Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (16 page)

Now was the moment, Schmarya knew.

Crouching low, he ran after the receding sleigh and flung
himself facedown as he made a grab for one of the runners.
He allowed his prone body to be dragged through the snow
for several yards. Then swiftly he pulled himself closer, clutch
ing first one and then the other of the upright struts which rose from the runners to the sleigh bed, until his feet found
purchase atop the runners. He glanced down. The white
ground seemed to fly past in an ever-quickening blur. Without
further ado he climbed up the towering body of the sleigh, using the wide cracks between the slats like the rungs of a
ladder. At the top, he nimbly vaulted over into a heap of trash.

The hellish stench was worse than he had anticipated. He
had to breathe through his mouth, but even so he nearly
gagged and had to fight the impulse to retch. Silence was imperative.
Even dry heaves might attract the drivers' atten
tion.

Moments later, the garbage sleigh slid to a halt at the gates.
Schmarya peeked out from between two slats. The guards, obviously well aware of the stench, kept their distance. They
unlocked the double gates and quickly waved the sleigh
through. It crossed the Neva on the bridge beside the Petropavlovsky Island Fortress, and then raced down a straight
stretch to the Little Nevka before crossing yet another bridge to Kamenny Ostrov. Unfamiliar though he was with the city,
Schmarya sensed it was time he got off this infernal convey
ance.

He climbed to the top slat and braced himself for the leap.
For long seconds he crouched there. Then he jumped. He
seemed suspended in midair before he tumbled painfully onto
a snowbank.

Testing his limbs, he rose slowly to his feet. No broken
bones or sprains, thank God; the most he likely suffered from
the leap was a few bruises.

He whistled to himself. At least he had found a way to
escape the Danilov Palace. Why anyone chose to live there,
he could not for the life of him imagine. However gilded it
might be, it was a prison, a self-imposed prison for the rich.
It not only locked undesirables out, it locked the Danilovs in.
He wondered if they ever gave that any thought.

He glanced up and down the street, his eyes wary. Few
pedestrians were about, as it was not a night for idle strollers.
The weather was working in his favour.

Satisfied that he hadn't been followed, he started walking,
remembering what his revolutionary 'brother' in Kiev had
shared with him: the secret St. Petersburg address was
engraved in his memory forever.

'They're our kind of people, Schmarya,' Sasha Sergeyevich
Kraminsky had whispered to him. 'Working with them, we
can achieve wonders. Give them this dynamite . . .'

Well, he hadn't brought it with him. It was still hidden safely
among the props and costumes. Before he handed it over, he had to see if Sasha's friends were as motivated as he. If they
deserved the explosives, or if they would waste them. Soon he
would find out. But first, he had to find his way to their house.
Find out if they were still together as a group. Find out. . .
Butterflies stirred in his stomach. He would have to be careful.
They might have been discovered and arrested already. The
house could be under surveillance.

At last he came to a streetcar stop. He waited for nearly
half an hour for the electric trolley, but it never came. An old
woman, head hunched down against the relentless blasts of
stinging sleet, finally passed, mumbling about it snowing too
hard for the trolleys to run.

He asked her for directions, and she pulled back away from
the smells emanating from his filthy clothes. She pointed in
the opposite direction and shuffled off.

Thanking her, Schmarya made his way on foot. It was when
he had nearly reached the street he was looking for that he
felt the hairs at the nape of his neck stirring. For an instant he
froze. This instinctive reaction had served him well in the past,
and he had learned to rely on it.

So he was being shadowed after all.

Or . . . was he simply imagining it?

Sneaking a glance over his shoulder, he saw that he was not
alone on the sidewalk. Half a block behind, two men, one
burly and one slightly built, were pale shadows in the sleet coming towards him. As he turned, they seemed to . . . slow
down? Engage in conversation? Or was he imagining that too?
They did seem to be hurrying in his footsteps. But their
strides . . .

Although they seemed to be walking casually, their strides
were long. Very long. If he didn't hurry, they would gain on
him.

He walked on, his footsteps faster, and turned left suddenly
at an intersection. He found himself on a smaller, more
deserted street. He chanced a backward glance again and saw
that the two men had turned at the same intersection and were
gaining on him.

His immediate reaction was to run, but he knew he must
conserve his energies for later. Besides, he didn't want them
to know he was onto them. His heart racing, he broke into a
graceful ballet of a speedwalk. Behind him, he could hear the staccato echo of footsteps speeding up. So they
were
pursuing
him, and no longer disguised the fact. He smiled grimly, his
lips twisting savagely under his scarf. All pretense was aban
doned. They were the wolves, and he their quarry.

Fear and instinct were a potent mixture: fists clenched, he
began racing as fast as he could now, his eyes glued straight
ahead on a well-lit intersection which seemed dismayingly
distant. Still the footsteps sounded ever closer behind him.
Gaining rapidly on him. Panic-stricken, he wondered if he
could take both men on should the need arise. He heard a
sudden yelp of surprise followed by a dull thud and a bellowed
curse. Obviously one of the men had slipped and fallen on
the ice. Schmarya's heart leapt and he felt a new surge of
determination.

The well-lit street grew in size as he summoned up all his reserves and hurtled forward with a final burst of speed.
Another twenty metres, he estimated ... just fifteen more . . . ten . . . nine . . .

The distance melted to two metres, then one, and suddenly
he burst out of the shadowy street and was caught in a throng
milling about on the sidewalk. There was more of a crowd
than he had dared hope. He guessed that a theatre must have
just let out or a restaurant had closed for the night.

Ruthlessly he shoved his way through couples and groups of well-bundled, happily chattering friends, elbowing them aside as he stumbled on. A man grabbed at his arm, but he
shoved him off. A woman screeched after him, 'Watch it, you
idiot!'

Finally Schmarya stopped, slipped into a dark alleyway,
and flattened himself against a door. Swiftly he faced left and
craned his neck.

His hopes sagged. Whichever man had fallen had not suf
fered a broken bone. Both emerged from the smaller street
and glanced up and down the congested sidewalk, their eyes
searching for him. The burly one spotted him, pointed, and
they started after him again. Schmarya observed, with more
than a hint of grim satisfaction, that the slight one had developed a pronounced limp, which slowed both of them down.

Then a miracle happened. The crowd through which he had
savagely elbowed his way had no intention of being shoved
again. Tempers intensified, and as he watched, the men's path
was blocked. People began to yell, and the shouting match
swiftly turned into a fight. Arms flailed and fists flew. More
and more people pressed around in a circle, attracted by the
spectacle.

Schmarya slipped unnoticed from the doorway and disapp
eared. Now his pursuers were stranded in the centre of the mélée. No matter how hard they tried, they would be unable
to catch up with him. He could hear the spectators excitedly
egging the fighters on, and he grinned to himself. There was
nothing like a fight to bring out the worst in people.

Schmarya reached his destination half an hour later, cau
tiously backtracking along a different route. It was a small, bleak old house squeezed between a block of others identical
to it. Only the peeling numbers on the doors differed.

He cautiously slipped inside and shut the door softly behind
him. The hall was narrow and cold, with weak bare bulbs
spilling sickly pools of light down the rickety, narrow wooden stairs. As he climbed up toward the top floor, the steps sagged
and creaked under his weight. Warning anyone of his
approach, he thought dismally, at the same time feeling a
respectful gratitude for someone's extreme caution in having
chosen this place. God forbid, he did not want to deal with
fools. He had a feeling he wasn't, but he had to be sure.

On the second-floor landing the lightbulb was burned out. No light shone down from the third floor either. He had to let
his vision adjust in order to see where he was going. Dark
shadows merged into Stygian darkness, and he cursed the
dangerous steps.

When he took his first step up to the third floor, a shadow detached itself from the wall behind him, and he felt the cold
muzzle of a pistol against the back of his head at the same instant that he heard an unmistakably loud click.

'Take one more step,' a whispery voice warned, 'and I'll
blow your head off.'

Mordka Kokovtsov lay awake in the well-heated second-floor
bedroom of his lavish apartment in the easternmost end of the
Danilov Palace. Mordka had been staring up from his down-
filled pillows with closed eyes for so long that he could imagine ghostly shapes and ephemeral apparitions hovering in front of
his shut eyelids. The dreamy, shadowy boy-angels fluttered
tantalizingly toward him, nimbus bodies with giant erect
penises. Not like that damned Mikhail.

Mikhail!