The White Russian

Ruzsky sat down. Pavel had returned to the window and was looking at their watchers on the street with the fascinated air of a small child following a military parade.

Ruzsky glanced over Sarlov’s note, then picked up the telephone again. “Sarlov? It’s Ruzsky.”

“Sandro, yes. I’m… well, we’re all sorry. I’m sure-well, I hope you know that.”

“Thank you, yes.” Ruzsky cleared his throat. “You wanted to speak to me…”

“Yes…” Sarlov seemed hesitant.

“Your note referred to the body at the Lion Bridge.”

“Yes.” Sarlov blew his nose heavily. “Of course. Do you recall the brand on the American’s shoulder?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the body at the Lion Bridge had something similar.”

“On his shoulder also? In the same place?”

“I can’t say for certain. I didn’t see it. The Okhrana performed the autopsy, if you recall.”

“You discussed it with a colleague?”

“It came to my attention, yes… The marks sounded alike. I thought you’d like to know.”

“So, both men had the mark, but not the girl.” Ruzsky was referring to Ella, but thinking of Maria. He had seen nothing like it on her shoulder either.

The pathologist did not respond.

“If there is anything else that springs to mind, would you telephone me, Sarlov?”

“Of course.”

Ruzsky terminated the call. He looked at the clock on the wall beside him. He tried to work out what reason there could be for the men in the group to have the mark, and the women not.

He picked up the receiver once more. “Would you put me through to the Ministry of the Railways,” he told the operator.

Pavel glanced over his shoulder, before facing the street again. The shouts outside were growing louder.

Ruzsky asked to be co

The number 447 turned out to be for the administration department at the headquarters of the North Russia Maritime and Customs Police. Ruzsky called the operator and was eventually put through to the correct department at the bureau, but the wrong individual. The man said the office he required was on the floor below, but that he could not recall the number.

More than ten minutes later, Ruzsky finally spoke to someone in the maintenance department of the Bureau for Railway Building and Maintenance. Despite it having been impressed upon him that this was a criminal investigation, the man said he was too busy to check the detailed maps that were kept on the top floor. He conceded, when Ruzsky would not let the matter drop, that he believed it was a road crossing on the line out to Tsarskoe Selo, but he could not be certain. Everyone in the department was stretched to breaking point, he said, ensuring the lines were in working order for the war effort, and he did not have time to pursue the matter further.

When Ruzsky tried to ask again, the call was terminated.

He stared at the telephone after replacing the receiver.

A moment later they heard rapid footsteps on the stairs and along the corridor. A constable appeared in the doorway, a sheepskin cap in his hands, his hair damp with sweat.

They waited while he caught his breath.

“Another body, sir,” he gasped. “A woman.”

49

R uzsky flew down the stairs, the constable alongside him. “A woman?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“How old?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Young?”

“I-”

“Twenty? Thirty? Older?”

“Something like that, sir, yes.”

Ruzsky ran out into the street toward the droshky waiting opposite. They had lost Pavel, but he did not wait. “Where?” he demanded of the constable as the young man got in beside him.

“Vyborg side,” the man shouted at the driver. “By the Finland Station.”

The driver cracked his whip and the sled began to move. “Go via the quay,” Ruzsky instructed him.

The man did not look around, nor did he query the instruction. Only likhachy drivers were usually allowed to take their charges along the Palace Embankment. Ruzsky glanced back over his shoulder and saw Pavel ru

Ruzsky swung back to his companion. “She was dark?” he demanded. “Dark hair? Long, dark hair?”

“Yes, sir. I believe so.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes… yes.” He did not seem at all certain. “She had a knife, through her…” He pointed at his eye.

Ruzsky faced the front.

It could not be her. But his heart threatened to break out of his chest and his forehead prickled with sweat.

The sled hurtled past the Admiralty and the facade of the Winter Palace. They swung onto the Alexandrovsky Bridge.

“Whereabouts?” Ruzsky heard himself shout. “Tell me where exactly.”

“I’ll show you, sir,” the constable responded, equally agitated. “I’ll show you.”

They were over the bridge now and hurtling down the broad, tree-lined avenue, toward the spire of the Finland Station.

“Here,” the constable shouted at the driver, pointing toward a narrow side street between the tenements. “Here.”

The man slowed the horses and then wheeled them into the alley and down toward a tall, dark building surrounded by armed men.

Ruzsky leapt from the sled before it had ground to a halt.

Ten or more Okhrana agents, armed with rifles, stood in a semicircle around the entrance. The queue outside the bakery opposite stared at the scene in awed silence.

Ruzsky strode toward the officer in charge. “Chief Investigator Ruzsky,” he said, “city police.”

The man’s broad, bearded face was unyielding. “We’ve instructions to let no one through.”

“A murder has been reported by my constables,” Ruzsky said.

The other sled drew up and Pavel strode over. He produced his identification papers. “Deputy Chief Investigator Miliutin,” he said. The man remained unmoved.

The two groups faced each other. Ruzsky slipped his hand into his jacket, grasping the handle of his revolver. The silence was broken by the screech of an engine and then a loud clank as a train shunted inside the Finland Station.

Ruzsky seized his moment.

“You… stop,” the officer shouted, but Ruzsky had already broken into a run, darting through the entrance, past a mound of garbage.

“Wait,” he heard Pavel shout. He half expected a shot.

Ruzsky pounded up the stairs. The stench of urine and decay brought tears to his eyes. The walls glistened with water. He tried to focus only the steps ahead of him. He turned the last corner.

There was a man ahead, bent over the body.

Ruzsky saw one slim leg twisted at an impossible angle, a long leather boot.

Prokopiev straightened and turned to face him. A knife protruded from the dead woman’s cheek.

“Sandro, I-”

It was not her.

It was Olga.

Christ, it was not her.

Ruzsky leaned against the wall as he tried to recover his breath. Inside his overcoat, he was soaked in sweat, his throat dry and palms clammy. The Okhrana officer caught up with him and bellowed in his ear, but Ruzsky was oblivious.

“All right, all right,” Prokopiev shouted. He waved the man away, and Pavel, who stood behind. “I’ll deal with him.”

Prokopiev faced Ruzsky, his hands thrust into his pockets, waiting for the others to withdraw.

Ruzsky tried to control his breathing. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Prokopiev examined him as a gamekeeper might a cornered animal, but, as Ruzsky came to his senses, he realized that something had changed in the man.

Ivan Prokopiev appeared tired, and in those dark, intense eyes, there was a hint, if not of humanity, then at least of irony, or weary disillusion. “Are you all right, Chief Investigator?” he asked. “You do not look well.”