Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (25 page)

‘Which is?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Money,’ said de Chassiron. ‘French loans have paid for the modernization of Russia – well, not entirely, but without them it wouldn’t have happened on this scale.
The Russians need another loan fairly soon. If they don’t get it, there are fears that the economy could collapse. If the revolutionaries don’t get them,’ de Chassiron visibly
cheered up at this point, ‘then the bankers will. That is why the French are the best informed.’

‘And I presume,’ said Powerscourt, feeling his way through, ‘that the centre of that intelligence, the brains and the knowledge, would be in Paris rather than St Petersburg. It
would be too dangerous to concentrate the knowledge here. Am I right?’

‘You are,’ said de Chassiron. ‘And why, pray, this interest in the best intelligence about Russia?’

‘My friend,’ Powerscourt laughed, ‘I cannot be expected to amass a detailed knowledge of this country in a week or ten days. I may need to tap into somebody else’s
brains.’

‘I don’t think our lords and masters at the Foreign Office will be very pleased to hear that their star investigator is crawling off to the French secret service. His Nibs will have
a fit. Maybe worse.’ De Chassiron grinned like a schoolboy at the thought of his Ambassador losing his temper.

‘I’ve no intention of consulting His Nibs, de Chassiron. You and I have never had this conversation. A man could stop off in Paris on his way back to London after all. You see,
I’m beginning to have a theory about why Martin was killed. It’s very flimsy, on the surface very unlikely. I should just like to bounce it off somebody and I don’t want to burden
you with it right now in case it’s too preposterous.’

‘It’s your investigation,’ said de Chassiron cheerfully. ‘I’m happy to help any time I can.’

A large body of soldiers were marching across Palace Square as Powerscourt made his way towards the Hermitage. He looked forward to going inside, even in such nauseating
company, for he had long been keen to see the finest art gallery in Europe. A footman in blue and scarlet took his coat and gloves as he entered. A tall, rather sombre waiter offered him a glass of
clear liquid from a silver tray. Maybe it was going to be a combination of cocktail party and art viewing, Powerscourt said to himself.

‘My dear Lord Powerscourt! Please do me the honour of taking a glass of this special vodka! It is of exceptional purity. Now then, do bring your glass with you. Have you been to the
Hermitage before? No? Well, I’m afraid most of it is closed but I have my own humble section to show you.’

Derzhenov, his bald head shining like a small light, led the way up an enormous marble staircase, decorated with huge pillars and monumental mirrors.

‘We must not forget our business, Lord Powerscourt, about that poor Mr Martin. Such a shame!’ With that Derzhenov opened an enormous door and led them through a series of
interconnected rooms full of Italian masterpieces of the Renaissance. They were hard to see in the gloom, and Derzhenov had now got so far ahead that only the odd word drifted back across the
marble floors. ‘Leonardo room . . . such a treasure trove, Raphael room . . . what a privilege . . . Raphael’s Madonna Conestibale . . . what a painting.’ Powerscourt suspected
that the man knew very little about art but was perfectly capable of enthusiasm in spite of ignorance about the Old Masters. Such characteristics, after all, are not confined to St Petersburg.

Then they turned left and Derzhenov opened another enormous door. It gave on to a long corridor, lined with tall windows that looked out across a courtyard to the opposite side of the building.
The Okhrana man pressed a button and rather feeble, yellow, museum-strength light came on to illuminate the pictures.

‘All of these are of special interest to me, Powerscourt. The Hermitage authorities have allowed me to mount my own little private collection within the larger whole. Such a privilege! And
now to have you with me to share its delights!’

Derzhenov had positioned himself in such a way that only one painting was so far visible. ‘What about this one, my dear sir? Sixteenth-century Spanish if you please. Not just one saint but
three! And Christ and the Virgin and God Almighty too!’

Powerscourt saw that the painting was called
St Sebastian between St Bernard and St Francis
, completed in 1582, by the Spanish painter Alonso Sanchez Coello. It existed on three separate
layers. On the bottom of the picture Sebastian was tied, rather loosely, to a tree. He was naked except for a white loincloth fastened at the waist and he was leaning outwards on his right hip
which curved in to meet his trunk. He was pierced by a number of arrows, one in the leg, one which had gone right through his right arm and five to his stomach, waist and shoulder. There was no
blood from his wounds and the saint had a rather dreamy expression on his face as if he expected to levitate up to heaven fairly soon. To his left St Francis, clad in a brown habit, appeared to be
pleading with him on some undisclosed saintly business. On his other side St Bernard knelt with a crook clasped between his hands. Behind the saint shadowy figures could be seen, with mountains and
a lake in the distance. On the next level, Christ, in a similar loincloth to the saint but with a red robe, and the Virgin appeared to be discussing possible rescue missions or preparing to welcome
him home. And on the topmost level, God, in a golden light, surrounded like an elderly and benevolent headmaster by hosts of misbehaving and mischievous putti, gazed down on the scene, the world in
his hand, and released a dove of peace.

‘Well,’ said Derzhenov, taking a large swig of his vodka, ‘what do you think of it?’

‘As a work of history or as a work of artistic composition?’ said Powerscourt, feeling rather like a new and junior curator at the National Gallery being interrogated by the
Director.

‘None of those! God in heaven, Powerscourt! Have you no idea what my interests in these pictures are likely to be?’ He strode forward and tapped Sebastian on the heart.

‘Look, man! They’re meant to be killing this fellow, for Christ’s sake! And they’re pathetic! If this was an archery contest, the heart would be here in the very centre
of the ring.’ Derzhenov drew a series of imaginary circles like an archery ring outwards from St Sebastian’s heart. ‘Anybody shooting an arrow or anything else into the centre in
there would get maximum points. But look at this! Not a single shot near the heart! Not one! No points for the archers. No blood either. The fools are not shooting hard enough, for God’s
sake. Bloody arrows are going far enough to penetrate the skin but not hard enough to do any real damage. No proper management of those archers, that’s what I say. If they’d behaved
like that under my command I’d have crucified every third one of them! Even our new peasant intake when we bring them here can see the bloody archers are a lot of old women.’

Powerscourt shuddered when he realized that Derzhenov must be conducting courses in torture here, bringing his minions to learn what lessons they could from the works of the Old Masters.

Derzhenov had moved on to another canvas. ‘And what about this one? By that Italian fellow who got everywhere, Titian,’ he demanded angrily. ‘See any improvement?’

This, Powerscourt saw immediately, was a very different sort of St Sebastian. He was flanked by no companionable saints. Neither Christ nor the Virgin nor God nor his putti offered comfort from
the layers above. You could just see that the saint was attached to a dark tree, barely visible behind him, a white loincloth round his waist. The background was unclear, a turbulent impasto of
dark purple, broken and illuminated in places by yellow or gold patches that might have been sunshine or the lights of a great city or the campfires of a distant enemy. The saint himself was lit
from the front so his trunk was in pale gold. The arms and legs were paler, with the head and the right arm in shadow. There were two arrows piercing his right arm and three in his torso. The
expression on his face was of long suffering, of acceptance of his fate.

‘Well?’ snapped Derzhenov, as Powerscourt finished his preliminary inspection of the painting. ‘What do you think?’

‘Well,’ said Powerscourt gingerly, ‘it’s a much greater painting than the other one, much simpler, more powerful.’

‘Powerful? Poppycock!’ Derzhenov tossed off the remainder of his vodka. ‘Do I need to remind you what was wrong with the first one? Inaccurate archery fire again. Nowhere near
the heart, for God’s sake. Arrows not drawing blood. Pathetic. Sebastian should have been dead long before if they could have fired straight, those Mauretanian archers. Know what I think,
Powerscourt? It’s a serious failure of duty by the counter-terrorist forces in Rome. Couldn’t be tolerated here in Russia. Third century AD, all this stuff with arrows and loincloths
and so on, I think. Roman history not my strong point, but this Sebastian had been clearly discovered by the authorities giving comfort and sympathy to Christian revolutionary elements. Enemy of
the state. Should have been disposed of quietly in some Roman basement like our own. No bugger would ever have heard of him then. No bloody paintings either. Instead the archers are so bad the man
survives! He was rescued, for God’s sake, by some other terrorist sympathizer called Irene and nursed back to health. Fellow only dies when he shows himself to the Emperor who has him stoned
or cudgelled to death, can’t remember which. Terrible failure by the security services, that’s how I portray it to our students.’

Powerscourt was saved from the need for speech by the reappearance of the waiter with the vodka tray who glided in almost invisibly from a door hidden by a tapestry.

‘Splendid, splendid,’ said Derzhenov, downing one glass and taking another. ‘Let me lead you to our next pair of pictures, Lord Powerscourt. These I always take care to show
our new recruits. Can I interest you in a couple of Flagellations on the way?’ Derzhenov had moved away to the window and was looking at the snow falling fast on the courtyard outside.
‘Both remarkable examples of how not to whip a man? No? A couple of heads of John the Baptist, perhaps? One a Caravaggio where the mouth of the beheaded prophet seems to carry on speaking
after death? My own favourite depiction of violence, the blinding of Samson, a quite remarkable early work by Rubens? No? Well, before we step along to the last two, perhaps we could speak of Mr
Martin.’

Powerscourt had known this must be coming. He wondered if the violent paintings had been meant to soften him up. Well, he thought to himself, he had seen far worse things in battle. Then, he
told himself, so too had Derzhenov.

‘My assumption, Lord Powerscourt,’ the Okhrana man continued to stare out at the snow, deliberately avoiding eye contact in the manner of an Old Bailey barrister, ‘is that you
have not found the answer to the death of Mr Martin. If you had, you would have gone home by now. Is that right?’

‘You will understand, General, that I am not at liberty to discuss the case with you, however much I might want to.’

‘Nonsense, Lord Powerscourt, don’t give me that rubbish. If you thought I could help, you would have been begging for my assistance.’

‘And you must understand, General, my belief that if you had the information you seek, you would not be questioning me at all.’

Not so much chess as fencing, Powerscourt felt, unsure of his ground. He wondered if the Okhrana man had read Lord Rosebery’s cable by now.

‘You have been to speak to that mistress of Martin’s, I believe, Lord Powerscourt. Did she have anything to say for herself, apart from the names of all the waltzes they ever danced
together?’

‘I’m sure you have spoken to Mrs Kerenkova in your time, General. You would have been remiss if you had not. She told me what I am sure you already know, that her husband is here in
St Petersburg, supervising the repairs on his ship.’

‘I did know that, but thank you for being prepared to tell me. Anything else?’

Powerscourt thought it might help his cause if he flung unimportant titbits in front of the Russian. ‘Only that he knew Mr Martin was coming, sometime round about the middle of
December,’ he said. ‘Do you find that odd?’

The Russian shrugged his shoulders. ‘The military, be they army or navy, are always close to the intelligence services, I think. They talk, they gossip. So you are staying for a while
longer, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I hope so,’ was the reply, ‘unless something terrible happens, or you decide to throw me out.’

‘Thank you for being so co-operative, Lord Powerscourt. Let me just show you my last two treasures.’

They passed beyond a couple of severed heads, sitting incongruously on silver salvers, and a couple of flagellation scenes where the action was too dark to see properly. Then Derzhenov stopped.
‘My second favourite,’ he said solemnly. ‘
The Flaying of Marsyas
, by Titian,’ he went on reverentially. ‘For anyone who needs to extract information from the
unwilling, it is an inspiration.’

Powerscourt looked at the painting. It told the story of the flaying of the satyr, half man, half goat, called Marsyas who challenged Apollo to a musical contest, Marsyas on his pipe, Apollo on
the lyre. When Apollo won, some said by challenging his opponent to play his instrument upside down as Apollo could his lyre, his reward was to have Marsyas flayed alive for his insolence in
challenging a god. The action took place in a wood or a forest towards the end of the day and the colours were a study in flesh tones up through various shades of brown to a pale pink. There was no
blue or green or red to be seen. Marsyas had been tied upside down to a tree. Bits of an improbable pink ribbon could be seen fastening the ends of his legs to the branches. His hands at the bottom
of the painting were tied together. The dark brown and occasional white of the fur on his satyr’s legs contrasted with the hairless trunk and chest beneath. His arms formed a circle round his
head. To the left of the painting a young woman was playing the violin, another stringed instrument that would mock the satyr in his agony. To the right were some spectators, a naked man carrying
what looked like a bucket of coal, possibly for a fire to heat up the flaying devices, an old woman sitting with her hand on her chin, a child and a couple of dogs. A naked man with a black woollen
hat was working on the goat part of Marsyas with a silvery instrument. A section of goat fur had already been removed from around the knee. A young woman, scarcely more than a girl, was attacking
the skin on his upper chest with a silver knife. Marsyas himself seemed to have passed out. All the participants looked as though this was a perfectly normal routine that happened every day in the
forest, hanging a satyr upside down and cutting the skin off his body.