20

Some days later, in a section of town far removed from the fashionable Remizov home, a vastly different meeting of friends was occurring.

Few citizens of the capital who were not residents of Grafsky Lane ventured there, even by light of day. This poverty-ridden Tartar district of the city was so infested with crime that black-coated gendarmes walked their beats only in pairs, praying for an ordinance then under discussion to pass, permitting them to carry sidearms for their protection. As it was, they had only their bare hands and a solid hardwood stick to keep a very tenuous peace.

The ragged Tartar children and gaunt-eyed veiled women on the scene that particular afternoon, poor and disreputable as they may have appeared, hardly seemed to merit such police vigilance. The real threat, especially at that early hour, was holed up behind closed doors, in dark, rat-infested corners—the thieves and owners of prostitutes and dealers in opium. Any of them would have killed for half a kopec’s worth of food.

With them, in these shadowy recesses of St. Petersburg, were criminals of a different sort—men driven to crime by the extremity of their passionate ideals. These St. Petersburg slums held the only sanctuary possible for beleaguered revolutionaries and terrorists.

Throughout the closing months of 1880 and into the new year, the tsar’s appointee had indeed achieved both his and the tsar’s objective. Loris-Melikov had, if not quite put the revolutionaries to flight, certainly subdued them and given them cause for considering their peril before instigating any further incidents.

In the panic of the previous year, many citizens had believed the rebels and malcontents to be so vast in numbers that they might flood the city at any moment with revolution. That could well come later. But as 1880 drew to a close, Melikov believed the troublemakers to be relatively small in number and, with some good sense and stoic persistence, easily contained. Taking this practical approach, he had made great strides in curtailing the threat, and, he believed, eliminating the terrorist hold on the city. Indeed, the government’s enemies had been driven deeply underground; some in their fear of arrest had fled the city, even deserted the cause. But the tenacious few that remained were as much to be feared as earlier. For they were the unbending, unshakable elite of the sacred cause.

There were as many hidden and personal reasons for their staunch loyalty as there were insurrectionists. Among this select class of criminals, motives were seldom discussed. It was taken for granted that each had his own motive, and it was enough.

One of those gathered that afternoon in the back room of a grimy Grafsky Lane tavern, however, possessed motives so sinister, so evil in intent, that even his very comrades would have shuddered at a full revelation of his heart. Basil Anickin’s hatred was uncompromised by human compassion, so purely personal that it had long ago driven out any vestige of humanitarianism. He sometimes spoke of the oppressed masses and the corruption of the government, but these words and causes had become for him only a tool to achieve the one goal that mattered to him.

After he had received his first contact in the mental hospital, Basil had labored like the devil himself upon a struggling soul to force his drug and depression-dulled brain back into focus. He had gradually, by degrees, regained his lucidity, and even managed to convince his keepers that he had recovered. Basil Anickin’s mental state was, perhaps, normal for him. But it was by no means sane.

In mid-November, months after the originally envisioned date, he had been finally transferred from the asylum back to the Peter and Paul fortress, and his friends had effected a successful escape. Anickin would not quibble about the timing. He was a free man now, and little else mattered.

Even Basil, in one of his more philosophical moods, might have seen the irony of using such a term to describe him. Free was a euphemistic word to describe the hunted life of a fugitive.

From the high-society son of a wealthy physician, to a criminal sitting in a dilapidated tenement in Grafsky Lane—a man could hardly descend lower socially. Even imprisonment in the fortress held a certain twisted sort of prestige in these low circles. Now he had only filth and squalor and near starvation to boast of. Yet the comforts of his past life meant nothing to a man consumed by hatred and vengeance.

Basil sat on the floor listening to the proceedings around him with aloof interest. His eyes narrowed keenly when the discussion chanced to probe something that might possibly be of use in fulfilling his driving purpose in life. The others in the room, especially those who did not know him from before, tended to avoid him.

Basil Anickin did indeed present a most forbidding figure these days. His once strong physique had grown wasted and hollow. His face, at one time so strikingly handsome that it nearly won the heart of a proud princess, wore a ghostly look, the eyes ringed with cavernous circles, his cheeks sunken and skeletal. This cadaverous appearance was enhanced by his hair. It had been cropped by his captors, and now he chose to keep it so as some statement of principle or badge of imprisoned honor. Only his eyes belied the sense of death about him. They shone and glinted with passion, with hatred, and with a brutal strength of will as they never had previously.

His presence at this clandestine gathering, however, was not primarily for the benefit of his companions, nor was it strictly for the cause he had espoused years ago. If by his presence some strides could be made in destroying the detested government and Romanov regime, so much the better. But more than anything, he had taken up with his former comrades because he knew in all likelihood he would never be able to achieve his goal without them.

During his weeks in the asylum, while he contemplated his proposed rescue, he had also begun to formulate a purposeful plan for his desired revenge upon the young Count Remizov and his foolish new bride. And it so happened that his scheme seemed to fit very nicely around the designs of The People’s Will. He reasoned that after the tsar was assassinated, there would follow a spontaneous rising of the people, with naturally resulting mass violence—peasant risings, general strikes, street fighting, and many isolated incidents of physical violence against aristocrats by their servants and others of the peasant classes. The murder of Count Remizov and his wife would raise no untoward questions, and Basil would walk away a free man. He would then travel to Switzerland or England, and live out the remainder of his life in fulfilled peace.

On the far side of the room, another younger man sat quietly contemplating his own future. Paul had not been successful in foiling Anickin’s escape. He regretted that fact more and more deeply as he watched the man that afternoon. Anickin looked like a hungry animal—of some dark species that thrived on blood.

Paul’s only recourse now was to stick as close to the man as possible. Better to have a mad bear in your sights than crouching unseen behind you.

But the thought of being in that lunatic’s company for even a second made his skin crawl! Moreover, if Anickin’s purposes began to run against the organization’s, Paul might find himself caught in a ticklish—and dangerous!—situation.

Perhaps he was inflating the potential risks all out of proportion. It had been over a year since Anickin’s attack against Princess Fedorcenko and Count Remizov. More than likely, thought Paul, the malice that had precipitated those acts of violence had long since dissolved.

Or had it? Paul wondered morosely.

One would have to be blind to truly believe that! But perhaps it was possible that at least Anickin intended to concentrate his malice against the tsar and not some inconsequential noble family. Why else would Anickin be present at this meeting? No doubt he was sane enough to recognize priorities, and that the death of the tsar must certainly take precedence over personal objectives of revenge.

But about his own personal motives? Paul rebuked himself. He needed to heed his own counsel and remain single-mindedly set upon the program of The People’s Will! Anna was capable of taking care of herself, after all. She had done so very well in the several years she had been on her own in the big city. It would do no one any good for him to try to assuage his own guilt by maintaining this false sense of protectiveness toward her. He’d be worthless to the cause if he continued worrying more about his sister than the larger drama of their destiny to reshape Russian society. He could not fail his comrades now. They were so close to success.

He glanced again toward Anickin, who had suddenly leaned forward with intense interest as Zhelyabov was describing some tunneling procedures they were using in order to mine a street that lay within one of the tsar’s oft-traveled routes. The insane lawyer was surely no longer a threat to Anna or her mistress. He had more important enemies to worry about than a mere ex-lover.

Paul turned his attention also toward Zhelyabov. This was where their future purpose lay—with the designs and schemes he was now describing! And it might have surprised Paul that the glow in his own eyes looked strangely like a reflection of the expression worn by the mad lawyer, Basil Anickin.

Then again, perhaps it would not have surprised him, for hadn’t he suspected all along that they were all a little insane, separated not by leagues, but only by tiny degrees?