The People's Will

Chapter XVII



KIBALCHICH COULD HAVE worked it out for himself, but he lacked the confidence. His understanding of mathematics and engineering was far greater than Mihail’s, but having done all the calculations he couldn’t look at his numbers and then look at the tunnel and say to himself, ‘That feels about right.’ Mihail had more experience to fall back on, and had never been allowed the luxury of doubting himself; there had always been an impatient officer at his shoulder, demanding he get on with it.

Not long ago, that officer had been Dmitry, in the guise of Colonel Otrepyev. Why, Mihail wondered, had not Dmitry in the guise of Chairman Shklovskiy exerted the same pressure upon Kibalchich? He began to piece together an answer.

Once they had decided upon a course of action, then digging began again. Almost everyone pitched in – the women as well as the men – though as far as Mihail could tell, Dmitry never came down. Zhelyabov never dug, though he did help out. Like Dmitry, he was too big to be able to employ his great strength in the enclosed space.

Over the following days Mihail began to get to know his comrades, to admire some and despise others. Sofia Lvovna he liked least of all. He wondered even if she might be mad, her dedication to the cause so eclipsed every other consideration. It was a madness he knew well, though his cause was different and he was forced to keep it hidden, but it helped him to fit in well with them. Where they said ‘Aleksandr’ he had merely to think ‘Iuda’ and he became indistinguishable in his hatred from those around him. And even as he pretended to be one of them, their attitudes began to rub off on him. Each night he would lie awake thinking about it; it worried him to admit it, but more and more he could imagine himself remaining quiet – not warning the tsar, his uncle, of the plans against him.

Dusya did not often come to the cheese shop, and when she did her slight build made her little use for digging. Even when she was there she and Mihail spoke little. They exchanged occasional glances and smiles, but had few opportunities for private conversation. Their nights together were quite different. Since the first time they had lain together in each other’s arms there had been only two occasions when he had heard her tapping at his door and let her into his room and his bed. In the darkness it could almost have been anybody, but he quickly grew to know every detail of her using only the four senses that remained. As planned, he had rented another room in another hotel, but never stayed there – it served purely to store his precious booty. Neither Dusya nor any of them knew of its existence, as far as he could tell.

He never asked her again whether the Executive Committee was aware of their relationship; he had no desire to offend her, or more importantly to lose her. He would assume that they were and hope that they were not. It was hard to imagine her speaking of it to anyone. In the presence of the others she seemed very different from the brave girl who had couriered dynamite halfway across the country, or the passionate one whose nails and teeth left their marks on his back and chest, or the thoughtful one he spoke to in the darkness afterwards. When with them she willingly placed herself in their shadows, particularly when it came to Sofia. She wanted to be like her but, Mihail was happy to observe, she could not achieve it.

It was with Kibalchich that he formed the strongest bond. It was unsurprising; they both understood engineering and they found themselves working side by side every day. The chances were that they would either despise one another or become friends. If Kibalchich had possessed any true dedication to his cause, it might well have proved to be the former, but he was one of the type that Mihail had spoken to Dusya about. His dedication today was just an echo of the radicalism of his youth, but he dared not admit it – not to himself and certainly not to his comrades. But it was obvious to anyone that Kibalchich now had a new passion towards which to dedicate his great intellect, and that passion was science.

They had been speaking, as all the group often did, of the world to come – a world in which Russians were freed from the Romanov tyranny. But Kibalchich’s view of the future had little to do with politics.

‘In our lifetimes,’ he said earnestly, ‘men will walk on the moon.’

‘You think so?’ Mihail replied.

‘Why not? And they wouldn’t just walk. They would run faster and leap higher than any man has dreamed – Olympian gods compared to those left on Earth.’

‘How come?’

‘You’d weigh less. About a seventh of what you do here. Look.’

Kibalchich had shown him the calculations. There was no principle that he invoked of which Mihail was unaware, but Mihail had never in his whole career thought of applying his knowledge to so impractical a question as what a man would weigh on the moon. But Kibalchich was not a practical man.

‘And how would you get there?’ Mihail asked.

‘Aha! You’d need a rocket.’

‘You mean like a firework, or a Congreve Rocket?’

‘Exactly, but bigger of course, with some kind of vessel for the explorers.’

‘It would be impossible.’

Kibalchich had proved him wrong, with a few lines on a scrap of paper. It was a tricky formula; the more fuel you carried, the more fuel you needed to lift its own weight, along with that of the men and equipment on board. But it was calculable and finite. The amount required was enormous, Kibalchich was happy to concede it, but it wasn’t so large as to be unattainable within a few decades.

‘I’ve already started work on a design,’ Kibalchich explained.

‘To go to the moon?’

Kibalchich’s face fell. ‘Small steps, Mihail. We’ll start by travelling between cities first, then continents. These things take time.’

‘You have your plans here?’ Mihail asked.

Kibalchich glanced around furtively and lowered his voice. ‘No. I’m not sure I’d trust everyone here. They wouldn’t understand. But I have them at home. I’ll show you some time and see what you think – get a practical viewpoint on them.’

Mihail never saw Kibalchich’s rocket designs, and doubted he would have understood them if he had, but he secretly imagined the two of them as old men, themselves too decrepit to take that fateful flight, but able to stand and watch others depart for the moon in Kibalchich’s machine.

In the evenings he would read through Iuda’s papers, sitting on the scruffy, uneven chair that along with the bed made up the sole furnishings of his second hotel room. He would not sleep here – if he did, how would Dusya know where to find him? – but he had brought his more unusual possessions here. He placed the hazelnut that Kibalchich had given him on the window ledge and would glance up at it as he turned each page. It was a reminder of just how dedicated these people were, and reaffirmed how dedicated he would have to be to defeat Iuda. He imagined his teeth pressing down on the shell and feeling the liquid inside spill on to his tongue and roll down his throat, wondering just how much pressure his jaw would have to exert to break it. He thought about slipping it into his mouth and resting his teeth lightly against it, allowing fate to decide if it would shatter or not. But he never did.

From Iuda’s books on vampires he learned of new weaknesses and new dangers of which he and Tamara had never been aware. Even in these later volumes where Iuda had begun to summarize his years of work there was too much for Mihail to remember every detail, and he could not know now what might one day be of use to him. The other correspondence, he hoped, would be of more help in locating Iuda, but there was nothing. The most obscure collection of letters dated back to the 1830s and were signed Auguste de Montferrand, a name with which Mihail was unfamiliar. The letters discussed issues of architecture, sometimes in general, sometimes very specifically, particularly with regard to the positioning of windows – an issue over which any voordalak would be concerned. It would seem that de Montferrand was taking advice from Iuda – whom he addressed as Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin, an alias which Mihail knew – on the design of some building, but there was no clue to its location, save for the fact that the documents were in the folder marked Petersburg. In all of it there was thankfully no indication that Iuda knew where Tamara had fled to in 1856, nor that he had any inkling she had borne a son.

The strangest thing he found was a single sheet of paper, not part of any of the notebooks, but placed between the pages of one of them. It could have been put there as a bookmark or for safe keeping. In any event it was a peculiar thing for a creature like Iuda to have in his possession: a charcoal drawing of a woman’s breast. The artist had talent and Mihail mused as to why it had been drawn. It was more than an anatomical diagram; it seemed to have been crafted with love, though not with lust. It lacked the exaggerated perfection that might come from a lascivious imagination. And yet it was not so mundane that it did not raise desire within him. It was initialled and dated:

S.M.F. 22.iv.1794

It could be another of Iuda’s aliases, though he would have been young judging by the date. It was hard to conceive that such a thing could have been created by Iuda’s hand. Mihail lingered over it for a while, then continued on through the journals.

The other possible trail that might eventually lead Mihail to Iuda had gone cold. Dmitry never came down to the cellar of the cheese shop, and Mihail found no opportunity to make contact with him. The name of Shklovskiy came up occasionally in conversation, and Mihail did his best to uncover more about him, but he dared not appear too inquisitive. It seemed that at first, before he had gone to Geok Tepe, Dmitry had been most concerned with what lay beneath the cheese shop. But once the digging had begun, once those older cellars had been unearthed and explored, he had lost interest.

The location of the cheese shop had one further advantage as far as Mihail was concerned: it was close to the Hôtel d’Europe. On travelling to and from his subterranean work there was ample opportunity for Mihail to keep an eye out for Iuda, either entering or leaving. He even managed to exchange the odd word with the concierge, who, in return for a few roubles, would tell him what he had seen.

But whether it came from the concierge’s mouth or from Mihail’s own eyes, the conclusion was the same. Iuda had not returned to the hotel.

Iuda looked out across the frozen river. The icy surface hid the turbid currents beneath. More than once those currents had clutched at him and carried him where they would. But they were all duplicates of the Berezina, where Lyosha had held his hair and thrust him beneath the surface. He didn’t remember how he’d escaped – he’d been unconscious and so whatever it was that had allowed him to live on, it was not his own wits. He had washed up and marched west with the pathetic vestiges of the Grande Armée. It was only in Warsaw that he had managed to get away from them. He was desperate and alone and with only one thought in his mind: to go home. It was another four months before he found himself in England and once there he realized that Esher meant nothing to him. There was only Oxford, where at least a few people remembered him.

And there his life had met a turning point. The letter had been waiting for him for almost a decade. His father’s brother, his uncle Edmund, had died and named Cain as the sole beneficiary of his will. The estate at Purfleet was worth thousands, and there were other assets to boot. It all belonged to Cain. He let the property to tenants to get an income, and bought himself a house in London, on Piccadilly, but still he spent much of his time in Oxford, writing a thesis based on what he had learned on his travels. He soon understood he could do little without his original notes, and so he had to return to where he had hidden them, in Petersburg. There he had reacquainted himself with Lyosha’s wife, Marfa, and with his son Dmitry. It was then he had realized how much he loved Russia – loved the naivety of its people and their potential for exploitation – and had known he would return there.

But there were other matters to attend to. On returning to England his thesis on the fauna of the Crimea gained him a doctorate and, with the addition of later work, a Fellowship of the Royal Society. But it all meant so little; the property, the wealth, the accolades. Still he craved only knowledge, a knowledge for which he would be laughed out of the Royal Society even for mentioning. He wanted to know of the voordalak. One day perhaps London would accept such a paper for the work of genius that it was, but that was not where he would do his research. From his uncle he had money, from Oxford he had an education. Both would help further his studies, but they would take place in Russia, in the Crimea, in the caves he had seen beneath Chufut Kalye. It was more than most scientists could dream of.

Was this, then, the fate for which he had been destined? Was this the proper life of an FRS – to lie on his stomach on the bank of the Neva, spying upon his enemies? But he knew he must watch them, even though the more he watched, the more he despised them. They were like gypsies, occupying property that did not belong to them and then treating it as their home. In Zmyeevich it was understandable; he hailed from the same part of the world as they did – it was in his blood. For Dmitry there was no excuse. Iuda had watched them for several nights, ever since he had discovered the invasion of his rooms at the hotel. He could no longer sleep there, and couldn’t return to the cavern beneath Senate Square – Zmyeevich and Dmitry already knew of it. But he’d little thought that they would choose to make their own nest there. Iuda himself continued to rest in the same tomb in the Smolenskoye Cemetery that had had been his home since his first night of freedom. From there it was only a short walk, at dusk, down to the northern bank of the Great Neva, from where he could look out over the river, across Senate Square and to the entrance of Saint Isaac’s. By the second night he’d acquired – unpaid-for – a pair of binoculars from a shop on Nevsky Prospekt, and could clearly identify the two figures that slipped from the cathedral as night fell, and returned before dawn. He had little doubt as to where they went once inside the building.

Some of the time he kept watch on the Hôtel d’Europe. He had removed his remaining journals from there on his first visit, so there was nothing more to be taken, but there was always the chance that Lukin might go back there, or even Dmitry or Zmyeevich, but there was no sign of any of them. Whatever his suspicions, Iuda was well aware that he had no clear evidence linking Lukin to the two vampires, but what other reason the lieutenant might have for searching his rooms he could not imagine. He could still only deduce that the connection was through Luka – the one person who knew about the Hôtel d’Europe – so there remained other avenues to explore.

But for now his main concern was what Dmitry and Zmyeevich were planning. They wanted to take back Zmyeevich’s blood. In that they might already have succeeded. Lukin had certainly taken it and could well have handed it over. Could Zmyeevich sense that there was yet more of his blood out there, safe and far away? In his experiments Iuda had not discerned that ability in any other vampire, but Zmyeevich was a special creature in ways that even Iuda could not imagine.

The other thing they wanted, more even than Zmyeevich’s blood, was Ascalon – or at least the fragment of it that had once been in Zmyeevich’s possession and which Pyotr the Great had stolen. They did not have it – of that Iuda was quite certain. But they had discovered much about where Pyotr had hidden it. Why else had Dmitry – under the name of Shklovskiy – ordered the mine that was to kill His Majesty to be dug at quite so precise a location in the city.

Iuda peered through the binoculars again. Dmitry had already returned to the cathedral to sleep, but Zmyeevich was still out there, somewhere. It had been like that on several nights, and Iuda had been forced by the rising sun to return to his own tomb before catching sight of the great vampire. He felt uneasy; vulnerable. There was no reason to suppose that they knew of his presence, but seeing Dmitry alone made him wonder whether Zmyeevich might even now be watching him. In a fair fight between them, Iuda did not rate his chances – but fair fights were not his style.

He needed to learn more. He had to hear them, not just see them. He dared not go back into the cellar itself – he would be too easily trapped – but he could at least get into the cathedral safely. It was a building he knew very well indeed. After all, he’d helped to design it.

‘Is this the sort of thing you meant?’

Mihail handed over the single handwritten sheet and returned to sipping his tea. It was Friday now – his fifth day of working on the tunnel, and they’d made good progress. They’d got under the sewer and propped it up safely. It sagged a little, but Mihail was sure it wouldn’t break again. Now they had only another eight feet to go. There was room for two men at most at the digging face, so they worked in short shifts of just an hour. They left it to the women to clear away the displaced earth and mud, shovelling it into barrels in the storeroom. Currently Bogdanovich and Mihailov were doing the digging. The sound of their work could be heard in the living room where a small group of them sat drinking tea: Mihail, Kibalchich, Zhelyabov, Frolenko and Sofia. The cat, recently discovered to be pregnant, snuggled quietly in Sofia’s lap. In the shop beyond Anna Vasilyevna kept an eye out for customers. Dusya had gone out a few hours before, and had not yet returned.

Kibalchich glanced over the obituary that Mihail had scribbled down the previous evening. There was nothing in it that was very far from the truth. It spoke of his youth in Saratov and of his mother, though identifying her as a member of the Lukin family. It referred to his years in Moscow at the Imperial Technical School and then his life in the army. Those occasions when he had mixed with radicals, particularly in Moscow, were emphasized. His exploits in the army and his commendation at Geok Tepe were told in terms of love of country, not love of the tsar. He had no doubt that what Kibalchich had said was the genuine reason behind it. He’d read the underground newspaper and seen the same done for others. But equally he understood that whatever he told them might be checked out, to ensure that he really was who he said he was. It was unlikely they’d discover the truth. He’d taken steps to hide the name Danilov from a far wilier enemy than these.

‘Seems reasonable,’ said Kibalchich, handing it over to Zhelyabov, who skimmed over it before folding it and putting it in his pocket.

‘Any last words?’ asked Sofia.

‘Charming!’ Mihail laughed.

Zhelyabov smiled. ‘Sofia Lvovna can be very direct. We generally like to print something short and personal to round it off. “My heart lies with the Russian people” or “He laid down his life for freedom”.’

‘But a little less vomit-inducing,’ added Frolenko. Zhelyabov glanced at him sternly, then tried to conceal a smile.

Mihail already had an answer. ‘“He sought revenge,”’ he said. He looked round the faces in the room. Most nodded with approval, but Zhelyabov was an exception. His mouth was twisted, as though eating a lemon. ‘Problem?’ asked Mihail.

‘Is revenge really what we’re all about?’ replied Zhelyabov.

‘We’re going to kill the tsar for what he’s done,’ said Frolenko. ‘That sounds like revenge to me.’

Mihail’s words had nothing to do with His Majesty, but the debate could apply equally to Iuda, so he listened with interest.

‘For what he’s done to whom, though?’ continued Zhelyabov. ‘To ourselves or to the people?’ he looked around, expecting an answer, though none came. ‘If it’s for ourselves, then yes, this is mere revenge. But our business is not vengeance; it’s punishment. We’ve seen what Aleksandr has done to the people. We calmly judged him on their behalf – at Lipetsk. If this is revenge then it is the collective revenge of the entire people. Isn’t that the very definition of punishment?’

Mihail’s mind wandered back to when he had been a little boy and he and Tamara had gone through the process of trying Iuda. Neither the verdict nor the sentence came as a surprise. But Mihail still knew in his heart it was revenge, and was not ashamed of it. True, as with Aleksandr, it was in part on the behalf of others, but it would be a personal pleasure he took in killing Iuda. He doubted that any of the others here felt differently about their own quest, but it was better to keep his head down and leave it unmentioned.

Thankfully Kibalchich had been thinking along similar lines. ‘But it’s personal too, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘We are all victims ourselves. I mean, I’m not saying we’re wrong, but we’re hardly neutral in this.’

‘All victims?’ asked Mihail.

‘Most of us here have spent months in prison, if not years,’ explained Zhelyabov. ‘You remember the trial of the 193? Me, Sofia, Anna Vasilyevna and 190 others. That’s how a lot of us met.’

‘You were acquitted,’ said Kibalchich with a hint of competitiveness in his voice.

‘Which makes it worse. They kept me locked up for almost a year only to decide I’d done nothing wrong.’

‘I was in prison for 969 days,’ said Kibalchich, more passionate than Mihail had ever seen him or imagined he could be. ‘You know how long the actual sentence was? One month – for lending a banned book to a peasant. The rest was waiting for trial.’

‘I don’t know what you’re all complaining about,’ announced Frolenko. ‘I for one enjoyed my time in prison.’

Kibalchich and Sofia both smiled and Zhelyabov emitted a brief laugh.

‘What?’ asked Mihail.

‘Frolenko saw the other side of prison life,’ Zhelyabov explained. ‘He was a guard.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Not quite as you imagine it,’ said Frolenko. ‘It was back in ’77, when Stefanovich, Deutsch and Bohanovskiy were in prison in Kiev. I got myself a job as a warder in the hope of breaking them out. But first we had to get rid of the head warder.’

‘A notorious drunk,’ added Zhelyabov happily.

‘Indeed,’ continued Frolenko. ‘So we lured him away with the offer of a job at a distillery. I’d been such a good boy that I got promoted to fill his shoes. And my first duty as head warder was to escort those three dangerous subversives out through the prison gates and onwards to freedom, never to return. It was only when the old head warder found there was no distillery and came back begging for his job that they realized anything was up.’

Even Sofia laughed as the story came to an end, but the good humour subsided as first Bogdanovich and then Mihailov emerged from the tunnel exhausted, their bodies plastered with mud. Their hour was up.

Sofia was on her feet in an instant. The cat dropped to the floor and then looked up at her reproachfully. ‘I’ll get you some water,’ she said.

The two men stood, stretching their aching muscles. It was Mihail and Kibalchich’s turn next. They both stripped down to only their trousers; it was easier to clean flesh than cloth.

‘Any problems?’ asked Kibalchich.

‘Nothing special,’ replied Bogdanovich. ‘Slow but steady.’

Kibalchich bent down and crawled in first, followed by Mihail. Today the tunnel was lit only with oil lamps which the two previous diggers had left close to the entrance, and which Kibalchich and Mihail now carried as they made their way out under the street.

‘There was something I meant to ask you,’ said Mihail, addressing Kibalchich’s wobbling backside as it led the way.

‘What?’

‘Who’s Auguste de Montferrand?’

Kibalchich gave a little chuckle. ‘You’re not from these parts, are you?’

‘No. He’s big then, is he?’

‘One of the city’s great architects.’

‘What, back in Pyotr’s day?’ Mihail realized as he spoke the stupidity of the question. The dates on Iuda’s letters were much more recent.

‘No. Under Aleksandr I and then Nikolai.’

‘Was he any good?’

Kibalchich stopped and turned his head. He raised a hand towards the city above them. ‘Next time you’re up there, look around you.’

‘Anything in particular?’

‘There’s the Kazan Cathedral, just up the road. And he did various rooms in the Winter Palace – though I think we undid a little of his good work there.’ He emitted a brief snort.

‘Anything else?’

‘Saint Isaac’s, of course. And the Nikolai Monument behind it. And the Aleksandr Column in Palace Square.’

‘Busy chap.’

Kibalchich nodded. ‘Died the year they finished Saint Isaac’s.’

There was no further for them to go now – they had reached the tunnel’s end. Even in the time since Mihail had first been here it had almost doubled in length, but there was still more to be done. They picked up the shovels that Bogdanovich and Mihailov had left for them and began to dig.

On leaving the cheese shop, Mihail once again made straight for the library. It was easy to rule out some of the buildings that Kibalchich had mentioned. De Montferrand’s letter to Iuda had described windows. There were none of those in either of the monuments to emperors past. He also dismissed the work at the Winter Palace, at least for the time being. Even for Iuda, that would be too audacious. That left the two cathedrals: Saint Isaac’s and Kazan. In broadest terms they matched what Mihail had read in the letter.

Of course, it might be none of the more famous examples of de Montferrand’s work that had been under discussion. Or it might have been something built outside the city. After only a few minutes’ research Mihail discovered that he had also done a great deal of work on the design of the park and buildings at Vyborg, over a hundred versts away. But he had to start somewhere. He soon found the information he needed. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan was built during the reign of Aleksandr I and completed even before the start of the Patriotic War. That was too early for the letters.

Saint Isaac’s, on the other hand, fitted perfectly. It had taken forty years to construct, spanning more than the entire reign of Nikolai and reaching into that of both Aleksandrs. When Aleksei had stood with the Decembrists in Senate Square it was scarcely begun. The letters from the ’30s were bang in the middle of the period. Mihail tried to recall their detail. What he could remember now began to make sense in the context of what he knew, but he still couldn’t be sure.

He walked briskly through the snowy streets. As so often he was grabbed by the fear that someone would have broken into his room and taken the papers and the blood, but once again they proved to be safe. He read through the letters voraciously, nodding as each statement suddenly made sense in the context of the cathedral. The last lines he read had originally been the most bewildering of all with their reference to ‘the toes of Saint Paul’, but now Mihail began to have some idea of what it might mean.

He itched to test out his theory, but it was dark now. Only a fool would go hunting vampires at night. Even by day, in the dark passages that he guessed he would discover beneath Saint Isaac’s, it could be dangerous. Thankfully, just that morning, a delivery had arrived for him from Saratov.

Mihail chose midday to visit the cathedral. The sun was rising higher in the sky now as winter drew gradually to a close. The days were over ten hours in length and gaps were beginning to appear in the ice sheet that covered the Neva. Saturday was a busy day at the cheese shop – remarkably, for the purpose of selling cheese. Thus they did not dig on Saturdays out of fear that they’d be overheard.

Mihail walked from his hotel along the English Quay and then turned across Senate Square to approach the cathedral. It was built to impress, and it succeeded. The great golden dome, gleaming in the sunlight, was visible from all over the city but seemed designed to be most imposing from just about this distance, close to the Bronze Horseman. Across the water the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral was still the tallest structure in the city, but it had none of the fat, squat authority of the dome, itself stolen, in some sense, from both Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

Mihail had only ever seen them in pictures, easy to find during his researches at the Imperial Library, but the similarities with Saint Peter’s in Rome and Saint Paul’s in London were unmistakable, particularly with regard to the latter. De Montferrand had even managed to incorporate the Greek Cross floor plan that Wren had been refused permission to use.

But he was not here to admire the building’s exterior. He began walking again towards the steps, noticing how the whole edifice seemed almost to shrink as he moved closer, away from the ideal viewing point. As he approached he noticed a hunched figure emerge through the massive bronze doors and walk gingerly down to street level. Mihail recognized him as the old man he had met in the square on the day of Dostoyevsky’s funeral, almost two weeks before – the one who had first told him what Ascalon meant. He hurried his pace so as to intercept him and offer a greeting, but once on the pavement the man moved with unexpected sprightliness and was soon heading towards the Admiralty. Mihail chose not to be distracted from his quest.

Inside the cathedral was quiet, but not empty. It was bright, but the sun was high and Mihail guessed that there would be more light still when the morning or evening sun shone through the tall, arched windows. Two or three people knelt facing the iconostasis, praying. Others simply stood, their necks bent back and their jaws hanging loosely as they gazed up at the painted interior of the dome, or at the walls, or the columns. Almost every surface displayed artwork, either statues or paintings or mosaics, each depicting an individual or scene of the holiest nature. A dyachok pottered about the place, tending to candles and incense, as was his duty. Mihail stood among the gawkers, and studied the decoration, with a specific interest in just one adornment that he knew was somewhere inside the building, but had no idea quite where; an icon of Saint Paul.

He found it quickly enough, just outside the Nevsky Chapel in the north-eastern corner of the church. He checked around him, but no one would see him if he was quick. He reached out and rested his thumbs against the saint’s big toes, precisely as de Montferrand’s letter had suggested. At first there was no response. He began moving the tips of his thumbs in small circles of widening diameter, searching the nearby area. The letter had said that if either button was pressed on its own there would be no discernible movement. Only when both were pushed would the mechanism release. It made it safe, both from accidental activation and from what Mihail was now attempting. But he was determined. Within a minute he felt a slight depression beneath both his thumbs as tiles of the mosaic yielded, and the whole icon felt suddenly loose, pressing back on him as it tried to swing open.

He checked around him again. A man and woman were emerging from the side chapel, arm in arm, but still their mouths were open and their eyes upraised. Mihail could probably have made it through the doorway without them even noticing, but he chose to wait. He moved his hands across the icon until they were side by side, in front of him, still holding the panel in place. He closed his eyes, as if drawing strength from the apostle. He heard footsteps and when he looked around again he was alone. It took him only a second to pull open the door, climb up into the passageway beyond and shut himself inside.

It was utterly black. Mihail reached into his bag and fetched out a paraffin lamp. Once this was alight he could see more clearly. He examined the door he had come in by, feeling in the corners where it met the walls until he found a catch. He tested it and the panel sprang open again, just a fraction of an inch. It was enough for him to know he had an escape route. He looked ahead. The passageway was not long, but he couldn’t make out how it ended. He reached into his bag again and pulled out his favourite weapon of the many he knew could kill a vampire.

At his side he had his military sword, which he could use for beheading. Under his coat he carried the short wooden dagger, with which he could stab through the heart. But both were close-range weapons. This was something rather different, arrived from Saratov just the previous morning.

It was an arbalyet – a crossbow. He’d been developing it since he was a boy. The device itself was standard enough, an eighteenth-century German Armbrust that he’d found rotting in a barn. The problem had been the bolts. The short drawback and high tension of a crossbow meant that it needed a dense bolt to receive the maximum kinetic energy. That was why iron was the traditional material. Wood though, not iron, was what was needed to kill a voordalak. But a wooden arrow fired from an arbalyet was liable to fly off in any direction, and even when it hit its target it had little penetration.

In the end Mihail settled on a hybrid: a core of iron or, better, lead, wrapped in a wooden sheath, almost like a pencil, but whose sharp tip was of wood. It was accurate and penetrating – Mihail had successfully hunted wild boar with it more than once. Neither he nor Tamara had seen any reason that it should not be fatal to a voordalak, but they had never tested it on one. There had been only one opportunity for such an experiment, and they had chosen to exploit their single chance in a different way. Five glass cylinders safely wrapped in straw had been delivered in the case from Saratov too. Mihail knew just what a potent weapon they could be, but they needed preparation and stealth – and a source of power. But he had seen the effects with his own eyes. The arbalyet was a different matter; theoretically sound, but untested. Perhaps soon, very soon, Mihail would discover the truth.

He pulled back the lever, tensioning the bow, and then inserted a bolt. He carried on along the short passageway. Already the splendour of the cathedral seemed far behind. The corridor ended in a descending spiral staircase. Mihail made his way down the stone steps, the lamp held high in his left hand, the crossbow outstretched in his right. Before long the steps brought him to a long, straight corridor, its end further than the lamplight could penetrate. He continued forward, nervous but determined. The narrow passage meant that attack could only come from ahead, and he was ready for that. Besides, however dark it was down here, it was still noon above. Any voordalaki he encountered were likely to be sleeping; likely, but not certain.

The passageway ended in a door. Mihail could see a keyhole and an iron ring for a handle. If the door was locked, then he would have to abandon his search, at least for today. He had no explosives with him, and he didn’t relish the idea of slowly breaking down the door and giving whatever lay beyond ample time to prepare for his entrance.

The handle turned and the door swept noiselessly open. Beyond was a vaulted brick chamber. Along one wall were a number of cupboards, much like the ones in Iuda’s rooms at the Hôtel d’Europe. All were closed and one, at the far end, was locked shut, the handles tied together with a far greater length of chain than was necessary, fixed with a sturdy padlock. It served only to intrigue Mihail.

In the middle of the chamber, among the brick columns that supported the ceiling, was some kind of ornamental pond – perhaps a font. The water in it was still and a few slivers of ice floated on it. It was cold down here, but warmer than on the surface. In the shadows towards the back of the cellar Mihail saw almost what he had been expecting to see. There were two coffins; he had anticipated only one.

It was not unthinkable that Iuda had acquired a companion. When Tamara had encountered him, he had hunted and killed alongside Raisa. Tamara had described her discovery of their two coffins, side by side, just like these two. Mihail wondered if he would be familiar with Iuda’s vampire companion. Would it be someone he had seen at night in the streets of Petersburg? Or someone he would recognize, unchanged, as an acquaintance of years before?

On the other hand, two coffins did not necessarily mean two vampires. It might not even mean one. Iuda had known of this place for at least fifty years, when he had somehow persuaded de Montferrand to build the passage down from Saint Isaac’s. At some time in that long history he might have slept here with a companion, but that did not mean he did so now. Mihail could not even be sure that Iuda himself slept here. Perhaps he should have waited – watched the cathedral just as he had been watching the hotel. But he was impatient for revenge. He felt his heart beat faster. It might be just moments away.

He went closer. Both coffins had their lids in place. Mihail looked around and found a hook on one of the pillars from which he hung his lamp. It rocked a little from side to side, making the shadows waver. He held the crossbow out in front of him, like a pistol. It would be more accurate if he squeezed the stock tight against his shoulder, but at this range accuracy should not be a problem. He had tested it held close to the carcass of a dead pig; the result had been spectacular. The only thing to remember was not to hold it too close. The bow had to be given time to transfer all its energy to the bolt.

He reached forward with his left hand and curled his fingers under the lid of the first coffin. It did not resist. Once he had raised it an inch he slipped his toe under it, allowing him to straighten up and take better aim. He reached into his pocket and withdrew another bolt. If there were two of them he would have to reload and take aim again quickly.

He gave a kick and the coffin lid slid from its position and hit the brick floor with two hollow thuds, as first one edge and then the other made contact. Mihail’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he did not fire. He wanted Iuda to be conscious; wanted him to know.

The coffin was empty. Mihail stepped quickly over it to the second one, afraid that the noise had disturbed whoever slumbered within, expecting to see the lid begin to rise and pale fingers to creep around the edge and take a grip.

All remained still.

Mihail repeated the process of lifting the lid, first with his hand and then with his foot. This time he scarcely heard the noise of its landing. His mind was occupied with what he saw.

This coffin was not empty. The tall figure that filled the wooden box lay deathly still, his eyes closed, his arms by his sides. Mihail’s finger relaxed a little on the trigger and his arm dropped a few inches. He forced himself to raise it again. He had rehearsed this moment so many times in his mind; how he would feel; how he would wake Iuda; how he would say the words, ‘My name is Mihail Konstantinovich Danilov, son of Tamara Alekseevna Danilova, daughter of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov’; how long he would wait to see the look of understanding in Iuda’s eyes before he finally pulled the trigger.

But this was not Iuda. It was a voordalak, of that there was no doubt, and one that Mihail instantly recognized, but one that he had not expected to find here.

His thoughts were interrupted. A shudder ran through the vampire’s body and his chest began to rise and fall. Air scraped in and out of his throat. Mihail’s mind raced, wondering whether he should flee, or just kill the creature where it lay.

But it was too late. Dmitry opened his eyes.