‘Anna’s right. Someone must go now.’ Olga was already moving towards the bedroom.
‘But not you or Sophia. It’s too dangerous,’ said Morozov with alarm.
‘No. It has to be Anna,’ she shouted through the half open door. ‘But I’m going to wait in the lane in case…’ She did not need to finish the sentence. They knew what she meant.
A little after eight o’clock in the morning, Nevsky was bustling with traffic — workers on the way to the Admiralty yards and the factories on Vasilievsky, civil servants to the great ministries — and it was a while before they were able to hail a droshky. There was a biting wind from the north-east carrying with it a flurry of snow, and Olga put her arm about Anna to share the warmth of her body, pressing her close.
‘If the police stop you tell them you are delivering a message from me to the dressmaker at Number 8,’ she whispered. ‘Nikolai and I have cover papers in the name of Khartsov.’
The driver dropped them at last at the corner of Zagorodny and Leshtukov Lane. It was a respectable part of town, popular with junior army officers and their families and doctors at the nearby hospital. Kviatkovsky was another of the gentleman revolutionaries and one of the most influential. The apartment he shared with Evgenia Figner was in a handsome yellow and white four-storey mansion in the middle of the lane. Anna knew the block well.
They hurried along Leshtukov in silence, arm in arm, their faces almost covered by their scarves. Mittened and muffled children were throwing snowballs at each other as they made their way to school. A dvornik was scraping snow from his yard into the street and an old lady, a black bundle in coat and shawl and hat, was inching unsteadily along the frozen pavement towards them with a shopping basket. There was no sign of gendarmes or the city police. A short distance from the mansion, Olga pulled Anna into an open yard: ‘I’ll wait here.’ She leant forward and kissed her on the lips. ‘Be careful, comrade.’
Kviatkovsky’s grand apartment was on the third floor, with a fine gallery window over the street. Nothing appeared out of place. Anna turned under the carriage arch into the yard and walked with purpose towards the back entrance and the servant’s staircase. Gazing up at the back of the block, she could see no sign of a parasol, the signal that was to be posted in a window when it was safe to visit. One foot lightly in front of the other, she began climbing the stairs, pausing after a few seconds to listen for voices or boots or the clatter of a rifle butt. At the door to the third-floor landing, she stopped and listened, but could hear only the faint trundle of a passing carriage in the street and the ferocious beating of her heart. It was no time for timidity; a deep breath, her small gloved hand firmly on the door knob, and she turned it quickly and stepped on to the landing. There was no one there. Kviatkovsky’s door was closed and there was nothing out of the ordinary — muddy footprints on the tiled floor, scratches on the varnished door, a splintered frame — nothing to suggest there had been a struggle. Perhaps there was still time. With another deep breath she stepped forward and rang the bell. At once, the door jerked open to reveal a portly middle-aged man in the black uniform coat of the city police.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, almost falling against the stair rail. ‘Goodness, you made me jump. I was told the dressmaker lives here.’
‘No, miss, the dressmaker lives in the apartment opposite.’
‘Oh, how silly of me.’
‘Sergeant Kirill Korovin, at your service.’
‘I need the dressmaker,’ said Anna, turning away.
‘I am afraid my orders are to take anyone who calls at the apartment to the station and I always obey my orders. Why don’t you come in?’ He stood aside to let her into the apartment.
Every muscle in Anna’s body was taut, her heart pounding, but she sought and held eye contact with the policeman, smiling sweetly.
‘It’s a mess in here,’ he said, as she slipped past into the hall. The drawing-room door was ajar. It looked as if a bomb had gone off inside. The upholstery had been ripped out of the soft sofa and armchairs, the contents of the sideboard drawers were strewn all over the floor along with copies of a statement on the attack printed on the party’s new press. They were to have been secretly posted around the city that night. Worse still, she could see copper drums, a roll of wire and a secure box that was identical to the one they had used to store dynamite at the cottage in Preobrazhenskoe.
‘Hey you, back in the kitchen!’ the sergeant bellowed behind her, and turning, Anna saw the little face of the maid peeking round the door. The poor girl was petrified and bobbed back inside at once.
‘In here, miss,’ said the sergeant, pointing to Evgenia’s room. Anna cleared more copies of the party’s statement from the bed then perched at its edge, her hands held demurely in her lap.
‘Sergeant — I really can’t stay. I must go,’ she said in a plaintive voice.
Korovin ignored her, turning his head to shout to one of his men: ‘Haven’t you finished in there?’
‘My mistress is expecting me,’ she whined. ‘Please let me go. I promised I would only be an hour.’
But the policeman just looked at her coldly.
‘Please. I don’t want to be in trouble.’ Taking out her handkerchief she began to snivel noisily into it.
‘What a performance. Bravo,’ said Korovin, clapping. ‘You’re wasting your breath, miss.’
Although Anna tried her best with desperate looks and tears, he was not to be moved. As soon as the constables had finished searching Kviatkovsky’s bedroom, she was escorted from the apartment, the crunch of police boots at her back, echoing up and down the stairwell. She was afraid but calm and clear-sighted, absorbed in rehearsing the story she would spin at the station. Time. She needed to buy as much of it as she was able. Olga was waiting a short distance away, but would she notice?
The sergeant stepped forward at the bottom of the stairs to hold the front door open. ‘After you, miss.’
The self-satisfied sneering in his voice made Anna furious. As he led her on to the pavement, she pretended to stumble and cried out in pain. Lifting her dress a little, she reached down to her ankle. ‘I’ve twisted it.’
‘Oh?’ said Korovin, quite unconcerned. ‘It’s fortunate your carriage awaits you.’ And he waved to the police driver parked a little way along the lane.
‘Aren’t you going to help me?’ Anna burst into noisy tears.
‘All right, all right,’ he said. But by now she had worked herself into a pitiful frenzy, her body heaving with sobs, and it was all the embarrassed sergeant could do to prevent her collapsing to the snowy pavement.
Her little pantomime was beginning to attract the attention of the street.
‘What are you doing to her?’ a young man in an expensive coat called from the pavement opposite.
‘Shame!’ shouted a woman from a window above.
‘Come on with that carriage,’ bellowed Korovin. A moment later it drew up in front of the mansion. ‘All right, all right, let me help you,’ he said impatiently.
Anna limped forward, pausing at the step to glance furtively down the lane. Yes, Olga was watching. There was no mistaking that blue scarf and enormous old fur coat.
The district police station was on the second floor of a run-down building on Zagarodny. It was oppressively hot, the waiting room crowded, and Korovin was obliged to shout and shoulder his way through to the administration office. He left Anna on a chair in front of the chief clerk’s desk and went in search of the station superintendent. A few minutes later, he was back and the scowl on his heavy face suggested he was very out of sorts: ‘Name and address?’
‘I’m going to be in so much trouble. Please let me go.’ She buried her head in her hands.
‘You’re in trouble now,’ the policeman barked. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Anna Petrovna Kovalenko,’ she muttered between her hands.
‘And where are your papers?’
But Anna refused to say more. Threats, imprecations, promises, even a reassuring arm, nothing he tried would elicit another word from her. And the more he tried the more hysterical she seemed to become until he began to wonder at her sanity.
‘You can cool down for an hour.’ He grabbed her arm and dragged her roughly to her feet. ‘Here, you, Rostislov,’ he said, addressing a constable bent in conversation with the chief clerk. ‘Take this one to Room 6.’ And turning to Anna again, he said, ‘An hour. If you don’t give me your address and answer for yourself after that I can promise you now, you’ll be spending the night in the Peter and Paul Fortress.’
It was a box room with a tiny barred window, furnished with only a wooden bench and a bucket. Anna
