Green had known Bullfinch for a long time, a lot longer than the others. He was a special boy, bred from precious stock - the son of a hanged regicide and a female member of the People's Will party, who had died in a prison cell while on hunger strike; the child of unmarried parents, not christened in church, raised by comrades of his mother and father; the first free citizen of the future free Russia; with no garbage in his head, no filth polluting his soul. Some day boys like that would be quite ordinary, but for now he was one of a kind, the invaluable product of a painful process of evolution, and so Green had really not wanted to take Bullfinch into the group.
But how could he not have taken him? Three years earlier, when Green had escaped from the state prison and was making his way home the long way round the world - through China, Japan and America - he had been detained for a while in Switzerland. Just hanging about with nothing to do, waiting for the escort to guide him across the border. Bullfinch had only just been sent there from Russia, where his guardians had been arrested yet again, and there was no one in Zurich to take care of the little lad. They had asked Green, and he had agreed because at that time there was nothing else he could do to help the party. The escort was delayed and then disappeared completely. Before they managed to arrange a new one, a whole year had gone by.
For some reason Green didn't find the boy a burden - quite the opposite, in fact; perhaps because for the first time in a long time he was obliged to concern himself not with the whole of mankind but with one single individual. And not even an adult, but a raw young boy.
One day, after a long, serious conversation, Green made his young ward a promise: when Bullfinch grew up, Green would let him work with him, no matter what he might happen to be doing at the time. The Combat Group had not even been thought of then, or Green would never have promised such a thing.
Then he had come back home to Russia and set to work. He often remembered the boy, but of course he completely forgot about his promise. And then, just two months ago, in Peter, they had brought Bullfinch to him in a clandestine apartment. Here, comrade Green, meet our young reinforcements from the emigration. Bullfinch had gazed at him with adoration in his eyes and started talking about the promise almost from the very first moment. There was nothing Green could do about it - he didn't know how to go back on his word.
He had taken care of the boy and kept him away from the action, but things couldn't go on like that for ever. And after all, Bullfinch was grown up now - eighteen years old. The same age Green had been on that railway bridge.
Not just yet, he had told himself the previous night, as he prepared for the operation. Next time. And he had ordered Bullfinch to leave for Moscow - supposedly to check on their contacts.
Bullfinch was a delicate peach colour. What kind of warrior would he make? Though it did sometimes happen that people like that turned out to be genuine heroes. He ought to arrange a baptism of fire for the boy, but the execution of a traitor was not the right place to start.
'Nobody's going anywhere,' Green said with authority. 'Everybody sleep. I'll take first watch. Rahmet's on in two hours. I'll wake him.'
'E-eh,' said the former cornet with a smile. 'You're a fine man in every way, Green, only boring. Terror's not the right business for you. You ought to be a bookkeeper in a bank.' But he didn't argue, he knew there was no point.
They drew lots. Rahmet got the bed to sleep on, Emelya got the divan and Bullfinch got the folded blanket.
For fifteen minutes he heard talking and laughter from behind the door, and then everything was quiet. After that their host looked out of the study, his gold pince-nez glinting in the semi-darkness, and muttered uncertainly: 'Good evening.'
Green nodded, but the private lecturer didn't go away.
Green felt that he had to show some consideration. After all, this was inconvenient for the man, and risky. They gave you penal servitude for harbouring terrorists. He said politely: 'I know we've incommoded you, Semyon Lvovich. Be patient -we'll leave tomorrow.'
Aronson hesitated, as if there were something he was afraid to ask, and Green guessed that he wanted to talk. After all, he was a cultured man, a member of the intelligentsia. Once he got started, he wouldn't stop until morning.
Oh no. Firstly, it was not a good idea to strike up a speculative conversation with an unproven individual, and secondly, he had something serious to think over.
'I'm in your way here,' he said, getting up decisively. 'I'll sit in the kitchen for a while.'
He sat down on a hard chair beside a curtained entrance (he had already checked it: it was the servant girl's box room). He started thinking about 'TG'. For perhaps the thousandth time in the last few months.
It had all started in September, a few days after Sable blew himself up - he had thrown a bomb at Khrapov as the General was coming out of a church, but the device had struck the kerb of the pavement and all the shrapnel had been thrown back at the bomber.
That was when the first letter had come.
No, it hadn't come; it had been found - on the dining table in the apartment where the Combat Group was quartered at the time, a place to which only very few people had access.
It wasn't really a group - that was just a name, because after Sable's death Green was the only active warrior left. The helpers and the couriers didn't count.
The Combat Group had been formed after Green returned to Russia illegally. He had spent a long time assessing where he could be most useful, where he should apply the match so that the blaze would flare up as fiercely as possible. He had transported leaflets, helped to set up an underground printing works, guarded the party congress. All this was necessary, but he had not forged himself into a man of steel in order to do work that anyone could manage.
His goal had gradually taken clear shape. It was the same as before: terror. After the destruction of the People's Will party the level of militant revolutionary activity had dwindled away to almost nothing. The police was no longer what it had been in the seventies. There were spies and agent provocateurs everywhere. In the whole of the last decade there had only been a couple of successful terrorist operations and a dozen failures. What good was that?
If there was no struggle against tyranny, revolutions did not happen - that was axiomatic. Tsarism would not be overthrown by leaflets and educational groups. Terror was as necessary as air, as a mouthful of water in the desert.
After carefully thinking everything through, Green had begun to act. He had a word with Melnikov, a member of the Central Committee whom he trusted completely, and was granted qualified approval. He would cany out the first operation entirely at his own risk. If it was successful, the party would announce the establishment of a Combat Group and provide financial and organisational support. If it failed, he had been acting alone.
That was logical. In any case acting alone was safer - you certainly wouldn't betray yourself to the Okhranka. Green also set one condition: Melnikov was to be the only member of the Central Committee who knew about him; all contacts had to go through him. If Green required helpers, he would choose them himself.
The first mission he was given was to carry out the sentence that had been pronounced a long time ago on Privy Counsellor Yakimovich. Yakimovich was a murderer and a villain. Three years earlier he had sent five students to the scaffold for planning to kill the Tsar. It had been a dirty case, based from the beginning on entrapment by the police and Yakimovich himself, who was not yet a privy counsellor, but only a modest assistant public prosecutor.