The People's Will (58 page)

‘Richard!’ she gasped. Iuda felt suddenly weak – disoriented. Then he realized she had merely said, ‘Vasya!’ His mind had been toying with him. Again he recalled the final time he had seen – or believed he had seen – Susanna’s face.

It had been on the very night when Iuda’s father had died, when he had gone down beneath Saint George’s to release his vampire captive in exchange for the death of Thomas Cain. Just as he had bid his farewell to Honoré, somewhere in the darkness beyond, he had seen her – Susanna – not the whole of her, just her pallid face peering out of the gloom as though she were lurking in the darkness there with Honoré, waiting like him for a chance of
freedom. It was thirteen months since Richard had left her down there; thirteen months since her death. At the time Richard had put it down to his guilty conscience. Only later did he understand that that could not be; he had no conscience. Looking back he couldn’t even be sure who it was had actually killed his father.

Dusya grunted and slumped forward, her arm no longer able to take her weight. Her forehead hit the stone with a thud and she lay still, her head to one side and her eyes open. Her last breath left her noisily and as her body slackened it collapsed on to the wooden bolt that had penetrated her stomach, forcing the bloody tip out a little further through her back.

Lukin walked over to her and checked her pulse, but it was obvious she was dead. He reached down and closed her eyelids with his fingertips. It was a sentimental act from the man who had killed her, but it didn’t occupy him for long. He went over to his broken crossbow and examined it briefly, then threw it disconsolately into a corner of the room.

‘Looks like you’re going to have to kill me the old-fashioned way,’ he said.

‘Any mechanism will do,’ said Iuda. ‘I’m not sure I want to sully my lips with Romanov blood. I may simply strangle you, or rip your head off. Or use this.’ He reached into his pocket and caressed his double-bladed knife, his weapon of choice for so many years.

‘One question,’ said Lukin.

Iuda shrugged.

‘How did you get down here? You came through that gateway, I know – but where does it lead?’

Iuda smiled. He was happy to explain – at least to explain some of it. He would have to be careful. Once Lukin was dead, Zmyeevich would know his mind. Iuda would need to be circumspect as to exactly what was housed in that mind.

‘We’re standing in a very auspicious location, you and I,’ he said. ‘I take it you know the story of what took place between Zmyeevich and Pyotr I – your great-great-great-great-grandfather, I suppose.’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, there’s a few details of the story that Pyotr didn’t pass
down to his descendants – or if he did they pretty soon got lost along the way. And Zmyeevich doesn’t like to talk of it either.’

‘The fate of Ascalon,’ said Lukin.

Iuda nodded, impressed. ‘A fragment of the lance with which George slayed his dragon. Zmyeevich used to wear it on a cord around his neck. He thought it gave him his power. How much of it’s true I don’t know. There may have been mountebanks all over Wallachia selling these things like popes selling splinters of the true cross. What matters is that Zmyeevich believes it.’

‘And Pyotr stole it.’

‘Exactly. Grabbed it from around Zmyeevich’s neck just before he ordered Colonel Brodsky to kill him. Just before Zmyeevich escaped.’

‘So what did he do with it?’

Iuda shrugged. ‘What could he do with it? There was a story that if it was destroyed then Zmyeevich too would be destroyed; another that if the thing were not properly disposed of it could lead to Zmyeevich gaining the most enormous powers. All Pyotr knew was that Zmyeevich wanted it. The best thing to do was to hide it safely. But he didn’t want to do it himself – the knowledge would be too dangerous.’

‘So what did he do?’ asked Lukin.

‘At the time there were dozens of groups and sects trying to make a home in Petersburg, eager to ingratiate themselves with the tsar. Any might have helped him to conceal the thing, but in the end he chose the Armenians. Why them? Who knows? Perhaps they’re the group which least venerates Saint George. I mean, you wouldn’t entrust it to the English, would you?’ He laughed, partly at the general absurdity of the concept, partly in the knowledge of where Ascalon now lay. ‘The Armenians wanted to build a church. Pyotr tried to help, but he didn’t want to appear to favour them. They made several attempts; in 1714, 1725, 1740. They finally got their church built in 1780. It’s above us, almost – Saint Yekaterina’s – on Nevsky Prospekt between—’

‘I know. I’ve seen it.’

‘I’m sure you have. Anyway, they were free to dig deep cellars and tunnel under the city and bury Ascalon in a nice safe shrine.’

‘Near here?’ asked Lukin.

‘You’re in it.’

Iuda walked over to the arched alcove in the wall opposite the door. It was empty now, but hadn’t always been. Someone – Lukin or one of his comrades – had hung an electric light bulb just above it; a pathetic thing – so feeble that Iuda could gaze straight at it. He pointed to the carved letters.

‘There it is, you see: “Ascalon”, though I think it’s more like “Ascaghon” here, a bit like that horrible sound the Dutch make – Armenian isn’t my strongest language.’

Lukin gazed at the lettering, a look of awe spreading across his face. He reached out his hand as if to touch the relic where it had once stood. ‘And here it remained, for all those years.’

Iuda turned away to show his disgust. ‘Don’t be like that. You know it’s horseshit as well as I do. And “all those years” wasn’t so very long. I bribed the
dyachok
, or whatever they call them here, back in ’67 to let me down into the labyrinth below the church. It only took me three months to find it.’

‘And where is it now?’

‘Oh, somewhere safe, don’t you worry.’ Iuda turned back to face Lukin, who had moved away from the alcove and from Dusya’s body towards the pile of junk in the corner. Iuda fingered the knife in his pocket.

‘And Dmitry? – or should I say Shklovskiy? – or Otrepyev?’

‘I don’t know how he and Zmyeevich got on to this place; probably followed the same trail I did. They couldn’t work out how to get in through the church, so Dmitry steered the Executive Committee into digging around here. Of course by the time they broke through, Ascalon was long gone.’

‘They must have been disappointed.’

‘Enough to chase all the way to Turkmenistan to find me. Which is where you came in.’ He took the knife from his pocket. ‘And here is where you’re going to leave.’ He saw the fear on Lukin’s face. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty more long conversations like this once you’ve arisen. I’m sure you’ll become quite sick of me.’

He took a pace forward, the knife out in front of him, deciding
how to use it. A cut to the throat was what it had been designed for, but that would be too swift. Iuda felt no need for revenge over Dusya, but he knew his Bible: ‘life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot’. Iuda’s blade would enter Lukin just where the bolt had entered Dusya. After that he’d see how the mood took him, but his eye would not pity.

Lukin backed away until the wall prevented him from going any further. His hands pressed against it, as if clawing for some means of escape.

‘Oh, before you go, though,’ said Iuda, remembering their earlier conversation, ‘you were going to tell me something; something about your real name.’

Lukin suddenly seemed to grow. He was no longer against the wall, merely beside it, though his right hand remained outstretched, touching the brickwork. Close to it Iuda noticed a small switch, presumably part of the dim electric lighting system they had down here, or even something to do with the bomb. Lukin’s eyes flared and he breathed deeply before speaking.

‘My name is Mihail Konstantinovich Danilov, son of Tamara Alekseevna Danilova, daughter of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. And you are about to die.’

He flicked the switch.

Aleksandr stepped down from his carriage on to the snowy embankment. He looked dazed and there was blood on his hands and arms, but he was very much alive. A few members of the crowd cheered at the sight of him, but it was a muted celebration – the carnage all around did not merit more.

‘Please, Your Majesty, get back on board.’ The coachman, unharmed in the explosion, was shouting down from his perch, his voice scarcely audible over the desperate whinnying of the dying Cossack horse.

‘It’s too badly damaged,’ the colonel shouted back. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘It’s not safe to stay here. There may be more.’

‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’ The colonel turned to his emperor. ‘Sir, we should take my sleigh.’

Aleksandr looked bewildered – concussed even. He paused
for a moment before speaking, but then gradually began to gain resolve. ‘Yes, yes, of course. But I want to see the fellow who did this first. I take it you’ve got him?’

The colonel exchanged a glance with one of his officers, but both clearly knew that the tsar’s instructions could not be questioned. ‘This way, sir,’ he said.

He walked briskly, keen to be away as soon as possible. His head flicked from one side to the other, on the lookout for further trouble. Ordinarily the tsar’s long legs would have allowed him easily to keep pace, but today he walked more slowly, like an old man, weakened in much the same way that Zmyeevich was by the sunlight.

A shot rang out. Some ducked, others turned their heads in the direction of the sound. Quietness followed and was a blessing for most. One of the gendarmes had fired his pistol into the head of the crippled horse, silencing it once and for all and in the process splattering its blood and brains over his uniform. The tsar merely stood, taking a moment to realize that the bullet had not been intended for him, and then continued walking towards his assailant.

The bomber was still pinioned against the railings by two of the tsar’s escort. Aleksandr stood to face him. He raised his hand, his forefinger extended, as if to wag it as he berated his attacker, but instead he kept it still, shaking minutely, a jagged red cut showing at the base of his thumb. He asked just one question.

‘What’s your name?’ His voice was rich with disgust.

‘Glazov,’ the man replied calmly. ‘Makar Yegorovich.’

It was almost certainly a lie. Aleksandr could find no more words to utter. He turned away.

‘The sled now, please, sir,’ insisted the colonel.

Aleksandr looked across the scene of devastation and to the crowd beyond, straight into Zmyeevich’s eyes. He seemed to form a sudden resolve.

‘I want to see where it happened,’ he said. He marched back along the embankment towards the funnel-shaped crater left by the bomb, but his eyes remained on Zmyeevich. He had confronted the bomb thrower and shown his defiance to him, now it seemed he wanted to demonstrate that same defiance to a far
greater enemy. Zmyeevich smiled, coaxing him forward, knowing that there were two more assassins still out there, and at the same time trying to hide that knowledge from Aleksandr.

The tsar stopped at the side of the pit, the white of snow beneath his feet suddenly giving way to the brown, frozen soil of its steep sides. It was a wonder the canal hadn’t broken through.

‘Poor devils,’ he muttered, looking down at the mutilated bodies of the Cossack and the butcher’s boy. Then he looked back up at Zmyeevich. His eyes glared for a moment and he turned away.

‘Let’s go,’ he said to the colonel.

The relief on the soldier’s face was palpable. ‘This way, Your Majesty,’ he said, using his hand to indicate the path towards his sleigh. They set out back along the road, the heads of onlookers turning to follow them. But one of the crowd did not watch. His back was to the tsar as he leaned against the canal railing, gazing thoughtfully into the icy water, a newspaper parcel clutched to his chest.

The tsar passed him at a distance of scarcely three paces. At the moment Aleksandr was at his closest the young man swiftly turned, raised the package above his head and flung it down at the tsar’s feet.

The current began to flow. The thin strand of fuse wire stretched between the two carbon blocks began to heat up. In less than a second its temperature was higher than the melting point of the zinc from which it was made. It became liquid and fell away, but the path that it had provided for the current remained, arcing through air itself between the carbon electrodes, producing a brilliant white light that in moments was at its full intensity. And it was more than simply white; it stretched into parts of the spectrum that were imperceptible to the human eye. Much like the light of the sun.

Mihail knew that all of this was happening without having to watch it. He had experimented many times and understood the physics perfectly. Today his only desire was to witness its effects.

It was not the same devastation that would have been meted out to Iuda if he’d truly been exposed to the sun’s rays, but Mihail had known that. This was the second time he would be blessed
with the opportunity to witness the effects of this great modern invention on a vampire. This time, though, it would be a far more enjoyable show. This time it was Iuda.