Collegiate Councillor Dobrshinsky picked up the surveillance log and, balancing it on his knee, began to turn its pages, marking passages in pencil before transferring them to the notebook on the desk in front of him. It was after nine o’clock at night but Fontanka 16 was still bustling with agents and clerks, and through the open door he could hear the incessant chatter of the Baudot receiver with telegrams from gendarmeries all over the empire. The terrorists were summoning trusted supporters to the capital. It was gratifying in a way, because arrests in the city must have left them in a parlous state, but it was clear they were planning another attempt on the emperor’s life. Barclay had extracted this piece of intelligence with a relish quite ungentlemanly from the traitor Kletochnikov. But he had not been able to supply the when and the wherefore. For now, they were obliged to rely on surveillance and informers in the hope that the fresh faces from the provinces would be careless and let something slip.
Sunday 21 February 1881
Dr Hadfield left his apartment at 12.30 a.m. He took a cab to the Nevsky Prospekt then walked down the Malaya Sadovaya and joined the crowd waiting for His Majesty. At a little before 2.00 p.m. the emperor left the manege with his escort to return to the palace. Hadfield watched him pass then walked to 24 Malaya Italyanskaya Street. An apartment in this house is occupied by an English newspaper correspondent…
Why was a well-to-do doctor with distinctly liberal if not republican views waiting in a frozen street on Sunday for a glimpse of the emperor? The special investigator had been concerned about security at the Sunday parade for a number of weeks, and the guard about the royal carriage had been doubled on his recommendation.
Dobrshinsky picked up a little hand bell from the desk and rang for the clerk in the outer office. ‘Ask Agent Fedorov to step into my office, would you?’
‘Did you organise a search of the buildings around the manege?’ Dobrshinsky asked when Fedorov appeared.
‘Yes, Your Honour, and in Italyanskaya Street.’
‘The canal embankment?’
‘No.’
‘The Malaya Sadovaya?’
The agent shook his head.
‘See to it then, as soon as possible.’
Dobrshinsky dismissed him and returned to the surveillance log on his knee. The Englishman had done nothing else of interest in the days since, and had made no effort to lose his police shadows although he was clearly aware of their presence. He turned to the previous day’s report.
Sunday 21 February 1881
The suspect Trigoni was followed to Number 17 2nd Rota Izmailovsky District. He was seen leaving with a blonde woman with a big forehead. A police agent followed the girl but she eluded him on the Nevsky Prospekt. The suspect Trigoni returned to his furnished lodgings at 66 Nevsky Prospekt at 10.00 p.m. and did not leave it again that day.
The station in Odessa had warned them that Mikhail Trigoni had arrived in the city. He was another of the party’s gentleman revolutionaries, the son of a general, with a weakness for expensive clothes that made him easy to follow. In his testimony, Goldenberg had referred to him by his English nickname of ‘My Lord’.
Dropping the log on his desk, Dobrshinsky rose stiffly, fastidiously brushing the creases from his frock coat. This simple activity left him a little breathless, his heart beating faster than was comfortable. He was spending too many evenings at Fontanka 16 without the benefit of a soporifique. It was easier to think at home alone, easier to rest.
‘Are today’s reports ready?’ he snapped at the clerk as he walked through his outer office.
‘No, Your Honour.’
‘Why not?’
Barclay was at the blackboard in the main inquiry room talking to an undercover agent. Drygin was one of the section’s best, older than the rest, shrewder, with instinctive guile. He was still disguised as a country bumpkin in a dirty padded kaftan, his grey beard and hair unkempt. Something in his restless movement suggested he had news of importance.
‘Your Honour?’ Barclay had seen him at the door. ‘We have a fresh report.’
The collegiate councillor stepped over to join him at the board where the latest intelligence on the chief suspects was chalked alongside their photographs. Dobrshinsky had taken the idea of a rogue’s gallery from a French crime journal and it was proving a useful tool.
‘Drygin was following our friend Trigoni,’ said Barclay, pointing to a fuzzy photograph of a young man in a student’s uniform.
‘Yes, Your Honour. A busy chap today. Really put me to the test.’
Drygin picked up his notebook and turned slowly to the correct page: ‘The subject left his apartment late this morning — a long breakfast in bed, perhaps — then he walked along the Nevsky to a cheese shop on the Malaya Sadovaya. It is run by a couple called Kobozev. The shopkeeper is from somewhere near Voronezh-’
‘The superintendent of the block says his papers are in order.. ’ Barclay interrupted.
‘The subject left at approximately midday and strolled over to the public library on the Bolshaya Sadovaya where he met a young woman — small, about twenty-five, brown coat, brown hair, quite pretty-’
‘Anna Kovalenko?’ asked Dobrshinsky.
Drygin shrugged. ‘She gave him a note. They were together five minutes at the most. Then I followed Trigoni to a restaurant on Nevsky where he had lunch. At about 2.30 p.m. he took a droshky to the Nikolaevsky Hospital. He gave the note to a porter, with instructions that it should be delivered at once. The porter delivered it to me first. It was addressed to a Dr Hadfield, just a couple of lines — I’m sorry it’s been so long. Tomorrow 22.00. With my love. ’
‘Good,’ said Dobrshinsky. ‘Then I want four of our best men with him tomorrow, and someone in the hospital. And no mistakes this time.’
The old man gave a respectful little bow then shuffled off in search of sustenance.
‘I want that cheese shop searched, Vladimir Alexandrovich,’ Dobrshinsky said when he had gone.
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘And I want you to take charge of Kovalenko. She’s the one we want, but if we find them together we can bring him to trial too. Now,’ Dobrshinsky turned back to the rogue’s gallery, ‘do you remember the names on the list we found in the hotel room on the Nevsky?’
‘Bronstein’s list? I think so: Mikhailov, Kovalenko, Morozov, Presnyakov, Goldenberg and Kviatkovsky.’
‘All of them are dead or in prison except for Anna Kovalenko. Even this one,’ and Dobrshinsky tapped his finger on the face of Nikolai Morozov. ‘The gendarmes arrested him at the border last week. He was trying to cross into Russia on false papers.’
Barclay watched the special investigator, his chin in his hand, his little brown eyes flitting from photograph to photograph. He was greyer, thinner, wearier than when they had met over the body of the Jew in that dingy hotel room. The last two years had certainly taken their toll.
‘His Majesty’s still with us, of course,’ said Dobrshinsky. ‘For that we can be thankful. But are we any closer to winning? It isn’t possible, is it?’
‘It is possible to arrest the bitch Kovalenko,’ Barclay replied. ‘And there will be satisfaction in that after all this time.’