A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

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       EIGHT

      Pyotr Ryzhkov spent the next week following Rasputin from whorehouses where his sexual appetites were indulged for free, to restaurants where they would tolerate his taking over the entire room and throwing his food on the floor, to mansions of the rich and addled where they submitted to his insults and religious instruction. When Ryzhkov wasn’t standing outside in the rain waiting for the Holy One to surrender to boredom, he was seconded to the ongoing effort to prevent Socialist Revolutionary terrorists from blowing up the capital or shooting its leading dignitaries.

      Zezulin, acting on information from Internal agents who were certain that they had discovered a cell of SR bombmakers, had assigned Dudenko and his watchers to conduct surveillance on a suspected ‘explosives factory’, a bakery. He, Ryzhkov and Hokhodiev supervised the surveillance in shifts; in addition they were expected to devise a strategy for an eventual raid on the premises.

      He read through all the reports, Dima’s carefully noted schedules. Apparently the bombers were well along with their work. Luckily for the Okhrana, when the plotters mixed their volatile chemicals the fumes became intoxicating, and they were forced to take frequent walks in the park. They were not thinking clearly at such times, they got lazy and were easy to see. Sometimes they would try to disguise their activities by acting casually, standing around with a lit cigarette they weren’t smoking. A long stroll to a newspaper kiosk, trying to look like they were normal people leading a normal life. How many newspapers can you buy in one day?

      The answer was right there in Dudenko’s cramped handwriting – seven.

      The neighbourhood was grouped around a filthy little plaza, an unplanned confluence of narrow uneven streets somewhere in the Narva district. There was a brick ‘fountain’ in the middle of the octagonal square. It had a pedestal at its centre and the remains of a bronze statue that had gone missing or had been melted down. It was crowded. During the day people came and went constantly, the traffic falling into patterns of astonishing regularity. All of it synchronized to the steam whistles of the gigantic factories that surrounded the district; the Putilov armaments buildings, the Northern Boiler works, and the St Petersburg Freight Carriage factories.

      There were no vacant apartments for rent, whole families were packed into two rooms; children were everywhere, running through the street like packs of dogs. The kind of place that was busy all the time, but nothing ever changed. Except that for the last few days teams of repairmen (all Dudenko’s technicians) had been climbing the recently installed telephone poles. At night they’d rope off their wagon at the end of the street. Dudenko and his boys listened from inside the cart, taking it all down in shorthand.

      Ryzhkov rode through the street a little after midnight, to all appearances just a drunk in a cab heading home, singing to himself as he admired the unfamiliar neighbourhood. There was nothing happening in the bakery. No lights. Nothing. Finally the plaza vanished behind him as his carriage clattered around a corner.

      Taken as a whole it was exhausting work, and he’d fallen asleep in his tiny office, when there was a discreet cough, a quick rapping and Izachik popped his head in the door.

      ‘Sir,’ he said in a stage whisper, pointing one finger towards the ceiling. ‘It appears that Christ has risen, and would like to confer with you.’

      He nodded, took a moment to realize where exactly in the universe he was – this is my office, this is my window, those are the leaves falling from my linden…‘Yes, thank you,’ he said softly to no one – Izachik had already left the doorway. He stood up, stretched the soreness from his joints, washed his mouth out with tea, straightened his clothing, rubbed his eyes, and headed upstairs.

      ‘Ah, Pyotr Mikhalovich!’ As Ryzhkov knocked on the door of his office, Zezulin was just coming out of the toilet, doing up the buttons on his trousers as he paced across the room in his socks. Ryzhkov was trying to think of an excuse to open a window.

      ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

      ‘I’m sure you will be as thankful as the rest of us that this terrorist activity is about to be tidied up, eh?’

      ‘Yes, sir, I will.’

      ‘Then we can get back to something resembling normality. Not that pursuing these misguided radicals isn’t of value. Yes.’ Zezulin smiled, patted his pockets trying to find something he’d lost, padded around behind his desk and started opening the drawers one at a time. He seemed comparatively alert and Ryzhkov decided that he might as well take the opportunity.

      ‘I wanted to speak to you about the Lvova case, if there’s a chance. I’m convinced that there is something more to it all, sir.’

      ‘Lvova, Lvova…’ Like Hokhodiev, Zezulin was a big man. Strong, with bushy dark hair and almost blond moustaches. He looked like a sleepy wolverine with a pair of spectacles. ‘What’s that again? Perk me up.’