'Aux armes citoyens.
Formez vos bataillons.
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.'
It was inexplicable to be so overcome with emotion at a foreign anthem – far from the finest music, or verse, ever written – but for the man inside the house, whose death at Matfei's hand I had just listened to, it had meant everything. I had witnessed many deaths over the past decade, and if he had been stood on the battlefield, supporting to the last a tricolour, then his death would have been… respectable – both to me and, I believe, to him. But ever since we had begun to work with the Oprichniki, there had not been one single honourable death amongst the whole lot of them. Maks' death, the deaths of the uncounted French, even the deaths of the Oprichniki – Simon, Iakov Alfeyinich and Faddei – betrayed by Maks to the French; none of these fitted into the mould of the regular deaths of war. Perhaps in years to come, such ways of dying would become commonplace and acceptable, as the Frenchman – Louis, I think it was – had suggested back at that encampment we had infiltrated, but just then I yearned to witness a straightforward death by cannonball or sword. When I had chosen my path, away from the regular army, I had thought espionage was about information; about discovering what lay in the enemy's mind. I soon learned that it was simply about terminating those minds – about finding new and more unusual ways to carry death to our foes.
The door of the house opened and Matfei emerged once again. Glancing from side to side, he headed back up the street the way we had come. A coldness gripped me as, for the first time, I noticed something tangibly vile in one of the Oprichniki. Up until then, their methods and their manner were distasteful – distasteful to me and hence the problem was as much mine as theirs; no more than a clash of cultures. But what I now saw took a step beyond distaste, into abhorrence. I noticed – and at that distance I could hardly see, yet I was nonetheless certain – that he had blood on his lips.
Still, there might be nothing untoward in that. The Frenchman might have put up a fight before his death, laying a punch on Matfei's face, and so the blood might simply be Matfei's own. After a few steps, the Oprichnik stopped and raised his hand to his mouth, wiping the stain away. He looked at his fingers, considering the blood that he found there. I couldn't help but remember the blood on my own fingers, as those fingers were one after the other removed from my hand. Perhaps Matfei had not realized that he had been injured, and now, on seeing his own blood as confirmation of the wound, he would merely wipe his fingers clean on his coat. He did not. He raised his fingers back to his mouth and licked them delectably until the blood was gone. Then he set off once again on his way. Memories of long-forgotten stories forced their way into my mind, but I repressed them. I continued my pursuit.
As we travelled back north-eastwards, Matfei's stride was now less surreptitious – more the step of a contented gentleman returning to his home after an evening's revelry. Indeed, the directness of his motion suggested that he was no longer meandering through the city in search of targets, but was heading for some specific objective, which could only be his lodgings.
The fact that he had done his work for the evening and was heading for home, however, did not deter him from keeping an eye out for any other opportunities to kill that might arise. We had been travelling for about half an hour, always in a roughly north-easterly direction, when Matfei suddenly pressed himself against a wall and vanished, much as I had seen Foma do. His hearing was clearly sharper than mine; it wasn't for several seconds that I heard the regular footfall of a patrol.
I ducked into an alleyway, watching the point at which Matfei had disappeared, hoping, if not to see him as he hid, at least to have my eyes focused on the right place when he eventually moved. The patrol marched past him, close enough to feel his breath on their cheeks, if he was in fact breathing at all, such was his stillness. And even now, just two days into their occupation of Moscow, I think 'marched' was too flattering a word for the French troops. Over the weeks that the French remained in Moscow, the behaviour of the average soldier was to deteriorate beyond all military decorum, but already their marching was slack and ragged. They chatted and laughed as they went by, and the last of them paused to light a cigar that he had, no doubt, stolen from some empty Muscovite home, part of the pillage that the French termed the 'Foire de Moscou' – the Moscow Fair.
I held my breath, though in anticipation of what, I could not tell. Did I fear that the French would see Matfei, that the French would see me or that Matfei would see me? The actual outcome was, I think, the one that I had really been afraid of. The hindmost, straggling man, lighting his cigar, stood unwittingly at the very point in the street where Matfei had thrust himself, camouflaged against the wall. He had fallen ten, perhaps fifteen paces behind his companions.
Matfei pounced. In a single motion he stepped to the soldier's side and flung his tightly clenched fist back against the man's larynx. The blow itself could have caused fatal damage to the soldier – though not immediately fatal – but additionally, it bashed his head back against the wall behind him with a damp cracking sound. Matfei's action had exhibited enormous strength, but also an indolent casualness, like a child cuffing aside a ball as he runs in for his dinner. The soldier crumpled unconscious to his knees, dragging in scraping breaths through his shattered windpipe.
Before the man's comrades had even the first inkling of his disappearance, Matfei had found the street entrance to the cellar of a nearby tavern, and had slipped down inside, dragging the dying soldier with him.
I crept up to the trapdoor, which Matfei had left open, not daring to go too close, as though it were the entrance to a bear's cave. For all I knew, Matfei could be sitting there in the darkness, looking out at me, waiting until I had moved near enough for him to swoop upon me and drag me back inside. I stood a little way away from the open cellar, trying to make out any hint of movement from within and listening closely. I heard only the vaguest sounds of movement, and then a crash of breaking glass, followed by an exclamation that I took to be a curse.
Suddenly, a dim glow could be seen at the opening to the cellar. Clearly, Matfei was as blind as I was in the pitch-dark and needed additional light. I moved closer to the entrance, remaining standing so that I might be ready to run and also so that I wouldn't peek around the edge of the trapdoor to find myself face to face with Matfei. This way I could see deep into the cellar from some distance, and when I finally saw him, I would still be far enough for him not to reach me.
The first thing I saw was the sparkling remains of several broken vodka bottles, presumably those which Matfei had smashed in the darkness. Behind them was a small lantern which lit the room – Matfei had either been lucky in finding it there, or well prepared in bringing it along with him. A pool of spilled vodka was spreading out from the bottles and gradually soaking into the compacted earth of the cellar floor, but still I could not see Matfei or his victim. I took another step, to improve my line of sight, and a foot came into view – Matfei's from the look of it. He was kneeling or even on all fours and so the sole of his boot faced upwards. Beside it, the clear puddle of vodka was mingling with another, darker spillage, whose source I could not see.