The little cheese shop on the Maly Sadovaya was doing a meager business that chilly Sunday morning.
The shop had opened for business only a few weeks previously and could hardly be expected to have much trade built up in such a short time. But, nevertheless, the proprietor could not have been expected to establish any business or handle the requests should customers begin coming his way. The shelves were but sparsely supplied with goods; three quarters of the rough planks were altogether empty.
The man’s customary response to the few potential customers who stopped in to inquire after this or that was, “Ah, you know how it is to get on one’s feet. But we will increase our stock very soon.”
In truth, every kopeck of the strained budget was going to pay the rent on the shop. It was not likely any time in the near future that the quantity of cheeses on hand would increase. Supplying the people of the neighborhood with food was not the reason the store had been opened, nor did its owners care if it ever made a profit. They would not be in business that long.
The People’s Will still had but one driving ambition. It had not changed in the year and a half since that summer in Voronezh. It had not been altered with Andrei Zhelyabov’s imprisonment. Tsar Alexander Nicolaivich Romanov must die!
Rather than curtail their efforts with Zhelyabov in jail, the remaining leadership of The People’s Will only resolved to intensify their labors, for Andrei’s sake as well as for the cause. Toward that end they had procured a lease on the Maly Sadovaya storefront. They had no intention of becoming well-known cheese merchants. The location had attracted them for altogether different reasons. It lay along a route frequently traveled by the emperor when coming or going from the Winter Palace, in a relatively deserted area alongside one of St. Petersburg’s broad and well-traveled avenues. In addition, it boasted a fine basement which, notwithstanding the sluggish trade above, had become a beehive of subterranean activity.
For some time the insurrectionists had been working in shifts, digging and burrowing like industrious moles. Zhelyabov himself had inspired the plan some time before. Now since his untimely arrest, his lover Sophia Perovskaya was carrying on his vision with fervor and determination. From the basement of the cheese shop, they had tunneled under the street, then dug a shaft straight up to within two feet or the surface itself, just wide enough to plant a powerful mine to be detonated at the precise moment the tsar’s carriage came atop the shaft.
But Perovskaya had devised a backup plan to go along with the dynamite. She did not lack faith in Zhelyabov’s idea, but there had been too many ironic twists of fate in the past to give her much faith in anything. This time, she determined to make sure. She was prepared to do it herself, if need be, although two or three others who knew of her resolve had already begged her to allow them to martyr themselves instead. The movement needed her, they insisted, to carry on until Andrei’s release.
Perovskaya peered into the dark tunnel, the glow of a single lantern at the other end her only light. She shivered, not because of the cold—for it was many degrees warmer here underground than on the icy street above—but because she felt so very close to her long-cherished goal.
“How is it going?” she asked as she approached a figure crouched over a wooden crate.
Paul looked up, the lamp casting eerie shadows over his fine-featured face. “Very well, Sophia,” he answered.
“Will there be enough explosives?”
“Not enough if we want to bring down the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, and Tsarskoe Selo. But it will do nicely for our purposes.” Paul allowed a dry half-smile to accompany his mild attempt at humor.
“He attends the Mounting of the Guard every Sunday. He is sure to use this route within a few hours.” She did not have to specify to whom she referred by he. They well knew the object of their labors.
“I am ready for him.”
Sophia bent over and inspected the bomb as Paul tinkered here and there with the final wires and connectors.
“Andrei has taught you well, Pavlikov.”
“It is a shame he won’t be here for our final triumph.”
“It may well be that before long we will be able to tell him all about it—in person.” She straightened up, rubbing the small of her back as she did so. “I only hope that if I am arrested the charge will be murder. I could not bear to hang merely for the attempt.”
“If this mine detonates anywhere near the tsar, it will kill him,” said Paul. He did not mention, nor did he even pause to consider the fact, that it would also kill anyone else within a stone’s throw of the blast.
Paul glanced over his work one final time.
“It is ready,” he said. “All that remains is for me to raise it up into the shaft. Believe me, Sophia, it will blow the entire street apart from side to side!”