The Third Section
Authors: Jasper Kent
It was dark now. The moon outside was a thin crescent, shining its light through the doorway and through several holes in the ceiling, cutting through the cave in glowing, ethereal columns. The skin of the dead Russian, lying in one such ray of moonlight, looked as grey as the rocks beside him. Next to the body stood the figure of a man …
1855
. After forty years of peace in Europe, war rages. In the Crimea, the city of Sevastopol is under siege. To the north, Saint Petersburg is blockaded. But in Moscow there is one who sits and waits – for the death of a tsar, and for the curse upon his blood to be passed to a new generation.
As their country grows weaker, a man and a woman – unaware of the hidden ties that bind them – must come to terms with their shared legacy.
In Moscow, Tamara Valentinovna Komarova – an agent of the tsar – uncovers a brutal murder. It seems this is not the first death of its kind, but the most recent in a sequence of similar killings committed by one who has stalked the city since 1812.
And in the ruins of Sevastopol, Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov confronts not only the guns of the British and French but also another, unnatural enemy – those creatures his father had thought buried beneath the earth, thirty years before …
Characters of the Danilov Quintet
His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery
SECTION
AUTHOR’S NOTES
A verst is a Russian unit of distance, slightly greater than a kilometre.
During the nineteenth century, Russians based their dates on the old Julian Calendar, which in the 1850s was twelve days behind the Gregorian Calendar used in Western Europe. All dates in the text are given in the Russian form and so, for example, the coronation of Alexander II is placed on 26 August 1856, where Western history books have it on 7 September.
A list of characters in the Danilov Quintet appears
here
.
Thanks to Stéphane Marsan and Hilary Casey for assistance with French and German.
Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov | Russian soldier and spy who defeated the Oprichniki in 1812 and saved Tsar Aleksandr I from Zmyeevich in 1825 by helping to fake his death. Sent into exile after the Decembrist Uprising |
Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov | Only son of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov |
Marfa Mihailovna Danilova | Wife of Aleksei and mother of Dmitry |
Domnikiia Semyonovna Beketova | Aleksei’s mistress, who accompanied him into exile in Siberia in 1826 |
Iuda | The only human among the twelve |
| Oprichniki who came to Russia in 1812. Under the name of Cain he experimented on vampires. Became a vampire himself in 1825 |
Zmyeevich | The arch vampire who brought the Oprichniki to Russia in 1812 and who seeks revenge for the trickery played upon him by Tsar Pyotr the Great in 1712 |
Vadim Fyodorovich Savin | Aleksei’s commander, who died during the campaign of 1812 |
Maksim Sergeivich Lukin | Comrade of Aleksei, who died during the campaign of 1812 |
Dmitry Fetyukovich Petrenko | Comrade of Aleksei, who died during the campaign of 1812 |
The Oprichniki | The nickname for a band of vampires defeated by Aleksei in 1812. Individually they took the names of the twelve apostles |
Yelena Vadimovna Lavrova | Daughter of Vadim Fyodorovich |
Valentin Valentinovich Lavrov | Husband of Yelena Vadimovna |
Rodion Valentinovich Lavrov | Son of Yelena and Valentin |
Dr Dmitry Tarasov | Physician to Tsar Aleksandr I, who conspired with Aleksei to fake the tsar’s death |
Prince Pyetr Mihailovich | Adjutant general to Tsar Aleksandr I, |
Raisa Styepanovna Tokoryeva | Vampire who helped Iuda to escape Chufut Kalye in 1825 |
Margarita Kirillovna | A prostitute colleague of Domnikiia who was murdered by Iuda in 1812 |
Natalia Borisovna Papanova | Daughter of a cobbler; sheltered Aleksei and Dmitry Fetyukovich during the French occupation of Moscow in 1812 |
In 1853 Russia went to war with the Ottoman Empire for the eleventh time in three hundred years. The difference on this occasion was that Great Britain and France allied with the Turks, leading to a European war on a scale not seen since the time of Napoleon. There were major engagements around the Danube, in the Baltic and the White Sea, in the Caucasus and even in the Pacific, but the most significant theatre of conflict was the Black Sea, where the Allies attempted to destroy the Russian fleet harboured in Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. Hence in the West at least, the conflict became known as the Crimean War.
The immediate cause of the war was the argument over who should have control of the Christian holy sites within the Muslim Ottoman Empire; the Catholic Church, championed by France, or the Orthodox Church, by Russia. More generally, antagonism between the two sides was due to fears of Russian expansion into the British Empire. Russia had the potential of reaching British India over land, while Britain’s access was by sea, over the circuitous route around the Cape of Good Hope. Turkish influence in the east acted as a buffer against Russian ambitions, but the anticipated collapse of the Ottoman Empire – nicknamed by Tsar Nicholas I as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ – would mean that Russia could gain much of the Turkish territory and take a step closer to the subcontinent.
While the French had little interest in this dispute, the French Emperor, Napoleon III, was, like the British, concerned over Russian naval access to the Mediterranean, through the Black Sea. Moreover, Napoleon III saw that making a stand against
Russia
might consolidate his recently acquired position (he became emperor in the coup d’état of 1851) as well as offering a chance to take revenge for his uncle Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat by Russia in 1812 and Tsar Nicholas’ failure to properly recognize Napoleon III’s claim to be emperor.
To test Turkey’s determination during negotiations over the holy sites, Nicholas I ordered the Russian occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia – autonomous principalities within the Ottoman Empire and historically the lands over which the two nations had often clashed. The Conference of Vienna led to a proposed compromise which gave Russia limited authority over the holy sites. This was enough for Russia, which began to withdraw from the principalities, but not for Turkey, which declared war on Russia. The remaining players began to take sides.