‘My dear,’ said Draganov, ‘it is important that we allow Kamo to contact whomsoever he wishes. There is a golden thread that runs all the way to our friend in Finland. I want the money to flow. Then we will follow the river. Krasin, Lenin, wherever.’
‘Are you going to arrest Ulyanov?’
‘That depends. We will do whatever it takes to damage the Party. Bolshevik or Menshevik, I’m not fussy. But these organisations are best cut at the neck, not the ankle. Even the old anarchists knew that principle.’
‘Revolution,’ said Saskia, tonelessly. ‘There’s no mistaking their ambition.’
‘Or mine.’
‘What would you give to see the future, Draganov?’
For the first time during their meeting, the secret policeman seemed uncomfortable. He rubbed his red beard.
‘A wit will answer: “I would give nothing, because I intend to make it”. However, more honestly, I would give everything. Who wouldn’t?’ His expression shifted from challenge to hope. ‘Do you trust me? Wait. I should not ask that question. Let me say this. You may not understand my motivations at this moment. But they are true. They connote the best of my actions. I do what must be done.’
Saskia stared at him. This cryptic admission compelled her to ask a question that had been building, rising within her, since the moment she stepped into the Summer Palace.
‘Why did you go to the palace, Draganov?’
‘I was looking for the money.’
‘Did you find it?’
‘No. Would you care to solve the mystery and tell me where it is?’
She frowned. ‘It should not matter to you where it is, if you are only interested in tracing its route back to Lenin.’
‘Not true,’ said Draganov, smiling. ‘If I were to snatch it, mid-flow, its loss would be as damaging to the party as the arrest of Lenin himself. The sum is greater than any ever stolen, my dear. It would keep the Party solvent for years.’
Saskia turned to her view of the stars in the windows.
‘What do you see?’ he asked. ‘There are no stars. The lights of the city are too bright here.’
‘There are always stars. Even in the daylight there are stars.’
‘You should have been a poet.’
‘Lo que será. Nothing can change, not really.’
‘My man will take you home.’
‘No.’
‘One last thing,’ said Draganov, removing his coat from Saskia so that the chill stole across her. ‘Kamo, if his sources are good, will discover that a favourite of the Empress will be permitted to hold his annual masked ball at the Summer Palace tomorrow evening. There will be an army presence. We live in troubled times when the army is called in to do police work. Do you know how many mutinies our reliable old army has enjoyed in the past three years? Almost eight hundred.’
‘I didn’t know that. But it makes no difference. Can you get us tickets?’
‘No. Let Kamo get them for you, and be sure to let him know that only a man of his skill can perform this indispensable service. That will help quieten any concern that lingers about why you risked so much to rescue him.’
His kissed her hand. His lips were cold.
‘Draganov, I need you to promise that Count Nakhimov and his family will be granted protection.’
‘From whom? Kamo?’
‘No. A man called Soso.’
‘Who?’
‘A Georgian cut-throat. Koba. Sometimes Soselo. Ivanov. David. The Milkman. The Priest. Real name Josef Visarionovich Djugashvili.’
‘Ah, I know him. Don’t be worried about. After all this, I will pull his claws personally.’
‘As for tomorrow, if I call you, you will come?’
‘Of course.’
Saskia remembered her bloodstained handkerchief. It was crumpled. She took it. Inside there was a cigarette paper with the pencilled message: Find me outside the Ministry of Justice.
‘I can get rid of that for you,’ said Draganov.
‘No. I will, thank you.’
Within the hour, Saskia had returned to Kamo. He had not moved from his position in centre of the room. Her dress still draped him. Saskia settled alongside and closed her eyes on his greasy hair and dreamed that she was once more in the Alexander Park, carrying Pasha from danger.
She awoke on the balcony overlooking the department store Gostiny Dvor. It was silvered with streetlight. She was breathing heavily. Had she sleepwalked? She still wore her shift, but nothing else. The wind hurt. She looked down at her hand. It was gripping the iron rail.
She noticed a pain near her collarbone. She probed it with her finger and found a mosquito. It flickered into the night before she could kill it. The bite itched.
Another gust of wind struck her.
Someone lit a cigarette across the street.
“The flames of victory light our country.”
Dawn commenced.
She watched the dust shift in wavelets. Two winds met in St Petersburg. One came from the Gulf of Finland, across which Lenin, so Saskia imagined, looked from the stoop of a villa. The second came from the south, direction Novgorod, and was too local to have stirred the reddish hair of Soso in Baku, or Tiflis, or whichever Caucasian town he was ghosting through.
There was a language where sky was “the sea above”.
She felt Kamo behind her.
‘The future is a mountain, is it not?’
Kamo was in a philosophical mood. Perhaps it was a facet of the character he had adopted as part of his disguise. She wondered how he would answer that question, since he had crossed the calendar line many times himself, sailing under the trade winds of anarchy.
‘Kamo,’ she said, feeling the hair moving at her temple, ‘I want you to obtain tickets for a masked ball tonight at the Summer Palace. I’ve tried and failed. I want you to pay back my effort in rescuing you.’
Saskia thought about the mosquito, which carried her blood.
‘How did you feel,’ Kamo asked, his voice quiet, ‘when you crossed the border from our calendar to the Gregorian?’
‘One travels in time thirteen days. Thirteen days into the West. It is nothing more than moving from one salon to another. A door opens. One walks through. There is a new sky.’ She realised that she was cold. ‘Mountains.’
‘A new sky,’ said Kamo. Saskia did not flinch when she felt his rage radiate. One hand gripped the hair at the back of her head and pulled. The other clamped her mouth. She gritted her teeth and breathed through her nose, which felt too narrow for the job. ‘You want me to pay back your efforts? You talk of mountains, whore. The debt your owe me is the mountain. Do not dare to suggest I am obligated to you. Is that clear?’
Saskia nodded.
Kamo held for a moment longer, then relaxed. His hands slipped to her hips and he rested his chin on her shoulder.
‘My sweet Lynx,’ he said, ‘you bring out the worst of me. Who will pull out your claws, I wonder?’
Saskia and Kamo used the main staircase to leave the building. Saskia held Kamo’s arm. Their steps were slow. Kamo wore smoked spectacles and a homburg that was low on his brow. Saskia had acquired a grey wig. As they crossed the foyer, Saskia looked at the frosted door of the superintendent’s office. It was closed.
Outside, on the Nevsky Avenue, Saskia made eye contact with Robespierre, who was across the street. He glanced at something to her left. Saskia did not turn, but watched the passenger window of a cab as it passed. She saw the reflection of a man leaning against the telephone pole on the corner.
In Armenian, she said, ‘Okhranniki, twenty yards on our left.’
Kamo grunted.
Saskia made eye contact with Robespierre again. With his eyebrows, he indicated a taxi near the Gostiny Dvor rank. Before she could smile, he looked away, stepped on his cigarette, and stepped onto a horse bus. Saskia longed to tell him, for the last time, that he was a good man.