At the same time, across the Atlantic, Everland, Scotland

Day was breaking. There was a spotless golden doe with bewitching eyes in the kitchen. She was lapping milk from a large salad bowl, the white droplets clinging to her eyelashes. She didn’t notice the castle staff coming and going as the morning spectacle was played out.

Andrei was watching her enviously as he sat on a chair in the corner of the kitchen. Mary had made him take off his shoes before quarantining him among the copper pots and pans. He had gone away for six months only to appear again, without warning, at dawn. He knew he wouldn’t receive a warm welcome.

“I want to work again. I want to speak with Master Paul.”

But Ethel’s brother hadn’t been at home for several weeks.

So Mary the housekeeper had made Andrei sit down before giving him a good scolding and taking his jacket from him to wash it.

“I’m going to clean this right away,” she had insisted, “because you certainly won’t be staying. I’ll see later on whether anyone is prepared to talk to you. But even if they are, Andrew, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes.”

Lily the doe had come to drink close by, and Mary had asked Andrei to keep an eye on her.

“She mustn’t go upstairs. They get up to such nonsense in this house. At Christmas, there was a horse tied to the piano on the second floor.”

Andrei didn’t take his eyes off Lily. He wasn’t simply envious of the milk she sent splashing with each lick of her tongue. He envied her freedom, a good simple life, innocence, and the kindness that surrounded her.

Andrei, on the other hand, could sense the jaws of a trap about to slam shut on him. He was thinking of his family in Moscow, who would pay with their lives for what he was doing: his little brother, his sister, his mother, and Ivan Ivanovitch, his father, who had so badly wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a mechanic. And he was thinking of the terrible Vlad the Vulture, and how his eyes were like two blades pressing into the back of his neck. Andrei was there to find Vango and hand him over to Vlad.

Mary had disappeared into the depths of the castle. Andrei watched Lily knock over the bowl with her muzzle and finish lapping up the milk from the flagstones. She politely wiped herself clean using her hoof in place of a linen napkin, then raised her head and made for the kitchen door.

“Lily!”

Andrei wasn’t sure if he was allowed to get up.

“Lily, come here!”

Apparently, the deer didn’t understand his Russian accent. She disappeared behind the door.

Andrei ran after her. Together, they crossed two small sitting rooms and a study lined with books. The cool May air wafted in through the open windows. There were triangles of sunlight on the bare wooden floors. The carpets had been draped over the windowsills. Every morning, Everland Castle yawned and stretched from head to toe.

Little Lily was capering around in this kingdom. She was sliding over the oak thresholds, polished to within an inch of their lives. Andrei had fallen behind while putting his shoes back on. He was walking on tiptoes now and calling out to her in hushed tones, constantly turning around for fear of being caught by Mary.

His first assignment on his return to Everland was to guard this deer. And he would do whatever it took.

Andrei slowed down when he saw Lily stop near a pedestal table with a small box on it.

“There you are!” he said. “Come here!”

She looked at him with all the freedom and innocence he had been admiring a few minutes earlier.

“Come here, Lily, Lilishka.”

Three meters away from her, he found himself smiling stupidly and holding out his hand. But Lily raised the lid of the box with a nudge of her head and delicately removed three cigars, which she began to chew. Andrei bit his lip. The lid slid shut. Clearly, Lily had her habits. A bowl of milk and three Havana cigars for breakfast. The good life.

Suddenly, she sped off again and came out into the hall.

By the time Andrei arrived, he could see in a flash that the morning constitutional wasn’t over yet. The doe was standing in front of the flight of stairs leading up to the second floor. It was a grand staircase with a thick carpet cascading down it in an irresistible red. With the final cigar poking out from her mouth, Lily gave Andrei a satisfied look before starting to climb the stairs. She seemed to be on familiar terrain, reaching the landing in just a few bounds.

Andrei hesitated before following suit. Wouldn’t he be better off going back into the kitchen to find Mary, asking for her help and sobbing into her skirts? Lily must have sensed this sudden indecision, and put an end to such ideas by grazing on the golden tassels hanging off the curtains, causing Andrei to gasp in horror. He went after her again.

Lily had ventured onto the main landing. She slowed down a little in front of each window, to bask in the warmth of the sun. Her golden fur rippled on her flanks. She raised her head and half-closed her eyes. She looked cozy enough to go to sleep then and there. But each time, a mysterious call made her set off again. At the end of the landing, after sniffing the air one last time, she pushed open a door and disappeared.

Andrei remained behind the half-open door. He knew that this escapade was madness. But in the worst moments of folly, there always comes a point where turning back is more risky than carrying on.

So Andrei carried on.

He pushed open the door without even thinking, and went one step too far.

The scene that met his eyes in the large bedroom could have been depicted in a classical painting. The deer was curled up on the carpet, in a circle of sunlight, at the foot of a blue-silk window seat. And on that window seat were two young people, a girl and a boy, their shoulders touching, staring at the animal whose sudden appearance must have taken them by surprise.

But Andrei startled them. The boy pulled hastily away from the young woman, gathered up the papers that were lying all around them, and stood back. He was blushing terribly. The girl stared calmly at the newcomer in icy disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” muttered Andrei. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

His lips kept on moving, as if repeating the same words until they were worn out.

Ethel didn’t even get up. She was wearing suspenders that were slightly undone over a white shirt teamed with an old pair of tweed trousers, and she was barefoot. There was a blue silk band around her wrist.

Andrei looked at the boy, who seemed to be trying to hide the papers he had just picked up. He was the son of Peter, one of the gardeners at Everland. Nicholas was slightly younger than Andrei, and a lot younger than Ethel, who was nearly twenty.

But what astonished Andrei even more than this scene was what was going on inside him. Behind the fear, Andrei could feel a sort of anger, an all-consuming, invisible anger, something he hadn’t experienced for a long time. For once, he wasn’t just trembling because he was afraid; he was trembling with thirst and hunger and rage. He was jealous. And, in a split second, Ethel became more mysterious than ever, and beautiful enough to die for.

He was frozen to the spot.

Ethel seemed disinclined to turn on the charm for him. She looked weary. Her eyes didn’t focus but slid across him, as if Andrei didn’t really exist.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for the deer,” he ventured in his hesitant English.

He pointed to Lily.

“I’m disturbing you,” he added.

“Why do you say that?”

“I thought you . . .”

“What makes you think you’re disturbing anyone?”

He gestured toward the window seat, and then at Nicholas.

When his eyes met those of the gardener’s son, he felt the urge to fight. Andrei had never enjoyed fighting. On his tenth birthday, to encourage him to give up his violin, his parents had sent him to learn the Russian martial art of sambo in a Moscow gym. But he had spent ten months on the bench, listening to the words of Master Ochtchepkov.

He took a deep breath.

“Where have you come from?” Ethel wanted to know.

“The corridor.”

“Before that?”

“The staircase.”

“Before that?”

“The kitchen.”

She gave up and glanced at young Nicholas next to her. Ethel smiled, while the gardener’s son looked distraught. Unlike him, she didn’t feel embarrassed in the slightest. She didn’t care what other people thought. No, Andrei alarmed her for more serious reasons.

“You think that you can just walk into my bedroom one morning . . .”

“I want to work.”

“And what about when I had ten horses in the loose boxes this winter, with all their straw to be transported; you didn’t want to work then?”

“I was with my parents.”

He’s lying, she thought instantly. But she could also tell that the word “parents” rang true: there was the same pain in his voice that there would have been in hers.

“I’d like to speak with Master Paul.”

“Me too,” she answered back. “I’d like that very much.”

She stood up, and Lily the doe got up at the same time.

“But Master Paul isn’t here.” She sighed. “Go downstairs. Wait for me there.”

Andrei left the bedroom. The way back felt very different, and not just because the doe was following him this time.

Nothing panned out the way he had been expecting.

Andrei didn’t see Ethel again for a while, but he was given back his old bedroom next to the stables, where there was only one horse left. Mary made Andrei eat his lunch at eleven o’clock at the big staff table, before everyone else, like a naughty boy. In the afternoon, he saw Nicholas heading off in the direction of the lake. An hour later, he was asked to saddle the horse and tether it near the tower. At sunset, a slender figure could be seen galloping toward the lake. Andrei recognized Ethel. For a long time, he watched her disappearing into the distance.

Toward eleven o’clock that evening, he heard the sound of hooves on cobbles. He got up and went outside. He had left a light on in front of the stables, beneath which Ethel was unfastening her horse’s girth. She saw him and looked away, with a peculiar smile on her face. When Andrei tried to help her, she was so lost in her thoughts that she nearly collided with him.

Again, Andrei felt that troubling sense of anger gaining hold of him. What was she thinking about? Or whom? And where had she just come from?

He left her to her own devices and went back inside the stables.

“For as long as Paul’s away, you can stay here. I’ll let you know when I need you. Paul will decide your fate once he gets back,” declared Ethel, who had just entered the building.

Andrei nodded.

She went over to him and tilted his chin a little, so as to pin the Russian with her gaze.

“I’m keeping a close eye on you. I’ve never understood why you’re here.”

It was then, as he looked up, that he saw something on the band tied around her wrist: in the middle of the blue silk that shone in the light was the letter V and a saffron-colored star.

He knew that she had seen Vango again.

Paris, rue Jacob, at the same time

“It’s him.”

When Madame Boulard heard the knocking at the door, she put her knitting down on her lap.

“It’s your Professor Rasputin.”

The arrival of this visitor always set her on edge. Why couldn’t he use the nice new doorbell that she’d had fitted?

“Don’t call him Rasputin,” said Auguste Boulard. “And anyway, you can go to bed now, Mother. We’ll be working in the dining room.”

Superintendent Boulard went into the hall and opened the door.

“My dear fellow, you’re right on time. As always.”

It was the stroke of midnight. Vlad the Vulture was standing before the detective on the threshold.

The old parquet groaned as they made their way into the dining room. Superintendent Boulard went to draw the curtain across the glazed door separating them from the sitting room. Through one of the panes, he gave his mother, who had stayed in her armchair, a forced smile. The curtain closed.

Marie-Antoinette Boulard immediately put her knitting to one side. She was about to turn eighty-seven, and nobody was going to make her swallow tall stories.

These Russian lessons had worried her from day one. It had all begun back in March with the sudden arrival of Vlad. He had entered the apartment without warning, holding a metal bar in one hand, while the superintendent was enjoying his bath. Boulard had eventually gotten out of his soapy water and, after a stunned silence, had politely led Vlad into the dining room for a chat. He had emerged an hour later in the company of his visitor, who was, as he explained to his mother, his Russian teacher.

“Russian?”

“Yes, Russian.”

“But . . . why Russian?”

“Because . . .”

Boulard attempted a Slavic dance step.

“Russian is interesting,” declared the superintendent, who was still wrapped in his damp towel.

“And this gentleman is really a Russian teacher?”

“Vlad?”

“Yes.”

“The best.”

Vlad looked more like a butcher from the taiga. In his big hairy beard, Madame Boulard could see a resemblance to the photos of the terrible monk Rasputin, tales of whom had made the rounds twenty-five years earlier.

And now, for the fourth time in two months, Rasputin was here, in the next-door room. She could hear the sound of muffled voices. Madame Boulard tiptoed over to the door and pressed her ear to it.

What she could hear sounded like gibberish for the most part, but she thought she could make out the word “revolution.” Just then, there was a scuffling noise in the hallway. She rushed over to the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

The door opened to reveal Blanche Dussac, the concierge of the building.

“Well?”

“Rasputin’s here.”

“I saw him go past my office,” said the concierge. “Do you need any help?”

Madame Dussac revealed that she was hiding a carving fork in her nightie.

“Not yet. Don’t intervene yet. I’ll tell you when.”

“Are there any new leads?”

Blanche Dussac was tantalized by this gripping story. She had climbed up the ranks from confidante to Madame Boulard’s right-hand woman.

“He was talking about a revolution.”

“Jesus wept! It’s political.”

“My son doesn’t get involved in politics.”

“Marie-Antoinette, do you really know your son?”

This was the first time the concierge had called Madame Boulard by her first name.

“I couldn’t say, these days,” admitted the superintendent’s mother with a little sob.

“Where there are Russians involved, it’s always political.”

“Heavens above!”

“We need to warn the police.”

“But my son is the police.”

“Yes. Good point. Right.”

“Let’s wait. Next time, I’ll hide in the dining room sideboard. Go back to your apartment now, Madame Dussac. I’ll pop by to see you tomorrow.”

An emotional Blanche Dussac gave the superintendent’s mother a hug.

“Be brave. And take this. No, really, I insist, just to be on the safe side. You never know. But I need it back before Sunday; I’ve got my niece coming for lunch.”

The intrepid Blanche Dussac headed back downstairs, leaving the carving fork in her friend’s hands.

There were noises coming from the adjoining room. Madame Boulard rushed back to her armchair and picked up her knitting again. Vlad the Vulture and the superintendent appeared briefly, and then the front door slammed shut.

It was half past midnight. Madame Boulard could hear her son in the kitchen boiling the water for his hot-water bottle. He came back into the sitting room.

“Why aren’t you in bed, Mother?”

“I don’t feel sleepy.”

Boulard noticed that she hadn’t gotten very far with her knitting in the past half hour: she was still on exactly the same stripe of that woolen hat.

What had she been doing during their interview?

He screwed up his eyes. The superintendent was even suspicious of his own mother. In fact, he was feeling so confused that he thought he had just seen a pretty blond girl on the gutter in front of the window. He wiped his hand across his face. And why not pink elephants, too? He was worn out.

“I’m going to bed, Mother.”

Before he disappeared, Madame Boulard challenged her son. “Auguste! How do you say ‘good evening’ in Russian?”

He didn’t answer.