servants who preferred the society of the
Barclay was flattered Dobrshinsky had singled him out to join the special investigation, although a good deal of his enthusiasm was dissipating as the size of the task they faced became apparent. Dobrshinsky had explained in his quiet measured way that it was their duty to protect His Imperial Majesty, and if that meant arresting every radical in the empire then that was precisely what they were going to do. With good intelligence that would not be necessary; well placed informers, more agents and better trained, a complete shake-up of the Third Section. Failure was unthinkable, the consequences immeasurable.
The special investigation team at Fontanka 16 had begun to creep across the first floor. A score of agents was assigned to the inquiry, clerks, copyists, an archivist and even a dedicated telegrapher with one of the new Baudot transmitters. The Third Section had seen nothing quite like it since the days of Tsar Nicholas. From dawn until long after dusk, clerks scurrying from room to room with telegrams and reports from gendarme stations across the empire, plain-clothes officers taking witness statements or questioning known radicals, street superintendents flicking through photographs in an effort to identify ‘illegals’ in their districts, and at the heart of this frantic activity, the special investigator himself. Dobrshinsky was at a blackboard with an agent when Barclay stepped inside the main inquiry room. There was an unnatural hush; the officers bent low over their desks like schoolboys before their teacher. Cheap furniture had been crammed into the office to meet the needs of the investigation and the agents sat in a phalanx of desks pressed together in the middle of the room. Along one of the walls, three large sash windows with a view over the Fontanka; against the rest, wooden filing cabinets, bookcases, blackboards and tables.
‘Vladimir Alexandrovich, how timely,’ said Dobrshinsky with an expression Barclay took for a smile. ‘We have something of great interest at last, please…’ and he indicated with a look and a brisk sweep of the hand that the gendarme officer should follow him into his office. ‘And you too, Kletochnikov,’ he said, addressing the agent at his side.
‘A good show?’ Dobrshinsky asked as he settled behind his perfectly ordered and polished mahogany desk.
‘A large crowd, Your Honour.’
‘No need for formality,’ said Dobrshinsky, offering them both the leather library chairs opposite. ‘It was a pointless waste. In time, I might have won Soloviev’s confidence. Justice has not served us well in this case, a little too blind and impatient, I fear. But we have something…’
He reached into his drawer and pulled out a red leather-bound file, opened it and spread his hands on the desk in front of him in a gesture of satisfaction.
‘Yes, thank goodness we have something. Two valuable pieces of intelligence, the first, a report taken from a yard keeper on the Fontanka Embankment a short distance from here. The second, well, that is why Agent Nikolai Vasilievich is here.’
Kletochnikov coloured a little with embarrassment and glanced down at his hands twisting in his lap. Well, well, a secret policeman who blushes; Barclay suppressed the temptation to smile. The poor fellow seemed very young, no more than thirty, slight, round-shouldered, with a thin intelligent face and spectacles.
‘The dvornik was questioned by a local constable and he gave a remarkably good description of what was almost certainly an illegal gathering at a mansion opposite. It’s owned by a…’ Dobrshinsky glanced down at the file, ‘a Madame Volkonsky, a sentimental old aristocrat, a champagne revolutionary.’
It was a Sunday afternoon, which was why the yard keeper was sober, he explained. The old man puffed on his pipe and watched the comings and goings at Number 86 with keen interest and with a surprising eye for detail.
‘Students, some respectably dressed young women, a young man in tweed with an exotic blue tie, but of more importance, these two.’ Dobrshinsky took two small photographs from the file and slid them across the desk to Barclay.
‘The one on the right is Mikhailov — rather an old photograph, and on the left, the Jew, Goldenberg. The dvornik had no difficulty in identifying him. Mikhailov arrived and left with a young woman, petite, dark.’ Dobrshinsky paused, lifting his elbows to the desk, hands together as if in prayer, intense concentration written on his face. ‘Her description seems to match one we have of a woman seen leaving the square after the attempt on His Majesty’s life.’
‘Do you want me to arrest Madame Volkonsky?’ Barclay asked.
‘Leave her — for now. Keep the house under surveillance. Have her followed. I don’t expect Mikhailov tells her anything, but he may risk using Number 86 for another gathering. She’s probably giving him money. I think it’s fair to assume Mikhailov and Goldenberg are still in the city. And now, if you please…’ Dobrshinsky nodded to the young agent perched anxiously at the edge of his chair.
‘Yes, Your Honour.’ Kletochnikov looked unsure quite what was expected of him.
‘Tell Major Barclay what the city police have told you.’
‘It’s Popov, Your Honour, the student revolutionary implicated in the death of the informer — Bronstein. He’s been seen among the men at the Baird Works.’
One of the foundry hands had tipped off the local police, Kletochnikov explained. Popov and the Muscovite labourers with whom he shared the room at the Neva were organising political meetings in the homes of sympathisers, distributing propaganda, agitating for a secret trade union, and the socialist gospel they preached was attracting new recruits, although the city police could not be sure how many.
‘So, as you see, another opportunity,’ said Dobrshinsky, impatiently pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. ‘Which is well and good because General Drenteln and the Justice Ministry are impatient for results. Soloviev was a nobody. It’s the men who gave him his gun and sent him out that we want.’
He turned to gaze out of the window on to the Fontanka, and for a moment the silence in the room was broken only by the noise of a carriage clattering along the embankment below and the heavy tick of the French clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Popov may be close to Mikhailov — Bronstein saw them together,’ Dobrshinsky said, turning to face them again. ‘Let’s find out where he lives then pick him up. He’s a nobody but he may take us one step closer to the six on the hotel list. ’
With a nod and casual wave of the hand, the collegiate councillor drew the meeting to a close. He slipped back behind his desk and was pulling a file across it when, almost as an afterthought and without lifting his head he said, ‘Oh, Vladimir Alexandrovich?’
‘Your Honour?’ Barclay was halfway to the door.
‘Would you like my clock?’
‘I don’t understand, Your Honour?’
‘What don’t you understand? Would you like my clock?’ he asked again with an enigmatic smile. ‘It is an excellent clock. It never seems to wind down or stop.’
‘Thank you, Your Honour, I have one of my own.’
7
It was with more than a little trepidation that Frederick Hadfield stepped from the droshky on to the pavement at the foot of St Boris and St Gleb. Pressing five kopeks into the cabby’s hand, he plucked his father’s battered medical bag from the seat and turned towards the shell of the new church rising from a forest of scaffolding on the bank of the Neva before him. Three towers in the Byzantine style were almost complete, but construction of the central dome had barely begun. The low wharf buildings and the school adjoining the site were painted in pink dust and probably had been for every one of the ten years since the foundation stone was cemented into place. The city’s wealthier inhabitants were not inclined to reach very deeply into their pockets
