Zugzwang: chapter five

'We turned into Morsakaya Street. The little car did the same.'
Gallery: Marc Quinn's illustrations

The story so far: Spethmann's office has just been ransacked by two thugs, Kavi and Tolya. Desperate to keep his daughter out of the police investigation into the unexplained death of the mysterious Yastrebov, Spethmann hurries to his meeting with the notorious Peter Zinnurov. Now read on...

St Petersburg, 1914 Chapter Five

The doorman smiled ingratiatingly as he let me out of the building. I did not recognise him. A new man, I supposed. He asked if I wanted a taxi and offered to run to the stand to get one. I had planned to take the tram to the Admiralty and walk to Morskaya Street but, having spent almost two hours sorting out the files, I did not want to be late for my midnight meeting with Anna's father. Russia was the home of autocracy, the realm of the gendarme and the spy. No Russian received an order to appear for questioning at police headquarters without there materialising before his eyes perfect and terrible visions of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, the state prison of Schlusselburg and the red-capped hangman. No father could contemplate his daughter in chains. I could not be late.

'Where shall I tell the driver your honour is going?' he asked.

The question was normal enough, and in normal circumstances I would have answered him without a moment's hesitation. Instead I said, 'You're new here?'

'Yes, your honour.'

'What is your name?'

'Semevsky, sir. I'll get your taxi. Where did you say you were going?'

'Never mind,' I said, walking away.

It had been clear and cold earlier in the day but snow had been falling since lunchtime. The gas lights flickered through the flurries. As I was about to cross the street I glanced over my shoulder. Semevsky was still outside the building, watching me. Without looking where I was going, I stepped into the road. A small, dark blue motor carriage braked sharply, slithering on the street and almost colliding with a droshky. I took a deep breath: I had to be calm.

I continued to the taxi stand outside Gostinny Dvor. Fortunately there was a driver waiting for a fare.

In the back of the taxi I went over the day's events. It was impossible to know whether Lychev's visit and the arrival of Kavi and Tolya were connected, and, if they were, how? Nor could I make sense of the interest the two assassins of Gulko - I was certain Kavi and Tolya were the killers - should have in one of my patients. Things like this simply did not happen to people like me. I was not a wealthy man, certainly not the kind who would ever be put up for membership of the Imperial Yacht Club, but I was what we call comfortable, and part of being comfortable is a degree of insulation, which we take utterly for granted, against the chaotic and unpredictable sides of life. Another thing we take for granted is that the police are there to protect our lives and property. When they start to take a professional interest in us, it is as though the natural order has been reversed. We are left confused, shocked and outraged, and feel ourselves the victim of intolerable injustice. I had not summoned the police after Kavi and Tolya's intrusion; until I knew what Lychev wanted I was not certain I could trust them.

The driver was in a mood to talk. There had been violent collisions this afternoon in the Vyborg quarter between striking factory workers and police, he told me. 'All got up by German agents. It's part of the German plan. They're trying to ruin our industries and turn the people against the tsar. Then, when they've got us on our knees, that's when they'll invade. The socialists are all in on it, too,' he assured me. Having other things to think about, I said nothing and he soon fell silent.

As we were passing the Stroganov Palace I casually turned my head to look out of the back window. The Nevsky was quiet. My eyes fell on a small motor carriage behind us. Besides the driver I could just make out a passenger in the front. Was I being followed? This morning such a notion would have seemed absurd. The comfortable are not followed. To be followed implies you are mixed up in something unseemly. The lives of the comfortable are civilised and blameless. If this is to exaggerate, it is only a little: the comfortable do not merit following; nor, generally, are we worth it.

We turned into Morskaya Street. The little car did the same.

The taxi driver pulled up at the Imperial Yacht Club. 'Fifty kopecks,' he said. I did not move or say anything, keeping my eyes fixed on the car behind us. I saw now that it was blue. The same car that had almost hit the droshky near Gostinny Dvor? I caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver and his companion as they passed. The passenger's face was obscured by his hat, but I got the impression he was slightly made, the bulk of his overcoat notwithstanding. They did not so much as glance in my direction. Perhaps I was being foolish. I paid the driver.

I went to the door, straightened my tie and rang the bell. A servant in a dark green uniform with red piping looked me over.

'I have an appointment with Mr Peter Arseneyevich Zinnurov. I am Dr Otto Spethmann,' I said.

Moments later two more similarly uniformed servants relieved me of my hat and coat and led me up a wide, sweeping staircase. At the top was a red-carpeted landing. I continued with my retinue until we reached the farthest door. I was shown inside. There were leather armchairs and a pair of butterfly-backed, cream-coloured sofas in the Italian rustic style. There were potted plants, leather-bound volumes in glass-fronted, mahogany bookcases and, on the French Empire gueridon, a carefully folded copy of the Petersburg Zeitung. One of the servants bade me sit and informed me that Mr Zinnurov would join me shortly. He offered me a cigar and asked if I would take some refreshment.

The room was terribly overheated. I went to the heavy, dark green drapes and pulled them aside. There was a good view of the golden caravel of the Admiralty, and, to the right, Winter Palace Square. The church bells sounded midnight and the cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress fired.

For all Anna's resistance there had been the unmistakable indication that something traumatic had happened during her trip with her father to Kazan all those years ago. Neither her refusal to confront the memory nor the upheaval following Kavi's visit had stopped me speculating on what might have occurred. There was an obvious and odious possibility: her father had made improper advances towards his 13-year-old daughter. For this reason alone, not to mention his notorious public reputation, my feelings on the prospect of meeting Zinnurov were ambiguous, wary and incomplete.

The man who bounded into the overheated room and thrust out his hand was tall, trim and straight-backed, despite being, by my calculation, almost 70. His hair was probably thinner than it had been when he was a youth, but it was still plentiful, not yet entirely grey, and, for all his hairdresser's expertise, it remained a little unruly (being naturally curly). He told me how delighted he was to make the acquaintance of the man responsible for the astonishing improvement in his daughter's condition. He spoke loudly, used to being heard and appreciated. I imagined he usually overwhelmed his listeners.

A waiter entered with a decanter of red wine and two crystal goblets on a silver tray. We took our seats and, in spite of my protestations, he forced a glass on me. The wine was French, he informed me with an ironic shrug. The Imperial Yacht Club was famously the resort of the German noblemen known as the 'Baltic Barons' and their friends, those who believed Prussian autocracy to be the safest guarantee of tsarism's future. They loathed the military and financial alliance with France.

'The French are cynical and frivolous,' Zinnurov said, then added with a helpless smile, 'but they do know how to make good wine.' The wine was big, earthy and forceful. Evidently Zinnurov was a man who liked his essence mirrored back to himself.

He asked about Anna. Had I met her husband? What did I think of him? I made some polite but inconsequential noises. 'He's a fool,' Zinnurov declared. 'A boring, pompous idiot. I never understood what Anna saw in him. Hardly a handsome man, either. And there are no children - which says everything, don't you think?' He continued to speak indiscreetly about his son-in-law before suddenly clamping his hands to his knees and asking how he could help me.

I came directly to the point: I told him about Lychev's visit and about the investigation into the death of Yastrebov. I told him that Lychev had ordered me to appear at police headquarters tomorrow, along with my daughter. I did not tell him about the intrusion of Kavi and Tolya and their theft of the file, partly for fear of giving the impression that my affairs must be more complicated than I was letting on, and partly because I desperately wanted to believe that, since they had got what they wanted, I would never see them again. But I emphasised to him that I knew nothing that could help Lychev in any way and that, naturally, I found the whole business very distressing.

I could smell the wine's dense bouquet in the air between us. He was quiet, as if following up some vague line of thought.

Eventually he said, 'If you are innocent you have nothing to fear.'

How to answer without sounding disloyal or cynical? 'Of course this is true,' I began slowly, picking my way carefully across the potential pitfalls. 'But mistakes are sometimes made. Suspicion can fall on individuals who are blameless. I swear to you I know nothing of Yastrebov or how he came to his death.'

Zinnurov scrutinised me with penetrating, bright, round eyes. It was rumoured that his grandfather had been a serf, and his father a conscript in the war in the Crimea. All that he possessed - which was a very great deal - he had created for himself. His spectacular rise in the world was the work of an especially powerful personality. This was the Peter Arseneyevich Zinnurov I now glimpsed - the self-made entrepreneur, friend of the Baltic Barons, confidant of the tsar, the man known to the Russian public as the Mountain because of his famous speech to the first Duma, in the chaotic days after the Revolution of 1905, when he declared that those who sought to bring down the tsar might just as well try to demolish Mount Narodnaya. He had famously termed the tsar's enemies as 'a league of wickedness': they included liberals, factory workers seduced by socialists, degenerate students, artists, social democrats, anarchists, terrorists and, 'a certain race that need not be named because every decent Russian knows who they are.' This was Anna's father. Was I, in his estimation - even if ambiguously in my own - one of that certain race?

'Wait here,' he said. He left the room.

I pondered that 'Wait here'. The tone had been neutral; it had been uttered without a smile. It had been the Mountain speaking. My spirits, which had risen on being greeted in so cordial a manner, began to sink. Half an hour went by. What a fool I had been to ask Anna to telephone him. Would I never see her again? I thought: I shall write to her! And then I thought: No - do not write. Telephone her. Speak directly to her. Tell her ... Tell her what? What would I say?

The door opened. I half rose to my feet. Zinnurov grandly motioned me to stay where I was. He dropped into the sofa next to me.

'We are engaged in a war against the most fanatical enemy,' he began solemnly. 'It is a war to the death. The enemy will not compromise or negotiate, for he has but one goal - the total destruction of our civilisation. Equally we cannot compromise. How can one negotiate away civilisation?' He put his hand on my knee, rather disconcerting me. Why was he telling me this? What did I have to do with any war to the death? 'The police must be vigilant,' he continued. 'They are, after all, our first line of defence. You understand that, don't you?'

'Of course,' I said quickly. 'It's just that I don't see - '

'Good, good,' he cut me off. 'I'm glad to hear it.' He squeezed my knee and went on brightly, 'It just so happens my friend Maklakov, the Minister of the Interior, is here tonight. I explained your situation and personally vouched for your reliability.' He paused to let me know that he had performed something out of the ordinary. 'The police cannot be blamed for pursuing whatever leads come their way,' he continued, 'and we should be grateful for their doggedness. Intelligence is everything - we must know our enemy. If there has been a misunderstanding, it is only because the police - not unnaturally given how many officials and ministers have been murdered by Jewish revolutionaries - tend to be suspicious of people of your persuasion. I keep telling them, not all Jews are fanatics. Like you, there are many who are respectable and loyal.'

I was squirming under all this. Then he said, 'There is no need for you or your daughter to appear at Police Headquarters.'

I almost collapsed in relief and gratitude. Zinnurov received my thanks and stood up. He led me down the wide marble staircase to the vestibule.

'One thing the Minister mentioned,' he said, almost as an afterthought. 'Does your daughter have a certificate of political reliability?'

'No,' I said, becoming alarmed again. 'I never thought it necessary.'

'You should consider it - an insurance policy.' I felt gloomy all over again. 'The certificate will be easily arranged,' he added, with a hearty smile. 'The main thing is that your problem with Lychev is over. He will never bother you again.'

A driver from the club brought me home, at Zinnurov's bidding. The small, dark blue car followed us all the way. This time I recognised the passenger. It was Lychev. He looked pinched and cold. I almost felt sorry for him. So I gave him a wave.

Next week: Spethmann lets down his guard

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