“Did you find Slade?”
Even as I prayed for the strength to protect Slade from his enemy, I answered, “Yes.”
“Where?”
“At the zoo.”
“When?”
“On Sunday afternoon.”
Stieber’s pale eyes gleamed with satisfaction. Helpless misery joined the league of emotions trying in vain to inhibit my speech. I had made Stieber aware that Slade had still been in London as recently as two days ago.
“What did Slade tell you?” Stieber asked.
Out came everything Slade had said at the zoo, plus that which I’d learned from Lord Eastbourne. I told Stieber that the Foreign Office had sent Slade to aid Russian revolutionaries in their uprising against the Tsar and find out what the Tsar was plotting against Britain. I did not neglect to mention the reason Slade had returned to England. “You’re trying to find Niall Kavanagh and his invention,” I told Stieber. “Slade followed you in order to stop you.” I could no more stanch the flow of my words than I could have halted a flood from a broken dam.
Shock quenched the gleam of satisfaction in Stieber’s eyes. Apparently Slade had managed to keep his intentions secret during his torture. Now, thanks to me, Stieber knew. But I didn’t realize just how much I had compromised both Slade and myself until Stieber spoke.
“You said that I am trying to find Niall Kavanagh and his invention.” He leaned closer, his gaze boring into me. I could see smaller pits within the pits that marred his face. Breathing the air around him, I made an unsettling discovery: he had no odor. “So you know who I am?”
“Yes.” Common sense blared a distant warning that I was unable to heed.
“What is my name?”
“Wilhelm Stieber,” I said. “You’re the Tsar’s favorite spy.”
He drew back, the instinctive reaction of a man who travels in disguise and hears his true identity suddenly proclaimed. “What else do you know about me?”
I perceived a chasm yawning before me. The drug and the magnetic forces banished my instinct for self- preservation. I stepped right over the edge. “You killed Katerina.”
“How do you know this?” Stieber spoke in a level yet menacing tone.
“Katerina told me. Before she died.”
Stieber turned away. I could surmise what he was thinking: my story would sound preposterous to most everyone, were I just an ordinary woman, but I was not. My service to the Crown had gained me the confidence of people in high places, and if I told them about Stieber, they might believe me. Stieber didn’t know I had already passed on much of the information to Lord Eastbourne and been rebuffed. He only understood that I knew far too much.
The doctor put a stethoscope to my chest and listened to my heart. “She can’t withstand the magnetic forces any longer. Are you finished?”
“Oh, yes,” Stieber said.
“Your men can take her back to Newgate.” The doctor lifted the magnets from my chest. I was vaguely conscious of physical relief, but doom vibrated like thunder outside the bell jar.
“No,” Stieber said.
Confusion wrinkled the doctor’s smooth brow. “What am I supposed to do with her?”
“Dispose of her,” Stieber said. This was my death sentence, uttered in the perfunctory tone of a man ordering a servant to clean up a mess his dog had made.
“Do you mean…?” As the doctor turned to Stieber, dismay broke the monotone of his voice; its pitch rose high with fright. “No. I can’t.”
“You will.” Stieber’s voice was flat, authoritative.
“But I’ve never killed anyone before.” The doctor’s protest was the bleat of a coward. If only his fear of taking my life were stronger than his fear of displeasing Stieber! “It’s against my principles.”
“Your principles didn’t prevent you from accepting money for torturing people,” Stieber said.
“That wasn’t torture, it was medical research!”
Stieber made a moue of contempt, then said, “She can’t be allowed to live.”
“But how will I dispose of her body?” The doctor had given in to Stieber; only the practicalities of killing me were in question. My hope of a reprieve faded. “What if I’m caught?” My last chance rested on his fear of the consequences. “Even if I can convince my superiors that her death was accidental, they’ll put a stop to my research. I’ll lose my position!”
“You’ll lose more than that unless you do as I say.”
The doctor wiped sweat off his upper lip with his finger. “Very well.”
He stepped out of my view for a moment. When he reappeared, he held a glass cylinder with a plunger at one end and a long needle at the other. It was the same kind of instrument that I’d seen him use on Slade, and that Slade had driven through the eye of the nurse. The doctor pushed up my sleeve; his fingers probed my arm. I should have bolted for the door, but I could not overcome my lethargy. My gaze fixed on the instrument. The colorless poison inside vibrated; the doctor’s hands were shaking. Stieber looked on, impassive. I knew he wouldn’t leave an important task in the sole care of a less capable subordinate. He’d killed Katerina himself, no matter the risk, no matter that it was dirty work unfit for the Tsar’s chief spy.
How strange that I should spend my last moments on earth analyzing my murderer. But I am an indefatigable observer of human nature, and the spell that the doctor had worked on me had detached me from the terrible fact of my own impending death.
The doctor found a vein in my arm. He positioned his instrument. I waited for the lethal prick of the needle.
The door burst open.
He lost his grip on the instrument. It fell to the floor; the glass cylinder shattered. Three men surrounded me. They wore British army uniforms-red coats decorated with gold epaulets and shiny buttons, and black caps, trousers, and boots-and they carried rifles.
“What is the meaning of this?” Stieber said, all surprise and fury.
“We have orders to take custody of this woman,” said one of the officers, the sort of ordinary, stolid man who’d helped win many wars for Britain.
“I won’t permit it,” Stieber said. “She’s seriously insane. She needs treatment that can only be provided here.”
The officer glanced at the doctor, who shrank against the wall, then regarded Stieber with the suspicion and distrust of a proud Englishman toward a foreigner. “And who might you be?”
“Dr. Richard Albert, chief physician of the criminal lunatics wing,” Stieber lied smoothly. “I’m responsible for her care.”
“Not anymore,” the officer said. “She’s coming with us.”
His comrades wheeled my litter out the door. Stieber stood with his hands clenched at his sides, containing his rage: he dared not oppose the troops; he could not afford to be arrested. As the soldiers rolled me down the corridor, we passed Julia Garrs. She waved to me and smiled. I realized that however the army had learned that I was in Bedlam, once the soldiers had arrived it was she who had guided them to me. She clearly thought she’d done me a good turn.
I only wished I could be so certain.
17
The secret adventures of John Slade
1849 June. Summer in Moscow flares briefly, like a fever before the chills of winter return. In the alleys around Trubnaya Square, northeast of the Kremlin, red lights burned above the doors of squalid brothels. Cheap prostitutes in tawdry finery called invitations to men who passed. Some of the men stopped to banter, bargain, and take their pleasure. But Peter, Fyodor, Alexander, and Slade ignored the women. Furtive and solemn, they hurried
