Twelve

'Forget about them,' said Vadim. 'I don't have any quarrel with them, Captain Petrenko.' He was at his most formal and therefore his most irate. 'My quarrel is about why you chose not to tell us what you claim to know.'

'Then quarrel with me later. We're in the middle of a war.' I had never heard Dmitry – or any of us – speak to Vadim in such an openly rebellious tone before. Vadim was not one to lord it over his subordinates, but Dmitry was crossing into unknown territory as to what he would put up with.

Vadim covered his face with his hands and breathed deeply. 'This is madness,' he said. 'Arguing as to whether you should have told me they were vampires. I should be dressing you both down for being so gullible.'

'Perhaps we had better postpone this,' I interrupted, nodding across the square to where I had seen two figures approaching. At a distance it was unclear who the shorter one was, but they were undoubtedly Oprichniki and the taller one could be no one but Iuda.

Vadim and Dmitry stepped apart, trying to look somehow nonchalant for the benefit of the creatures that approached us.

'We'll speak of this later, Dmitry Fetyukovich,' muttered Vadim through a false smile. 'If what you say is true, then that was no way for Maksim to die.'

'So what's a good way for a traitor to die?' came Dmitry's reply. Before anyone could add anything else, the Oprichniki were with us.

It was Ioann that accompanied him, but as usual, Iuda did all the talking.

'Good evening, Vadim Fyodorovich, Dmitry Fetyukovich, Aleksei Ivanovich.'

We each acknowledged his greeting.

'How is your work progressing?' asked Vadim.

'According to plan,' replied Iuda. 'We are restraining ourselves so as not to give too much alarm. At present the fires are causing as much trouble for the French as we are.'

'I think they've nearly run their course now,' said Vadim. 'The French have organized themselves enough to deal with them. On top of that, there's not much left to burn.' He said it with a casualness that belied how deeply we all felt for the devastation of the city.

'Good. They have been a cause of much concern to me and my friends. Indeed, we have not seen some of our friends for several days,' said Iuda. 'Have any attended your meetings?'

'We saw Matfei and Varfolomei last night,' said Dmitry.

'We?'

'Vadim Fyodorovich and myself.'

'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.