“Friends, I greet you. And I apologise if my English is not so good. But it gives me pleasure to be here tonight, and to introduce my friend and colleague from St. Petersburg State University. Ladies and gentlemen… Viktor Kedrin.”
Kedrin is an imposing figure, broad and bearded, in a battered corduroy jacket and flannel trousers. There’s applause as he walks out, and a few cheers. Taking her phone from her bag, Eve grabs a shot of him at the lectern.
“It’s cold outside,” Kedrin begins. “But I promise you, it’s colder in Russia.” He smiles, his eyes dead-leaf brown. “So I want to talk to you about the spring. The Russian spring.”
Rapt silence.
“In the nineteenth century there was a painter named Alexei Savrasov. A great admirer, as it happens, of your John Constable. Naturally, like all the best Russian artists, Savrasov succumbed to alcohol and despair and died penniless. But first, he created a very fine series of landscape paintings, the best known of which is called The Rooks Have Come Back. It’s a very simple painting. A frozen pond. A distant monastery. Snow on the ground. But in the birch trees, the rooks are building their nests. Winter is dying, spring is coming.
“And this, my friends, is my message to you. Spring is coming. In the Russian heartland, there is a yearning for change. And I feel the same thing in Europe. A longing to throw off the dictatorship of capitalism, of degenerate liberalism, of America. A longing to reclaim an older world of Tradition and the Spirit. So I say to you, join us. Leave the U.S. to their pornography, their blood-sucking corporations and their empty consumerism. Leave them to their Reign of Quantity. Together, Europe and Russia can build a new Imperium, true to our ancient cultures, true to the old beliefs.”
Eve scans the ranks of the audience. Sees the rapt gazes, the mute nods of agreement, the desperate yearning to believe in the golden age that Kedrin promises. In the centre of the front row is a young woman in a black sweater and plaid skirt. She is a few years younger than Eve, and beautiful, even at a distance. On impulse, Eve raises her phone, and surreptitiously zooming in on the woman’s face, photographs her. She catches her in profile, lips parted, gazing fervently up at Kedrin.
The speech gathers pace. Kedrin recalls another who dreamt of a new imperium—a thousand-year Reich, no less—but dismisses the Nazis for their crude racism and lack of higher consciousness. He makes an exception of the Waffen-SS, from whose rigorous idealism, he says, much can be learned. This is too much for one audience member, a middle-aged man who stands up and starts shouting incoherently at the stage.
Within seconds, two figures in quasi-military clothing appear from the shadows at the back of the hall, grab the man, and half-lead him, half-drag him towards the exit. A half-minute later, to desultory cheers, they return without him.
Kedrin smiles beatifically. “There’s always one, no?”
In all, he speaks for about an hour, setting out his mystical, authoritarian vision for the northern hemisphere. Eve is appalled but fascinated. Kedrin is charismatic, and satanically persuasive. That he will make true believers out of those assembled here tonight, she is in no doubt. He is not yet well known in Europe, but in Russia he commands a growing following, and has a small army of dedicated street fighters ready to do his will.
“And so my friends, I finish as I started, with that simple message. Spring is coming. Our day is dawning. The rooks have come back. Thank you.”
As one, the audience rises to its feet. As they cheer, stamp their feet, and applaud, Kedrin stands at the lectern, unmoving. Then, with a small bow, he leaves the stage.
Slowly, as Eve watches from the gallery, the hall empties. The spectators have a dazed look, as if waking from a dream. After a couple of minutes, accompanied by the ponytailed master of ceremonies and flanked by the two foot soldiers who ejected the protester, Kedrin appears in the auditorium. He is quickly surrounded by admirers, who take it in turn to address a few words to him and shake his hand. The woman from the front row waits on the outskirts of the group, a faint smile touching her sharp, cat-like features. If I dressed like that I’d look like a librarian, Eve muses. So how come this little fascist princess gets to look like Audrey Hepburn?
Kedrin’s certainly registered her, and gives her a glance as if to say: wait, just let me finish with these people and you’ll have my full attention. Soon, watched with barely suppressed amusement by the shaven-headed foot soldiers, the two of them are deep in conversation. Her body language—the head fetchingly tilted, the neat little breasts out-thrust—makes her availability unambiguously clear. But eventually she settles for shaking his hand, pulls on her parka, and vanishes into the night.
Eve is one of the last to depart the hall. She waits outside at a nearby bus stop, and when Kedrin and his party leave the building, she follows them at a discreet distance. After a couple of minutes the four men turn into an Argentinian steak restaurant in Red Lion Street, where they are clearly expected.
Deciding to call it a night, Eve makes for Holborn tube station. It’s gone 9.30, and she’s too late for the bridge tournament. But she’ll get to the club in time to grab herself a large vodka and cranberry juice and watch Niko play a few hands. She needs to wind down. One way and another, it’s been a weird day.
At a little after 9.45, when she’s satisfied that the Russians are settled in, Villanelle moves away from the doorway from where she’s been watching the steak house, and takes a back route to the hotel. As she moves through the lobby towards the
