'So you were not at that meeting, Aleksei Ivanovich,' said Iuda, turning to me. I wondered if he already knew about what had happened to Matfei and Varfolomei and whether he was trying to read my mind. I was relieved that Dmitry had not mentioned my following them.
'No, I didn't make it. But the previous night I saw Foma and Ioann,' I replied, nodding towards Ioann, who still stood tacitly beside his taller comrade. 'It's not always easy to travel across the city, even at night. I'm sure the others are perfectly safe.'
'You are no doubt right, Aleksei Ivanovich – those whom you have not seen are quite safe, I'm sure. I myself saw Pyetr and Andrei only last night.'
Ioann shuffled his feet impatiently and looked around him.
'I think we had best be about our work,' said Iuda, noting Ioann's nervousness. 'I'm sure we shall all meet again soon.' He glanced at each of us in turn, in case we had anything more to say. Seeing that we had nothing, they turned and walked away.
Once they were out of earshot, I heard Vadim's voice in my ear. 'So, which one do you want to take?' The thought of pursuit that had been on my mind had evidently been on Vadim's too.
'You choose,' I said.
'You're going to follow them?' asked Dmitry, as if astonished that we could consider something so underhand.
'I would like to see for myself what Aleksei has described,' said Vadim. 'Then I might be convinced. I'll take Iuda.'
'Fine by me,' I said. My plan was not simply to follow, but to follow and to kill. To that end, I would prefer it to be Ioann. Strange though it was to admit, Iuda managed to carry some vestige of personality about him – relative at least to the other Oprichniki – that would make his death less of a pleasure. 'I'll take Ioann.'
'You don't have to join in if it goes against your conscience, Dmitry,' said Vadim with a knowing smile. It was unthinkable that Dmitry would allow himself to be left out of it.
'No, I'll tag along. I'll go with Aleksei.'
'It's all right,' I said, not wanting Dmitry to interfere with my true purpose. 'I'll be fine. You go with Vadim.'
'No, Aleksei. We're the old team. We work best together.'
I couldn't make any further protest without it being too obvious, and Dmitry knew it.
The two Oprichniki were still just visible, leaving the square to the right of Saint Vasily's. The three of us scurried through the burnt remains of the square's shops and then skirted around the left-hand side of the cathedral. Iuda and Ioann had separated, with Iuda heading in our direction. We ducked back into one of the many columned archways beneath the cathedral's steps. Iuda passed by without seeing us. With a brief smile and a wave of farewell, Vadim set off in pursuit.
Dmitry and I headed off in the other direction and soon caught sight of Ioann once again. He had turned west along the embankment between the Kremlin and the Moskva.
Ioann's travels of that night were not much different from those of Matfei the previous night, or of Foma the night before that. His chosen prey – like Foma's – was from a concentrated group of soldiers. During the night he found three separate barracks, two of which I'd mentioned when I'd briefed him and Foma a couple of days earlier. He slipped quietly into each one, making no sound as he entered or as he killed. We made no investigation ourselves of what he had done or whom he had killed. We both knew full well what had taken place – unlike Vadim, we required no further physical evidence.
Waiting and watching as Ioann went about his activities summarized for me the ambivalence of my attitude to the Oprichniki. My intent was to kill Ioann as soon as the opportunity arose and I should have been mortified at each killing that my delay allowed him to perpetrate. In reality, I could only be happy at those deaths. They were the deaths of French invaders. Their deaths were the very purpose for which we had summoned the Oprichniki to Moscow. My desire to kill Ioann was based solely on what he was, not on what he did. I supported him in his actions and condemned him for his nature. It was the exact opposite of why I had allowed Maks to die.
After his three repasts, Ioann's movement had become less stealthy. As I had observed in Matfei the previous night, once their hunger had been sated, then the Oprichniki became a little less feral in their movements. His walk was more upright – more proud – and, were it not for the circumstances in which the city found itself, he might have been mistaken for a Moscow socialite returning from a night of gaming or dancing.
With Dmitry's assistance, following was far easier than it had been alone. In a city, there is an established way for two men to follow another. The pursuers never need get near their quarry; they never even have to take a single step along the path that he has trod. While one remains stationary to watch where the target is going, the other runs down a sidestreet to get ahead of him. Once he has made it to a new viewpoint, the roles are switched. The man who is being followed never sees movement and never knows that he is being pursued.
This approach was complicated by the fact that I was urgently trying to evade Dmitry whilst still keeping track of Ioann, because I knew that Dmitry would try to thwart me in my goal of destroying at least one more of the repulsive creatures that night. Dmitry seemed to guess that I was planning something and so he spent as much of his time pursuing me as he did helping me to pursue Ioann.
Despite these intricacies, and the steady rain that began to fall during the night, we did not lose sight of Ioann. His resting place turned out to be not far from where we had first met him and Iuda earlier that night; close to Kutznetsky Bridge, the French quarter that had still managed to escape the flames. It was an address in a tightly built area, where the boundaries between separate properties within a block were so indistinct that one front door could have led to any one of three or more homes. Remarkably, these buildings too were as yet untouched by the fires which had already consumed many of their neighbours. Ioann crept up the steps to a door and slipped inside.
'Any more you want to see?' asked Dmitry, unenthusiastically.
'Yes,' I replied. 'I want to see where he goes.'
'He went in there. He's not going anywhere else tonight. It'll be dawn in an hour.'
But I was already setting off to see precisely where in the building Ioann lay. The fact that I had not been able to shake Dmitry off my back was not going to be a permanent impediment to my goal. If I could see where he slept, then I would have the benefit of a full day of sunlight to come back and slaughter Ioann in a manner of my choosing.
I reached the doorway, still ajar as Ioann had left it, and peeped inside. Within, I could see nothing but an empty hallway. I heard footsteps behind me. It was Dmitry, clearly (and wisely) unwilling to leave me alone with Ioann for even a few minutes.
'You see anything?' he asked. I shook my head and pushed open the door. There were three doors off the hallway, plus a flight of stairs. Beneath the stairs, open, was a fourth doorway which, undoubtedly, led down to the cellar. That surely was where Ioann would have gone.
More prepared than the previous night, I had brought with me a candle, which I lit. I held it ahead of me as we descended the stairs. Dmitry was close behind me, his hand against my back. A sudden fear possessed me. If we were to encounter Ioann – and maybe other Oprichniki as well – on whose side would Dmitry place himself? Was that hand on my back there to steady and reassure me, or would it be the case that if I turned to flee the voordalaki we encountered, Dmitry's hand would thrust me pitilessly into their midst? Dmitry had saved my life seven years before. We had been the closest of friends before that and ever since. I had named my son after him. It was a shocking reflection on one or both of us that at this moment I could doubt him.
At the bottom of the stairs, my candle illuminated on one side an archway into a small cellar and on the other a closed double door. A brief glance through the archway proved that there was nothing there. The ceiling was partially collapsed and no one had bothered to repair it in years. It was a miracle that no dinner party from the room above – tables, chairs, tureens, plates, servants, guests and all – had ever fallen through and landed in there. None had, nor had Ioann made his bed there.