For at eleven o’clock the following morning a distraught and tearful Mikhail presented himself at the British Embassy. Natasha, he told a weary Powerscourt and de Chassiron, resplendent in a new shirt from Paris, had disappeared. A friend of hers was in the city that morning. Natasha had told her, Mikhail reported, that she thought she was being followed by some of the soldiers of the guard. Perhaps they had taken her prisoner. Perhaps they were going to mistreat her.
‘She disappeared once before, didn’t she,’ asked Powerscourt as gently as he could, ‘and she came back again, didn’t she?’
‘That was because the little boy was ill, my lord,’ said Mikhail. ‘He’s not ill now, at least not for the present.’
De Chassiron saw how upset the young man was. Anybody might fall in love with Natasha. He himself could easily have fallen in love with her. Perhaps the entire squad of soldiers in the Alexander Palace had fallen in love with her.
‘You don’t suppose,’ Mikhail was tormenting himself now, ‘that they will take revenge on Natasha for what happened to the Major and the others last night?’
That thought had crossed Powerscourt’s mind some moments before. He looked at his watch. The engineless train should have been discovered by now. Perhaps Shatilov’s mutilated body had also been found. It would take some time, he thought, to work out how he had met his end. The presumption would be that he had been killed by one of the Englishmen rather than destroyed by a bridge. He stared hard at a print of King’s College Cambridge behind de Chassiron’s desk, the Chapel standing out like a bulwark or a beacon of man’s love of God in a sceptical and scientific city. He could see de Chassiron lounging about on the grass in his gown, arguing with the dons. Powerscourt wondered if the print followed him on all his postings, a travelling reminder of the glory of youth accompanying him into the shallows of middle age.
It must have been the print that made up his mind, he told Johnny later. For when he turned his gaze back to de Chassiron he knew exactly what he was going to do.
‘There’s only one thing for it,’ he said. ‘The Ambassador has, I hope, sent on the letter I drafted for him last night. That made no mention of the little battle on the train or the death of the ghastly Major. Any references to those events would, it seems to me, be likely to have the most unpleasant consequences. Who are these English people anyway? What is their business here? They are spies. Of course they are spies. And what happens to the heroic defenders of the person of the Tsar and the integrity of his realm when they apprehend these villains and try to extract information from them by traditional Russian methods? Why, the heroic Major is slain doing his duty. Powerscourt and the rest of his English rabble are murderers. To the cells with them! Death to the traitors! Long live the Tsar!’
‘You could have a point there, Powerscourt,’ drawled de Chassiron. ‘At the very least you could be locked up for years before any case came to trial. Last night you were up on the roof of a railway compartment. Maybe in view of the fact that these people guard the roads and the railways you’ll have to leave on another.’
‘I’m damned if I’m going to crawl out of this country like a criminal,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The important thing at the moment is to rescue Natasha. I’m going to rouse Johnny Fitzgerald and then he and I are going to pay a visit to General Derzhenov at the Okhrana headquarters on the Fontanka.’
‘And what are you going to do when you get there? Pop yourself into one of those nice cells they have in the basement?’ De Chassiron looked as if he thought his friend had gone mad.
‘Let me try to put it into diplomatic language for you, de Chassiron. I am going, on behalf of the British Government, to conduct a negotiation aimed at the speedy release of Miss Bobrinsky who has been a great friend to the British Foreign Office and the British Government.’
‘That makes her sound like a spy, an English spy,’ said de Chassiron. ‘That might not do her any good at all. I think you have to let events take their course. There’s nothing we can do. Talk of going to the Okhrana is so much pie in the sky. Why should they lift a finger to help us?’
‘I think you are wrong there. In fact I’m sure of it. Derzhenov has already asked to see me to discuss my conversation with the Tsar. I propose to tell him something, but not necessarily all of what was said, in exchange for the immediate release of Natasha.’
‘But he’s not going to interfere with another of Russia’s intelligence agencies.’ De Chassiron sounded very certain.
‘My dear man,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘this is one of the problems of having competing intelligence agencies. They usually hate their rivals far more than they hate their enemies. I bet you the Okhrana loathe the late Major Shatilov and his organization. Anything they can do to bring them into disrepute brings more power to the Okhrana.’
‘And how much do you propose to tell him? More than you propose telling our Ambassador here, or myself? That would be rather treacherous conduct.’
‘That’s unfair,’ said Powerscourt angrily. ‘You know perfectly well that I am specifically instructed to give the results of my investigation to the Prime Minister and to him alone. At present, however much I might want to fill you in, de Chassiron, I just can’t do it. Anyway, we shall see,’ said Powerscourt, rising from his chair. ‘Please come too, Mikhail, Derzhenov speaks very good English but I have no idea who else we might meet on the way.’
Derzhenov was alone in his office on the fourth floor. The villainous Colonel Kolchak, Powerscourt thought, must be kicking people to death in the basement cells.
‘How good of you to call, Lord Powerscourt!’ the head of the Okhrana purred. ‘And you must be the famous Johnny Fitzgerald. And Mikhail, of course, in case I forget my English. You come just as you said you would, Lord Powerscourt, the morning after your interview with the Tsar. How kind! How very kind!’
Powerscourt felt as though a month had elapsed since his interview with the Tsar. ‘Now then, my friend,’ Derzhenov went on, ‘I understand you have had some interesting adventures since your interview. Is that not so? Interesting adventures?’
‘I will tell you about those in a moment, if I may, General Derzhenov. But most of all I want to ask for your assistance.’
‘My assistance, Lord Powerscourt? How can the son of a humble schoolteacher possibly be of assistance to the representative of the greatest empire on earth?’
Powerscourt felt that American or German historians might take issue with the last statement but he did not think the time or the place were appropriate for a discussion on the rise and fall of empires. ‘It is a very simple matter, General. It concerns a young lady called Natasha Bobrinsky. She is a friend of Mikhail. She has been helping us in a general sort of way, in the inquiries about Mr Martin, for example. She has done nothing whatsoever to harm or betray her country. She is employed part-time as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. For the past few days she felt she was being followed by members of the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division. This morning she has disappeared.’