the chapel, just beyond the glow of the candles. He couldn’t make it out in the shadows, but he sensed that it was there, just as he sensed the presence of someone standing behind him.
His head snapped round expectantly.
It wasn’t Irina; it was a young priest, not much older than Tom, and yet there was something haggard and careworn about him.
‘If He hasn’t heard you by now, then I doubt He’s listening.’
Tom returned the faint smile, but said nothing.
‘Bad times.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Vade in pacem,’ the priest said softly before retiring into the gloom shrouding the main body of the cathedral.
Maybe it was the young priest’s depleted air, but Tom felt a sudden shiver of unease pass through him. He now noticed that some of the icons were missing from the walls of the chapel. Stolen, or removed for their own protection? Either way, their absence pointed to an ominous shift in the natural order of things. A story blew into his mind, something Irina had once told him. She had been present when two hundred victims of the so-called ‘Bloodless Revolution’ had been laid to rest on the Champ de Mars. Apparently, no crosses had been carried in the procession, and no priests had been allowed to officiate at the burials.
Irina. Was she trying to tell him something? He would normally have dismissed such a thought as superstitious claptrap, but by now the fear had lodged itself in his chest. Why had he even chosen St Isaac’s? Because it was safe? Nowhere was safe in the new Russia. There was certainly no place for obsolete notions of religious sanctuary.
He was a fool. At the very least, he should have remained outside the cathedral, whose thick walls rising into the darkness were beginning to feel more like those of a prison than a place of worship. Even the mosaic saints set in the marble iconostasis towering before him seemed to look down on him now with a certain disapproval, reproaching him for his stupidity.
He hurried over and recovered the bag from the shadows. The park directly across from the north portal would give him a view down Admiralty Prospekt of Irina approaching. More importantly, he would be able to see if she was being followed. He refused to consider the possibility that she wouldn’t show at all. If the mission had failed, there would be no second chances.
He was ten yards shy of the north doors when he saw them enter the cathedral directly in front of him. They weren’t in uniform, they didn’t need to be. The way they were moving, the arrogant purpose in their step, marked the pair out as Chekists. Tom’s instinct was to turn and flee, but he knew they would have the south and west doors covered by now.
Extending an upturned hand, he carried on towards the two men.
‘A few roubles, comrades,’ he pleaded pathetically, ‘for a veteran of Tannenberg.’
Mention of the bloody battle didn’t curry any sympathy.
‘Papers,’ snapped the smaller of the two Chekists.
‘I haven’t eaten in days.’
Not so far from the truth, but Tom found his hand slapped aside.
‘Papers!’
‘Leave him,’ growled the other. ‘You heard what Zakharov said – he has a beard.’
Zakharov. There was no time to process this news – or to give thanks for the last-minute precaution of changing his appearance – as two more men bowled into the building through the north doors. They were wearing leather jackets crossed with cartridge belts. The taller of the two Chekists turned to them.
‘Neratov, you guard the door.’
Any suspicions that Neratov might have had of Tom were dispelled when the smaller Chekist shoved him dismissively aside. The scruffy man with the bag in his hand had evidently been checked and cleared. While the three other policemen fanned out into the cathedral Tom crept sheepishly past the glowering Neratov and out through the doors.
In his haste to put the danger behind him, he slipped on the icy steps leading down from the pillared portico. Falling hard, he felt something go in his wrist. He bit back a cry, not wishing to draw attention to himself.
He glanced up and down Admiralty Prospekt: the pavements were deserted, just an isvochik heading towards him, drawn by a shaggy white horse. It was free, and Tom waved it down, almost laughing at the absurdity of his good fortune.
The coachman, muffled in furs, was bringing the small sledge to a halt when Tom heard the shout.
‘Stop him!’
It came from the cathedral. The tall Chekist stood dwarfed between two pillars of the north portico, waving furiously.
‘Stop him!’ he bellowed again. ‘He’s an enemy of the Soviet!’
With a flick of the driver’s reins the sleigh took off. Tom stumbled after it, unable to get any meaningful purchase on the compacted snow, falling quickly behind as the horse’s trot became a canter. Realizing the futility of the pursuit, he cut left across the street and disappeared into the park on the far side.
Overhead, a half-moon hung in a cloudless sky, and even beyond the pool of light thrown by the street lamp he could still pick a route with ease. Unfortunately, this also meant that his pursuers would have no trouble following his deep tracks in the snow.
That first lone shout had now become a chorus at his back. Outnumbered, the only thing he had in his favour was that he had prepared himself for such conditions. The snow in the park was deep, thigh-deep in places, just as it had been in Finland. Before leaving Helsinki, he had trained hard in anticipation of their flight from Russia, pushing himself on occasions to almost masochistic extremes. Not only was he in better physical condition than he’d ever been, but he had also accustomed himself to the hunger and the cold until his mother would barely have recognized the lean, gaunt spectre of her own son before her. He had grown a beard, and he had learned to stoop convincingly, knocking a few inches off his height, making him one of the crowd.
‘Come on, you bastards,’ Tom muttered to himself. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’
What they had, it turned out, was guns. And they weren’t afraid to use them.
The first few shots ripped through the skeletal branches above his head. He assumed they were warning shots until he heard something whistle past his left ear, death missing him by a matter of inches.
Crouching, he drove his legs on, knowing that every hard yard gained now would equate to three or four when the snow-bound park gave way to Admiralty Quay. He lost a little of his advantage when he was suddenly pitched forward into the snow, as if shoved hard in the back by a phantom hand. Scrabbling to his feet, he figured the bullet must have struck the bag slung over his shoulder, embedding itself in the jumble of clothing he’d put together for Irina.
A primeval impulse to survive, to live beyond his twenty-two years, took complete possession of him now. He ploughed on like a man sprinting through a waist-high sea to save a drowning child. Pleasingly, the shouts of his pursuers had dimmed almost to silence by the time he finally broke free on to Admiralty Quay.
He knew that the frozen stillness of the river lay just beyond the low wall ahead of him. Should
