It was Yudin.

'Who's for a game of noses?'

Dmitry turned his head. It was Volgin, a naval podporuchik. He had just come into the mess and was waving a pack of cards.

'I'm up for it,' said Dmitry quickly. Anything to distract him from his thoughts. It had been over a month since his encounter with Wieczorek and Mihailov in the casemate and his earlier and quite different encounter with Tyeplov. Wieczorek was dead, and Dmitry had not seen Mihailov, or heard of any death that might be attributed to him. He had not seen Tyeplov either, and that was the concern that filled his mind.

'Kids' game,' said another voice.

Volgin slapped the deck lightly against the man's nose, imitating the game itself. 'What do you want to play then?'

'Preferans,' came the definite reply.

'Count me in,' said a captain, strolling over from the bar.

'Major Danilov?' asked Volgin.

'Why not?' said Dmitry. Preferans would be far less of a distraction, but he had no desire to make an issue of it. He pulled his chair up to the table. The other two players introduced themselves Ilyin and Manin.

Volgin dealt, while Ilyin found a piece of paper and scribbled a puljka on it for them to score with. He laid it on the table so that each triangle aligned neatly with the corresponding player. Dmitry won the bidding with seven in clubs and stuck with clubs as trumps. All three of his opponents opted to defend. He picked up the two cards of the talon; ten of clubs and ace of diamonds the latter bearing the duty stamp, showing a pelican with its wings spread over its nest, a reminder that the tax went to fund the imperial orphanages. He discarded two low spades.

Just as he was picking up the cards of his first trick, the table shook as a sh.e.l.l came in somewhere close.

'That one was from the ships,' said Volgin. The others nodded. The sound of cannon continued. Dmitry played his hand, but couldn't concentrate. He made the contract, but it was obvious to everyone that he should have got overtricks. Ilyin noted down his score on the puljka. Next it was Dmitry's deal. No one chose to bid, and so the hand was played as a pa.s.s-out, with each player trying to win the fewest tricks.

'I was talking to a chap the other day,' said Volgin as they played, 'who thinks we should all go home.'

'Good idea,' said Manin. Dmitry felt the table shake, and thought another sh.e.l.l had exploded, but looked up to see it was only that Manin was banging his hand upon it, to emphasize his agreement. Dmitry threw a card almost at random, and won a trick that he hadn't intended.

'Says each side should send a man home,' continued Volgin, 'then another and another, till there's only two left one of them, one of us.'

'Single combat,' said Ilyin.

'That's how wars start,' said Manin, 'not how they end.'

'It'd save lives,' suggested Volgin.

'They'd cheat,' said Dmitry.

'Not if they won,' replied Ilyin.

'Then we'd cheat.' Dmitry's final comment seemed to settle it. They finished the hand. Dmitry was happy to have taken only one trick, though he knew he'd been lucky. Ilyin had taken none, with the remainder split between the other two. Ilyin dealt.

'Six diamonds,' was Manin's opening bid.

Volgin followed with 'Seven spades.'

Dmitry considered his hand. The sound of a large, distant explosion filled the room, but this time the floor did not shake. Dmitry felt reckless. 'Eight no trump.'

He heard a sharp intake of breath from behind him. He hadn't seen who had entered the room, but it was the height of rudeness to comment on a player's hand, even in a non-verbal form such as that.

'Fifth player!' said Manin, looking at the newcomer behind Dmitry.

'Under the table!' said the other two in unison, pointing there as they spoke. It was a common enough response to unwanted advice. Dmitry felt the man move away and head over to the bar. Manin bid nine diamonds and n.o.body countered. Only then did Dmitry glance at the newcomer. He immediately turned back, fixing his gaze on his cards, his blood suddenly cold.

It was Ignatyev, the michman he'd met briefly in the casemate in the fourth bastion. At the time he'd seemed pretty chummy with Mihailov and Wieczorek, though he hadn't returned with them later. Even so, Dmitry could not ignore the possibility that Ignatyev might, like them, be a voordalak.

For his part, Ignatyev did not even look in Dmitry's direction. Since he had come into the room, he had been behind Dmitry, with no opportunity to see his face except in the brief moment when Dmitry had glanced over at him, and then he had been turned away. If he had seen and recognized Dmitry, surely he would have reacted. Dmitry missed two possible tricks, but Manin had overbid horribly. He finished two under. Just as Ilyin was tallying the scores, Ignatyev walked briskly out of the room.

Dmitry was on his feet in an instant. 'That's it for me,' he announced.

'But you're ahead,' complained Manin.

'Give us a chance to win it back,' added Volgin.

'Keep it,' said Dmitry, striding to the door and grabbing his knapsack from beside the chair where he had left it.

He heard muttered comments of 'Choodak!' and 'Better with three, anyway,' but then he was outside.

It was a warm night, the sort of night that made you want to do nothing. Despite the proximity of the sea, the air was thick and humid; it reminded him of Moscow. Outside, the noise of the guns was louder. Dmitry could clearly distinguish the direction that the explosions came from, either from the land to the south and east, or from the sea. The glare that lit the sky preceded their accompanying blasts by seconds, and they were frequent enough to make it impossible to connect a particular report with a particular flash.

Ignatyev was nowhere to be seen. Dmitry had come out of the mess on to the bank of the Military Harbour. Almost immediately opposite, a boat bridge stretched across it, connecting the eastern and western halves of the city. The harbour was calm, but the boats bobbed up and down in the water. Someone had just run across. Dmitry followed.

The west was a ma.s.s of small streets. Dmitry chose the one nearest to the end of the bridge and walked briskly down it. Above him, a sh.e.l.l sailed through the sky like a meteor, launched from one of the ships and aimed not into the city itself but at the bastions beyond. He heard the blast of its impact and tried not to imagine the carnage it must have caused.

He carried on down the street, glancing left and right at each side road that branched off. The entire area was all but deserted those who were not on duty at the fortifications remained indoors for safety. Occasionally Dmitry saw someone, but not Ignatyev. Half the buildings he pa.s.sed had been boarded up, some in hasty repair of damage caused by stray cannonb.a.l.l.s, others simply because their owners had fled.

At last his eyes fell upon the figure he had been seeking. Ignatyev was no longer alone. Another man was walking beside him this one in civilian clothes. Had Ignatyev found a victim, or a comrade? Dmitry scurried along the short distance to the next block of buildings, then turned into the road that ran parallel to where he had seen Ignatyev. He ran down that and then cut back to the right so that he would be ahead of them when they reached the next junction. He ducked into the doorway of one of the abandoned houses and waited. He could hear low voices approaching.

As they pa.s.sed, Dmitry saw that there were now three of them. There probably had been before, but the third man had been obscured by the shadows. Like Ignatyev, he was in a naval uniform, and taller than the other two. He walked between them, as if they were leading him somewhere. Dmitry could not see his face.

The three men did not have much further to go. They stopped at the door of one of the houses, just beyond where Dmitry stood, hidden in the darkness. Compared with its neighbours, this building was in a decent state of repair probably still lived in. Ignatyev unlocked the door and opened it, indicating that the other two should enter. At the same moment, a sh.e.l.l whistled low overhead, clearly off target. It landed a few streets away, shaking the ground and illuminating the sky. The three men turned to look, their faces momentarily lit by the blast, and Dmitry saw what he had already suspected.

The man in the middle was Tyeplov.

'Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov.'

Yudin eyed Tamara as he spoke. He tried to gauge her reaction, but could infer nothing. The name sounded unusual on his lips, at least in that form. In his mind the man would always be 'Lyosha', but to refer to him so familiarly would reveal too much. It was suspicious enough that she should be showing an interest in him. It could be quite innocent but Yudin would not have lived to anything like his great age if he believed in innocence.

Tamara's response was simply to bat the question back. 'Yes, Vasiliy Innokyentievich?'

Yudin knew that he did not have to play games. 'Why the interest?' he asked.

'He's a witness to murder,' she said simply.

Yudin almost laughed. The idea that Lyosha could have anything to do with the death of Irina Karlovna was beyond ridiculous. But that was not the primary issue. 'I don't recall authorizing you to investigate the death of your colleague.'

'Not that murder. A murder in 1812. And another in 1825.'

Yudin considered her. She was sitting in his office, lit as usual by lamplight, and it was night outside. She was closer to the door than he, but even if she ran for it he could easily catch her. Gribov had shown her in, and might hear her scream, but he could be dealt with too, if necessary. None of it was necessary yet. The very fact that she had come down here and was telling him indicated how little she must know. He felt safe but also fascinated.

'Explain,' he said.

'There was a murder in 1812, just after the French pulled out. A prost.i.tute. In Degtyarny Lane. Her name was Margarita Kirillovna.'

She gave out each fact separately, as if feeding a line out to Yudin so that he could become well and truly hooked. He knew full well that Margarita Kirillovna had been killed in 1812 it was he who had killed her, and made it look like the work of a vampire. He had used a weapon he'd constructed himself, formed from two knives, virtually identical, bound together at the handles with leather strapping so the two blades lay parallel. Their upper edges were a jagged sawtooth, and the lower keen as razors. Each ended in a neat, sharp point. He'd made it specifically to imitate the wounds of a vampire's teeth, and now, even though he was a vampire, he still sometimes preferred to use the knife, and always carried it with him. It allowed him to look into his victim's eyes as he worked. He could recall the thrill as he had turned it on Margarita, her expression of surprise and terror. He felt an excitement inside him as he considered telling Tamara the truth and seeing that same look on her face, but he restrained himself. 'Prost.i.tutes get murdered all the time,' he responded.

'Her injuries were almost identical to those of Irina Karlovna.'

'Almost?' He refrained from adding, 'That's not how I remember it,' but he was curious to know what differences there were.

'She'd also been stabbed in the chest.'

That, Yudin presumed, would be Aleksei's handiwork. Yudin had clearly done a good job of making it look like the work of a voordalak good enough for Aleksei to take precautions. 'And how was Danilov involved?' he asked.

'He found the body.'

'Did they catch the killer?' It was a delightfully unnecessary question.

She shook her head. 'No, but that's not it. In 1825 there were five more murders.'

'In 1825 there were dozens of murders,' he snapped.

'In five the cause of death was a similar throat wound. In one, the man who found the body was Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov.'

Yudin raised an eyebrow, hoping it would disguise the true nature of his surprise. Aleksei had clearly been a busy man in 1825. He had come to Chufut Kalye and helped to destroy all Yudin's work there, he had saved Aleksandr I from a fate worse than death in Taganrog and he had taken part in the Decembrist Uprising in Petersburg. All this Yudin knew because he had been present. He had not been in Moscow at all, but it seemed that there too Aleksei had not been idle.

'When in 1825?' he asked.

'Early October.'

That was before the events in the south of the country. It must have been what brought Aleksei down there. 'I see,' said Yudin. 'And now you think he might have come back and killed Irina Karlovna for old times' sake.'

'I think it unlikely.'

'Because?'

'Because he's in Siberia.'

'You're sure of that?'

'That's what I was coming to check.'

Yudin thought for a moment. He doubted that she knew any more than she was telling, but even so, it was an impressive piece of investigation. And the fact that they were both now interested in Aleksei could be of use. Her investigations could provide a cover for Yudin's own though he still had other lines of enquiry that might allow him to leave Aleksei to his fate.

'He's still there in Irkutsk.'

'Any family?'

'His wife died. He has a son, Dmitry.' Yudin paused, trying to judge if she knew already. She said nothing, but she would soon find out. 'Whom I know personally.'

Tamara tilted her head a little to one side. Now she was trying to a.s.sess Yudin, but she would discover nothing. 'And where is he?'

'Sevastopol. He's in the army. Is that a good enough alibi?'

'Not as good as Irkutsk.' Yudin could not tell if she was being serious. 'How old is he?' she asked.

'Nearly fifty.' Yudin understood where she was leading. 'Which would have made him around five years old at the time of your first murder.' He was amused to find himself defending the man.

She smiled, and he was now fairly certain that she had been teasing him. 'What was your interest, by the way?' she asked.

Yudin had antic.i.p.ated the question. 'As you might expect, I read all the mail to and from the exiles, including Danilov's.'

'And?'

'He mentioned a name a possible co-conspirator; another Decembrist.'

'One that got away?'

'Not for very much longer.'

She seemed satisfied. She did not ask the name of the other man, and Yudin would simply have refused to tell her if she had.

'You think you can put together a case against him?'

'He'll confess.'

'Simple as that?'

Yudin smiled. Could she really be that naive? Her work had, so far, only introduced her to one side of the Third Section's activities, but she must surely guess what happened to the men she informed upon, once they were in custody. It was time to see what the woman was really made of.

'Let me show you something,' he said. She looked puzzled, but he said no more. He took out his key and went over to the door to unlock it. 'This way.'

She stood and followed him. He stepped back and let her go first. He heard her feet on the stone steps coming to a halt. She had reached the point where the stairs divided. He had no plans to let her see the coffins. What she would see would be enough enough for him to enjoy that first hint of apprehension on her face. It would be their opening step on a journey together that would end in her understanding everything, and being horrified by it, and dying with only fear in her mind. With luck it would be a long journey, of which he at least would relish every moment.

'Down to the left,' he called lightly.

Tamara's steps resumed and Yudin followed her down, closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER X.