CHAPTER X

FOR GOD'S SAKE, SPEAK RUSSIAN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE ANOTHER five minutes,' I whispered to him fiercely.

'What do you mean?' he said, continuing to speak in French. He had acquired a Russian cuirassier's uniform from somewhere and so clearly had at some stage been trying to pass himself off, but it seemed to have been temporarily forgotten.

'You're in the centre of Moscow, Pierre. Speak Russian,' I continued under my breath, hoping that even if he didn't understand where he was, he would instinctively respond to my Russian with the same.

'Why am I in Moscow?' he asked, at last using the vernacular.

'You must have been taken for a casualty.' I still spoke quietly. Although he no longer spoke in French, anyone overhearing might soon work out his true nationality. No one seemed much concerned with our conversation however. Most of the crowd was pushing forward to see what was the cause of the latest holdup.

'Where did you get the uniform?'

'Uniform?' He looked down at his body and saw what he was wearing. Even then, he seemed to think my question trivial. 'I took it from a corpse after I escaped from you.' He looked at me again and his earlier vitriol re-emerged. 'You! Why did you do that? We may be the enemy, but we're not animals.'

He had a wound to his right cheek which made each word an agony to him. This at least meant that he was unable to raise his ' voice. The cheek was not quite cut through, but most of the skin was missing, carved away by two jagged, parallel score marks. Whatever had done it had both cut the skin and begun to flay it in a single stroke. He had a similar wound on the side of his neck – any closer to the front and it would have been fatal.

'It wasn't me,' I told him. 'When I left you, you were well. You'd just insulted the tsar,' I continued, encouraging him to remember. I was desperate to hear how the Oprichniki operated.

He raised his hand to his wounds as if trying to recall. His forearm bore an injury similar to the others. Clearly, Pierre had tried to fend off his attacker. Again a chunk of skin and flesh had been scraped off in a strip about the width of two fingers. It could have been inflicted by claws or teeth, but, knowing who it was that had attacked him, I immediately recalled the glimpse I had seen of Iuda's strange, double-bladed knife.

He peered at me closely. 'You're right,' he said. 'You and the other one did leave, and then some more of you came. But you must have been there!' He tried to raise his voice. I shook my head and put my hand on his shoulder to calm him. 'Or at least you paved the way for them.' That I couldn't completely deny.

'What happened when they came?' I asked, urging him on.

He fixed his eyes upon mine, but in his mind he was seeing that campsite near Borodino, five days previously. His description flickered between lucidity and incoherence. 'We didn't see them. Men started vanishing – over minutes, not hours. We were eating at the same time as they were. You'd turn away to get something and turn back and your neighbour was gone. Not everyone ate. Then Louis found them. And the bodies – among the bodies. We were so few left. They circled us. Stalked us. Weren't they satisfied? They moved so quickly. And killed. They could see through the darkness. I fought one off. Louis fought. It took two of them. I ran. They chased me. Spread out like wolves. Calling to each other like huntsmen. But I was fast – so fast – so afraid. They gave up. Louis screamed, but I was fast.'

He seemed proud of his speed. He had the build of a runner, and the Oprichniki looked to me the sort that would soon give up a chase if it became too swift.

Pierre's eyes focused on me once again. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. 'You weren't there. You couldn't have done that. But you knew. You must have known.' A realization dawned in his eyes. 'You sent them! They weren't Russian. We weren't their enemy. They had no reason to do that – not once they were satisfied.'

It was the second time he'd used the word. 'What do you mean – "satisfied"?' I asked him, but he had collapsed back on to the wagon. His eyes were still open, but his breathing was shallow and he showed no sign of recognition of the world around him. 'Pierre,' I persisted, 'what did you mean?' There was no answer. How could the Oprichniki be satisfied? What had he meant by that? A soldier isn't satisfied until the enemy is defeated – or surrenders. Did he mean that they wouldn't accept surrender when it was offered? Or had he meant that the Oprichniki had been after some sort of information – that they were satisfied once they'd been told what they wanted to know? I tried to imagine what the Oprichniki could possibly want to discover from the occupants of a French encampment – and what they would do with the information now they had it.

There was a slight commotion amongst the crowd and I saw that the traffic ahead was beginning to move again. It was clear that I would get no more from Pierre. I bent over and whispered in his ear, not knowing whether he could hear me. 'Next time you wake up, remember to speak Russian.'

The wagon began to roll away. It hadn't even occurred to me that this was a French soldier disguised in a Russian uniform – an infiltrator and a spy who should be arrested and executed as such. But I had felt no personal betrayal, as I had with Maks. It became clear again that there was no line of thought I could take that did not, eventually, end in Maks.

'Aleksei!' Vadim's voice was full of enthusiasm, and he grabbed me in a hearty embrace which I gratefully returned. It had been a long two days since I had seen him last. Dmitry stood beside us. He might not have shown his affection in that way at the best of times, but today he was wary of me. We quietly assessed each other; he trying to judge how much I knew; I trying to decide how I really felt about him. Initially he was just Dmitry – the same Dmitry I had known for years; slightly distant, sometimes selfish, sometimes blinkered, but fundamentally reliable. I had to remind myself that he had sent the Oprichniki after me to Desna and that was why Maks was dead, or at least dead sooner and less properly than he might otherwise have been. I had plenty of evidence now of how the Oprichniki worked. I could hold out little hope that they had treated Maks any differently. I had to remind myself that it was Dmitry who had left Domnikiia bruised and bleeding in order to get the information that he couldn't get from me. As we spoke, I let the memories and the images of Maks and Domnikiia flow over me in a rising tide of venom that I knew I would need if I was to take any action against Dmitry.

'So where's Maks?' asked Vadim.

'Why don't you ask him?' I replied, nodding towards Dmitry.

'No, Aleksei,' said Vadim sternly, sensing that order needed to be maintained, 'I'm asking you.'

'I went to Desna – that's where Maks had gone – and found him there.' I was looking at Dmitry throughout, trying to gauge his reaction to each thing that I said, searching for something that would help me to hate him. 'We talked for a while.'

'Did he confess?' asked Vadim.

And that of course was the reality of it. However much I might bemoan the injustice of what had happened, there was no doubt as to his guilt. 'Yes, he confessed. You know Maksim. He wouldn't waste time lying about what we already knew.'

'Was he ashamed? Repentant?' Vadim could tell that my story was not going to be completely straightforward.

'No.' I would have smiled at the memory of Maks' consistency, but I knew that I could allow myself no such self-indulgence that would soften me in my resolve against Dmitry. 'For him, it was just the logical conclusion of a long chain of reason. To dissuade him from his path, you'd have to dissuade two and two from being four.'

'So where is he, Aleksei?' Vadim was now overtly suspicious. 'I appreciate it wouldn't be wise to bring him here to Moscow. Did you manage to find some gaol that would take him?'

'No, Vadim. He's still in Desna. He always will be.'

'Still in Desna?' Then he cottoned on. 'Aleksei, you didn't . . . ?'

'No, Vadim, I didn't.' My voice became harsh and I paced around them until I was behind Dmitry. 'But Maks and I weren't alone for long, were we, Dmitry Fetyukovich? Soon your friends the Oprichniki showed up, didn't they? And they wanted to exact vengeance for themselves. And how did they know where we were?' I was shouting in Dmitry's ear by now. 'Because Dmitry Fetyukovich told them. And how did he know? Because he beat up a mere girl to make her tell him. And so the Oprichniki made it very clear that either I left Maks with them, or I wouldn't leave at all. And so I left – not to save my own skin, but to give me a chance to get hold of Dmitry Fetyukovich and do this!'

I punched him sharply in the kidney. He bent forward, clutching his side. I placed my hands on his back, pushing him down on to my knee as I raised it sharply into his chest. He gasped, but still offered no retaliation. He was a bigger man than I and, from what I knew, a better fighter. I guessed that he had decided to take what was coming to him like a stoic. If he expected compassion from me at this reaction, he was to be surprised – as indeed was I. I had soaked myself in the anger generated by what he'd done to Domnikiia and Maks and, now, for one of the few times in my life, I was beyond my own control. I kicked his legs from under him and he collapsed to the ground, leaving himself prone for my repeated sharp kicks to his chest and stomach. As each blow connected, I thought to myself alternately 'Maks!' and 'Domnikiia!' and felt the same joy each time, as if I had been with them instead of here. I felt an energy throbbing through my leg as I kicked at him; an energy desperate to get out of me and into him. My entire mind and body abandoned themselves to the sensation. I no longer saw anything and no longer sensed anything except the feeling of exhilaration each time my foot pounded into his torso. It flooded my entire being, not as a pleasant sensation, but an all-consuming one. It was like the spasm that rips through one's body whilst vomiting, as I regurgitated on to Dmitry the hatred for him that I had nurtured within my belly.

'Aleksei! Aleksei! Captain Danilov!' I must have heard my name shouted half a dozen times before it penetrated my consciousness. Vadim had dragged me away from Dmitry, though I still tried to kick towards him. Something of a crowd of passersby had gathered round. Some were bent down over Dmitry, seeing if he was all right.

I breathed deeply. I felt satisfied – physically satisfied. Every extremity of my body felt that it had done its job and now, as a whole, I – almost as if it were 'we' – began to calm. I looked over to Dmitry's aching body and felt a pulse of guilt pass through me. Not guilt – pity. I pitied Dmitry's pain without feeling guilt at causing it. The glance from Dmitry's anguished eyes, as well as my own rational mind, told me that what I had done was allowable. Vadim himself confirmed it.

'That's enough, Aleksei Ivanovich. You were owed that – Dmitry knows it too – but we still have a war to fight. The next time you do that, do it to a Frenchman.'

Dmitry was rising to his feet. He lifted his hand for me to take and help him up, but I couldn't. I'd been in the army long enough to see many savage brawls that might have terminated with the death of either man, and yet seen those same men laughing and drinking together hours later. In this and many other things, I could not be as trivial as that. I couldn't belittle my own loss of control with something as easy as a handshake. It had frightened me and it should frighten Dmitry, and anyone else who saw it, to deter them from raising that wrath in me again. At the same time, I realized that the possibility that I hadn't lost control frightened me even more than the belief that I had. If the unrestrained violence that had just ejected from my body had been under my conscious control, guided by my intelligence and yet untrammelled by my conscience, then I was a dangerous creature indeed. But if it had been an uncontrollable frenzy, why had I only kicked his torso, where I could hurt him, and not his head, where I might kill? Perhaps there is some visceral, primeval instinct that tells a man how to hurt another man, without causing his death. Perhaps I'd learned it in that Turkish gaol in Silistria.

Dmitry had stood himself up without my helping hand. 'Are we all right, Lyosha?' It was almost an entreaty. He hadn't called me Lyosha since we had first met and I'd told him it made me feel like a kid. I looked through his beard to the scar on his cheek – the memento of where he had saved my life – and good memories of him came washing through my mind, rinsing away the rancid taste of the thoughts of Maks and Domnikiia that had come before.

'No,' I replied, 'but we will be, Mitka. We will be.' I never guessed how long it would take.

The three of us walked off the bridge and on to the river's southern bank, where we could talk freely, away from the hubbub of the fleeing soldiers, citizens and socialites.

'So what's the plan now?' I asked.

'Didn't Iuda speak to you?' asked Vadim. 'He said he would.'

Dmitry did not seem keen to make any comment. He hugged his bruised ribs and did his best to keep his breathing steady. My sense of pity now was increasing to complement my lack of mercy earlier. The real source of my rage against Dmitry was that he had forced me to allow myself no vestige of forgiveness when I had confronted Maks. Who would be next in turn to suffer at my hand for what I had done to Maks? Vadim? I caught Dmitry's eye and responded likewise to the smile in it. It had only been minutes, and yet despite myself I began to understand how those young soldiers could be drinking together, so soon after being at each other's throats.

'Yeah, I saw him last night,' I replied to Vadim. 'You're happy with his plan?'

'His plan?'

'For them to hide in the city. Wait until the French arrive and then demonstrate to them that Moscow can be . . . inhospitable – for an unwelcome guest. Isn't that the plan Iuda explained to you?'

'No,' chuckled Vadim, 'that's the plan that I explained to him. Iuda wanted to keep attacking their supply lines. That's not unreasonable, but he can't see what it will mean to have them in Moscow.'

'It's odd for them to fuss about who gets the credit for the plan. They don't seem like the sort to worry much about their social standing.'

'That Iuda is different,' wheezed Dmitry, 'very different. When I was with them in Wallachia, there were only ten of them – and, like I said, only four of those are amongst these – but all of them had that same subservient quality that these have; with the exception of Iuda. That's what makes them such good killers – like cannonballs – you aim and you fire, and anything that doesn't get out of the line of the shot is ripped apart. But not Iuda; he has his own desires – even vanities. He takes his own aim. I'd have thought it would lessen his ability to kill, but it makes him better. He can choose when to care and when not to. That's the most dangerous combination of all.'

We sat quietly and considered Dmitry's words. There was little comment to be made on them.

'So are we happy with the plan?' pressed Vadim.

'Yes, of course,' I said. Dmitry nodded. There was, once again, silence for a while.

'There's another odd thing about Iuda,' I said.

'And what's that?' asked Vadim.

'Well,' I said, 'Iuda seems to take all the decisions, but I thought Pyetr was supposed to be in charge.'

'Funny,' responded Vadim. 'I thought I was.'

Vadim was always in charge – always utterly in charge – when he needed to be. As Bonaparte had taken Vilna, we – the Lifeguard Hussars under General Uvarov, along with the whole of the First Army of the West – had retreated to Drissa. As they took Drissa, we retreated to Polotsk. Two months earlier, during a hot, sticky July, I had been lying on my bed in a room at an inn in Polotsk – a room which I was sharing with four others – when I heard a familiar voice.

'On your feet, Captain Danilov!'

He stood, leaning against the doorway, his face neither smiling nor stern, but his eyes confidently expressing the affection that we both knew existed between us. I raced over to greet him.

'Vadim! How are you? It's good to see you. Where have you been?'

He smiled. 'I've been a bit south of here, with Bagration.' He spoke the great general's name as though he knew him personally, which was quite possible. Vadim was the kind of officer who seemed to know everyone. He had connections in Petersburg society that most could only dream of. But unlike many other well-connected officers, Vadim chose to use those friendships to genuinely achieve military objectives, not simply to advance his own career. The favours he would quietly ask of Bagration would be for more rations or more arms for his men, not for promotion or a safe posting, well away from the front line.

'So how did he manage to get rid of you?' I asked.

'I told him I had some work to do. Speaking of which, are you busy?'

'Busy retreating,' I said bitterly. 'What did you have in mind?'

'Saving Russia.'

'As easy as that?'

He shrugged, taking my agreement as read. 'I'll meet you here tonight at eight. Oh, and see if you can bring Maksim Sergeivich along.'

I knew where Maks was billeted. He was easy to find, but surprisingly difficult to persuade to join us.

'It's been a long time since we worked together, Aleksei; back before Austerlitz, and I didn't manage too well then, did I? I think I'd do better just to stick with regular soldiering. I'd be putting you at risk.'

I realized now exactly how he, as a traitor in our midst, could see himself as a risk, but at the time it seemed quite uncharacteristic.

'You, Maks? A regular soldier?' I laughed as I spoke. When I had first met him, he had seemed the most unlikely of warriors.

Only once he had joined up with Dmitry, Vadim and me that first time did he really begin to fit in. 'You'd be bored rigid.'

'True enough, but that doesn't make it the wrong course of action.' This was more like classic Maks.

'But we need you.'

He said nothing. He looked torn. I could tell that in his heart there was nothing he would like more than to rejoin the old team, but something in his head held him back.

'Vadim told me to bring you,' I said.

'He ordered you?' A fleeting look of pride crossed his face at the mention of Vadim's name.

I pulled a face. 'You know Vadim,' I said.

'I'll see you at eight, then,' replied Maks.

Maks arrived first that evening, soon followed by Vadim, who had brought Dmitry with him. Dmitry was also in Polotsk with the First Army, so Maks and I had seen plenty of him. The only reunion was between Maks and Vadim.

'Back to the fold then, eh, Maksim?' said the latter, shaking his hand.

'With you the watchful shepherd?' I asked, looking at Vadim.

'More the wolf than the shepherd,' murmured Dmitry.

'We'll all be wolves, and pity the poor little French lambs,' said Vadim.

'So it's more like back to the wolf pack?' asked Maks.

And so, seven years after we had first formed, the wolf pack had regenerated. Soon Polotsk had fallen, and we had once again retreated. It wasn't until Smolensk was taken that Barclay de Tolly had spoken to Vadim (or perhaps the other way round) and we had been set on our present course. And now in Moscow, in September, the pack of four was down to three. Maks no longer suffered any risk of being bored.

Standing beside the Moskva river in the heart of Moscow, the three of us – Vadim, Dmitry and I – made a few more detailed arrangements. During his earlier discussions with Iuda, Vadim had selected seven meeting places from our list of those within Moscow itself. The easiest arrangement was to have a different rendezvous for each day of the week. The time would always be the same; nine in the evening.

'And we meet every night?' I asked.

'Iuda said that at least one of them would try to be there every night,' replied Vadim. 'As for us; I think we should all three try to make it whenever we can. We won't be seeing each other the rest of the time.'

'Why not?'

'We all need to stay under cover – and stay separate. It's up to you what you do. You can be a French officer or an escaped Russian convict – I don't need to know. We've got to be the eyes and ears of the Oprichniki. We need to see where the French are going and what they are doing. Then we need to tell the Oprichniki where to strike.'

'Or strike for ourselves,' I put in.

'No!' said Dmitry with sudden vehemence. Vadim and I both looked at him. 'That's not their style,' he added. 'They'd rather we left it to them.' I would have pressed him, but Vadim agreed with his conclusion, if not his reasoning.

'Dmitry's right,' said Vadim, 'regardless of their "style", our style is not to get ourselves killed. To put it crudely, the Oprichniki are more expendable than we are. I'm sorry, Dmitry, I know they're your friends, but that's the way it is.'

Dmitry smirked painfully. 'Oh, you know me, Vadim. Everyone is more expendable than I am.'

'So do we start meeting from tonight?' I asked.

'No,' said Vadim. 'Well – not necessarily. We can wait until the French actually arrive. I don't think that will be tonight. Take these.' He handed Dmitry and me each a purse. Inside was a small fortune in gold coins. 'This is not your money or even my money – it's the tsar's money. We may encounter expenses in the course of the next few weeks. If you don't need to spend it then don't. I'll be expecting most of it back once we've kicked out Bonaparte.'

We sank into silence, realizing that we might not see each other for many days, and that when we did, it would be in a city under French occupation.

'I wrote to Maks' mother,' I announced.

'Thank you,' said Vadim. 'I trust that he died a hero.'

I nodded. 'Any news from Yelena Vadimovna?'

'Last I heard she was well, but that was almost a month ago. She's due in a few weeks.'

'So we can't call you "granddad" yet?'

'Not yet,' replied Vadim levelly, 'or ever.'

Again we lapsed into quiet contemplation, sitting on the low wall and gazing into the river, reluctant to say our goodbyes. We were like three old men who have said, over the years, everything that could possibly be said, who sit outside all day, watching the world as it passes by them, fearful of leaving lest one of them never comes back again; three men who remember that in their distant youth they had been, and had forever expected to be, four. In such times as these, we couldn't even be sure of the luxury of getting old.

'Who were you talking to on the bridge?' asked Vadim.

'When?'

'When we found you – the wounded soldier.'

'Didn't you recognize him?'

Vadim shook his head. 'I barely saw him.'

'It was Pierre.' Vadim looked blank. 'The Frenchman. You remember, he told us all about Tsarina Yekaterina and the horse.'

'Passing himself off as a Russian?' Vadim asked, mildly angry. 'Why didn't you . . .' but I think he realized that I wasn't in the mood for unmasking any more French spies just now, and left the question unasked.

'Did Vadim tell you about the camp?' I asked Dmitry. 'And about Iuda, Matfei and Foma showing up?' Dmitry nodded.

'The interesting thing is, of course,' I continued slowly, watching Dmitry to gauge his reaction, to see if he would reveal anything, 'that he escaped – Pierre, I mean.'

'So the Oprichniki are not quite so infallible as we thought,' said Vadim.

'No indeed,' I went on. 'Not like them to leave a survivor who can go on and tell everything that happened to him.'

Dmitry turned to me with a look of searching horror in his eyes, straining to turn his battered body. There was something that Pierre might have told me – something terrible – and Dmitry was scrutinizing my very soul to see if Pierre had told me; to see what I knew. Of course, all I'd heard from Pierre were his confused, delirious ramblings, but now I knew from Dmitry that there was something I might have known – something that I now planned to find out.

Soon after, we took our leave of one another. This time there was little expression of emotion. We were all too intent on our personal plans for the next few days. Vadim had one final thing to say.

'We may not do this, you know. It's not something I want to face, but that's a big army out there. I just want to say that if any of us gets wounded, or if things get too hot for us in the city, then we shouldn't be afraid to leave. If we can let each other know, then all the better, but survival is just as important as heroism. All right?'

Dmitry and I both nodded in sombre agreement, and then we parted. Vadim had told us that it was our own affair where and how we hid ourselves, but by some instinct that we had established over years of working together, we headed off immediately in different directions. Vadim went west along the riverbank. Dmitry and I walked the opposite way in silence, but it was less than a minute before Dmitry turned north, back over the bridge.

I continued east. My plan of action had been, somewhat obliquely, inspired by the sight of the French footman being flogged. I soon turned south and headed over the canal into the region of Zamoskvorechye. It was easy enough to find an abandoned house, with planks nailed hastily over the windows and doors, and even easier to break through these naive defences. Whoever had quitted the house had been generous enough to take their servants with them, but not, fortunately for me, generous enough to take all their servants' possessions. It was no trouble for me to find a butler's uniform that fitted. I reckoned that, once the French arrived, a Russian servant would be able to move around the city relatively unmolested. If not, it would be the work of an instant to transform myself to a French émigré servant, welcoming with open arms the liberating army that had freed him from his cruel masters.

The empty house would also make a good place for me to stay, at least for the time being, although I would have to be wary, since the invading masses would also be looking for abandoned buildings where they could be billeted. There were plenty of alternative exits if I needed to leave in a hurry.

And so I waited. Moscow became quieter and emptier as those who had lingered finally left, but still the French did not come. I wandered the streets of my beloved city for the next few days, astounded by the horror of its tranquillity. A few people remained, perhaps one fiftieth of the population, and all were sapped by the distance that separated them from the next person they might see. A week earlier, Muscovites would have had to push and jostle to make it through the busy streets – and would have complained about the overcrowding too – but now it was almost like living in the countryside, but without knowing the rules for such a life. In the country, one can go for hours without seeing another human soul, but when one does, they are always a friend, always someone to converse with. In this deserted Moscow, other people were just such a rarity, but those who were left were used to ignoring the thousands of individuals that they might pass within the space of a single hour, and so they ignored the few that they saw now. Thus even those who remained, that fiftieth of the population, were weakened by their isolation to a further fiftieth of their usual vitality.

It was as if the entire city had ceased to breathe. The physical entity that was Moscow still existed, but the spirit that had made it live was gone. As yet the body that was left showed no sign of decay, but even the most imperceptive of observers would soon be able to see that it was dead. Soon the maggots of the French army would arrive to feast on the remains.

Strangely though, it was a full three days before they arrived. From what I could gather later on, Bonaparte had expected Kutuzov to make a further, final stand at the gates of the city and so had hesitated. Kutuzov made no such defence – it would have been futile – and by the evening of 1 September, it was clear that French troops would be entering the city the following day.

That night, I had a dream.