She was looking at him and Ruzsky realized he had nodded off.

He glanced at the clock. It was four in the morning. He sat up straight, but the expression on her face made his heart sink. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her voice was tired and weak, but it carried a hint of impatience.

“Do you still feel dizzy?”

“No.”

“But you’re in pain?”

She did not answer.

The silence dragged.

“I’d like you to leave,” she said.

Ruzsky did not reply. He continued to stare into the fire.

“I thank you for what you have done, but I ask you to leave and not trouble me again.”

Ruzsky did not move. He felt a tightness in his chest. “You’d like me to leave?”

She rested her head again with an almost inaudible sigh.

“Did you know the boy?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Why did-”

“Not now,” she said.

“Your name is not Popova.”

Maria closed her eyes.

“Your sister does not acknowledge that she has a family. Who are you?”

Maria’s face was still.

“Does my brother know about your past?”

“No.”

“He’s an officer in the Life Guards.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What is it that you have planned, Maria?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t-”

“It is not your affair.”

Ruzsky leaned forward. The stony glare in her eyes unnerved him. “All those years ago in Yalta, Vasilyev had an agent reporting on your meetings.”

She did not answer.

“Three other members of your group have been murdered. The American was stabbed seventeen times. Markov’s head was nearly severed…”

“Please go.”

“Why does your sister carry a different family name?”

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

Ruzsky was stung by her hostility. “I could ask the same of you. What purpose have I served? What part of your plan was I needed for?”

Maria did not respond immediately. He listened to the sound of her breathing. “I never asked you to get involved.”

“Tell me about the Kresty Crossing.”

Maria slowly pushed herself upright, her face distorted by pain and fatigue. “If you’re even half the man I once imagined, then you will leave now and never trouble me again.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Then do so for your own sake.”

She lay back, exhausted. Ruzsky was on his feet. “Borodin thinks someone is closing in on you, doesn’t he? Three of your number have been killed.”

“I should imagine more die every second in the Tsar’s army.”

“You’re not in the Tsar’s army.”

“Nor am I dead. Yet.”

Ruzsky stared at her.

“What can I tell you that will make a difference, Sandro? What do you want to know? That Michael Borodin has been my lover, too? That he still is when the fancy takes him?”

She looked at Ruzsky. “Does that disgust you? Perhaps you would like to imagine the hands of the man who beat that boy to pulp tonight, all over my body. Would that convince you?”

“I don’t believe a word.”

“Oh, yes you do. I saw the look in your eyes when I was trying to clean him up. He’s violent to me, too. Do you know what he does when we are alone together? Do you want to know what he does to me when I am naked?”

“Why are you saying this?”

“You shouldn’t have been greedy. You should have taken what was offered and left it at that.”

“I don’t believe you. This isn’t the woman I know.”

“Perhaps that woman is a figment of your imagination.”

“No.”

She was silent again, for so long that Ruzsky thought she had drifted off to sleep. He stood and walked to the window. It was snowing, thick flakes swirling out of the darkness, into the pools of light cast by the gas lamps.

“I’d like you to leave now,” she said quietly.

Ruzsky waited. “A boy was murdered tonight.”

“Then come back in the morning with your constables and arrest me.”

“I think you may be the next victim, and I believe that you think that too.”

Maria was still staring up at the ceiling. “Please leave, Sandro. We will not be seeing each other again.” She looked at him. “If you’re a gentleman, you won’t make me repeat myself.”

41

R uzsky let himself out into the bitter night, the hurt bewildering in its itensity. On her doorstep, he almost walked into a bulky figure huddled against the railings. He began to mumble an apology when he realized that it was Pavel.

His partner wore a thick sheepskin cap, but still looked white with cold. Ice crystals had formed in his beard and he was shuffling from one foot to the other.

“What in the-”

“I tried the hospitals. You weren’t there, or at your apartment.”

“Christ, man,” Ruzsky said. He gripped Pavel’s shoulders and began to try to warm him, then pushed the door back and forced him inside. “Why didn’t you wait in here?”

“I’m all right.”

Ruzsky glanced toward the hall porter’s little box beneath the stairs. The man was eyeing them warily.

“Is she alive?” Pavel asked. “I saw her go under the horse.”

“She’s alive, yes.”

Pavel took off his gloves and began to blow onto his hands.

“You need to get warm,” Ruzsky said.

“No, I’m all right.”

Pavel knocked the remaining snow from his boots. The hall porter shouted something incomprehensible at them.

“What happened at the factory?” Pavel asked.

Ruzsky glanced up the curved stairwell at the floors above, ignoring the question. “Are you tired?”

“Why?”

“Because I would like to go back to the factory. I’ll explain on the way.”

There were no trams running at this time in the morning, so they had to walk down to the Mariinskiy before they found a droshky.

The vanka was a monosyllabic Tartar who barely even bothered to haggle over the fare. He was wrapped in at least a dozen layers of clothing and as they crossed the Alexandrovsky Bridge, Ruzsky could see why. The sky was clear, a bright moon sparkling off golden spires, but it was viciously cold, a north wind sweeping across the ice and biting through their overcoats. They huddled together in the back for warmth, Ruzsky attempting to bury his leather boots beneath the straw by his feet.

He tried to explain some of what had happened in the factory to his colleague, but the howling wind made it difficult.

Pavel paid the driver outside the tall black gates and tried to persuade the man to stay for the return journey, but he shook his head, turned his sledge around, and disappeared back toward the south side of the river.

Ruzsky led the way into the courtyard. It was deserted now and bathed in moonlight. The braziers that had been burning earlier had been knocked aside.

Ruzsky marched toward the darkened entrance to the vast, redbrick building, the wind roaring in his ears.

It was quieter within, and their footsteps echoed. Pavel put a hand on his arm and drew him to a halt. His eyes questioned the wisdom of continuing. Ruzsky held up two fingers. “Two minutes,” he mouthed.

He began to mount the stairs. It was dark but for fingers of moonlight feeling their way through tiny slit windows.

They reached the landing where Ruzsky had first seen Borodin, but the corridor disappeared into darkness in both directions.

Ruzsky followed the route he had taken earlier, mounting the steps and turning toward the gangway over the factory floor.

They saw light ahead and Pavel pulled him roughly back into a stairwell.

They heard voices.

The conversation grew louder for a moment and then quieter as the torchlight faded.

They waited. The factory was silent.

Ruzsky led the way down to the floor below, groping in the darkness, past giant black machines that smelled of grease and oil.

They stopped again. Above them they could see light from a series of flame torches flickering across the ceiling of the supervisor’s office where Andrei had been murdered.