Blackstone and the Endgame (13 page)

‘No, Your Worship,' Hartington said miserably.

‘In that case, you will apologize immediately!' the magistrate instructed him.

‘Gladly, Your Worship,' Hartington agreed. ‘I … I simply don't know what came over me.'

The magistrate nodded. ‘And now that you have apologized, I
will
answer the question that you put to me a few moments ago.'

‘There's no need, Your Worship,' Hartington said.

‘But there
is
a need,' Charnley contradicted him. ‘You asked me if, when you came to pay the bail, the bar would have been “magically” raised to one thousand five hundred pounds, didn't you?'

‘Yes, Your Worship – and that was quite wrong of me,' Hartington said meekly.

‘Yes, we have already established that,' Charnley agreed. ‘But to return to the point – you will find, when you know me better, Mr Hartington, that all my rulings are based on both the law of the land and solid common sense, and, thus, when I set bail at one thousand pounds, it will remain at one thousand pounds.'

Hartington was suddenly straighter and more confident again.

‘Since my practice mostly concerns commercial matters at the highest possible level, I do not normally appear in magistrates' courts myself,' he said, ‘and, as a result of that, my knowledge of how they operate is perhaps a little rusty, so I would beg Your Worship's indulgence …'

‘You have already apologized for your behaviour once, Mr Hartington,' the magistrate interrupted. ‘There is no need to do it again.'

‘With the greatest respect, Your Worship, you seem to have misunderstood me,' Hartington said. ‘It is advice on a procedural matter for which I wish to beg your indulgence.'

‘A procedural matter?' the magistrate repeated.

Hartington's clerk opened his briefcase, and Ellie saw that it was bulging with banknotes.

‘Yes, a procedural matter,' Hartington said. ‘To whom should we pay the bail money?'

Hartington and Ellie were sitting in a workmen's café, close to the Southwark Magistrates' Court.

Some of the workers gave the solicitor puzzled looks – as if to ask what the hell he thought he was doing there – but if Hartington noticed the looks, he gave no sign of it and seemed perfectly at home with a large mug of steaming tea in his slim, delicate hands.

‘You were brilliant in court,' Ellie said, full of admiration.

‘Yes, I was rather,' Hartington agreed complacently.

‘But you had me really worried for a while. Why didn't you tell me what you were going to do?'

‘Yes, I suppose I could have explained my strategy to you beforehand,' Hartington said, ‘but then, you see, you wouldn't have looked worried at all – and your genuine concern was a necessary part of the act.'

‘A necessary part of the act?'

‘I needed the magistrate to feel that he was totally in control of the situation, and that we were losing ground every time I opened my mouth. I needed him to feel confident enough to set a figure for bail that he couldn't amend without losing face. And that is just what I got him to do.'

‘How much money did your clerk actually have in that briefcase of his?' Ellie wondered.

‘One thousand pounds,' Hartington said.

‘So even before you walked into the court, you knew exactly how much it would be!'

Hartington smiled. ‘I am costing my client – whoever he or she might be – a great deal of money,' he said. ‘But I think you'll agree, having seen me in action yourself, that I'm worth every penny of it.'

I
t was snowing again, Blackstone noted, looking out of Vladimir's study window on to the street below. And it would keep on snowing relentlessly for months to come.

He wondered whether he would still be in Petrograd when the snows melted – and then, realistically, he wondered if he would even be
alive
when the spring finally came.

He turned around to face Vladimir, who was – as usual – manipulating the small world that was his railway.

‘As I was walking along Nevsky Prospekt this morning, I noticed a cartoon,' Blackstone said. ‘There were two small figures in it, who, I think, were meant to be the tsar and tsarina, and one much larger one – a wild-looking man with a long scraggly beard.'

‘The man's name is Grigori Rasputin, and he is a semi-literate Siberian peasant, with an unquenchable thirst for both alcohol and debauchery,' Vladimir said with disgust. ‘He is also considered by some people to be a
starets
– a holy man – and two of his most devoted followers are the tsar and tsarina.'

‘It's hard to imagine the tsar of all the Russias and his wife being under the sway of a semi-literate peasant,' Blackstone said sceptically.

‘That is because you do not understand what makes them tick,' Vladimir said. He paused again. ‘Have I got that right – “makes them tick”?'

‘You've got it right.'

‘The Romanov dynasty has ruled this country for over three hundred years. The tsar considers he has a divine right to govern, and when you see him performing one of the great ceremonies of state – drinking the holy water from the Neva River at the start of spring, for example – it is hard not to believe that God is looking down approvingly.'

‘But …?'

‘But the home life of the tsar and tsarina has little of the imperial splendour about it. Their private apartments contain just the kind of furniture that you would find in the home of any senior clerk living in Peckham.'

‘You're exaggerating,' Blackstone said.

‘They have at their command the finest craftsmen in Russia – which is to say some of the finest craftsmen in the whole world – but they choose to buy mass-produced furniture from a catalogue provided by Maples of London. It is what they feel comfortable with,' Vladimir said firmly. ‘They are a very domestic family. At home – and in their letters to each other – the tsar and tsarina use the terms “Hubby” and “Wifey”. They dress all four of their daughters in exactly the same way – even though there are six years between the youngest and the oldest – and smother them in the kind of love that would only be appropriate with much younger children. And, of course, they dote on their son, the tsarevich Alexei.'

‘How does Rasputin fit into all this?' Blackstone asked.

‘I was coming to that,' Vladimir told him. ‘The tsarevich is a haemophiliac – a curse that he inherited through his mother.'

‘Is she a haemophiliac herself?' Blackstone wondered.

‘No, it is very rare for women to suffer from the disease, though they have proved most efficient at carrying it and passing it on to their male children,' Vladimir explained.

‘I see.'

‘Much of the time, Alexei is not even allowed to walk, but instead is carried around like a baby, by a huge sailor. Even a slight jolt – one which you or I would probably not even notice – is enough to start him haemorrhaging, and a small cut could lead to disaster. And since, as the tsar and tsarina see it, the future of Russia and the Romanov dynasty rests on his thin shoulders, his health is of paramount importance to the whole family.'

‘The family think that this holy man – Rasputin – has the power to heal him,' Blackstone guessed.

‘Once, when Alexei was little more than a year old, he was bleeding for days. The physicians had all but given up on him, and even the family thought he would die,' Vladimir said. ‘Then, in desperation, they summoned the so-called
starets
, who had already acquired something of a reputation as a healer. Rasputin spoke soothingly to the tsarevich, and the bleeding stopped. And that is not the only time he is supposed to have cured him. It's said that he once cured Alexei by merely speaking to him over the telephone.'

‘I still don't see …' Blackstone began.

‘It is only a small step from guiding them in the care of their son to guiding them on how to rule the country. Rasputin told the tsar that he should dismiss his cousin as head of the army and take charge himself. And that is what he has done, so now the tsar is at army headquarters in Mogilev, which is over five hundred miles from Petersburg. And the tsarina – or rather her mentor Rasputin – is left running a country that covers one-sixth of the earth's surface and has a population of over one hundred million.'

‘Now that
has
to be an exaggeration,' Blackstone said sceptically.

‘That Russia is so big?'

‘That Rasputin's running the country.'

‘I assure you, he is running it as much as anybody can be said to be running it,' Vladimir replied. ‘Even so, things would not be quite so bad if the tsarina was popular. Catherine the Great made some terrible mistakes and caused immense suffering – but the people liked her.'

‘And they don't like Alexandra?'

‘They do not – and that is partly her fault. The people expect their monarch and his wife to appear in public, but Alexandra is painfully shy and rarely does so. I have heard stories of provincial aristocrats who have stood on railway platforms for hours on end, waiting for the royal train to pass through the station. They don't expect to meet her personally. They don't even expect her to wave at them – though they hope she will. It is enough for them to catch a brief glimpse of her as the train rushes through. And what do they see when the train finally arrives at the station? That she has pulled down the blinds!'

Vladimir flicked more switches on the control panel, and more trains began to move.

‘And now we are at war with Germany, and she is a German herself,' he continued. ‘So was Catherine the Great, for that matter, but – as I said – she was popular. The people think Alexandra is betraying us to the Kaiser and that Rasputin is her lover. Neither of those things is true. She is deeply in love with her husband and, like many converts, fanatical about her adopted country.'

‘Does
no one
like her?' Blackstone asked.

‘Aside from Rasputin, she has only two real friends,' Vladimir said. ‘The first is Anna Vyroubova, the daughter of one the tsar's bureaucrats. The other is General Kornilov.'

‘A general!' Blackstone said, surprised.

‘Ah, now we stray into the realms of the romantic novel,' Vladimir said. ‘Alexandra's mother died when she was quite young, and she was brought up mostly at the court of her grandmother, your Queen Victoria. It was there that the tsar first saw her and started to fall in love with her. His mother and father were opposed to any idea of them marrying – they wanted a better match for their son than a mere provincial princess – but Nicholas was determined to have his own way in the end.' Vladimir shuddered. ‘I wish he had shown half as much determination in ruling Russia.'

‘And how does this General Kornilov come into the picture?' Blackstone asked.

‘He was a young officer serving under our military attaché at the Court of St James. Nicholas arranged for him to meet her. It was not difficult – she was, after all, very low in the royal hierarchy. It was Kornilov's job to prepare her for her life in Russia. They became friends – to the extent that a junior officer
can
become friends with a future tsarina of Russia. And now he is like a faithful old dog, whose only aim in life is to serve her.'

‘I see what you mean about the realms of the romantic novel,' Blackstone admitted.

‘But we are straying far from our subject, which is that, to the extent to which
anyone
can run this chaotic country, it is being run by Rasputin.'

‘But surely the tsarina can't really believe that a peasant would know how—' Blackstone began.

‘The Minister of the Interior has rented an apartment in which some of his officials hold secret meetings with Rasputin,' Vladimir interrupted him. ‘The officials carry two things with them when they go to those meetings. The first is a list of actions that the Minister would like to see taken, and the second is a bag of money. They hand the money and the list over to Rasputin. He goes back to his own apartment and, over five or six bottles of sweet Madeira wine – never less – he considers the Minister's request. Then, the following morning, he will ring up the tsarina and tell her what she should do. And there is no guarantee – even though he's already been paid – that Rasputin will ask her to do whatever it is the Minister wants her to do.'

‘That seems incredible,' Blackstone said.

‘A man with no education – no grasp of geography, economics or warfare – has the power to appoint or dismiss ministers at will,' Vladimir said, with rising anger. ‘And he does so regularly.'

‘Can't anyone do anything about it?'

‘The dowager empress presented the tsarina – her daughter-in-law – with an ultimatum. She said quite plainly that either Rasputin must be banished from court or she would herself leave. She never thought for a moment that she would be the one to go, but she was – and her son, the tsar, did nothing to prevent it. After that, there are few who would even dare to think of trying to change things.'

Archie Patterson had lost weight during his time in gaol, but it was weight he could well afford to lose. Now, being handed his first pint of bitter in over a week, he emptied it in three quick gulps, then signalled to the waiter to bring him another one.

‘Is your client paying for this, as well?' he asked the tall thin man in the Savile Row suit.

‘My client is paying for
everything
as long as you are willing to follow instructions,' Hartington said.

‘What kind of instructions?' Patterson asked suspiciously.

‘Instructions which, I can assure you, Mr Patterson, will only serve your own best interests.'

‘Would you care to be a little more forthcoming than that, Mr Hartington?' Ellie Carr asked.