It had been intended as a joke, but her face was instantly concerned.

Warmth flooded through him.

Maria took a step toward him, then leaned against the dresser upon which she stored her makeup. Her dress was tight and low cut, the swell of her breasts almost sculpted. He caught sight of a single rose in a cut-glass vase behind her, and suddenly imagined another man bending to kiss the smooth skin of her neck.

Ruzsky fought to keep his emotions in check, but it was an unequal battle. He was forty-forty-an investigator hardened by more experience than was good for a man; married, betrayed, alone. And yet when he was with her-a girl not much more than half his age-the cares of the world fell away.

Opposite her dresser, a photograph of the male dancer Vaslav Nijinsky as the golden slave-the role that made him famous-took pride of place alongside one of Maria and Kshesinskaya, the prima ballerina assoluta. Russia ’s two best-known ballerinas had their arms draped around each other for the camera. “How is she?” Ruzsky asked, inclining his head.

“Much the same as before.” Maria shrugged. “Still collecting Romanovs.”

“Perhaps not the best currency in these times.”

“The world is at war, Sandro. How many million dead? How many yet to die? Our fantasies count for little.”

Ruzsky felt that she was able to look right through him.

“Was it so bad, what you did? To send you away for so long.”

Her gaze was intense. Was it hurt that he saw there? Ruzsky sighed. “I helped cause a man’s death.”

“But he was a terrible man.”

Ruzsky stared at the floor.

“And you took the blame, Sandro?”

Ruzsky did not answer.

“So you’re the kind of man who will not cheat on his wife, even though she betrays him openly, and who will happily go into exile in order to protect a friend.”

“I wouldn’t say happily, exactly-”

“An example to us all.”

“I’m afraid my father would not agree.”

“Is what he thinks still so important?”

“Yes.” Ruzsky realized he had said too much. He shook his head. “No.” He forced a smile. “Are you rehearsing today?”

There was a shout from the corridor. “Maria Andreevna!” Then another, when she did not respond.

Maria was still looking at Ruzsky. “Something for next month. Two more nights of the Stravinsky and then I go home to Yalta.”

“It’s a long way, at a time like this.”

“My sister is not well. Sandro, I…” As she tried to find the words, her face was soft and more achingly beautiful than ever. This was how he had remembered her. “I would like us to be friends,” she said.

Ruzsky did not move. His heart banged like a drum. Friends… He was not sure if she meant only friends and no more. “We are friends.”

Now he saw sorrow in her eyes. Was it longing, or just a deep loneliness that was the mirror of his own? Ruzsky looked at her for a few moments more, but something prevented him from speaking.

“Maria!” the man shouted again.

Maria touched his cheek, her fingers cool on his skin as her eyes searched his. Then she was gone.

Ruzsky stayed rooted to the spot. By the time he had followed her out of the door, she had disappeared.

At the end of the corridor, he stopped.

He could hear the ballet master already barking instructions. “And one and two and no… Again!”

He waited.

He listened to his own breathing in the silence of the corridor.

After a minute, he continued on his way.

9

I t was still snowing heavily as Ruzsky walked across the square toward the Tsarskoe Selo Station, head down and deep in thought. He could see no sign of any police presence, so he assumed the trains must be running today.

The elegant, yellow station took its name from its principal destination; trains from here ran out to the town that was home to the current tsar an hour away. Whenever Nicholas wanted to come to the capital on his train, the entire station was sealed off, sometimes all day.

Ruzsky barely registered the long khvost on the far side of the square until he heard shouts and looked over to see a group of soldiers fighting in the middle of the queue.

He hesitated, then began to walk on until he heard the crack of a shot, then another.

A tram rattled past, almost encased in ice, and Ruzsky ran around the back of it, slipping as he narrowed his eyes against the driving snow. A large group of men was fighting-perhaps ten or more and there was another shot. The melee was too confused to tell who was firing, or at what. Ruzsky reached into his pocket for his Sauvage and pointed it in the air. He fired once. “Police! Get back in line.”

The men continued to fight. He fired twice more. “Get back in line!” he bellowed.

They stopped and, as Ruzsky moved closer, turned slowly to stare at him. Two were on the ground, covered in snow, and got up slowly. All were in long greatcoats, but one at least had large holes in the top of his boots. He was an older peasant conscript with a long, unkempt beard. He had knocked a woman and her son over in the scuffle and Ruzsky stepped forward and helped them to their feet. The woman almost slipped over again, but he caught her. She was dressed in a thick jacket and a scuffy, dark pair of valenki-knee-high rough woolen boots.

He retreated once more, and it was only then that he could see that the line was more than a hundred yards long and stretched all the way around the corner of the block. He couldn’t see what they were waiting for. Perhaps, as so often, they did not even know themselves.

“You’re waiting for bread?” he shouted.

All of the men stared at him, the snow gathering in their faces. Most of those ahead and behind them were women, wrapped up in headscarves, so that only their eyes were visible.

He saw himself through their eyes, for the first time in many years. A detested servant of the Tsar. He thought of the article on his desk. No wonder the educated classes feared the mob.

“You’re waiting for bread?” he shouted again, wanting to break the mood, but still no one answered him.

Ruzsky walked swiftly along the queue, turning the corner to see that the bakery they waited outside was not even open. He pushed through the middle of the crowd and went to the door, then put his face to the cold glass and peered in. There was no light on inside, but he could see that the shelves were empty.

He turned around. “There’s nothing there.”

Nobody answered him.

At the front of the queue, a woman waited with her son and an old man they had wheeled on a makeshift wooden barrow. Snow and ice had gathered in the old man’s beard and his eyes were beyond caring.

“They said there would be bread later,” the woman said. “No one wishes to lose their place in the line.”

Ruzsky looked at her for a moment and then turned around and walked back toward the group of soldiers. “It will be a long wait,” he said as he approached. “If you must stay, be patient. Fighting serves no one.”

But even as he spoke, he felt the patronizing futility of his words.

He stared at them for a moment more and then turned and walked toward the station steps. As he did so, he felt a thousand eyes upon his back.

“Officer!” someone shouted. Ruzsky swung around. The young boy who had been at the front of the queue stood before him. He thrust a piece of paper into his hands.

Ruzsky looked down at it.

“A PROPHECY,” it read.

A year shall come of Russia ’s blackest dread;

Then will the crown fall from the royal head,

The throne of tsars will perish in the mud,

The food of many will be death and blood.

– Mikhail Lermontov, 1830.

Ruzsky looked up. They were all staring at him. Even through the veil of falling snow he could see the hatred in their eyes.