CHAPTER XII

I FELT A SENSATION OF SELF-LOATHING AS I DISCOVERED HOW pleasant – I'm afraid that is the correct word – it was to see these familiar faces. Without doubt, I wanted to meet with Vadim, or even Dmitry, but to be able to speak freely with people that I knew, be it for only a few weeks, was a relief. The constant pressure of pretence as a covert patriot amongst a swarm of invaders is debilitating. Despite the fact that somewhere in my mind I had been hoping that if it had to be an Oprichnik it would be Iuda who came along, I think that my smile was genuine as I shook both Foma and Ioann by the hand.

'I'm glad to see you,' I told them. They smiled and nodded as if they hadn't quite followed the detail of the French I had spoken to them, but appreciated the sentiment.

'Where have you been staying?' I slowed the pace of my speech and, I fear, introduced the tone of condescension which one uses when speaking to people who understand neither French nor Russian.

'We have found a cellar,' said Foma. 'It is a perfect lair.' I forgave him his odd choice of words. I had learned French from an early age, in parallel with learning Russian itself. For someone who learned it later in life, the subtle ambiguities of meaning are easily overlooked.

'Have you seen any of your comrades?' I asked.

They discussed the issue amongst themselves, using their own language, before Foma replied. 'We have seen one or two, but more importantly, we have seen their work.'

I understood that he meant by their 'work' the deaths of French soldiers. At the time, more than on any occasion before or certainly since, I felt complete accordance with their achievements and complete indifference to their methods.

'I have heard of your work too,' I told them. 'The French are quite afraid of you.'

'As far as I know, we have only killed twenty so far,' said Foma. He quickly followed up with an explanation of this small number. 'It is better to keep the numbers inconsequential. Even with so few deaths, you have already heard rumours; any more and there would be mobs rampaging the streets in search of us.'

'It's a lesson that we have learned at the expense of fallen friends,' interjected Ioann. 'We will have plenty of time in the city. We do not gorge like dogs, forgetting tomorrow.'

'Do you have anything to tell us?' asked Foma, cutting his friend short.

I briefly summarized what I had seen and heard of troop dispositions, but it, and I, felt superfluous. Moscow was full – full to bursting – of Frenchmen and their allies. The Oprichniki needed no more directing than a reaper needs pointing towards a field lush with wheat or than a fox needs to have a particular chicken marked out as his prey once he has found the henhouse. On the other hand, despite their revolutionary slogan, not all Frenchmen were equal, certainly not in terms of their threat to us. Officers were obviously more fruitful targets than men, and specialized officers – in the artillery or on the general staff – would be the greatest loss to the French military machine. So it was towards such locations, where I knew them, that I directed Foma and Ioann.

'Where are the fires at present?' asked Foma, when I had finished.

'See for yourself,' I said, pointing. 'All along Pokrovka Street, and other streets too.' Looking north over the city, the night sky was reddened by the glimmer of fire. The fires themselves showed up as glowing arcs that silhouetted groups of buildings. 'I suspected that you might have started them yourselves,' I added.

'Us?' Foma was taken aback, almost insulted by the suggestion, and also strangely afraid. 'Fire's no use to us.' He showed no inclination to explain further what he meant by this.

'We will go now,' he continued. 'We, or some of the others, will do our best to meet with you again tomorrow.' They both nodded a brief farewell to me and headed back to the street. Once there, they exchanged a few words with each other before separating, Ioann heading south and Foma north.

I knew that now was my opportunity. I had heard reports of the Oprichniki's work, and seen a choreographed display of it on the road near Borodino, but now was my first, irresistible opportunity to see them work for real. Foma was alone, and I took my chance.

I had tracked men in the past across vast distances, through woods and across mountains, and rarely been caught out by them. Pursuit through a city was somewhat different but had many principles in common. Out in the wilderness, one can sometimes track at a distance of a verst or more, knowing that any traces one's quarry leaves will remain for a few hours, and knowing also that he is most likely the only other human soul in the whole area.

In the city, one must keep closer. If Foma were to get far enough from me to turn two corners, then I might lose him. If I got so close as to be on the same stretch of road as him, he had only to glance over his shoulder and I would be seen. I had the advantage, however, that I knew Moscow intimately. If he went down one street, then I could slip down a sideroad, cover three sides of a square in the time it took him to cover one, and be at the next crossroads before he was.

He headed quickly north. Although he might not know Moscow in any great detail, he knew where he was going. When I had briefed the two Oprichniki earlier, I had told them that many of the French had billeted themselves in the north of the city, and so it was towards there that Foma was heading. Pursuit was made more difficult by the regular patrols of French soldiers, although they were a hindrance to Foma's progress as well. Since few of the French spoke Russian, his lack of the language would probably not be his undoing if he were stopped. He could simply jabber at them in his own tongue, which I guessed was some form of Romanian, and their ears would hear no distinction between what he said and the equally incomprehensible babble of genuine Russian. To me, the language that the Oprichniki spoke seemed to have more in common with Italian and French than it had with Russian, but that was to make a similar mistake. Whatever one's nationality, be it French, Russian or Japanese, there is an instinct not to bother with sub-classifications of things that have already been classified as foreign.

Foma still ran the risk, however, that he might meet a patrol which did have a Russian speaker in its ranks, and then he would be found out. Whether through this reasoning, or out of instinct, his approach to avoiding the problem was to avoid being seen. As a patrol (or indeed anyone) came near he would step into some dim doorway or alley and wait for them to pass. His skill at hiding in darkness was remarkable. At one point, when I was watching him from the far end of the street, he heard approaching footsteps and flung himself into the shadow of the wall at the end of a block of houses. It was as if he had vanished before my eyes.

I watched for several minutes as first an organized patrol and then a rowdy group of off-duty soldiers came past, and still he remained invisible. I got out my spyglass and looked again at the place where I had last seen him, but I could make out nothing but the vague shapes of dark shadows cast against the wall. Then, suddenly, what I was looking at transformed; not through any intrinsic change in itself, but simply by my unconscious reappraisal of what I was seeing. I wasn't staring at a shadow, but at the side of Foma's face, pressed against the wall in utter and complete stillness. It was that ability to stay quite still that somehow allowed him to disappear. His dark coat hid most of his body. Looking around further, I could also make out his hand, pressed against the wall as if reaching out to those who were passing by, but again implausibly still. Of the arm that I knew must lie somewhere between his hand and his face, I could make out nothing.

Looking back to his face, I noticed that there was one minuscule hint of movement. His eyes were flicking back and forth. They say that when a man dreams his body remains quite still and yet his eyes continue to move, indicating physically to the real world in which direction the dreamer is looking in his mind. The only difference was that Foma's eyes were open, following the stragglers of the off-duty soldiers as they tottered past.

After the last trailing man had gone by, his footsteps fading into the night, Foma moved and was suddenly quite visible once again. But he didn't continue on his way. He liked what he had seen and began to follow the soldiers back up the road. This time it was my turn to step back into the shadows as he passed.

Foma followed the soldiers, I followed Foma and we all headed gradually eastward into the outskirts of Kitay Gorod. Fresh flames shone to the south-east, but the area in which we found ourselves remained untouched, not just by fire, but by the French. Beyond the small troop that we were following, we saw no other patrols. Soon the soldiers came to their destination – an abandoned school building that they were using as their barracks. With the same laughter and jokes that had accompanied their entire journey across town, they made their way into the building and closed the door.

Foma was only a short way behind them, but again he had stood stock-still, with his back pressed to the wall, and had remained unseen by anyone but me. Hiding myself at the end of the street, I watched Foma to see what he would do next. Now that the boisterous revelry of the soldiers had ceased, my own breathing sounded deafeningly loud. Foma passed back and forth outside the school, gazing up at the high windows, reminding me of a cat pacing up and down beneath a caged bird, never doubting its ability to climb up and take the puny, twittering creature, but simply looking for the best route to ascend – the best route being that by which the cat is least likely to be found out.

After a little consideration, Foma stopped beneath one of the windows, deciding that it was the easiest one to reach, or perhaps noticing some slight clue that suggested he would be able to break it open. Without hesitation, he began to climb the wall. It was an astonishing feat, one which I could not have achieved, and neither could any but the most expert of climbers. He found every tiny crevice and fissure in the wall and somehow managed to insinuate his fingers or toes deeply enough inside to gain some purchase. Just as when he had been hiding, his body clung inseparably close to the wall, and as he moved each limb in turn, sliding it across to its next grip, his body flowed like water across a rock, never venturing away from the precipice he scaled in case it unbalanced him. The impression was of some sort of lizard or insect – no, neither of those, instead a spider – climbing up that wall, but I realized that Foma's achievement was not in truth inhuman, but superhuman. Any man with the strength and skill and experience – and, it has to be said, daring – could have achieved it. I was not such a man, and it was difficult to conceive that a man so unprepossessing as Foma could in any area of activity be so exceptionally talented.

He reached the window and opened it without trouble, scuttling into the building with a swiftness that almost made it appear he had been pulled from inside. There was no way that I would be able to follow him, nor had I any desire to find myself trapped in a room with him as he discovered that I had been following him.

I crept up to the school building and listened. All was silent within; no hint of what Foma might be doing inside, nor any reaction from any of the soldiers who slept there. There was little I could do but wait, and hope that Foma would leave by the same window he had entered, or at least from the same side of the building. The house opposite had a rather grand portico and so there I sat, leaning my back against the wall and hidden from the school by one of the pillars.

I suspect I may have dozed off, but it felt like only seconds later that I was being challenged, in heavily accented Russian, by the commanding officer of a small squad of French troops.

'What are you doing here?' he barked.

'Sleeping, sir!' I leapt to my feet in an effort to show respect, but I realized that if I wasn't careful, I might betray my military background.

'Don't you have a home?' As the lieutenant spoke, I noticed behind him the window of the school across the street swing open once again.

'It's been occupied, sir,' I replied, trying not to look at the window and thereby betray Foma, 'by your compatriots.'

'And where was that?'

This was a tricky question. I tried to recall somewhere close by where I had seen French soldiers billeted.

'Kolpachny Lane, sir.' Behind him, the figure of Foma slipped to the ground, not quite jumping, not quite climbing; flowing – slower than water but faster than honey – like blood. He passed across the wall as the shadow of a stationary object cast by a moving light.

'I see,' continued the officer. It looked like he believed me and had some sympathy for my predicament. 'But I can't help that. The men have to sleep somewhere.'

I nodded. Foma walked silently away down the street, almost swaggering compared to his earlier furtive gait, as if proud of what he had achieved within the temporary barracks. Whether he glanced over towards me and the French soldier, I don't know. Even if he had, he may not have recognized me. He certainly made no action to come to my assistance.

'I have to sleep somewhere too,' I told the lieutenant, trying not to appear so submissive that I might arouse suspicion.

'That's as may be, but you can't sleep here. That's a barracks over there.' He glanced over his shoulder, but Foma had already vanished into the night. 'We can't have the natives loitering around here.'

'I'm sorry, sir,' I said. Anger began to well up inside me as he spoke, particularly at dismissive words such as 'native', but it was not the anger of Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov – he understood that this was just the bluster of a frightened junior officer in a foreign country. It was the anger of the homeless Russian butler that I had become, much as I always became whoever I had to pretend to be. It would not convince this lieutenant if the Muscovite before him simply stayed calm. I had to stay calm, but to do so in spite of myself, and make it clear to him that I was angry and urgently containing myself so as not to show it. So many layers of deception are too difficult to juggle. It is better simply to believe it oneself, then one cannot be doubted by any man.

It was beneath him to dismiss me, but he said nothing more, and so I scurried off in the direction that Foma had gone. The trail was, however, now cold. Foma had been scarcely half a minute ahead of me, but already he would have had a choice of ten or more roads to take. I didn't give up – I'd always play a ten to one shot – but on this occasion it proved to be that he had taken one of the other nine.

I headed back to my stable in Zamoskvorechye and went to sleep.

The following day, I returned to the school. By that time, I looked pretty rough. I hadn't actually been sleeping out of doors, as had some of the people of Moscow, but I was still dirty and dishevelled and smelled of the streets. This struck me as a good pretext for starting a conversation with the two guards who now stood outside the schoolhouse.

'Excuse me, sirs,' I said to them in Russian, 'would you have any food?' They looked at me blankly. 'Some bread, perhaps?' Still they didn't understand. I switched to French. 'Du pain? Du pain?' I pleaded, as if it was the only phrase I knew in French, and trying to speak it with a Russian accent. There were real tears in my eyes and one of the guards went inside, returning moments later with a dirty crust. 'Thank you, sir,' I continued, in French, presuming that most Muscovites would know at least that much.

I crouched down on the pavement with my back to the wall and gnawed hungrily at the stale bread. They showed little inclination to move me on. A third soldier joined the two guards.

'Any news of Albert?' the first guard asked him.

'Still nothing,' he replied.

'I'm certain he came back with us last night,' said the second.

'Oh, he did. His bed was slept in – and bloodstained – but there's no sign of him. Even if he'd been murdered, there'd be a body.'

I immediately recalled to mind the scene days ago near Goryachkino, when the Oprichniki had been so fastidious in removing the bodies of all those soldiers that they had slaughtered outside the farmhouse.

'One of the patrols last night came across a Russian sleeping rough – or pretending to – just over there.' The first guard nodded towards the doorway where I had been found the previous night. 'Maybe he was a look-out.'

'Maybe,' mused the newcomer, then, to give vent to his frustration, he mounted a hefty kick to my leg as he snarled at me, 'Bistro! Bistro!' The accent was almost impenetrable, but it was the only word of Russian that most of the invaders had bothered to learn: 'Quickly! Quickly!' It was used in any circumstances; whether, as now, to send me hurrying on my way, or to clear the path in front of them, or – with, as time went by, greater and greater urgency – to procure themselves a meal. In this case, it was my opportunity to escape. I gladly complied.

I spent the day much as I had the previous one, wandering the streets, picking up scraps of information from both the French occupiers and from those remaining Russians whom they repressed. I avoided Kitay Gorod, which was now almost completely ablaze, though there were few places that I could venture in the city where I would not see flames nearby, or come across the devastation left behind where fire had already exhausted itself. Before the occupation, the main enclave for French émigrés had been in the area round Kutznetsky Bridge, spanning the river Neglinnaya; now diverted from its natural course into a part-covered canal, before acting as a moat beside the western wall of the Kremlin and finally flowing into the Moskva. Though the inferno reached the very borders of this area, it went no further.

Some of the French I spoke to believed that it was the will of God that 'their' part of the city had been saved. The will of Bonaparte also made a contribution; he had ordered that a picket of men should stand around Kutznetsky Bridge, ensuring that if ever the flames did encroach, they would be beaten back.

The fires and stories of how the fires had begun and discussions of when they would end were the main subjects on everyone's lips. Hidden amongst them were tales of other mysterious deaths and disappearances that could not be put down to the conflagration. These, I had little doubt and took some pleasure in knowing, were the work of my friends the Oprichniki. Other news was more political. Bonaparte had abandoned the Kremlin, for fear that the fire would reach it, moving to the Petrovsky Palace on the outskirts of the city. Furthermore, the French were beginning to discuss what Bonaparte's next step would be. The previous day there had been an air of if not euphoria, at least proud achievement in their conquest of a foreign city, but now they were wondering what they were actually going to do with it. Few relished the prospect of marching on to Petersburg, but there would be no safety or comfort in remaining in Moscow over the winter. There was still a general expectation that Tsar Aleksandr would soon give up his pride and begin to negotiate some sort of peace, but that would still leave the Grande Armée isolated and far from home.

That evening, being a Wednesday, we were due to meet on the Stone Bridge, west of the Kremlin. I didn't attend, but watched from well away to the west, on the south bank of the river. My plan was to follow one of the Oprichniki again. If I spoke with Vadim and Dmitry, it might slow me down. I couldn't even be sure that Dmitry wouldn't try to stop me. The moon was high and three-quarters full when I arrived, somewhat earlier than scheduled. Before long I saw a figure walk to the middle of the bridge and gaze down into the river below. It was Dmitry. He was soon joined by Vadim. They spoke for a moment and then walked together to the south side of the bridge. Some five minutes later they returned. Clearly, they didn't want to be seen lingering in one place for too long and were patrolling the bridge so as to encounter any Oprichniki that chose to show up.

I felt an enormous urge to go over there and speak to them. It had been five days since I had exchanged a word with either of them, and in that time I had not had a single, honest, straightforward conversation with anyone. My brief exchange with Foma and Ioann the previous night counted for nothing. I realized that I felt almost homesick, not for a place – I felt Moscow to be my home now far more than Petersburg – but for people; for my friends. Five minutes of conversation with either of them would give me the same relief as plunging into a cool river in sweltering weather. Just as I have in the past been gripped by the eccentric inclination on a hot day in a public place to rip off my clothes and bathe before all in some cooling pond, I felt now the desire to indulge myself in the comforting conversation of my friends. On those occasions, as now, I resisted the temptation. I had a greater task than the alleviation of my own discomforts.

I watched Dmitry and Vadim pacing back and forth with a certain unwholesome pleasure – like the true, unknown father of a child might watch that child as it played with its mother's husband, or as a spurned lover might watch his beloved through her open window – pretending I was there, imagining the conversation as if I were taking part, but unable to step out of the shadows and join in. It was only now, when its relief was so tantalizingly close, that I comprehended the depth of my loneliness. Although I had been pleased to see Foma and Ioann the night before, I had soon become reacquainted with their absolute lack of character. They were not merely sullen; they were simply nothing – soulless portraits of men from a distant land whom I felt I had never met in person.

Vadim and Dmitry were passing across the bridge for the fourth time when they encountered two more figures coming from the opposite direction. One was Varfolomei; the other I could not make out. It was not Iuda, who was easy to recognize by his height alone, if not by his hair and his posture. The two Oprichniki spoke a little with Vadim and Dmitry, but for no longer than five minutes, then my friends departed, both heading north. The Oprichniki waited a short while to be sure that they had gone, and then set off themselves. Varfolomei headed north whilst the other, once he had stepped off the southern end of the bridge, turned right and proceeded along the embankment where I was hiding.

As he passed, I saw that it was Matfei. I pressed back into the bushes and he walked past, unaware of, or at least unresponsive to, my presence. I followed him, much as I had done Foma the previous night. It looked to me as though he was keen to get back to the north side of the river, but he was still unfamiliar with the geography of the city. The river curved south and we had to cover nearly two versts before we came to the Crimean Bridge and were able to get back across. Almost immediately, Matfei spotted a French patrol which, like Foma, he followed from a safe distance. We continued for about half an hour, but Matfei made no attempt at any attack on the patrol. For all I could tell, this was still early in their watch, and they might not return to barracks for several hours.

Eventually, Matfei must have come to this conclusion as well, for he was distracted by the sound of a pleasant French baritone emanating from one of the grander houses that we passed. There was a light at the window, but I could not see who was inside. Matfei crept up and peered closely through the glass. Suddenly, he started. Once again, as I had been with Foma, I was reminded of a cat, tensing as it catches sight of its prey. Either the door was unlocked, or he had some way of opening it, for he was soon inside the house, leaving me to watch and wait in the shadows outside. And to listen.

The Frenchman's pleasant voice continued to serenade the night. On our arrival, he had been singing an aria that I recognized to be from Beethoven's Fidelio. At Austerlitz, tunes from this then-new opera had been on the lips of French and Austrian soldiers alike, and on those of some of the more cosmopolitan Russians. Now the unseen singer had switched to that old favourite (in certain quarters) 'La Marseillaise'. I smiled to myself; I could well imagine Vadim incensed by the singing of that song in a house in Moscow, though I think it would have been bluster. In his heart, I'm not sure Vadim loved his country any more than I did, or than Dmitry or . . . Well, no more than Dmitry or I anyway, but Vadim did like to make his patriotism clear for everyone else to see. He loved the emblems of Russia and hated the emblems of the invader. How I would have loved to have him beside me then, huffing and puffing at the outrage of hearing the air of Moscow polluted by such a tune. In truth, Bonaparte himself would have been little happier. He found 'La Marseillaise' a little too redolent of revolution for his new imperial dynasty, but it remained popular amongst the men.

For my part, I loved the tune. I lay my head against the wall behind me and enjoyed the rendition. The Frenchman inside the house sang in a fruity tone and had just got to the bit about the bellowing soldiers coming to cut the throats of his sons and his consorts when he too was cut short. The song ended in a curt, startled yelp, with which I was becoming all too familiar. I continued the song under my breath, choking back a tear whose cause I could not quite determine:

'Aux armes citoyens.
Formez vos bataillons.
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.'

It was inexplicable to be so overcome with emotion at a foreign anthem – far from the finest music, or verse, ever written – but for the man inside the house, whose death at Matfei's hand I had just listened to, it had meant everything. I had witnessed many deaths over the past decade, and if he had been stood on the battlefield, supporting to the last a tricolour, then his death would have been . . . respectable – both to me and, I believe, to him. But ever since we had begun to work with the Oprichniki, there had not been one single honourable death amongst the whole lot of them. Maks' death, the deaths of the uncounted French, even the deaths of the Oprichniki – Simon, Iakov Alfeyinich and Faddei – betrayed by Maks to the French; none of these fitted into the mould of the regular deaths of war. Perhaps in years to come, such ways of dying would become commonplace and acceptable, as the Frenchman – Louis, I think it was – had suggested back at that encampment we had infiltrated, but just then I yearned to witness a straightforward death by cannonball or sword. When I had chosen my path, away from the regular army, I had thought espionage was about information; about discovering what lay in the enemy's mind. I soon learned that it was simply about terminating those minds – about finding new and more unusual ways to carry death to our foes.

The door of the house opened and Matfei emerged once again. Glancing from side to side, he headed back up the street the way we had come. A coldness gripped me as, for the first time, I noticed something tangibly vile in one of the Oprichniki. Up until then, their methods and their manner were distasteful – distasteful to me and hence the problem was as much mine as theirs; no more than a clash of cultures. But what I now saw took a step beyond distaste, into abhorrence. I noticed – and at that distance I could hardly see, yet I was nonetheless certain – that he had blood on his lips.

Still, there might be nothing untoward in that. The Frenchman might have put up a fight before his death, laying a punch on Matfei's face, and so the blood might simply be Matfei's own. After a few steps, the Oprichnik stopped and raised his hand to his mouth, wiping the stain away. He looked at his fingers, considering the blood that he found there. I couldn't help but remember the blood on my own fingers, as those fingers were one after the other removed from my hand. Perhaps Matfei had not realized that he had been injured, and now, on seeing his own blood as confirmation of the wound, he would merely wipe his fingers clean on his coat. He did not. He raised his fingers back to his mouth and licked them delectably until the blood was gone. Then he set off once again on his way. Memories of long-forgotten stories forced their way into my mind, but I repressed them. I continued my pursuit.

As we travelled back north-eastwards, Matfei's stride was now less surreptitious – more the step of a contented gentleman returning to his home after an evening's revelry. Indeed, the directness of his motion suggested that he was no longer meandering through the city in search of targets, but was heading for some specific objective, which could only be his lodgings.

The fact that he had done his work for the evening and was heading for home, however, did not deter him from keeping an eye out for any other opportunities to kill that might arise. We had been travelling for about half an hour, always in a roughly north-easterly direction, when Matfei suddenly pressed himself against a wall and vanished, much as I had seen Foma do. His hearing was clearly sharper than mine; it wasn't for several seconds that I heard the regular footfall of a patrol.

I ducked into an alleyway, watching the point at which Matfei had disappeared, hoping, if not to see him as he hid, at least to have my eyes focused on the right place when he eventually moved. The patrol marched past him, close enough to feel his breath on their cheeks, if he was in fact breathing at all, such was his stillness. And even now, just two days into their occupation of Moscow, I think 'marched' was too flattering a word for the French troops. Over the weeks that the French remained in Moscow, the behaviour of the average soldier was to deteriorate beyond all military decorum, but already their marching was slack and ragged. They chatted and laughed as they went by, and the last of them paused to light a cigar that he had, no doubt, stolen from some empty Muscovite home, part of the pillage that the French termed the 'Foire de Moscou' – the Moscow Fair.

I held my breath, though in anticipation of what, I could not tell. Did I fear that the French would see Matfei, that the French would see me or that Matfei would see me? The actual outcome was, I think, the one that I had really been afraid of. The hindmost, straggling man, lighting his cigar, stood unwittingly at the very point in the street where Matfei had thrust himself, camouflaged against the wall. He had fallen ten, perhaps fifteen paces behind his companions.

Matfei pounced. In a single motion he stepped to the soldier's side and flung his tightly clenched fist back against the man's larynx. The blow itself could have caused fatal damage to the soldier – though not immediately fatal – but additionally, it bashed his head back against the wall behind him with a damp cracking sound. Matfei's action had exhibited enormous strength, but also an indolent casualness, like a child cuffing aside a ball as he runs in for his dinner. The soldier crumpled unconscious to his knees, dragging in scraping breaths through his shattered windpipe.

Before the man's comrades had even the first inkling of his disappearance, Matfei had found the street entrance to the cellar of a nearby tavern, and had slipped down inside, dragging the dying soldier with him.

I crept up to the trapdoor, which Matfei had left open, not daring to go too close, as though it were the entrance to a bear's cave. For all I knew, Matfei could be sitting there in the darkness, looking out at me, waiting until I had moved near enough for him to swoop upon me and drag me back inside. I stood a little way away from the open cellar, trying to make out any hint of movement from within and listening closely. I heard only the vaguest sounds of movement, and then a crash of breaking glass, followed by an exclamation that I took to be a curse.

Suddenly, a dim glow could be seen at the opening to the cellar. Clearly, Matfei was as blind as I was in the pitch-dark and needed additional light. I moved closer to the entrance, remaining standing so that I might be ready to run and also so that I wouldn't peek around the edge of the trapdoor to find myself face to face with Matfei. This way I could see deep into the cellar from some distance, and when I finally saw him, I would still be far enough for him not to reach me.

The first thing I saw was the sparkling remains of several broken vodka bottles, presumably those which Matfei had smashed in the darkness. Behind them was a small lantern which lit the room – Matfei had either been lucky in finding it there, or well prepared in bringing it along with him. A pool of spilled vodka was spreading out from the bottles and gradually soaking into the compacted earth of the cellar floor, but still I could not see Matfei or his victim. I took another step, to improve my line of sight, and a foot came into view – Matfei's from the look of it. He was kneeling or even on all fours and so the sole of his boot faced upwards. Beside it, the clear puddle of vodka was mingling with another, darker spillage, whose source I could not see.

With one more step towards the cellar door, the full picture was revealed. Matfei was on his knees, crouched over the body of the French soldier. One hand was on the man's chest, pressing him down in case he tried to struggle, although he appeared little capable of it. Matfei's other hand was under the soldier's chin, pushing back his head at a macabre angle so that his neck jutted enticingly outwards and upwards. At a first glance, one might have thought Matfei was kissing him, or trying to revive him, but it was not on the soldier's mouth that Matfei had placed his own lips, but on his neck.

The dark puddle that I had seen was a pool of blood, dribbling from the soldier's throat beneath Matfei's mouth. It was unthinkable, but it could only be that Matfei was drinking the man's blood. Even so, he was wasting an awful lot of it. This was not, however, I recalled with a shiver, his first meal of the evening.

Matfei adjusted his position slightly and the soldier's previously motionless legs began to thrash in a pathetic, strengthless, final attempt to resist the assault on his body. Matfei pressed down harder on the man's chest and began to raise his head, satisfied, I thought, with what he had drunk and pausing in his foul imbibement.

But as Matfei raised his head, so the neck and the head of the soldier began to move with it. Matfei pushed against the body beneath him and I saw that his teeth were still sunk deeply into the man's throat. As he strained upwards, the skin suddenly ruptured and gave way and Matfei's head rose rapidly, a lump of flesh trailing from his bloody mouth.