Then they turned left and Derzhenov opened another enormous door. It gave on to a long corridor, lined with tall windows that looked out across a courtyard to the opposite side of the building. The Okhrana man pressed a button and rather feeble, yellow, museum-strength light came on to illuminate the pictures.
‘All of these are of special interest to me, Powerscourt. The Hermitage authorities have allowed me to mount my own little private collection within the larger whole. Such a privilege! And now to have you with me to share its delights!’
Derzhenov had positioned himself in such a way that only one painting was so far visible. ‘What about this one, my dear sir? Sixteenth-century Spanish if you please. Not just one saint but three! And Christ and the Virgin and God Almighty too!’
Powerscourt saw that the painting was called St Sebastian between St Bernard and St Francis, completed in 1582, by the Spanish painter Alonso Sanchez Coello. It existed on three separate layers. On the bottom of the picture Sebastian was tied, rather loosely, to a tree. He was naked except for a white loincloth fastened at the waist and he was leaning outwards on his right hip which curved in to meet his trunk. He was pierced by a number of arrows, one in the leg, one which had gone right through his right arm and five to his stomach, waist and shoulder. There was no blood from his wounds and the saint had a rather dreamy expression on his face as if he expected to levitate up to heaven fairly soon. To his left St Francis, clad in a brown habit, appeared to be pleading with him on some undisclosed saintly business. On his other side St Bernard knelt with a crook clasped between his hands. Behind the saint shadowy figures could be seen, with mountains and a lake in the distance. On the next level, Christ, in a similar loincloth to the saint but with a red robe, and the Virgin appeared to be discussing possible rescue missions or preparing to welcome him home. And on the topmost level, God, in a golden light, surrounded like an elderly and benevolent headmaster by hosts of misbehaving and mischievous putti, gazed down on the scene, the world in his hand, and released a dove of peace.
‘Well,’ said Derzhenov, taking a large swig of his vodka, ‘what do you think of it?’
‘As a work of history or as a work of artistic composition?’ said Powerscourt, feeling rather like a new and junior curator at the National Gallery being interrogated by the Director.
‘None of those! God in heaven, Powerscourt! Have you no idea what my interests in these pictures are likely to be?’ He strode forward and tapped Sebastian on the heart.
‘Look, man! They’re meant to be killing this fellow, for Christ’s sake! And they’re pathetic! If this was an archery contest, the heart would be here in the very centre of the ring.’ Derzhenov drew a series of imaginary circles like an archery ring outwards from St Sebastian’s heart. ‘Anybody shooting an arrow or anything else into the centre in there would get maximum points. But look at this! Not a single shot near the heart! Not one! No points for the archers. No blood either. The fools are not shooting hard enough, for God’s sake. Bloody arrows are going far enough to penetrate the skin but not hard enough to do any real damage. No proper management of those archers, that’s what I say. If they’d behaved like that under my command I’d have crucified every third one of them! Even our new peasant intake when we bring them here can see the bloody archers are a lot of old women.’
Powerscourt shuddered when he realized that Derzhenov must be conducting courses in torture here, bringing his minions to learn what lessons they could from the works of the Old Masters.
Derzhenov had moved on to another canvas. ‘And what about this one? By that Italian fellow who got everywhere, Titian,’ he demanded angrily. ‘See any improvement?’
This, Powerscourt saw immediately, was a very different sort of St Sebastian. He was flanked by no companionable saints. Neither Christ nor the Virgin nor God nor his putti offered comfort from the layers above. You could just see that the saint was attached to a dark tree, barely visible behind him, a white loincloth round his waist. The background was unclear, a turbulent impasto of dark purple, broken and illuminated in places by yellow or gold patches that might have been sunshine or the lights of a great city or the campfires of a distant enemy. The saint himself was lit from the front so his trunk was in pale gold. The arms and legs were paler, with the head and the right arm in shadow. There were two arrows piercing his right arm and three in his torso. The expression on his face was of long suffering, of acceptance of his fate.
‘Well?’ snapped Derzhenov, as Powerscourt finished his preliminary inspection of the painting. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt gingerly, ‘it’s a much greater painting than the other one, much simpler, more powerful.’
‘Powerful? Poppycock!’ Derzhenov tossed off the remainder of his vodka. ‘Do I need to remind you what was wrong with the first one? Inaccurate archery fire again. Nowhere near the heart, for God’s sake. Arrows not drawing blood. Pathetic. Sebastian should have been dead long before if they could have fired straight, those Mauretanian archers. Know what I think, Powerscourt? It’s a serious failure of duty by the counter-terrorist forces in Rome. Couldn’t be tolerated here in Russia. Third century AD, all this stuff with arrows and loincloths and so on, I think. Roman history not my strong point, but this Sebastian had been clearly discovered by the authorities giving comfort and sympathy to Christian revolutionary elements. Enemy of the state. Should have been disposed of quietly in some Roman basement like our own. No bugger would ever have heard of him then. No bloody paintings either. Instead the archers are so bad the man survives! He was rescued, for God’s sake, by some other terrorist sympathizer called Irene and nursed back to health. Fellow only dies when he shows himself to the Emperor who has him stoned or cudgelled to death, can’t remember which. Terrible failure by the security services, that’s how I portray it to our students.’
Powerscourt was saved from the need for speech by the reappearance of the waiter with the vodka tray who glided in almost invisibly from a door hidden by a tapestry.
‘Splendid, splendid,’ said Derzhenov, downing one glass and taking another. ‘Let me lead you to our next pair of pictures, Lord Powerscourt. These I always take care to show our new recruits. Can I interest you in a couple of Flagellations on the way?’ Derzhenov had moved away to the window and was looking at the snow falling fast on the courtyard outside. ‘Both remarkable examples of how not to whip a man? No? A couple of heads of John the Baptist, perhaps? One a Caravaggio where the mouth of the beheaded prophet seems to carry on speaking after death? My own favourite depiction of violence, the blinding of Samson, a quite remarkable early work by Rubens? No? Well, before we step along to the last two, perhaps we could speak of Mr Martin.’
Powerscourt had known this must be coming. He wondered if the violent paintings had been meant to soften him up. Well, he thought to himself, he had seen far worse things in battle. Then, he told himself, so too had Derzhenov.
‘My assumption, Lord Powerscourt,’ the Okhrana man continued to stare out at the snow, deliberately avoiding eye contact in the manner of an Old Bailey barrister, ‘is that you have not found the answer to the death of Mr Martin. If you had, you would have gone home by now. Is that right?’
‘You will understand, General, that I am not at liberty to discuss the case with you, however much I might want to.’
‘Nonsense, Lord Powerscourt, don’t give me that rubbish. If you thought I could help, you would have been begging for my assistance.’