“I don’t understand. Why did she come here to say goodbye? Where did she say she was going?”

“She did not explain. Maria said only that she wanted to settle things, to be sure that Kitty would always be all right. She was very sad. She was crying. ‘But if there is a revolution,’ she kept saying, taking my hand, ‘what then? Can’t you stay? Who can I find who will always be here?’ ”

“Why did she say that?”

“I don’t know.”

Ruzsky shook his head. “What did she mean about wiring the money?”

“This is a private sanatorium, Chief Investigator. The Tatyana Committee pays for those officers who are recovering here, but other patients’ fees have to be met from personal funds. Kitty was only moved here a short time ago and Maria came to see that she was well cared for. She wanted to give us enough money in one transfer to ensure her sister would always be looked after here, but…” She shrugged.

“It would be a sizable sum.”

Eugenia didn’t answer.

“Kitty’s parents are dead?”

“Yes.”

“They were-”

“I don’t know the details.”

“Would it be possible, do you think, to see Kitty’s personal file here. It would be most-”

“No. We could not do that.” Another nurse had come onto the terrace and was waving at Eugenia to indicate that her presence was required. She stubbed the cigarette out beneath her foot and then brushed the ash from her white blouse.

“It would be helpful to ascertain whether she has other relatives.”

“Maria said she had no other family members here.”

“So Kitty never talks about her past, her family…”

“Chief Investigator…” The nurse shook her head. “I would like to help, but there is nothing I can tell you.” She stood. “I’m sorry.” She offered her hand. “Good luck.”

As they shook hands, Ruzsky saw once again in her eyes the strain caused by too great an acquaintance with tragedy. The nurse who had appeared so strong and calm in the hallway within was agitated now. She hurried away.

Pavel was waiting at the top of the bank, beneath the shelter of a tall fir tree. Ruzsky crouched down beside him and, for a moment, they faced each other in silence.

“She wasn’t there?” Pavel asked.

“No, she was.” Ruzsky looked back down toward the entrance to the sanatorium and saw Kitty’s face in the window above the doorway. She was watching him, her nose pressed to the glass. Pavel saw her too.

They watched her, but she did not move.

“I need to go back into the town,” Ruzsky said.

“Sandro-”

“Just for a few more hours.”

“Sandro, come on.” Pavel stood, imposing in his bulk. “Maybe Maria was telling you the truth, but she’s still a revolutionary. Groups like Black Terror used to blow officials like your father to the four winds.”

“I know, but-”

“Please. Think about it. Prokopiev’s men will be crawling all over the town. We have found what we came in search of: all of the victims were revolutionaries. The question is what were they doing returning to Petersburg. What had they gathered for? If the murders are the key to something bigger, the answer is not here. This is a trap. Don’t you see it?”

“But why were they killed?”

“I don’t know, but the answer is in Petersburg.”

“Why do you assume that?”

Pavel frowned. “Well, why did they come back? The American, the man we found at the Lion Bridge…”

Ruzsky was still staring at Kitty. He thought of the nurse’s assertion that Maria had come to say goodbye.

He clung to the fact that Maria had been telling him the truth about her sister.

Had she wanted him to come here? Had she wished him to meet Kitty?

Pavel put his arm gently around Ruzsky’s shoulder and led him away.

As they walked down onto the drive, Ruzsky looked back once more at the entrance to the sanatorium.

Kitty was still there, her hand resting against the glass, as if waving goodbye.

37

P avel and Ruzsky stood side by side looking out of the tiny, dirty, barred window at the spires of Russia ’s capital, which were indistinct against a pale, lifeless sky.

They did not converse, because, even at this speed, the transport carriage proved an almost total bar on audible forms of communication.

They’d made the assumption that the station at Sevastopol would be watched, so had gone to Simferopol instead and waited many hours before boarding a train bound for Moscow. From there, only troop trains had been moving. In all, it had taken a full two days to get back home.

This goods wagon was all they’d been able to find and they’d passed the last section of the journey to Petrograd in extreme cold and discomfort, the noise ensuring they were barely able to exchange a word.

It was instructive, Ruzsky thought, that this carriage was empty. Why wasn’t the government using it to bring food into the city?

They jumped down from the wagon as it rolled into the Nicholas Station and clambered over to the edge of the track. Ahead of them, amidst clouds of steam rising to the glass and iron roof of the station concourse, a lone conductor furled and unfurled his flag. An engine hooter roared, but the train on the platform did not move.

Ruzsky and Pavel slipped through a narrow passage between two wooden warehouses, the pungent aroma of engine soot and rye bread carried on the breeze. As they passed the low entrance to one of the warehouses, Ruzsky stopped. Every inch of his body ached.

The rye bread was in a tin bucket just by the door, but the air was now thick with the smell of cheap tobacco and putrefaction. There was a cough, quickly answered by another. Ruzsky stepped forward and peered into the gloom.

Inside, there were hundreds of wounded soldiers on makeshift pallets laid down on the freezing mud. One or two stood, smoking, but most were lying down in an eerie silence. The men stared at him. There were more coughs.

Ruzsky turned around. Outside, a railway worker was walking in their direction, a giant metal mallet over his shoulder. He wore a quilted winter coat, with a sheepskin hat pushed back from his forehead. He, too, was smoking, the cigarette hanging from his lips.

Perhaps Ruzsky’s face framed an unspoken query, because the man answered: “They said they were moving them to Moscow.”

He spat his cigarette out and continued on past them toward the tracks. “Prisoners of war,” he shouted. “Escaped from the Germans and treated no better than animals!”

Ruzsky and Pavel tipped themselves over the edge of a low iron fence and trudged down the snowy embankment to the road beyond. The country was falling apart. He couldn’t help recalling the ecstasy in those faces in Palace Square as the Tsar read out the Declaration of War.

War was not an instrument of foreign policy. It was a national disease.

Icy winds cut through their overcoats as they mingled with the crowds moving down Ligovskaya. Ruzsky waved at a droshky driver waiting outside the station. Eventually, the man saw them and snapped his reins to bring his horse to attention, swinging the small sled around. “Ofitserskaya Ulitsa, twenty-eight,” Pavel instructed him as they climbed into the back.

“Forty-five copecks.”

The vanka turned around. He had a thick, black beard and the hollow eyes of an alcoholic addicted to the worst kind of moonshine.

“You are joking, right?” Pavel asked. Vankas always haggled, but his quoted price was at least double the going rate. This wasn’t the game.

“It’s far.”

“It’s a mile at the most.”

The man was still looking at them. “I know the building. I don’t carry pharaon in my cab.”

Ruzsky and Pavel stared at him. Pharaon was an insulting street slang name for policeman, usually reserved for members of the Okhrana. They were shocked both by the man’s audacity and by the fact that he appeared to include them in the same bracket.