the edge of his seat, his hands pressed over his ears in a gesture of incredulity. ‘The grenades are not properly made. The gendarmes are in the shop… suicide.’
Sophia Perovskaya gave him a steely look: ‘Do we act?’
‘What will be left of the party after this?’
‘Do we act?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘We must hear from the shop before we can decide.’
Sophia Perovskaya stared at him coldly for a moment, then turned to Anna: ‘Annushka, do we act?’
Dead comrades, comrades in prison, the isolation, fear, so much sacrifice in the two years they had been fighting. Zhelyabov would never feel the warm southern sun on his shoulders again. There was no longer a choice.
‘Annushka?’ Sophia asked, again.
‘Yes. We shall act…’
‘Will you help us, Doctor?’
‘If I can.’
‘Then where will we find Anna Kovalenko?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you would tell me if you did know?’
Hadfield did not reply but folded his arms across his chest and stared impassively at the special investigator. They were sitting on either side of an iron table in the House of Preliminary Detention. The interrogation room was larger than his cell but with the same bleak grey walls and asphalt floor, lit by an unscreened gas flame. They had given him an ill-fitting prison uniform with trousers he was obliged to grasp like a village simpleton to prevent them falling to his ankles. The duty doctor had made a respectable job of cleaning and stitching the wound in his head, but a little blood was seeping through the bandage. It was not how he would choose to dress for an embassy soiree but there was little chance of his name appearing on the guest list for a while.
‘Why did you visit the Sunday parade?’
‘To see the emperor.’
‘Were you helping your terrorist friends with information?’
‘No.’
‘Then why were you there?’
‘To see the emperor.’
Dobrshinsky sighed with exasperation: ‘I don’t think you understand how serious your situation is, Doctor. Consorting with a terrorist — the old Ukrainian woman has told me of your meetings — resisting His Majesty’s servants in the line of duty…’
‘He wasn’t in uniform.’
‘Doctor, that’s quite insulting.’ Dobrshinsky leant forward earnestly, elbows on the table: ‘You’re an intelligent fellow — if misguided — you know Anna Petrovna and her comrades are going to make another attempt on the emperor’s life. Isn’t that why you went to see the Sunday parade?’
Hadfield did not reply.
‘Do you think killing the emperor will solve anything in this country? ’
‘No,’ said Hadfield emphatically. ‘I’m opposed to terror, whether it’s directed at or by the state.’
‘Said with creditable frankness. But then you must help me prevent another outrage.’ Dobrshinsky paused to let him answer, and when none was forthcoming: ‘Didn’t you make a promise to preserve life?’
‘You asked me if I would help you if I could and I said “Yes — if I could”.’
‘You’re not telling me what you know,’ said Dobrshinsky. ‘Is she worth the disgrace and imprisonment? What about your principles?’
‘If I could, I would help you.’
‘A facile mantra. You think you’re trapped, but you have a choice. You’re a doctor, a gentleman, a man of reason — please use it.’
Dobrshinsky paused again, his little brown eyes watching Hadfield intently, perhaps hoping for a flicker of weakness — of sense. But there was nothing Hadfield could say. He could own that he used to be a man of reason and even some principle, he could admit to his confusion, to terrible doubt, he could say he had not made a decision to pursue this course, that it was a feeling, a compulsion he was in thrall to. Would a man who struggled with an irresistible impulse of his own understand a little of this?
‘No one knows you’re here,’ Dobrshinsky continued. ‘Help me and you will walk free. You can return to your patients and to society. If you don’t help me you’ll be sent to trial and then to a convict settlement, a disgrace to your family and your country.’
‘This is my country.’
‘Then serve her.’
‘If I could, I would help you,’ Hadfield repeated.
‘We will catch Kovalenko and the rest, Figner, Perovskaya. We’ve arrested Zhelyabov. You have a choice…’ Dobrshinsky paused, then, almost as an afterthought, added: ‘Perhaps I should arrange for you to speak with your uncle?’
‘As you wish,’ said Hadfield with exaggerated composure.
Dobrshinsky’s thin lips twitched a little with amusement: ‘Of course that would have unfortunate consequences. You understand the choice you must make. I urge you to think on your future and the right course.’ He pulled a gold timepiece from his waistcoat pocket: ‘Four o’clock. I’ll return in a few hours.’
Rising stiffly from the table, he smoothed the creases from his frock coat with great care and turned to the door. He knocked sharply then turned once more: ‘Did you read those volumes of Mr Dostoevsky’s I lent you, Doctor? There’s a line, I can’t remember it precisely but it is something like, “Do not underestimate how powerful a single man may be.” That power is given to you now. Choose wisely.’
They were saved by a cat. Yakimova had left as soon as she was able and hurried to the flat on the Voznesensky. The gendarmes had arrived at the cheese shop with a surveyor of buildings.
‘Not just any old surveyor. He was a general,’ Bashka reported.
They had searched all three rooms but were most interested in the cellar. The general kicked at the pile of coke they had placed in front of the gallery entrance but did not ask for it to be moved. Nor had the gendarmes taken the trouble to look under the shopkeeper’s bed and in the barrels where they would have found the earth from the gallery. The general had been on the point of asking for one to be opened when Bashka’s cat had bounded down the steps into the cellar and rubbed against his shiny boots.
‘He bent to stroke her and I began rattling on about her history, and that was enough to distract him,’ Bashka said with a throaty chuckle. They were now on the best of terms with the gendarmes. It was the first piece of good fortune they had enjoyed in weeks.
By eight o’clock the mine was charged for firing and the rendezvous set for the bomb-throwers. Nikolai Kibalchich would work through the night to ready the grenades. There were six of them left at the flat on the Voznesensky, cutting the kerosene cans for the shell of the grenades, bending and twisting the metal with fire tongs in the grate and casting weights on the kitchen table. Anna Kovalenko and the other women knew nothing of explosives, but fetched and carried and measured and mixed as they were bidden. The living-room floor was covered in shards of metal, the apartment full of stinging acrid smoke. They spoke little and only of the tasks they needed to perform. At eleven o’clock Sophia Perovskaya left them to rest as best she could before the morning.
‘You must go too, Annushka,’ Vera Figner said a short time later. ‘You’re exhausted. You should be fresh for tomorrow.’
But Anna could not sleep. She lay on the bed in her stained dress, conscious of Sophia restless beside her and the noise of the bomb-makers in the sitting room. With nothing to distract her tired mind, she became a prisoner of her thoughts again. Where was Frederick?
‘Are you awake, Annushka?’
