Castlereagh was British, and the British were always more astute in war than in peace. They maintained their own peace by allowing Europe to be at war. Aleksandr had beaten him – beaten Britain – on that. There had been peace now in Europe for ten years, and there was no prospect of it breaking down – all thanks to Aleksandr’s Holy Alliance. Metternich had played his role, but only as a broker. To make peace one had to be capable of war, and Austria, even with Metternich as her chancellor, had little strength in that direction when compared with Russia.

  For it was war that had proved Aleksandr to be the only man capable of bringing peace. It was Russia that had turned the tide of Bonaparte’s domination; Russia that had proved he was not invincible; Russia that had pursued him all the way back to France. Other armies had played their part, Aleksandr would happily concede that, but it was Russia – Aleksandr – that had led the way.

  And yet they still belittled him. Years before Metternich had spoken, Aleksandr’s friend and advisor Speransky had expressed much the same sentiments. ‘Too feeble to reign and too strong to be governed.’ That had been the real reason Speransky had had to go. The most laughable thing was, they thought he would never hear. Scientia potentia est – knowledge is itself power. It was another thing Yekaterina had taught him. He had spies everywhere, who could report to him what anyone said – be they enemies or friends, foreigners or compatriots.

  But Yekaterina had lacked one thing a truly great leader required – a devotion to God. Sure enough she worshipped Him, acted in His name, but she believed that the Lord was simply a judge within whose rules – at the boundaries of whose rules – she must operate. Aleksandr knew that God did not exist simply to be feared, but to be loved. It was Castlereagh, again overheard by an ear friendly to the tsar, who had noted it, though he meant it as a criticism: ‘The tsar’s mind has of late taken on a deeply religious tinge.’

  It was an accurate observation – and one in which Aleksandr revelled. He had been mistaken in his youth. He had had a zeal to do right, but it had been misdirected. God’s will was not to overthrow the old order – to make serfs into princes – but to protect it; to make serfs prosper as serfs and princes thrive as princes, each knowing his place and doing good for the other. And peace was the foundation for that – an end to ‘the destruction that wasteth at noonday’, as the psalm put it. Aleksandr had achieved peace in a way his babushka never had, and that was what made him greater than she.

  But would he yet prove himself to be greater than Tsar Pyotr, his great-great-grandfather? Time would tell – perhaps very little time. He had come to Taganrog to find it out, to face ‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness’. And yet he had been in Taganrog now for three weeks, with no sign of how the question was to be answered – with little sign of anything happening at all.

  He glanced out to sea again. At least there there was some change. A new sail could be seen on the horizon. She was too small to be a barque – little more really than a large yacht. She was too far to see the name, or even the flag.

  It was pleasant to have something to break the smooth horizon, and a single vessel sailing into harbour could do no harm – not to a man who could outsmart Metternich.

  Even now, Aleksei felt a thrill as their eyes locked and did not separate for four, five, six seconds. As ever, it was he who looked away first, despite the pleasure he derived from the sensation of his heart beating faster and the flush of blood he felt to his face, and elsewhere. Why did he break away from her gaze? Was it simply out of some sense of gentlemanly etiquette – the idea he had been brought up with since birth that any woman of good breeding would feel ashamed to sense the eyes of a man on her for so prolonged a period of time? Possibly, but Aleksei knew Domnikiia well enough to understand that no such sense of shame would ever cross her mind in those circumstances.

  And therein lay the attraction. To stare into Domnikiia’s eyes was to see no semblance of resistance, to see no veil of diffidence that said, ‘That part of me is not for you,’ or even ‘You must wait.’ Her eyes would yield and allow the gaze of a man to fall upon them almost as though at the same time she had stood up and slipped out of her gown, allowing those same eyes to meander over every curve of her still delectable body. Not that there was anything wrong with that, had they been in the privacy of their own bedroom, where he would have happily gawped at the reality of her nakedness for minutes on end and yet still returned his attention with inescapable frequency to her eyes.

  But they were not shielded by privacy. They were sitting across from each other at a table in a teahouse off Tverskaya Street. Anyone who even glimpsed Domnikiia would instantly see her as the most desirable woman in the room. Anyone who saw Aleksei as he fell into those dark, wide, acquiescent eyes of hers would understand exactly what was going on between them, and might as well be sitting beside their bed as they made love.

  As ever, Domnikiia could read his thoughts.

  ‘Do you think they know?’ she asked quietly. He glanced back at her. She was sipping her tea, but had not moved her eyes from him.

  ‘Who?’ he countered. ‘And for that matter, what?’

  ‘All these people.’ Her eyes left him only briefly to take in the rest of the clientele. ‘And what you’re thinking of doing to me.’

  ‘Planning on doing to you,’ corrected Aleksei.

  She raised an eyebrow and sipped more of her tea. ‘Do I get a say?’ she asked.

  It had been Aleksei’s idea that they should go out together. They didn’t often, in part because Domnikiia hated to leave Tamara, in part because they might be seen together by somebody who knew Marfa. But on this visit to Moscow, he had been so busy with Kyesha, and not with her, that he had looked for an opportunity to make amends. She had displayed no general envy of his time away from her – an occasional comment, perhaps, but as far as he perceived, those were intended more to tease than to rebuke. In that way, and in most others, she was almost perfect, or at least that version of perfection which Aleksei might have come up with if given a blank page to start from: beautiful, witty, irresistibly sensuous and, with all that, as it had turned out, a doting mother. There was just that one niggling cloud on the horizon, which threatened to fill the whole sky: the possibility that the entire thing was founded on a pack of lies.

  ‘Don’t you hate me sometimes?’ he asked. He had changed the subject, but apparently not her mood.

  ‘Constantly,’ she replied. ‘Any specific reason you want to focus on?’

  ‘For my absence.’

  ‘I could only hate you for your absence because I love you for your presence.’

  ‘You could love another man who was never absent.’

  She paused. ‘Lyosha,’ she asked. ‘Have you made love to any other woman since we met?’

  ‘There’s Marfa, obviously,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘That’s marriage. But anyone else?’

  Embarrassingly, Aleksei had to think. There had been several women in his life over the years, even since he and Marfa had married, but it was a case of going through them in his mind to see if any had been since he had first met Domnikiia – seen her, met her and screwed her, all within the space of about half an hour – back in late 1811.

  ‘You haven’t,’ she said, before he could reply, ‘and believe me, I’d know. But I’m glad you had to think about it, because that’s the point.’

  ‘Glad?’

  ‘Absolutely. Ask yourself why you haven’t. You never made any promise to me of your undying faith. And even if I found out, I’d probably let you get away with it – a couple of times.’

  ‘Really?’ He didn’t have the conviction to convey any real interest in the prospect.

  ‘Really. But you wouldn’t want to, however much you pretend to, for the sake of God knows who. And why wouldn’t you want to?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Because you know full well she’d be a pathetic disappointment compared with me. Not just in bed – everything about her. You’d get more pleasure by closing your eyes and imagining watching me from half a verst away than you would with her.’

  Despite her delightful arrogance, Domnikiia was right, not just about the fact there had been no other women – he’d got through his mental list and verified that – but about the reason. Even in Paris in 1814 and again in 1816 he’d remained faithful, despite the obvious temptations. There were many reasons why a man might be faithful to a woman – because he feared she would leave him if she found out, because he didn’t want to hurt her – but Aleksei supposed he was lucky, and perhaps a rarity, in that he knew it simply wouldn’t be half as much fun.

  ‘And how do you know all this?’ he asked her.

  For the first time in several minutes her eyes dropped away from him. Her speech was close to a whisper. ‘Because that’s how I feel about you.’

  She had not needed to look at him, but still another wave of passion – not just physical passion – washed through him. He drank his tea and bit hard on to the glass.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. There was no rush. Yelena Vadimovna was looking after Tamara. They had gone to visit friends near Bogorodsk and would not be back till much later. Aleksei nibbled on a khvorost.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ said Domnikiia.

  ‘You ask so many questions, my dear.’

  ‘You know which one.’

  Aleksei honestly didn’t, and Domnikiia chose not to prevaricate.

  ‘Do I get a say?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ he said with a smile. ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then let’s go home.’

  They cut through sidestreets to find the shortest way back to Arbatskaya. Their conversation was trivial as they teased each other with attempted distractions from what was to come. They walked briskly, but again, each deliberately held the other back a little. Even so, their pace meant they did not hold hands, which proved to be fortunate.

  Neither of them saw him as he approached, and he was upon them before either could react in any way.

  ‘Papa!’

  Aleksei felt his features freeze for a moment, and then re-form into a smile, which he hoped would be all that Dmitry would perceive.

  ‘Dmitry,’ he said. ‘I was meaning to come and find you.’

  ‘I’ve just been at your hotel,’ replied Dmitry, but he had quickly stopped paying attention to his father and was looking at Domnikiia.

  ‘Have you met Domnikiia Semyonovna?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Dmitry. It was with mixed feelings that Aleksei noted that his son’s reaction to Domnikiia was not dissimilar to that of most other men, not least because, as a father, he felt his son should not have eyes for a woman fourteen years older than himself. Domnikiia raised her hand and allowed Dmitry to kiss it.

  ‘Domnikiia Semyonovna is nanny to Yelena and Valentin’s little daughter. I just happened to bump into her. Do you remember them?’

  ‘Of course, though I’ve never seen the daughter. I’ve meant to call on them since I’ve been in Moscow.’

  There was a formality in both men’s manners which Aleksei felt Dmitry must notice as easily as he did. He hoped he would not understand its cause.

  ‘This is Dmitry Alekseevich, my son,’ he said to Domnikiia.

  Dmitry was taller than his father and, in turn, towered above Domnikiia. She tilted her head upwards and smiled only slightly, but her eyes fixed on his in a way Aleksei found familiar.

  ‘I’m heading back home now,’ she said, giving the impression that Aleksei was quite forgotten. ‘Perhaps you’d like to accompany me. I’m sure they’d be delighted to see you.’ The last sentence seemed almost an afterthought.

  ‘We do really need to talk, Dmitry,’ said Aleksei.

  Dmitry thought for a moment, his eyes still on Domnikiia, before acquiescing. ‘Yes, absolutely. Another time, Domnikiia Semyonovna.’

  ‘I do hope so,’ said Domnikiia. She smiled at Aleksei and he gave her a brief nod. She glided away down the street, turning back briefly after a couple of dozen paces to see both men still looking at her. Aleksei suspected it was in Dmitry’s direction that her face was turned.

  ‘What a charming woman,’ said Dmitry.

  ‘I went to the meeting as usual last night,’ said Aleksei, without any acknowledgement of his son’s comment. ‘Kyesha didn’t come.’

  ‘As you expected.’ Dmitry’s tone was at once deadly serious. ‘I spoke to Kirill Antonovich,’ he continued. ‘The police officer you saw in Theatre Square.’

  ‘Has he discovered anything?’

  ‘No, but he’s linking Obukhov’s death with the other murders – which now seem to have stopped. Captain Obukhov was the last.’

  ‘It’s only been two days,’ said Aleksei.

  ‘True, but there was a death almost every night while Kyesha was here. It fits in with his having left.’

  ‘Just one? Never more?’ Aleksei had not really been keeping track of the details. The presence of a voordalak meant death – what more did there need to be to it? For those other victims, he felt less empathy than he had even with Obukhov.

  ‘Never more, sometimes none at all – unless there are still bodies to be discovered.’ Perhaps Kyesha had been restraining himself. In 1812, the Oprichniki had been far less disciplined. Then, though, the city had been in chaos under the occupation, so there was less threat of discovery. And, of course, Aleksei himself had asked them to kill as many French as they possibly could. Even so, it might just be the case that Kyesha was of a different caste of vampire from the Oprichniki, as he seemed to be in other ways.

  ‘What was in the package?’ asked Dmitry.

  ‘A book – handwritten. A notebook, really.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s in English.’ Aleksei knew well enough that his son had no more ability in the language than he did.

  ‘I’ll ask around, see if I can find a translator,’ said Dmitry.

  ‘Someone we can trust.’

  Dmitry nodded.

  ‘I’ll go to the meeting tonight, just in case,’ said Aleksei.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Red Square. We spoke in the Lobnoye Mesto last time.’

  ‘Want me to come?’

  ‘I’ll be all right. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.’

  They parted. Dmitry turned north, and Aleksei headed southeast, towards his hotel. At the next junction, having checked Dmitry was out of sight, he turned right and then right again, and was soon once more heading west.

  Domnikiia was already naked when Aleksei entered the room. She could not have got there more than five minutes ahead of him, but had not wasted any time. The blankets had been thrown to the side of the bed and she lay centrally on her back, her legs together and her arms by her sides. The long plait of her dark hair curved from behind her head and over her left shoulder, hiding her left nipple and lying across her belly. There was only a small gap of white flesh between it and the matching triangle of hair that nestled between the tops of her thighs. Her eyes were closed, but it was obvious she was not asleep. Aleksei took off his clothes and then ran his finger down her chest, between her breasts.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, with a smile.

  Aleksei threw himself on the bed beside her and pulled her over towards him. She opened her eyes and grinned at him.

  ‘Who did you think it might be?’ he asked.

  ‘I met a very charming young man out in the street just now.’

  ‘Man?’ It was genuinely an odd word for Aleksei to hear describing his son. ‘He’s just a boy.’

  ‘I’d make him a man,’ giggled Domnikiia. It should have been an uncomfortable conversation, but from her it had a charm that banished all his concerns. He was reminded of how, by way of business, she had slept with Maks. But that had been different; he had been unsure of her then – and sure of Maks. His certainty in Maks had proved misplaced. He had learned to live with his uncertainty of Domnikiia.

  ‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ he said.

  ‘Afraid you’d lose me to a less wrinkly version of yourself?’

  ‘Afraid I’d lose my son to a lascivious succubus.’

  She leaned over him. He felt her breast brush against his chest. ‘I’d be offended if I knew what that meant,’ she said.

  He raised his head so that their noses touched. ‘A dirty whore,’ he whispered. There had been a time when such a reference to her former profession would have offended her. Now they both revelled in it.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’d better keep my attention from straying then, hadn’t you?’

  He pushed himself up off the bed with his elbow and flipped her on to her back. She looked up at him and he gazed down into her eyes. Still they revealed more of her vulnerability than any of the cool, pale flesh that lay beneath him.

  Part of him knew he should be in the next room, working on the translation of the notebook, but the mysteries of a few pages of English offered little temptation in comparison with this Russian enigma, which he had so often unravelled, but which always revealed yet one more conundrum within.

  However many times Dmitry visited Red Square, he could never get over the vastness of it. In the past, he’d only come here as a tourist, but since he’d been living in Moscow, although he’d walked through it or close to it almost every day, it had still failed to diminish in its impact. He’d crept into the square through the market stalls between Saint Vasiliy’s and the river, arriving at about half past eight; thirty minutes before the appointed time. This was where he had followed his father the previous week, and where he did not now need to follow him, but simply to hide and wait for him to arrive.

  He skirted round to the east of the cathedral. Glancing up, he saw that no one had yet repaired the broken glass of the window in the central tower. They might not even have noticed. From there he edged along the side of the square, finally secreting himself amongst the low, wooden shops on the eastern perimeter. He could see the Lobnoye Mesto clearly, though the entrance – a gap cut in its cylindrical wall – was on the opposite side from him. Even so, no one would be able to reach that entrance without him seeing their approach.