Kakhovsky had been the last to leave, from what Aleksei could hear. Having given his excuses, Aleksei had made his own way out of Prince Obolensky’s house. It was usual practice not to be seen out by servants, whose tongues might in gossip give away their names. Thus, it had been a simple matter to slip into the small cupboard, full of winter clothes that would not be needed for a month or two. The meeting had gone on for another hour or so, the members occasionally raising their voices loud enough that Aleksei could make out individual words, but mostly just producing a quiet hubbub that revealed they were still there. Then they had begun to leave. Finally, Aleksei had heard Kakhovsky talking alone to Obolensky, just on the other side of the door. He caught only one sentence.

  ‘I will do it, if need be.’

  Then there was a pause, with no sound of movement. Aleksei pressed himself back against the wall, hiding amongst the furs, for fear that, operating on some sixth sense, Kakhovsky would open the door of the cupboard. Within moments, he heard their footsteps begin again, followed by farewells and the slamming of the front door. There were a few more noises as Obolensky pottered around before making his way to bed, and then silence.

  Aleksei stepped out into the corridor. A patch of moonlight that had entered through the window above the front door was the only illumination. He crept over to it and checked his pocket watch. He had been in the cupboard almost two hours. Obolensky’s study was to the left, beyond the room in which the meeting had taken place. The door was closed, but made no sound as Aleksei turned its handle and pushed it aside. Here, on the other side of the building, there was no moonlight. Aleksei could just make out a lamp on the desk, which he lit, keeping the flame guttering at its lowest, for fear that even the slightest brightness in the house would attract attention.

  Aleksei knew what he was looking for. Ryleev had waved it in front of them earlier that evening.

  ‘We are not alone,’ he had said. ‘We are not an enlightened few standing against the masses. The people, we know, are with us, for we are with them. But even amongst the nobility, we have many friends. This list’ – and this was the moment he had shown them the papers – ‘contains the names of all our friends in the north. In Kiev, Pestel has a similar list, twice as long. When the time comes, we will be the bolsheviki – the majority will be with us.’

  Aleksei had caught a glimpse of Ryleev taking it into Obolensky’s study and returning empty-handed. It did not take him long to find. It was in the right-hand drawer of the desk, beneath an invoice from a tailor’s shop. There were five sheets in all – over one hundred names – the entire organization in the north. Aleksei folded it into three and slipped it into his pocket. Of course, he knew he shouldn’t take it, he should copy it. Vadim Fyodorovich, his mentor in the world of espionage, had taught him that much. Even if there was no time for that now, he should copy it at home and return the original before it was missed.

  But Aleksei’s plan was not as straightforward as that. He did not simply desire a list he could hand over to the tsar. He wanted the absence of the list to be noted. If Ryleev, Obolensky and the others realized that their organization was compromised, that at any moment they might expect a visit from the gendarmerie, then they might abandon the whole ill-founded idea of assassination and return to doing what it was they knew best. Aleksei had no desire to see the tsar murdered, but there were many ways in which he might prevent it. Vadim would have admired the ingenuity of such a double effect, though they would have argued as to which was the intended consequence and which the side-effect.

  Vadim was another of Aleksei’s comrades who had died badly in 1812.

  Aleksei extinguished the lamp and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. The light of the full moon still illuminated the front door at the end of the corridor. He walked rapidly and silently towards it, but then stopped. The grey moonlight was not all that he could see. It had been joined by an orange glow, which became gradually brighter. He stepped back into the shadows, just glimpsing the figure which descended the stairs carrying a candle.

  As the man came past him, he recognized it to be Obolensky. He was more than ten years younger than Aleksei, but Aleksei had no doubt he could beat him in a fight – it would be better than trying to outrun him. But if he were to take him on, Aleksei would have to do it without his face being seen. While it served his purposes for the conspirators to know they were discovered, he did not want them to know who it was who had betrayed them. He could, of course, kill Obolensky, but to do so would be unnecessarily cruel.

  Obolensky had walked past without noticing him, and continued down the corridor. A sudden fear gripped Aleksei. If Obolensky went into his study now and discovered the theft, he would raise the alarm. Whilst Aleksei could easily have defeated him on his own, taking on the entire household would be a different matter. But Obolensky turned away from the study, heading towards the kitchen. Aleksei gave him a few more moments to get suitably far away, then made for the door. He was out of the house in seconds, and walking through the streets of Petersburg.

  His journey home followed the same route as that of several weeks before. The broken image of the moon shone up at him from the dark waters of the Yekaterininsky Canal. Once out of Obolensky’s house, he had no need for stealth; the city was not bustling, but a lone figure making its way home as if from some decadent soirée would not seem out of place. His thoughts turned once again to Vadim. Even though they had both been dead now for thirteen years, and they were not on his mind as once they had been, he thought often of Maks and not infrequently of Vadim. Dmitry Fetyukovich came to his mind less regularly. It was hard to determine why. In many ways, he and Dmitry had been closest of all. In 1805, on the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz, Dmitry had saved Aleksei’s life. That was why Aleksei had named his own son Dmitry, in honour of his friend.

  But still, Aleksei’s memories of his friends were biased by how he had last known them. Maks he had discovered to be a spy, but had forgiven. Vadim had never changed – a rock by which Aleksei could navigate his whole life. But Aleksei had come to doubt Dmitry and had only just started to become reconciled to him before his death. Dmitry had brought the twelve creatures they had known as the Oprichniki to Russia – eleven creatures and one human, each taking his nom de guerre from one of the twelve apostles.

  Dmitry had eventually come round to see the horror of the mistake he had made in trusting the Oprichniki, but even when he died, frozen by the cruel winter that had taken such a toll on Bonaparte’s retreating army, Aleksei had not been quite sure where his loyalties truly lay, beyond the suspicion that Dmitry’s loyalties ultimately had always lain with Dmitry.

  Vadim, Aleksei, Dmitry and Maks; they had been quite a team. Or just B, A, and M, as they’d identified themselves in the brief messages they had used to coordinate their activities across Moscow and beyond. Aleksei realized he had never worked in a team since; not in that way. He had fought as part of the regular army as Bonaparte retreated across Europe, but as far as espionage was concerned, he had always worked alone. At the Winter Palace, Yevgeniy Styepanovich was an informant, not a colleague. And the members of the Northern Society might see Aleksei as a tovarishch, but they would one day discover the truth.

  Aleksei reached his front door. He could still smell the mould and damp from last year’s floods. Fortunately, he occupied none of the ground-floor rooms in the building. There were good reasons the upper storeys were more expensive. Many of the shops at street level were still unoccupied. The smell barely penetrated into his own home. He climbed the steps to his apartment and went inside. He did not feel tired, so went to his study and lit the lamp before going over to the cabinet and pouring himself a brandy.

  It was only when he turned around that he saw it.

  It was odd that he had just been thinking of the coded messages they used to leave for each other in Moscow. This was different, of course. The characters were as tall as he was, and scrawled in red across the wooden panels of his study wall. But the style of the message was chillingly familiar.

  9 – 22 – 14 – 4 – M

  CHAPTER III

  DMITRY’S FATHER WAS SITTING IN HIS CHAIR WITH A STRANGE rigidity. His knuckles were white as his fingers dug into its arms. He stared directly in front of him. Dmitry had only glanced into the study on his way to bed after a night – yet another night – of saying goodbye to his Petersburg friends. He was slightly drunk, but few would notice – that was something he shared with his father. He stepped into the room.

  ‘Are you all right, Papa?’

  Aleksei did not reply. The slightest nod of his head indicated to Dmitry that he should follow his father’s stare. Dmitry stepped further into the room and turned. He could not miss the writing.

  9 – 22 – 14 – 4 – M

  It covered two walls, the corner of the room lying between the number 14 and the letter . Dmitry approached it, reaching out his hand to touch. The lettering felt dry, and smeared when he rubbed it. He suspected it was some kind of pastel. He stepped back again to view the text as a whole. It was clearly intended to mean something, but he could not fathom what.

  ‘It’s from your Uncle Maks.’ His father’s voice cut through the room, louder than was necessary, monotone and grating, as if he was trying hard to keep it under control.

  Dmitry did not remember his Uncle Maks. He’d been told by his parents that Maks had been a frequent visitor to their home when he was young, but he could not have been more than four years old at his last visit. Both his mother and father had shown a great affection for him, but they had not spared their son the truth about him – he was a traitor, a French spy. The other thing Dmitry remembered with certainty about Uncle Maks was that he had died in 1812.

  ‘Maks is dead,’ said Dmitry.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Aleksei. Dmitry glanced round at him, but Aleksei did not explain what he meant by the comment. ‘The trouble is,’ he said instead, ‘that everyone who knew what that code means is dead: Vadim, Maks, Dmitry Fetyukovich, and the others – all of them, except me.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It’s very simple. Those first three numbers are a date and time: month, day, hour. Then there’s a letter and number combination indicating a place, then a final initial, by way of a signature.’

  Dmitry looked at the message again and spoke his thoughts out loud. ‘So that’s 22 September, the fourteenth hour – two in the afternoon. And it’s from Maks. How do you decode the location?’

  ‘There’s no real system there,’ said Aleksei. ‘It was just a list – dozens of places in Moscow, and all around it.’

  ‘Do you still have it – the list?’

  ‘We destroyed it once we’d memorized it.’

  ‘Forgotten now, I suppose,’ said Dmitry.

  ‘Mostly. But I remember 4. It’s a woodsman’s hut, near a town called Desna, south of Moscow. At least it was – it’s been a long time.’

  ‘Why do you remember that one?’

  Aleksei paused. Dmitry had always thought his father an unemotional man – a temperament quite different from his own – but the fact was that Aleksei did not lack emotions, he merely concealed them, desperately. Dmitry only understood that now, as he saw that concealment beginning to break down. Finally, Aleksei spoke.

  ‘Because that’s where Maks is buried – where he died. That’s the only place he could meet anyone.’

  ‘It’s not from Maks, Papa.’

  Aleksei’s rigid posture relaxed suddenly, as though Dmitry’s assertion had at last brought rationality back to him. He leapt to his feet. ‘You’re right. It can’t be from Maks. So who is it from?’

  ‘You said everyone who knew about the code is dead – except you.’

  ‘I believe so, but that doesn’t mean no one told anyone else. Not one of us – one of them.’

  ‘Them?’ asked Dmitry.

  ‘The Oprichniki – that’s what we called them. Twelve mercenaries from Wallachia. But they betrayed us. Maks was the first to see what was happening.’

  ‘So Uncle Maks wasn’t spying for the French?’

  ‘Oh, he was. And at the time, that’s all we could think about – all I could think about. I left it to the Oprichniki to execute him.’

  ‘In Desna?’

  Aleksei nodded. ‘Later they killed Vadim.’

  ‘And Uncle Dmitry?’

  ‘No, the Russian winter killed him,’ said Aleksei, ‘but it was still down to them.’

  ‘Who might they have told?’

  Aleksei shrugged. ‘Perhaps their leader, Zmyeevich.’

  ‘He survived?’

  ‘We only met him briefly. He delivered them to Moscow and then returned home – I presume. They wouldn’t have had a chance then to tell him, but they could easily have sent him the information. But why would he want it? And why use it now?’

  ‘You’re going to go and find out, aren’t you?’ Dmitry might have resented his father’s willingness to abandon his family in pursuit of adventure, but he knew him well enough to understand that he could not change it.

  Aleksei gave his son a smile that Dmitry didn’t think he’d seen since he was four years old, not directed towards him at least. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

  Dmitry scarcely needed to think about it. ‘I have to go to Moscow anyway.’

  Aleksei smiled broadly. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now go and get some water and a couple of brushes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think we want your mother to see this, do we?’

  It took almost two hours to get the walls completely clean. Dmitry had not felt as close to his father for many years.

  Aleksei had been in a hurry to set out for Desna, but his appointment was set for the twenty-second, and no rushing across the country at breakneck pace would change that. For him, a sudden departure from Petersburg such as this was nothing unusual. For most of his life he had been prepared and able to pack up the most meagre selection of his possessions and leave one city for another without more than a moment’s consideration. An emergency supply of gold coins sewn into his belt provided for most things he could not bring with him.

  And so if it had just been down to him, Aleksei would have been happily ready to depart within hours of reading the message – and happier still that such haste would give him even more time to spend in Moscow. But he knew that for his son the departure from his home was a much more serious step. Dmitry had spent the last two days visiting his tailor, traversing the city saying goodbye to friends and attempting to console his dismayed mother. Now that there were only a few hours remaining before their departure, he was doing what he should have been doing all along – packing.

  Aleksei went into his son’s room. Dmitry was on his knees, bent over an old trunk full of books and toys and childhood memories which, in truth, probably evoked greater feelings of nostalgia in the father than they did in the son. Dmitry heard the footsteps behind him and turned briefly to smile at Aleksei.

  Aleksei walked closer to peer over Dmitry’s shoulder and into the box. There was a model boat, a wooden whistle – his first musical instrument – and a book of Perrault’s fairy tales. Each item brought a different smile to Aleksei’s lips. He bent forward to see more, squinting to focus on the dark mass of items. Suddenly his blood ran cold.

  ‘My God, Mitka. What are you doing with that?’

  Dmitry turned again. In his hand he clutched a sword – a short, wooden sword, no longer than a large dagger. The tip was whittled to a point which time had blunted, but which could easily be made once again fit for purpose. The guard was merely another short strip of wood lashed to the blade with twine, intended less to protect the wielder’s hand than to allow it to apply greater force. Aleksei had made and used such a tool before. It was designed to kill, but not to kill a man.

  ‘Don’t you remember, Papa?’ said Dmitry, standing up. He began fencing with the sword against an imaginary opponent. ‘You made this for me, years ago – when I was a kid.’

  The recollection came back to Aleksei. When he whittled away at those vampire-killing swords, he remembered having made a similar one as a toy for his son. The form was much the same, however different the purpose.

  ‘You loved the idea of being a soldier back then,’ he said.

  ‘I grew up,’ said Dmitry, then relented. ‘But I’m sure I will enjoy it.’

  ‘If I’d been better at woodwork, I’d have made you a piano.’

  Dmitry smiled, but said nothing.

  ‘Are you taking it with you then?’ asked Aleksei.

  ‘I think I’m old enough for a real one now.’

  ‘Do you mind if I keep it?’ The request was not a sentimental one. Aleksei had no idea what he would find in Desna, but he knew it had some connection with the creatures he had met thirteen years before. It was reassuring that the meeting was to take place in daylight, but with such a weapon he would feel far more comfortable. ‘Just as a reminder,’ he added, for his son’s benefit.

  Dmitry studied his father, but saw nothing beyond the obvious in the request. ‘There you are,’ he said, handing the sword over with a shrug and a smile.

  A few hours later, they said their farewells to Marfa. It was a tearful occasion, on her part at least, and Aleksei thought he perceived a glistening in Dmitry’s eye too. For himself, he felt no especial emotion beyond what was normal for his departures from home, beyond that feeling of giddy anticipation he had felt about visiting Moscow since even before he had any specific reason to and whose causes had multiplied over the years. His goodbye to Marfa was no different from what it had always been, and as for Dmitry, they were not yet to part.