Ruzsky stared at her name, struggling to take it in. Maria Popova.

Meeting called to order by Borodin. Further discussion of possible assassination of Governor of Odessa. Markov agreed to travel to Odessa, to research Governor’s movements. Popova expressed view that Chief of Police in Odessa perhaps better target. White spoke of the need for money to carry out revolutionary tasks. Raised possibility of robbing a bank in Odessa, Sevastopol, or Simferopol in order to raise funds. All agreed on necessity of this type of action.

Ruzsky’s mind swam. He stood, transfixed. Popova expressed view that Chief of Police in Odessa perhaps better target.

He sat and stared at the grille, his vision blurred.

There was bile in the back of his throat. A revolutionary? A murderer? He thought of the softness of her skin and the gentle sadness in her eyes. It wasn’t possible.

But who were the men she had left the station with this morning?

Had she been watching him? Is that why she had come to Yalta?

No, it had been her suggestion. She had told him she was returning before they’d discovered Markov’s body on the Lion Bridge.

Ruzsky read through the entries again. Half of him still did not believe the evidence before his own eyes.

He tapped his fingers against the pages. Why did the reports come to a halt on August 11?

Ruzsky toyed with the idea of keeping what he’d found to himself, but he decided that it could do no harm to discuss it with Godorkin. The chief of police sat at his desk, a cigarette burning in the solid silver ashtray, a blind flapping idly against the window.

Ruzsky placed the file in front of him. “Have you got the folder for the train robbery, even if it is empty?”

Godorkin was already reading. He opened the cupboard beneath him, took out an empty folder, and handed it to Ruzsky. Simferopol-Odessa train robbery, it read. August 31, 1910.

Godorkin looked up.

“The entries cease,” Ruzsky said, “roughly two weeks before the train robbery, of which they make no mention.”

“Yes.”

“I assume it takes longer than two weeks to plan a crime of that kind.”

Godorkin nodded. “I should imagine so.”

They were silent. Both men stared out of the window. There were two yachts in the bay now, and they crossed each other, their sails a startling white against the sea.

“Ella Kovyil got a job in the royal household up at Livadia,” Ruzsky said. “How did she manage that, if the department here was doing the vetting?”

Godorkin did not reply. The answer was obvious to both of them. “Someone must have called a halt to the surveillance,” Ruzsky said, forcing home the point. “After the robbery, Vasilyev makes sure the case is handled here, but goes nowhere. Eventually, the notes are removed and disposed of. If there was an investigation, that is.”

Godorkin still did not reply.

“Did you know the Popova family?” Ruzsky asked. “Wasn’t her father the governor?” He tried to keep his tone and expression neutral.

Godorkin shrugged.

“I think the girl must have been the agent. Nothing else would make sense. Her father died some years before?”

The policeman didn’t respond.

“You didn’t know him?”

“No.”

Ruzsky stood. He felt suddenly profoundly uneasy.

35

R uzsky strolled back down the winding alley to the promenade. He had established from Godorkin that the Tatyana Committee Convalescent Home was on the other side of the hill, overlooking the next bay, but even if Maria had gone there to see her sister, neither the prevailing atmosphere nor Ruzsky’s state of mind encouraged haste.

He needed time to think.

He stopped and leaned against the wrought iron railings. A group of small boys was throwing stones on the shingle beach below, trying to land them in a small pool of water they’d dug in the sand. Farther down, a man was selling cold drinks from a cheerful red and white stall.

Ruzsky straightened. He crossed the road and walked into the hotel lobby. He climbed the stairs to the first floor and knocked on Pavel’s door. There was no answer. He cursed under his breath. It was unlike Pavel not to have left a note. Beside him, in the corridor, a palm tree fluttered in the breeze from an open window.

Perhaps his departure from the train had upset his old friend more than he’d imagined. Ruzsky rubbed his hand hard across his face and groaned inwardly. He supposed it had been a typically selfish gesture. He walked toward the stairs again. He needed that cheery, gregarious face now.

The Moorish palace at Livadia was cut from almost translucent white stone. Ruzsky was admitted to the grounds by the security guards at the gate and told to wait in the sunshine beside the front steps. He squinted heavily, shading his eyes as he watched one gardener clipping a hedge while another scrubbed the stonework around the fountain. The garden, like so much of Yalta, was green even at this time of year, packed full of the distinctive narrow firs and tall palm trees.

The man who came to meet him was exceptionally tall and lugubrious, but without the military bearing Ruzsky had grown to expect in palace officials. He stooped slightly, as if weighed down by his long, drooping nose. He was thin almost to the point of emaciation, and superior to the point of being immediately irritating. A much lesser individual, Ruzsky judged, than Shulgin at Tsarskoe Selo. “You are the investigator?” the man said, his voice so soft that it was hard to hear.

Ruzsky nodded expectantly as he listened to the clip-clip-clip of the shears behind him.

“How can I help you?” He had not bothered to introduce himself.

“And you are?” Ruzsky asked.

“I am the chief officer of the household.”

“You have, I’m sure, already spoken to my colleague.”

The man inclined his head. “I do not believe so.”

Ruzsky frowned. “He came here yesterday, direct from the police station. A big man, with a generous beard. Investigator Miliutin. Pavel Miliutin.”

The man shook his head, his confusion genuine.

“Perhaps he spoke to someone else?” Ruzsky asked.

“That’s not possible. I was here all day. If he had called, the guards would have sent for me.”

Ruzsky was silent. He turned to face the sea and watched the gardeners at work again. He wanted to leave now, but suddenly had no idea where to go. Pavel must have been onto something. He must have followed a lead.

“How can I help you?” the man asked, and now his supercilious manner annoyed Ruzsky.

“Ella Kovyil.”

The official frowned again.

“She used to work here. Her father was a noncommissioned officer in the Preobrazhenskys. She was taken on as a nanny to the Tsarevich in the summer of 1910.”

“It may be.”

“It may be, or it was?”

Perhaps the man sensed Ruzsky’s unease. His patronizing manner melted away and his face grew more serious. “It was.”

“You were here?”

“I recall the girl, if that is what you mean.”

“Tell me about her.”

The man tilted his head a fraction and appraised his interlocutor properly for the first time. “You have come a long way, Chief Investigator. What is the nature of your inquiry?”

“Ella was found with a knife in her chest in front of the Winter Palace on New Year’s morning. Her companion was cut to bits.”

The man did not react. His expression was sober, but neutral.

“Did you know when you employed her that she was a member of a revolutionary organization?”

Now the lugubrious bureaucrat looked as if he had seen a ghost.

“She was part of a cell of the Black Terror that met regularly through the spring and summer of 1910, at different venues in Yalta.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“But it’s true.” Ruzsky was enjoying his power to shock, even if he wasn’t enjoying much else. “The question that I have is a simple one. Who was responsible for vetting her before she took up her post in the nursery here?”