The Red Tide Read online

  “But, madam, you are barred from Russia, by order of the Tsar.”

  “It is the Tsar who has given the permission for me to return, for this visit, Harold. Would you not like to visit Russia again?”

  “Well, madam, in all the circumstances...”

  “Listen, get me Mr Duncan on the phone.” Patricia was on her feet now, prowling to and fro as the excitement took hold of her mind. “The children! They must come too. They have never been to Russia. Perkins? Perkins! Come in here a moment, please.”

  “I have Mr Cromb, madam.” Morgan was standing by the wall telephone.

  “Oh, thank you, Harold.” Patricia waved at the nurse, who had just appeared in the inner doorway, and took the receiver from Morgan’s hand. “Duncan! Duncan, darling.”

  “I was about to call you,” Duncan said. “There’s been the most frightful news from Russia.”

  “Oh!” Patricia was disappointed at having her thunder stolen. “How did you find out?”

  “It came in on the wire.”

  “Aunt Anna is that famous?”

  “Aunt Anna? Mom? Whatever are you talking about, my dear?”

  Patricia raised her eyebrows to Morgan. “Whatever are you talking about, Duncan?”

  “Why the attempt on Prime Minister Stolypin’s life, of course. How did Mom get involved?”

  “There has been an attempt on Stolypin’s life? Where? How?”

  “At the opening of the Kiev Opera House, last week. Someone walked up to him in the middle of the performance and shot him. He was badly wounded.”

  “The Kiev Opera House! My God, Duncan, Aunt Anna was there. And she was trampled on in the panic and is now seriously ill.”

  “Mom? Trampled upon?” Duncan sounded thunder struck.

  “There was a telegram from Alexei, just now.”

  “You mean she’s been hurt? How badly?”

  “Alexei doesn’t say. But he wants you to go to her, Duncan. And he says I can go too. The Tsar has given permission. I’m starting to pack now.”

  *

  Alexei was on the dock in Sevastopol to meet them. Duncan, having exchanged a succession of wires with his brother and sister in Boston, had taken a Cromb Lines’ ship as far as Naples, where he had changed to a vessel of the Crimean Shipping Company, owned by his cousins. Now he escorted the entourage down the gangplank, while the seamen and stevedores stood respectfully to attention; Alexei was their ultimate employer.

  The Prince wore the white uniform with the red collar and facings of a general officer, but no black arm hand, Duncan observed with relief. He had been in a state of agitation ever since Patricia’s phone call. It really was not possible to imagine anything happening to Mom. Anna Bolugayevska had overridden so many extraordinary crises: as a young woman she had been mistress — as well as sister-in-law — of the famous Colin MacLain Bolugayevski, the founder of the English part of the family, and with him had fought her sister for possession of Bolugayen; as the wife of the American shipowner Charles Cromb she had had to adapt her wild Russian ways to the staid requirements of Boston society; as the mistress in turn, after Charles Cromb’s death, of her own nephew, Alexei’s older half-brother Peter, she had shared exile for Patricia’s misbehaviour; and finally, she had fought for survival beneath the Japanese guns in Port Arthur, only seven years ago. To think of her now succumbing to a panic-stricken mob...

  “How is she?” he asked, squeezing Alexei’s hands.

  “She has broken two ribs, and at her age this is a serious business. But Dr Geller says she will mend, if she is careful and behaves sensibly.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Alexei was embracing his sister. Their greeting was a trifle hesitant, on both sides. If the last generation of Bolugayevskis had had to contend with the foibles of Aunt Anna, at least she had never been arrested for treason. And Patricia, if she had expressed her gratitude to her brother often enough for saving her life, had never once expressed any regret for being an anarchist. Not even Duncan knew if those tumultuous emotions still lurked in her heart and mind. “It is so good to be home,” Patricia said.

  “I am sure you will find that nothing has changed,” Alexei promised her. “And these are the children?”

  Patricia beckoned them forward. “This is Joe,” she said.

  The boy was thirteen, and extended his hand gravely, although his eyes were shining, both at the sight of the uniform — Alexei carried his huge plumed helmet under his left arm — and of the man himself, of whom he had heard so much. Alexei shook hands with equal gravity. He knew all about little Joe, naturally. He knew that the boy was not Duncan’s natural son, although Duncan had adopted him, but had been born out of wedlock in the wilds of Siberia, to a Jewish exile who had shared Patricia’s fate but had died in the escape. But the father had been a friend of Sonia’s even before he had met Patricia, and Alexei was therefore prepared to welcome his son, although since the shooting of Peter Stolypin the future, certainly as regards Russian Jews, had become ever more uncertain.

  Joe’s sister, Jennifer, named after Alexei and Patricia’s mother, was entirely the child of Duncan and Patricia. At five years old she was already strongly built and fair-haired, in the strongest contrast to her slight, dark half-brother. Nor was she the least shy of her uncle, held up her arms to be lifted into his for a hug. “I like you,” she confided.

  “As I like you, little Jennie,” he assured her.

  There was no time to explore Sevastopol, although Joseph, steeped in history from an early age, wanted to hear all about the siege of sixty-five years before, and was disappointed that they were not able to ride out to Balaklava and see the famous Valley of Death that had been immortalised by Tennyson following the Charge of the Light Brigade. Colin MacLain had ridden in that charge, been wounded, and taken prisoner. But for that charge, and his father’s adoption by the Bolugayevskis, Alexei reflected, none of them would be standing here now.

  The train was waiting, because in Sevastopol the train always waited for the Bolugayevskis. As was the family custom, Alexei had reserved an entire carriage for his party and their servants. “Are you glad to be back in Russia, Morgan?” he asked. He remembered the valet from the last adventure.

  “I am, sir,” Morgan said. “Although I trust this journey will be less eventful than the last.”

  “We must hope so.” Alexei nodded to the waiting conductor, and the train moved out of the station. “First stop Kharkov, as usual. I’m afraid our railways have not improved.”

  He sat with Duncan and Patricia in his own compartment, the men drinking brandies and soda and smoking cigars as the city fell away and they rumbled through open country towards the isthmus. “Tell us what happened,” Patricia said.

  Alexei told them about that evening. “It really was a panic. It is amazing how well-bred genteel people can turn into a pack of wild animals when they are made afraid. Aunt Anna had apparently stepped into the aisle, hoping to rejoin us upstairs, just before the shot was fired, and she was bowled over and knocked to the floor, whereupon several people actually stepped on her in their anxiety to get out. A woman of seventy-three! It really makes you despair of the human race.”

  “What about the man who shot Stolypin?”

  “Oh, they got him quickly enough. A Jewish fellow, named Mordka Bogrov.” He could not resist a glance at Patricia.

  “I have never heard of him,” she said. “Was he acting alone?”

  “He is being interrogated by the Okhrana now. I have no doubt they will find out.”

  Patricia shivered. “Will he be executed?” Duncan asked.

  “I would imagine so. Especially if Stolypin dies.” Patricia shivered again.

  The news was waiting for them when they arrived in Kharkov. The Prime Minister was dead.

  Chapter Two - The Holy Man

  “Here is the report you asked for, Your Honour.” Captain Klinski placed the folder on the desk, and stood to attention.

  “At ease, Feodor,” Colon
el Alexis Michaelin said, opening the cardboard cover. “A Jew. Another Jew. If I had my way I would stamp them out, eradicate them, rid Russia entirely of this pestilence.”

  “Yes, Your Honour,” Feodor Klinski said, patiently. He reflected that his superior’s capacity for hatred was probably the main reason he had been demoted to the command of the Okhrana in this remote town of Ekaterinburg, just beyond the Ural Mountains. As far as Klinski was concerned, the place was beyond the pale of civilised human society also, certainly with winter approaching.

  As commander of the Petersburg office, seven years ago Alexis Michaelin had had the world at his feet, metaphorically as well as literally: he was a huge bull of a man who stood well over six feet and had a physique to match. His monocle, always shining brightly in the middle of his great bland face, was the sole suggestion of any weakness in his physical or mental persona, and Klinski knew that it was actually an affectation, and not worn because the eye was weak.

  In St Petersburg, Michaelin had been able to arrest and interrogate, torture and flog, and even condemn, those he had considered enemies of the State, without question. But his decision to allow Father Gabon to lead that infamous march on the Winter Palace in January 1905 had been his downfall. Gabon and his workers with their wives and children had appeared to wish only to present a petition to the Tsar. Michaelin, with his network of spies, could easily have stopped the march at its start; he knew the names of all the organisers and could have had them arrested. But he had chosen to let it proceed, in the full knowledge that the Tsar and Tsaritsa were not even in the Winter Palace, and could therefore be in no danger, because Gabon had been in his pay, an agent provocateur bound to do the bidding of his Okhrana employers. Michaelin had wanted the opportunity for a show of force to quell any incipient rebellion that might have been simmering following the Russian defeats by the Japanese, thus he had sent a message to the guard commander at the palace to be watchful, because the mob was very probably armed. The result had been a massacre, as the troops had opened fire on the entirely unarmed crowd of people. Hundreds had been killed, in the name of the Tsar. The Tsar had been furious, and had sought a scapegoat; Michaelin had been removed from his post and sent to Ekaterinburg.

  But he had never forgotten either his demotion or those he considered his enemies, high amongst whom were the Bolugayevskis. They hated him because he had arrested the Countess Patricia, had forced her to submit to rape and torture, and eventually, exile in Siberia, along with her friend and accomplice, Sonia Cohen, who now called herself the Princess Bolugayevska. But he hated them equally and was determined one day to bring them down, even from a provincial backwater like Ekaterinburg. And there it was. “Amongst those attending the opera on the fateful night were the Prince and Princess of Bolugayen,” he read, his tone savouring every word. “Together with Countess Anna Bolugayevska. The Countess was badly injured in the stampede following the shooting of the Prime Minister. Now, what do you think of that, Feodor?”

  Klinski scratched his head. “Is it important, Your Honour?”

  “They were there, Feodor.”

  “But so were several hundred other people, Your Honour.”

  “I am not interested in other people,” Michaelin said. “The Prince Bolugayevski attends the opening of the State Opera House in Kiev. Why? To my knowledge he has never set foot in Kiev in his life before. He is accompanied by his wife, who is both Jewish and a known terrorist.”

  “Ahem,” Klinski ventured. Michaelin glared at him. “She was once arrested for terrorism, Your Honour. A long time ago. Before she married the Prince. Since then...”

  “Leopards do not change their spots,” Michaelin said. “They were there, Feodor. And on the night they are in Kiev to attend the opera, for the first time ever, remember, the Prime Minister is mortally wounded, by a Jew.” Another glare. “You do not see what I am driving at?”

  “I do, Your Honour. But...I would say it is almost certainly a coincidence that the Bolugayevskis were there on the night the Prime Minister was killed.”

  “I do not believe in coincidences,” Michaelin declared.

  “Well, then, Your Honour, should we not report your...ah, our, suspicions, to the Petersburg Office?”

  “Under no circumstances. This business could take me back to where I belong, in the Petersburg Office. But not if someone else gets the credit. Now listen to me, and I will tell you what we are going to do.”

  *

  “Wow!” Joe Cromb commented, standing in the great hall of the Bolugayevski Palace in Poltava and looking around him. “This must be bigger than Buckingham Palace!” Jennie couldn’t speak, just held her brother’s hand.

  “It probably is,” Duncan agreed. “I’ve never been inside Buckingham Palace.”

  Alexei had been giving instructions to the servants to have the windows draped in black. “But I think we should get out to Bolugayen as quickly as possible,” he told Duncan and Patricia over lunch. “We’ll leave in the morning.”

  “Do you think there’ll be trouble?” Duncan asked.

  “There will certainly be repercussions. A lot will depend on what this man Bogrov confesses, on who he names.” Again he could not prevent himself from looking at his sister.

  “I told you, I have never even heard of this man,” Patricia said. “As for Stolypin, I never met him either.”

  “And we have the Tsar’s permission for Patricia to return to Russia,” Duncan pointed out.

  “Oh, quite. I am not disputing that, as I obtained it for you. But we don’t want any trouble with officious police officers; things aren’t quite what they were in my father’s day, when he told the police what to do rather than the other way around.”

  “What about Stolypin’s death?” Duncan asked.

  Alexei’s shoulders hunched. “It is a catastrophe. He is the one man who might have saved Russia.”

  “Oh, come now. Saved Russia? Isn’t that pitching things a bit strong?”

  “You don’t know the truth of it, Duncan. At the end of the day, you know, the Tsar, even the Tsar, only rules by the consent of his people, and that means the trust and support of his people. Nicholas lost that in the war with Japan because of his constant indecision, his summoning of a parliament, the duma, and then his dismissal of it because it opposed his concept of autocracy. Peter Stolypin was working to recreate that essential empathy between Tsar and people. And he was succeeding. Until some maverick anarchist went wild. Forgive me, Trisha, but it was a dreadful crime.”

  “I agree with you,” Patricia said.

  “Now,” Alexei went on. “There is no one to take his place.”

  “You’re not going to tell me that Stolypin was the only worthwhile minister in Russia,” Duncan declared. “What about that fellow Witte?”

  “Witte is a very sound man. But he cannot stand up to the Tsar, much less the Tsaritsa. He is too steeped in the mystique of the throne, the determination that the throne speaks with the mouth of God, and is therefore infallible.” He gave a twisted smile. “You realise I am speaking treason.”

  “Not to us. But there must be someone else. What about the aristocracy? What about you?!”

  Alexei’s smile was more twisted yet. “I am the brother of an anarchist.” He looked at Patricia. “Don’t take offence. It happens to be the simple truth, in the eyes of the powers that be. Anyway, I don’t think I’d be very good at the job.”

  “I think you’d be very good at the job,” Patricia said fiercely. “Oh, if you could know how much I regret those things I said. And even more, did.”

  Alexei squeezed her hand. “Does that mean, that if people like Lenin and his friends ever again raised the red flag in Russia, you would disown them?”

  “Yes,” Patricia said. “I would.”

  “I am so terribly sorry,” Sonia said.

  “I think we always knew he was going to die.” Alexei sat behind his desk and began to open the mail that had accumulated during his brief absence; they had arrived on Bolugayen
an hour earlier, and this was the first opportunity Sonia had had to be alone with her husband. “He was shot at point-blank range.”

  She sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk. “In a way, I feel so guilty...because it was one of my people...” She paused, waiting for Alexei to reassure her, as he always did. But Alexei was reading a letter, with a frown. “Not bad news?” she asked.

  His head jerked. “Bad news? Good lord, no.” He grinned at her. “Old Witte. Keeping in touch, I suppose. Not bad news.” It was odd, Sonia thought, how men never seemed able to realise that their wives always knew when they were being lied to.

  “Mom,” Duncan said, sitting beside Anna’s bed. “Oh, Mom!”

  Never had he seen his mother looking so frail. But as always, there was nothing frail about her spirit. “I’m not going to die, you silly boy,” she said. “What are a couple of broken ribs?”

  He kissed her. “Alix and Charlie send their love.”

  “But they are not here. They have written me off.”

  “That’s not true,” Duncan protested. “I was closest. But Alix is planning to come. She’s probably already on her way.”

  “I shall be glad to see her.” Anna looked past her son at Patricia, and held out her hand. “My dear, it is so good to see you, here, in Russia.”

  “It is so very good to be here, Aunt Anna,” Patricia said. “But I am sorry you are not well.”

  The two women had had a stormy relationship. As a girl, Patricia had had but a single dream, to be like her famous aunt in all things. But when Anna had attempted to come between her and Duncan they had quarrelled. The fact that Anna had been justifiably opposed to second cousins marrying, and that Patricia had yet won in the end, had done nothing to bring about a reconciliation, especially when Patricia had attempted to involve Duncan in her revolutionary activities. But as that was all behind them now, and as Patricia was the mother of Jennie — Anna had never really recognised little Joseph — she allowed her daughter-in-law a kiss. “I shall be up again in no time at all,” she asserted. “Come and give me a kiss, Jennie. Not a hug. Hugs are not allowed, according to Geller.”