmann’s hand remained on his chest.

He heard the distant report of a gunshot, which was not uncommon these days when the wind was in the east. The noise carried across the Adriatic to the high window of this bedroom, penetrating the armoured glass.

This prompted a thought of his last, disbanded employer, the Föderatives Investigationsbüro. The organisation had been replaced months after his retirement by another with a different three-letter acronym but the same brief, a budget blacker than black, and military oversight in place of civilian.

Dr Hsieh had used a hypodermic syringe. It was an anachronistic tool. Just like, Beckmann supposed, his FIB agents had been. One, the Moscow Section operative Klutikov, had joined Beckmann in his retirement, and now supervised the security of this clifftop compound. Another, Brandt, had disappeared in the twenties, along with the reclusive John Hartfield. Beckmann had only one clue to her whereabouts: a photograph taken in St Petersburg in the 1900s. It showed a shopping arcade. In the foreground, Saskia Brandt stood in the clothes of the day, her expression unabashed. She seemed to be looking at the camera; at Beckmann. No more photographs of her had been found. He had it mounted in one of the upper hallways.

There were times when Beckmann could outpace his anxiety at Brandt’s disappearance, but they were seldom. He was a political man. He had an instinct for anything that weakened him. His ignorance of Brandt’s whereabouts was one such weakness. She was, with luck, long-dead of tuberculosis, a slit throat, or the madness that time travel would surely inflame. But if that chip at the back of her brain had survived in a grave and was found, and reverse-engineered, then the law would come to Beckmann on his comfortable little Croatian island, and the charges would make a Class A nanotechnology possession look like littering. The FIB had bent more than one law and indentured its agents under the quasi-legal status of the Richter Ruling. That charge was inescapable. It didn’t matter that Beckmann was following orders.

Hand on heart.

There had been—how many?—nine of those self-interfacing cerebral chips. Each had been the size of the pills he used to take for his circulation before the i-Core became his one treatment. It had been the Hartfield Foundation that had pushed for their application in law enforcement. The risk had been great, and not just to those sorry criminals whom Beckmann had picked by hand. In truth, nobody understood how those glass lozenges worked. Nobody understood how it was possible for them to work. And nobody, as far as Beckmann could discover, knew where they had come from.

Another weakness.

With the exception of Brandt and Klutikov, the remaining FIB agents had died in the line of duty. All, that is, apart from his final recruit, Shangxiang. She had disappeared on a mission to the Arctic. Her death had been probable but never verified.

He took a deep breath, pressurising his heart as one might squeeze a hand in reassurance, and looked at the vast, blank ceiling of his bedroom. He liked the blankness. He liked the simple geometry and the colourless. But this eyrie would be different if he had family. It would be warmer, fuller.

Shangxiang had been codenamed for a third-century warrior and noblewoman known as Lady Sun.

He closed his eyes.

When the sun touched Beckmann’s clifftop house, its tinting layers darkened, pushing back the light, maintaining a certain gloom in its chambers. Beckmann would watch the process most mornings as he ate breakfast on one of the higher balconies. The tinting reminded him of slowly closing eyes. It reminded him of his death. When the evening came, and the tint faded, Beckmann liked to think that this was the house waking. It was a night-thing, like him. That was why he called his house the Moonflower.

Beckmann had an uncomfortable erection. He reached into his pyjamas, pushed it to one side, and tried to sleep. Two minutes later, thoughts entered his head that were not his own.

’…related to that gunshot earlier. Entry attempted. Not sure how many.’

Beckmann woke fully. The words had entered his head via a connection to the cortical region of his auditory pathway. The connection was mediated by the i-Core, and Beckmann had given one person alone the authority to break into his consciousness: Klutikov, his head of security.

Klutikov? thought Beckmann, passing his thoughts along the same channel. Give me a—

He was overwhelmed by a rushing wall of light. It faded, calibrating, until he perceived the gate that blocked the switchback road leading to the inner security barrier for the garage beneath Moonflower. Klutikov had said, ‘Entry’: there was a security breach. But was it virtual or physical?

What am I meant to be seeing? he sent.

’I think I saw her. I’m redeploying men. Stand by.’

The direct auditory connection preserved tone of voice. Klutikov sounded anxious. That was unlike him.

Klutikov, stay focused. Give me a report. What do you mean by ‘her’?

The scene was a virtual plane eight metres from his face. Beckmann looked around it. He could see no signs of trouble. The enhanced image showed the exterior wall—intact—and the gates, which were closed.

’Sir, five minutes ago, an individual was sighted near the front gate. She matches the description of Lady Sun. Repeat, I’m moving men into—’

She died years ago, said Beckmann, cutting him off.

’It’s her.’

An augmentation in Beckmann’s mind informed him that the vocal stress complexes in Klutikov’s voice were more than three standard deviations from his mean. He was losing control. Beckmann sighed. Klutikov had always been his most stable FIB agent, and he had been an exemplary bodyguard for much of his later career—until an incident six months previously when he had called an abort on Beckmann’s annual skiing holiday because he claimed to have sighted Lady Sun.

Have you actually seen her? Show me the video.

The display before Beckmann shimmered as it clicked back four minutes, then five. It stopped on a guard walking on his perimeter control. It was one of their Taiwanese, name of Qiyu.

I’m not seeing her. Is this the correct time?

There was no reply.

Klutikov? Keep the channel open.

’She’s reached the garage. Christ, she’s good. I’m passing her description to the automated systems.’

Beckmann sat upright. He dismissed the image of the front gate, pushed his duvet aside and slipped from the bed. Automatic lights brightened. He put his mind through a series of discrete intentions, each of which were identified and tagged by his standard neural implants. The bedroom door locked; metal blades slid down the window, where they stacked to reinforce the glass. He moved towards his wardrobe but hesitated when a thumping sound came from inside.

Knocking. Slithering. It made him think of a trapped snake.

He suppressed his fear and approached the wardrobe. It would not open to his touch. He put his fingers into the gap between the two large doors and managed to slide open the lefthand door. His day suit — a shiny sack of fabric that would assume his form and interface with his i-Core — was twisting and struggling on its hanger. Its control code had malfunctioned.

As Beckmann closed the door, he cursed aloud. He did not want to meet a threat wearing his pyjamas. However, the thought was irrational and wasteful. A weakness. He dismissed it.

He felt a drumming through is feet and heard a distant rattling.

He had never known the large-calibre ballistic weapons of Moonflower to fire. Whatever was happening beyond his bedroom, whatever had breached the compound, was serious enough for the automated systems to risk the structure and its inhabitants.

He took the hint. He reached out to the drawer near his bed, which was already opening. A fist-sized pebble of smart matter flew slowly to his hand. Once gripped, it became a gun.

Beckmann looked at the weapon. He rarely used smart matter, but his neural augmentations were able to clean up his half-memory of a training session from two years before and present the knowledge to him in a form that made him feel expert and capable. He thumbed the safety twice. When it turned red, he knew that the gun was under local control and could not be hacked like his day suit.

Klutikov, what’s that firing?

’Qiyu and Zelan are down, sir. I don’t understand. Stay where you are.’

What image did you give the house systems? Show me, as an overlay.

In a moment, the bottom left corner of his vision showed the target that Klutikov had ordered the house to attack: Qiyu. So the guard had been killed by the Moonflower’s own systems. Beckmann could only guess at the end of Zelan. Perhaps he had come to the aid of his friend and been cut down en passant.

Listen to me, Klutikov. You’ve been compromised. Take no further action.

’Sir, she’s approaching your room.’

Without thinking, Beckmann looked at the door. He wondered how he could suspend Klutikov’s security permissions. He had no idea. That kind of thing was Klutikov’s expertise. Anyway, it was too late.

Klutikov, where are you?

’I’m in the—‘

The transmission terminated with a gasp.

Beckmann put his hand on his heart. He looked at the door. The deadlocks had made him feel safer a moment before. Now he felt trapped. Was Lady Sun even here? This situation—all the hacks—fit the signature of a remote attack. But he could not assume as such. The situation was ambiguous.

To the i-Core, Beckmann thoughtsent a metaphor of reddish leaves falling in late autumn, which was his favoured image of relaxation. The edge of his anxiety dulled.

With that, he understood what to do next. He would verify the location of Klutikov and somehow override his security clearance. Then he would arrange to confine the man and turn his attention to confirming their attacker was physical.

As long as those confirmation methods were not also compromised.

He concentrated on a discrete intention to see the security suite. This intention was picked up by his neural implants and passed to the Moonflower computer.

A remote image of the suite appeared before him. Beckmann saw a bright room containing a row of lockers, an antique desk and chair, and, sitting in the chair, Klutikov. His head lay on the desk and his arms reached to the floor, touching his feet.

Crash position, Beckmann thought.

He noticed two things. A circle of blood was expanding across the green leather of the desk. And Klutikov was still holding his firearm.

For Beckmann, Klutikov had been the closest thing to family. He was surprised by the absence of even the smallest grief. He understood that Klutikov had failed him. He regretted that Klutikov had not been better.

‘Computer,’ said Beckmann, ‘tell the island authorities that the house is being attacked.’

‘Security Head Klutikov has already sent that message,’ said a voice that came from every surface. ‘It has been confirmed but the authorities are experiencing difficulties with their systems.’

‘How surprising. Briefly, where are my guards?’

‘Ho Chang is in the garage. Liu and Pribićević are on the level above the garage. Memedi is on this level along with Hao. Memedi and Hao are the only guards whose status is green. It is likely that all others have been killed. It is also likely that Mr Klutikov is dead.’

‘I know. Did you see what happened to him?’

‘Data for that event have been deleted. However, live feeds indicate that he has received one shot to the head.’

‘How many shots did he fire?’

‘One.’

‘He killed himself?’

‘That is forensically consistent with the scene in the security suite, but given my experience of Mr Klutikov, I find this unsatisfactory.’

Beckmann paced a circle. He felt absurd in his pyjamas. Not old; the i-Core lent him youth. He looked at the black dots of the cameras around the room. Behind him, the possessed suit continued to thump against the closed wardrobe door.

‘Mr Beckmann, you are in danger,’ said the house computer. ‘I would like you to proceed to the secure room.’

‘I think that the intruder would anticipate that move.’

‘Yes.’

A single shot was fired somewhere in the house.

‘Mr Beckmann,’ the computer said, ‘another guard has been killed. Only Mr Memedi remains. He is outside your door. I think he wants to come in.’

Beckmann said, ‘No.’

He could not concentrate enough to send a fear-inhibiting metaphor to the i-Core.

‘Mr Beckmann, it seems to me that the guard is acting strangely. I would like to show you, but your neural implants are not responding.’

‘I’ve taken them offline as a protective measure. Put the picture on the wall.’

Beckmann turned to see an image of young Memedi half-crouched. His head was shaking. There was a spray of blood on the front of his grey suit.

‘Turn up the volume.’

When the computer did so, the room was filled with the guard’s fast breathing. Beckmann saw the darkness around his eyes. He looked more scared than anyone Beckmann had ever seen.

‘Can he hear me?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Memedi, this is Beckmann. Someone or something is interfering with your mental processes. Try to resist.’

Beckmann saw the man turn to one of the high cameras. In reaction, the computer switched to that camera.

Memedi was looking right at him. His face had become expressionless. Relaxed to the point of inhumanity; corpse-blank. Beckmann wondered whether his warning had got through. Then Memedi’s eyes widened, as though seeing his nightmare in the dark eye of the camera dot. He fired twice at the lens. Beckman winced as the first one missed. The second one hit; the image dissolved.

Beckmann was about to request an alternative angle when Memedi screamed. Its pitch disturbed him. It was punctuated by a third, silencing shot.

The quiet that followed made Beckmann’s heart twitch. He put a hand to it.

‘Moonflower?’

There was a pause.

‘I’m afraid the last guard is dead.’

Beckmann nodded. Events had taken him beyond the threshold of fear. He was calm. He looked at his smart matter gun and rippled his fingers around the handle. He had first killed a man as a teenager.

Strange to remember that now.

He had not thought of that man for years. He had forgotten the sense of power that came with firing a bullet. Just like throwing stones, he remembered, only faster. A grown-up game now. As a teenager, he had proven something to himself.

Today, I’ll prove it again.

Beckmann knew that, by most measures, he deserved the death that was coming. But damned if he wouldn’t delay the appointment.

‘Computer, I want to head for the secure room. Maximise my chances of doing that.’

‘Very well. Do you believe you can traverse the gap between your balcony and that of the first guest bedroom?’

Beckmann considered. The rooms were next to one another along this flank of the house. The balconies were separated by a two-metre gap. If he fell, there would be three hundred feet to regret it.

‘I’ll do it. If I die, destroy yourself, and this villa. Understood?’

‘Yes.’

He strode across to the balcony doors and touched the handle to open them. When nothing happened, he frowned.

‘Computer, I’m going to shoot out the window with a smart matter gun. Can you raise the blinds?’

‘Yes. They are still under general control.’

The horizontal blinds rose to reveal the sparkling edge of the Vinodol coast.

Beckmann pointed the gun at the centre of the window. The target-identity function within the gun would ramp it up to maximum kinetics, so Beckmann straightened his elbows before firing. The shot was not loud, but it forced him back.

A plate-sized hole appeared in the glass. Its edge was scintillating. The hole got smaller as Beckmann watched. The window was repairing itself.

‘Shit,’ he said, clubbing the edges of the gap before it could shrink further. The smart gun hindered him; pieces of spent matter were returning to it, docking with little clicks.

‘Computer, stop the repairs to window.’

‘Sorry, Mr Beckmann. The code elements controlling the window repair system are too low level.’

Beckmann growled. He articulated an intention for the gun to change its shape; something, anything, that would widen the hole in the window. He felt the gun rumble. In an instant, the smart matter was a spidery star occupying the hole. Then it fired filaments into the layers of glass. The entire window buckled and fell outwards under its own weight, pulling the smart matter from his hand.

The sea air blew the drapes across his face. He stepped onto the balcony, avoiding the window. The balcony floor was cold against his bare feet. He crouched in the darkness. His pyjama cuffs fluttered. He imagined himself in the crosshairs of a weapon. The night was a vast, empty darkness. He could hear the thump of the mainland nightclubs.

Something touched his hand. He started, but it was only the smart matter returning. It resumed is massy, comforting shape.

The door to his bedroom burst from its hinges and a tinnitus filled his head.

Move it, Beckmann, he thought. Jump the gap.

He looked towards the end of the balcony.

The lights went out. All he could see was the jewelled line of the shore to his right.

This is it.

The acknowledgement of his death gave him no mastery. He felt scared, old and weak. He would die in his pyjamas, never mind Dr Hsieh’s i-Core. The technology was advanced enough to repair most bodily injury, but he did not doubt that his assailant could defeat it just as she had defeated Klutikov.

But not me, he thought. Not yet.

He hurried forward. His nerves grew tighter in anticipation of a bullet or plasma strike. He was sure that the first injury would not be fatal. It would give his assailant time to gloat. Why else kill him last?

He heard footfalls behind him. Deliberate; cold; heel-to-toe.

Beckmann pointed the gun over his shoulder, imparted full remit on target selection, and pulled the trigger. The kick hurt his wrist.

He did not turn to see the effect of the shot. He remained focused on the gap between the balconies. If he could make it across, and shoot through the window, he would be two doors away from the secure room, where he could await the Croatian authorities.

His heart thumped. Beckmann put his left fist against it once, as though marking his solidarity, and then reached for the rail. He would vault the gap like the man he had been thirty years before.

‘Beckmann,’ said a voice that might have been woven from the night itself: a wintery, thin voice, probably female. It seemed to come from all around him.

Beckmann would not stop. He told himself that he had enough forward momentum to make the jump. He remembered it as narrow, but when the dark lines of the other balcony became visible, he saw that the distance was more than two metres.

He jumped. There was enough time to feel foolish. He knew that the balcony overhung the house and the cliff; down there would be the ghostly surf, forever away, pinked by the lights of shore.

Beckmann understood, half way across, that he would not make it. The gap was too wide. He was going to fall. On instinct, his arms reached out for the rail and his fingers splayed. He released the smart matter.

There was a jolt in his shoulder. Had he been struck by a ballistic weapon, perhaps a projectile from the Moonflower automatic defences?

But it took an instant to see that the thump had come from the deploying smart matter, which had formed a cuff around his wrist. It had sent three grapnels towards the rail of the balcony. The grapnel had struck, held, and even now Beckmann was swinging painfully into the glass.

He cried out at the impact. Somehow, his arm did not break. His chest, however, slammed flush. Ribs cracked. For long seconds he hung there. He had no strength to lift himself over the rail.

The shock passed. He turned to look at his bedroom balcony. The drapes billowed. And there was something else there: a shape made of darkness. It was moving towards him.

No.

The silhouette was the perfect, final piece of puzzle he had spent his life trying to solve. He could neither articulate the puzzle nor describe its solution; but the sense of revelation overwhelmed him.

His satisfaction did not linger. It was superseded by a fear greater than any he had experienced. The fear catalysed his will. He put his left hand over his right and hauled himself up far enough for his bare toes to find an indentation on the side of the balcony.

He roared at this victory—though the sound emerged as a scream—and flopped over the rail. The smart matter grapnels rotated elegantly and released his arm before it could be wrenched. Then, in his hand, it transmuted into the gun.

Beckmann did not bother standing. He scuttled round to face the bedroom balcony and sent an intention to the smart matter: twelve projectiles, clustered.

Now.

They ablated the glass and—tech willing—his assailant.

Beckmann lay there, panting, evaluating himself. He was on his back, old, balls freezing. He was holding the gun above his belly. It shook in his grip.

He had been shouting something. The sound diminished.

There was no evidence of his assailant, but the night maintained too many shadows for him to be sure. He pictured a cloud passing from the sun and the i-Core improved his vision: to reveal a blazing, shifting scene. The bedroom drapes moved like white fire. The balcony was empty.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

With a second, the spent projectiles began returning to the gun. It kicked as the matter pebbles finished their lazy arcs and rejoined, carefully avoiding his fingers. When mass was restored, he made to pull the trigger again; this time, he intended to fire through the supports that attached the bedroom balcony to the building.

Something landed with a thud behind him.

A black hand reached down and gripped the smart matter. His hands were trapped. Before Beckmann could look up, he was lifted to his feet with irresistible force.

Beckmann whined with outrage. He was unable to move the gun or detach his hands from it. Another hand gripped his shoulder and spun him to face his assailant. The woman he saw was a distorted, kaleidoscopic caricature.

Turn off enhanced vision, he thought in desperation, but it was not a metaphor; the i-Core did not understand.

‘Sleep, sleep, sleep,’ she whispered. Her breath was foul. Her head was tilted in malignant curiosity.

Beckmann was maddened by her familiarity. He was certain that they had met before. This meeting was extraordinary in a manner he could not articulate. Had he dreamed of her? Who was she? Her name, and her role, was on the tip of his tongue.

‘I know you.’

‘Sleep,’ she repeated. ‘But don’t lie on the edge of the bed. Or a grey wolf will come and get you.’

The tinnitus increased in volume. At the same time, the woman released him and stepped back. Beckmann had no control over his body. He could only stand in the night and seethe as his right arm raised the gun to his temple. It was under her control.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not like this.’

The idea that posterity would view his death as suicide, when he had fallen in murder, gave him enough frustration to surmount his fear.

Think, Beckmann, he told himself. If I can talk, if I can move my mouth, she can’t have full control of me.

‘This is easier,’ she said.

‘Who are you?’

‘A reflection of yourself. We all were.’

He sent a discrete intention to his i-Core: an image of this woman as a scarecrow, set upon by birds, each bird pulling out her straw and until only her ragged clothes remained.

Just as Beckmann felt the i-Core within him mobilise, his vision darkened. The night seemed to fall in upon the face of the woman. Shadowed, she staggered, clutching her heart. Beckmann grinned. He smelled her perfume, incredibly familiar, but unnameable. The way her hair moved and caught the light: again, her identity unlocked a box of the greatest importance.

And then he was free. His arm dropped to his side. He swayed and stumbled against the rail. Somehow, his i-Core’s attack had worked. He looked down at his arm. It would not lift. It was still weak. It took all that remained of his will to hold the smart matter.

And then, across his vision, as though a banner had unrolled, came the words:

i-Core had to shut down unexpectedly.

The woman straightened.

‘Lady Sun?’ he gasped. ‘Is it you?’

His vision was normal again. There was just enough light to reflect in her eyes. They were oriental, like those of Dr Hsieh.

‘What do you see?’ she said.

Beckmann could not raise the gun to her. His arm was no longer his own. His finger pulled the trigger and a cluster of projectiles passed through the lower half of his legs and the floor of the balcony.

He dropped into the night.

He heard her say, ‘The wolf came after all,’ before his limbs returned to his command, and he could wheel them as he fell. He did not scream.

There was enough time to consider whether he deserved this.

He did not know. He never would.

Looking Glass will be available soon.

Probably.

Aliya Whiteley’s Interview with the Author

In this email interview, the questions are asked by novelist Aliya Whiteley and they focus on the research process. Aliya happens to be the editor of the original 2005 edition of Déjà Vu.

Ian, tell me about your research process.

Here goes…

The research for a novel is typically quite secondary to the story — that is, what the characters are going to do to each other and have happen to them. But it is central to the feel of the book. I tend have the feel sorted out first; there might be a period in history that I’m interested in and that period creates a certain effect. The most recent novel I wrote involved a time traveller ending up in Russia towards the end of Tsarist rule. The effect of that is decline, ending, sadness, and a sense of disgust (in me) that fabulously wealthy individuals partied while other starved.

In terms of a timeline, the research took place at the same time as the writing in this case. This is something I try to avoid generally because typically leads to immature, half-baked prose full of anachronisms, and this is precisely what happened with this book! I got about a quarter of the way into it and had to stop because I didn’t know what I was writing about.

The research for this novel has involved learning Russian, finding oral histories written by women at the turn of the century, and watching contemporary movies.

It’s really interesting that you researched and wrote at the same time and found it was a weaker book because of it. Does that mean you usually like to build up a full picture of the time/place before you start — and that makes the novel more coherent in some way? You think the reader can tell when the research has not been done thoroughly beforehand rather than as/when your information needs pop up?

In the case of this book, what happened is that because it was not plotted in advance (I tend not to do this), then I found myself moving towards an area for which I had no information. I believe it was the day-to-day life of St Petersburg in the early 1900s; I also needed to have some detailed plans of the Great Catherine Palace, a huge building near St Petersburg that contains a feature called the Amber Room — that Amber Room was also something I knew I had to research because some important scenes would be set there. I didn’t know which scenes at the time, though.

You think the reader can tell when the research has not been done thoroughly beforehand rather than as/when your information needs pop up?

Hmm, that’s a good question! I think that any writer can probably shape the impressions of a reader so much that the lack of research probably won’t be noticed. At the end of the day, the writer is like a magician — you have to distract and glitz things up so the audience doesn’t twig to the fairly mundane secret behind the trick.

In the case of your last novel, where did you look to find the information you needed? So where did you go to learn a bit of Russian, read oral histories, etc? How did you decide that was what you’d need to know?

For the Russian, I signed up for a local evening class. I studied Russian for two years. I didn’t expect to learn it very well, but I felt ridiculous writing a novel set in Russia without knowing anything about the language. The oral histories showed up on Amazon. The book was out of print — ‘Women Against the Tsar’, I believe it’s called — and described the lives of several women anarcho-bolsheviks in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Another source of information was the writer Roger Morris, who was in the process of writing novels set in the same period of history (though a little earlier). I spoke to him about oral histories and sent him links to some websites…which reminds me, the web was a very useful sources of information. I popped into one or two forums related to Tsarist Russian military uniforms to ask the experts questions about materials, colours, etc.

I also looked on memorabilia sites for clothes that had been owned by people in the time period of interest — these were very good quality pictures with lavish descriptions including the correct terminology (sometimes in Russian as well as English), which is quite important when writing prose.

I love the fact you learned Russian — very immersive! So that’s the kind of research that doesn’t necessarily make it into the WIP so much as flavours it, if you like, would you say? Or in some way makes you feel more prepared to write convincingly about it? Is it the feeling that’s the important part of the process there?

I think you hit the nail on the head with ‘immersion’. I don’t really trust myself to set an interesting story in a place or a time without becoming somewhat expert in it. I’m using the term advisedly, of course — there’s no such in which an English bloke in 2010 is going to become an expert on pre-revolutonary Russia overnight. But I do need to get a sense of how things work, what a person would see walking down a street…In one sense, I have an advantage because my viewpoint character is a time traveller. Her perceptions, therefore, and what she finds interesting or surprising, will somewhat overlap with mine: the constant smell of humanity, the disease in the streets, etc.

That said, I do have my own theory about stories. I think they exist — and should always work — if they are completely abstracted from their setting. So I think that my book should work wherever it is placed because it’s a story about a person who is lost and trying to get home.

And also — you mentioned using books, web sources and also Roger Morris — do you have a type of source that you prefer to use, or think of as more trustworthy? How would you decide that a source is useful to you, or what reasons would make you disregard information from a source?

The sources I find most trustworthy are first-hand accounts because I want the details. What kind of matches are used to light a lamp? What time of day is breakfast? A detailed, pedantic diary is perfect. Books like ‘Natasha’s Dance’ by Orlando Figes are useful because they give a broad sweep of social trends etc., but I’m not sure I want to know too much about those. Nobody in pre-revolutionary Russia knew they were about to experience Soviet rule; some even doubted the revolution would ever come. There’s also a danger that history has n homogenising effect. Just because it seems very linear and inevitable today, doesn’t mean it felt that way at the time.

You mentioned ‘broad sweep’ books and how there’s a danger there in homogenising the writing, (putting in a perspective that couldn’t possibly exist for the character?) — but first hand accounts are more helpful. Where would you go to track down these first hand accounts? A library, or the internet, for instance?

Well, I probably would have benefitted from talking to a librarian but I decided to start with Amazon. I know that they have lots of used paperbacks that I could search easily. That’s how I came up with ‘Five sisters: Women against the Tsar’. However, I did use the library here at Canterbury Christ Church to find books on communist theory (…which reminds, I also downloaded audiobooks from Audible.co.uk on Marxism and long-term Russian history stretching all the way back to the Russ).

Does most of your research get conducted at home in front of your computer, say, or do you go elsewhere?

Largely in front of my computer or in my office. I picked up a couple of books from the library at Christ Church, but in the main everything came to me.

And to go back to talking to Roger Morris about Russia — can I ask, does a conversation like that take the form of an email conversation, or did you meet him face to face first? Is it a case of him recommending sources to you, or giving you information directly? And would you find that information (from another writer directly) more or less trustworthy, do you think, than from a textbook, say, or a first-hand account?

This was partly an email conversation but we also chatted at the launch of hot new book from a Devonian author. Then it was mostly email. I asked Roger for some recommendations — he came up with Orlando Figes’s book, ‘Natasha’s Dance’ — and also recommended ‘Five sisters’ to him. He didn’t give me any information directly, though he probably would have if I asked. I think Russia itself is too vast a topic to bother talking about it other email — particularly when you’re not sure what will turn out to be useful.

Over to the Devonian author…

When do you feel satisfied that you’ve done enough research?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt satisfied with research. There’s always something that you’ve handled wrong. With specific regard to a novel, where you’re dealing with the representation of lived experience, there’s no way everything is going to ring true. A phrase might be wrong; or a train line that you thought was there in 1904 wasn’t built until 1910, or some such. I’d go as far as to say that if I ever had that feeling of satisfaction, I’d be losing my grip on reality. …Unless the novel was heavily autobiographical, of course.

So when might you stop researching, even though there’s no moment of satisfaction?

Hmm, that’s a good question. I would never stop volitionally. It would come when the book is published. Since the book we’re talking about — The Amber Rooms — is not yet published, I haven’t really stopped researching it even though the book has been mellowing on my hard drive for a year. There’s always something rattling around my head and that I realise I can put it in. Typically, I realise it would be cool if I could include a particular fact — such as the bridges of St Petersburg rising in unison during the night, or the horse-drawn taxi drivers standing up and bowing to the road-side shrines as they clatter past — and then go back to the book and drop it in.

Also, what would you recommend to a new author as a method of conducting research?

Zoinks — that’s a difficult one. I think research is a battle on many fronts. You need to use physical and nonphysical sources, curated and non-curated…but the most important thing is to start broadly and get narrow later. Follow your interests because these will probably be informed by an idea of where your story will go, even if you’ve not consciously aware of it. In terms of research in general, you must do it — because of all the things that might lead to writer’s block, running out of ‘road’ will be the thing that inhibits the writing more than anything.

About the Author

During his writing career, Ian Hocking’s fiction has been published both in print and online. His first novel, Déjà Vu, received the 2011 Red Adept Award for Science Fiction.

‘A new voice in Brit SF that we should all be taking an interest in.’

Joe Gordon, Forbidden Planet International

Also by Ian Hocking

In the Saskia Brandt Series

Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (Book 1)

Flashback (Book 2)

Comedy

Proper Job: A Romantic Comedy

Literary Short Fiction

A Moment in Berlin and Other Stories

Summary of Déjà Vu, Saskia Brandt Book One

It is 2023. Saskia Brandt of the Berlin Förderatives Investigationsbüro (FIB) has just solved the most baffling murder of her career. Over the past twelve hours, she has followed clues that lead only to one conclusion: she is the murderer. Upon this realization, her boss appears to explain that her violent criminal past has been erased from her mind and a chip implanted in her brain. This chip imposes a donor personality, a blank slate on which the FIB can draw any skill or knowledge. “It takes a murderer to catch a murderer,” her boss says, and congratulates her. She is now a full Kommisarin.

Saskia’s first assignment after this revelation is to find Professor David Proctor. In 2003 he was suspected — but never convicted — of bombing a Scottish research institute. Now he has detonated a second bomb in the same location. This bomb has killed a man called Bruce Shimoda, David’s former research partner. Now David is on the run.

Saskia flies to Edinburgh. At the airport, she meets a middle-aged Scottish detective called Jago. They verbally spar with each other and become friends. Saskia learns that David was briefly held in custody following the murder but escaped with the aid of an unidentified woman. Many suspect this woman to be his daughter, Jennifer, who is a world-leading physicist working in a secret research centre in Nevada called Met Four Base, where she presides over Project Déjà Vu. Only days have passed since she successfully sent the first matter through time using Project Déjà Vu’s machine.

The chase is on. Saskia tracks David with a combination of luck, nerve, implanted skill, and gut instinct. Throughout the chase, she must tamp down the flickers of strangely familiar associations and fragments of random memories in a mind that is supposed to be entirely blank and new, designed and controlled only by the FIB. They meet at night at Heathrow after a pursuit across the remote Scottish and British countryside. David manages to reach the aircraft and Saskia boards it as it takes off.

En route, Saskia and David connect. She tells him her story, and makes clear her determination to take her own life should her past mind, that of a murderous criminal, take over. David warms to Saskia but knows that a return to Britain means jail. He threatens to use his electronic companion, a credit-card-sized computer called Ego, to take over Saskia’s brain chip and effectively switch her off. Saskia’s hand is forced. Reluctantly, she helps him escape the American authorities upon landing and they go on the run, destination Nevada and Project Déjà Vu. David doesn’t know why he has to go there, but the same mysterious woman who helped him escape custody after the bombing of the lab has, cryptically, instructed him to do so.

Jennifer surprises both David and Saskia by asking them to follow her into the research centre. Then David reveals what he has known since meeting Saskia on the aeroplane to the US: that the woman who helped him escape from custody in Scotland was Saskia Brandt herself. Saskia is incredulous at first. She cannot believe that there is an older version of herself walking around the world of 2023. It has echoes of her first case as a Kommissarin: the mastermind of the crime under investigation has turned out to be herself.

Their conversation is halted by the appearance of John Hartfield, the co-owner of the research station. He wants to use Project Déjà Vu to travel backwards in time and force his younger self to accept an antidote to the experimental medical treatment that cured his cancer but re-shaped his mind. For Hartfield, the world of 2023 can go to hell. Hartfield escapes by doing the one thing that Saskia fears most: he sends a wireless command that deactivates her brain chip. As Hartfield flees, Saskia feels her conscious self as an FIB agent evaporate and the half-remembered life of Ute, the murderer within Saskia, overwhelm her.

Saskia experiences a waking dream in which she recalls the rape and attempted murder of a woman called Ute Schlesinger by a cabal of sexual predators in Cologne. The woman plans her revenge and takes it, killing them all. Saskia comes to understand that Ute is not a woman to be feared; she is a survivor. That instinct that Saskia has always felt inside her was not criminal intent. It was courage.

She understands that the only way to stop Hartfield is to surrender herself to the identity of Saskia Brandt once more. Again the courage. When she opens her eyes, it is Saskia who looks out. Hartfield has beaten them to the time machine, however, and left for 2003. Saskia understands that she will need to follow him back in time. In one sense, it is an escape from her indentured employment with the FIB. In another sense, it is a trap: she will become her future self, the woman who helped David escape. Just like her recruitment into the FIB, it is a choice without choice.

David and Jennifer help Saskia return to the research centre in rural Scotland in the autumn of 2003, the day it was first bombed. Saskia is half an hour ahead of Hartfield. But at the time he is due to arrive, there is an underground explosion. The only explanation can be that the time machine changed Hartfield’s destination and time and used his mass to trigger a detonation. Who changed the time machine’s settings? Again, it is the person that Saskia has been pursuing all along: her future self. Saskia escapes from the burning research centre uninjured and slips away from the authorities to start a new life in 2003, free of the FIB but not free of her destiny, and still with questions about herself. If her body is Ute Schlesinger, who is her mind? And who can she trust to help her if she needs it? In her pocket, she discovers a list of major upcoming sports events and their outcomes written by David Proctor. She smiles at this small human connection and then walks into anonymity.

Summary of Flashback, Saskia Brandt Book Two

In 2003, German passenger plane DFU323 crashes in the Bavarian National Forest on a routine flight between Berlin and Milan. Its last transmission: the co-pilot shouting the letters, “S, T, E, N, D, E, C.” As the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents team flies in, the media focus on a startling coincidence between the fate of DFU323 and the ‘Star Dust’, a Santiago-bound plane that crashed into the Andes in August 1947 minutes after confirming its landing time. Its last signal: the letters S, T, E, N, D, E, C.

One of DFU323’s passengers is Saskia Dorfer, alias Brandt, a loner millionaire living in Berlin. The last person to see her alive was English runaway Jem Shaw, who has been exploiting Saskia’s kindness in order to discover the secret of her unbeatable gambling system. Jem is numbed by the news of the crash. In Saskia’s apartment, Jem discovers a futuristic credit-card-sized computer called Ego. It tells her that Saskia might still be alive because she is protected by a time paradox. Jem heads immediately for the crash site in Bavaria. She is pursued by an mysterious, elderly American known as Cory.

In a flashback, we return to Cory’s youth in Buenos Aires, 1947. He is a time traveller on a mission to find the killer of Professor David Proctor. He has been sent by David Proctor’s daughter Jennifer. Cory’s only advantages are the i-Core — an infusion of medical nanomachines in his blood — and the Smart Matter, which can mimic any simple machine (key, gun, grapnel) at will.

Meanwhile, in 2003, Jem makes it to the Bavarian National Forest and discovers that a retired ranger pulled Saskia alive from the wreckage of the aeroplane and took her to his cabin. But no sooner has Jem found Saskia than she dies of her terrible injuries. Cory arrives next and, knowing that Saskia has information critical to his mission, injects her with i-Core. The nanomachines begin repairing her body and she returns to life.

Jem overpowers Cory and forces him to tell them his mission, which has lasted for more than half a century. In explanation, he tells them of the crash of aeroplane Star Dust:

In Buenos Aires, 1947, the young Cory has tracked Proctor’s killer, Patrick Harkes, to the airport in Morón, from where he believes Harkes will flee to Santiago. Cory smuggles himself onto the plane, but when it takes off, he discovers that the killer is not aboard. Harkes has set a trap for him. The Star Dust is a doomed aeroplane and Harkes knew it. Over the Andes, Cory forces the radio operator to send the code S, T, E, N, D, E, C, which he knows will be reported in a newspaper, and thus read later by Jennifer Proctor. He then bails out and watches the aeroplane crash into Mount Tupungato.

Back in 2003, Saskia responds with the story of what happened on board flight DFU323. She had noticed Cory in a Berlin crowd and decided to follow him because of his anachronistic electromagnetic signature. On board the flight, she is surprised to find Jennifer Proctor. Jennifer has changed; she is a broken woman and prepared to sacrifice all the passengers to execute her father’s murderer. Harkes and Saskia join forces against Jennifer and Cory. Saskia steals Jennifer’s time travel device, a bracelet, but Cory is sucked from the aircraft along with Harkes. The fuselage is irretrievably damaged. In the last moments of the flight, Saskia tries unsuccessfully to land the aircraft along the Danube. Instead, it pitches into the Bavarian National Forest.

As Saskia finishes the story in the ranger’s cabin, Cory breaks free of his bonds using his Smart Matter. Saskia stays his hand by trying to convince him that he has been used. Jennifer had confessed to Saskia that Cory’s whole identity is a fabrication custom-made by Jennifer to ensure that Cory would follow through with his mission over the years, much as Saskia’s identity was created by her old employer, the Förderatives Investigationsbüro (FIB). Cory is almost convinced, but decides to kill them…until Jem finally makes Cory understand that memories can be false. She tells her own story, in which the false memory of incest drove her from England into the arms of a criminal, and an elaborate con-job whose target was Saskia Brandt. Cory drops his gun and walks away.

Some time later, Saskia has traced Cory to Berlin and cracked the code behind ‘S, T, E, N, D, E, C’. She now knows that Cory’s personality, created by Jennifer Proctor, is based on a poem called Richard Cory. Saskia believes that, like the eponymous character, Cory wants to commit suicide following the completion of his mission. Her research suggests that Cory tried to kill himself in 1948 with a shotgun slug through the mouth. She goes alone to the Berlin TV Tower and finds Cory waiting. They both realise that the i-Core repaired his skull but did not rebuild his brain; did not restore him with the identity of the person he once was. Like Saskia, he is a digital ghost. The two share a moment of affinity. Neither is surprised when Cory jumps from the tower. His Smart Matter is left behind; it tries to replace the left hand she lost in the crash, but Saskia pushes it away, afraid for her humanity. She knows that a remnant of the i-Core is still inside her—that’s enough.

In the final scene at an abandoned lakeside house in Germany, Saskia, who has never fully recovered from her injuries, has reduced her bodyweight in an attempt to match Jennifer Proctor for mass. She believes that, if the match in mass is correct, she will be able to use the stolen time bracelet to return to 2023, and home, realising Cory’s dream and her own. In 2003, she has found only alienation. Jem appears and pleads with Saskia to stay. Saskia shakes her head. She has forgiven Jem for the attempt to romance her millions, but she wishes to leave. She uses the time bracelet and vanishes. On the table near the door Jem finds the list of upcoming sporting fixtures and their outcomes written by David Proctor. It is Saskia’s unbeatable gambling system. Jem smiles, but ruefully.

Copyright

Copyright © 2012 by Ian Hocking

http://ianhocking.com

http://twitter.com/ian_hocking

Unless otherwise stated, this story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

Ian Hocking has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Line-edited and proofread by Olivia Wood of TextMender.com.

Cover design support by Toby James Creative.

Published by Writer as a Stranger

Version 98723445

Content

Ian Hocking
THE AMBER ROOMS

Author’s Note

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Looking Glass (Book Four)—Draft Preview

Chapter One

Aliya Whiteley’s Interview with the Author

About the Author

Also by Ian Hocking

Summary of Déjà Vu, Saskia Brandt Book One

Summary of Flashback, Saskia Brandt Book Two

Copyright