One

‘Madame Discretion?’ he asked politely.

The brothel owner looked hard at him. She was fat and old, her hair dyed with henna, and was clothed only in a pale yellow silk wrap through which he could see her hanging breasts. Wordlessly she held out her hand, the nails very long and painted a brilliant scarlet.

Obediently he handed her the little purse while the half-naked whores, most of them clad only in black silk stockings and garters and transparent gowns, watched in bored curiosity.

Madame Discretion took the purse, opened it, counted the gold sovereigns, then as an afterthought bit into the edge of each one of them. Finally she nodded her approval. ‘Bon,’ she said throatily, ‘venez avec moi, m’sieu.’

Again obediently he followed her, his dark, cunning eyes missing nothing as they passed out of the salon and began to descend the stairs – the chains and the whips on the walls, the pornographic statues everywhere, the two-way mirrors through which voyeurs could watch the sexual antics of others. His observations told him that while Madame Discretion and her whores now serviced the new Communist masters of Russia, she had done the same for the aristocrats of the old regime who obviously had had more sophisticated tastes than the peasants who now inhabited the Kremlin.

She opened the door of what appeared to be the cellar. A whiff of stale, fetid air assailed his nostrils. Automatically he touched his right pocket where his revolver lay. Was he walking into a trap? The fat brothel owner saw the movement. She shook her head and one enormous breast, the nipple painted scarlet, fell out of her wrapper. ‘Pas dangereux,’ she reassured him. ‘Seulement difficil.’

‘Oui, je comprends, madame,’ he answered in fluent French, one of the half a dozen languages he understood in addition to his native Yiddish.

She took a torch from the clamp next to the door and handed it to him, saying, ‘Allez… vite.’

He nodded his thanks and stepped inside the narrow entrance.

Carefully he started to make his way down the tunnel. Here and there rats scurried away at his approach, their bodies magnified grotesquely in the light of the torch. Moisture dropped from the ceiling. Slime coated the walls and there was a mouldy stench everywhere that made him want to choke and spit. Still he persisted, telling himself that the couple had found a wonderful hiding place. Not even the Cheka would think of searching for them in a disused sewer under a brothel.

He blundered into a wall. For a moment he thought his progress had come to an end. But after groping his way a little, he found the turn in the passage and continued. Suddenly he stopped and thanked God for the torch. Twenty metres below, water foamed and bubbled as it rushed along a narrow brick passage. One step more and he would have fallen straight into it. ‘May the saints help and save me!’ he exclaimed in that faked Irish accent he always used when he spoke to himself. He looked down at it for a few moments, guessing that it had been used by the brothel to get rid of unwelcome visitors or whores who had got pregnant and were no longer of any use in their job. Russia had always been full of young peasant girls who thought the profession of prostitute was glamorous or a means of escape from the drudgery of farm work. There were always plenty of new recruits eager to take up the job.

Carefully, for the ground was slippery and wet, he crossed the gap and went on to where, in the yellow light of the torch, he could see the steps leading upwards. This must be their hiding place, he told himself, and began to mount them carefully, trying to be as silent as possible. For even now he was prepared to find that the meeting might be a trap. After all, he had survived as long as he had by being constantly on the alert. Even when he was in bed with one of his current six mistresses, he always kept a loaded automatic under the pillow.

He came to the head of the stairs. A door barred his way. From underneath it there came a chink of light and he could hear a child’s voice saying something in a soothing tone. It had to be them, he told himself. Still, all the same, he reached into his pocket and clicked the safety off his revolver.

He knocked softly. There was a sudden silence which lasted for a long moment. Then a cultivated voice asked a little fearfully, ‘Is it you?’

‘Yes,’ he answered in Russian. ‘It is I, Your Highness.’

A bolt was drawn back. A moment later the door was opened and, framed in the square of yellow light coming from the single naked bulb which illuminated the secret room, a boy stood. He might have been twelve and he was poorly dressed in a shabby smock and black breeches in the peasant fashion. But there was no mistaking that imperious look and those bright blue eyes, the eyes of his murdered father. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. Again the accent was definitely not provincial Russian. It was cultured and aristocratic.

The man bowed. ‘My name is Reilly, Your Highness. I am the representative of the British Secret Service,’ he added grandly, for he always liked to make the grand gesture when he dared.

The tall, dark-haired youth was impressed. He stared up at the swarthy agent with his hooked nose, obviously intrigued. ‘Ah, the famed English Secret Service,’ he said with a gravity beyond his years. ‘Please enter.’

Sidney Reilly followed him into the little, sparsely furnished room, heated by a green-tiled oven which reached to the ceiling and on which lay an old woman with a shawl wrapped around her head. Reilly saw immediately that she was dying.

‘Babuska,’ the boy said simply. ‘She saved me and has hidden me from those Red beasts for the last six years.’

On the stone oven bench, the old woman moaned.

‘Now the poor dear’s time has about come.’ There were tears in the boy’s eyes. ‘Friends of the old court brought us to this strange place once they heard Babuska could look after me no longer. They said the Englishman would see to everything. So what will you do?’

Now it was Reilly’s turn to be impressed. Although the boy had been living among peasants ever since the Romanov family had been murdered, he still retained the aristocratic directness of his dead father, the Tsar.

‘I have been commanded by your uncle King George V personally,’ Reilly lied, ‘to bring you out of Russia and transport you secretly to Great Britain.’

‘How?’ the boy asked directly.

‘It is better, Your Highness, that you don’t know the details of our plan. There is some danger entailed. If you are caught by the police, you will know nothing. You will be just one more of the Homeless Ones.’ Reilly meant the thousands of children orphaned during the Civil War who wandered around Russia trying to steal a living and dodge the police.

‘I understand.’ The boy accepted the information without any further comment. ‘But what about Babuska? I can’t leave till she has finally passed away.’ Again, tears flooded his bright blue eyes.

‘We shall wait,’ Reilly agreed. ‘Perhaps you will give me a cup of water from over there?’ He indicated the white pail covered with a towel. ‘We’ll make her drink a little. It might bring her round for a moment and then I can see what her condition’s like.’

The boy turned and took the mug down from the nail above the bucket. While his back was so turned, Reilly palmed the pill he had brought with him specifically for this purpose. Those friends of the old Court who had brought the pair to this strange hiding place had told him – these days in Russia everyone became very talkative at the first sight of a Horseman of St George – that the boy would never leave without the old woman.

Reilly took the mug, dropped the pill into it, and then, wrinkling his nose a little at the unwashed stench coming from the dying peasant woman, fed her a little water. Most of it went down her wrinkled, shaking chin, but the pill went down her throat. He made sure of that, raising her skinny back a little so that she swallowed it. ‘It’s no use,’ he said in mock sadness, as he gently lowered her once more. ‘She’s in a deep coma. I’m afraid the inevitable won’t be very long now. Then we shall start our journey.’

‘But who will bury her?’ the boy protested, his haughty aristocratic mien vanished now. ‘Who will ensure that she is buried in her native earth?’ He reached in his pocket to pull out a little leather bag. He opened the drawstrings and showed Reilly the dark earth inside it. Obviously, Reilly told himself the woman was of Cossack stock. They always carried the earth from their native Don with them so that they could be buried in their own soil.

‘The woman who owns this place will see to it, Your Highness. I shall pay her one Horseman of St George.’ He pulled a gold sovereign from his pocket to show the boy what he meant. Behind him the old woman was beginning to moan and move. The cyanide pill was already taking effect.

The boy turned in alarm. He placed his hand, which Reilly noted with approval was unkept and hardened like that of a peasant boy, on the dying woman’s face and stroked it gently.

He feigned concern as little flecks of foam started to form at the side of her lips, which were already blue. Reilly told himself she had only moments to live. It would be dark outside now. It would provide them with the cover they needed to dodge the police patrols which were everywhere now that Lenin lay dying in the Kremlin. Obviously the authorities feared trouble soon.

Suddenly the old woman arched her back, her ancient wrinkled face contorted by unbearable pain. Then she fell backwards onto the stone pillow. She was dead.

The boy fought to control himself, his lips quivering as he forced himself to be brave and not cry. Reilly took him by the shoulders and led him towards the door. He then returned and closed the old crone’s eyes. ‘It is time to go, Your Highness,’ he said, his voice hushed with reverence.

The boy took one last look at the old peasant woman who had saved his life. ‘Goodbye, Babuska,’ he said thickly, still fighting back the tears, ‘I will never forget you.’ He crossed himself and then allowed himself to be led down that dark and dangerous tunnel which ran to Madame Discretion’s rooms.

Inside the salon, they were preparing for the night’s trade. A woman, naked but for black silk stockings, was squatting over a bucket of warm water, washing her hairy crotch. Others were soaking little bits of sponge in vinegar. They would be shoved into their vaginas to provide a primitive form of contraceptive. Others were slipping into black and red silk knickers and then applying rouge to their nipples. All was hectic activity, punctuated by bursts of raucous laughter and quick puffs at long cigarettes which festooned the ashtrays everywhere. Reilly looked from the whores to the boy. He seemed to be taking it in his stride, as if he went into brothels every day of his life.

The two of them crossed over to where Madame Discretion, well corseted now and clad in black silk, sat behind the desk waiting to receive her clients – and take their money. ‘The old woman is dead. You’ll see she gets a decent burial.’

‘And don’t forget to sprinkle her native earth over her,’ the boy said.

Reilly winked at the fat brothel owner. She looked at him knowingly. The old woman would be tossed into the sewer and washed away into the Moskva River. Reilly never left any traces behind. In his business it was not wise to.

Madame Discretion looked at the boy, for the first time curious. Who was he? she wondered. What was so important about him that his friends and the Jew were prepared to pay a small fortune to hide him? ‘Where you go?’ she asked in broken Russian.

‘Ça suffit,’ Reilly cut in hurriedly in case the boy answered. He held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, madame and thank you.’ He put on his hat, and holding the boy’s hand firmly in his own stepped out into the night. A moment later they had vanished down the street.