2

Anna stood and looked at her telephone. Two days and not a word. They had been the most miserable two days she could remember. Several times she had gone to call Nicholas and then put back the receiver, even as his number rang. Nothing had been resolved between them. The questions were all there, unanswered. She picked up the telephone and dialled Paul’s number at the magazine. He arranged to come round to her apartment that evening. He had, he said, someone who wanted to meet her. Someone who could explain, better than he, why Nicholas Yurovsky was dangerous to her and to himself.

They arrived after seven, Paul slightly dishevelled, smoking his usual cigarette; he always needed to shave twice, and that evening his chin was very blue. Her mother, fastidious to the point of obsession, had said that he looked dirty after four o’clock.

The man with him, older, rather stout, and very soberly dressed was introduced as Raoul Jumeaux. He kissed Anna’s hand. He had small bright brown eyes, and a neat moustache. He could have been a doctor or a civil servant. Paul got them all a drink, with the familiarity of someone who had once lived in the apartment. He sat next to Anna, Jumeaux on the sofa opposite.

He asked her permission and produced a pipe. There was an extraordinarily awkward silence, which Anna didn’t know how to break. It was Paul who spoke first.

‘My wife wants to know about Nicholas Yurovsky,’ he said.

Jumeaux nodded. ‘We all want to know about him,’ he said. ‘He’s become quite a problem to us.’

Us. Anna stiffened. No doctor, no Paris bureaucrat. SDECE. She had called them thugs. Jumeaux spoke directly to her.

‘Paul is an old friend,’ he said. ‘I warned him about Yurovsky when you came into it. He tells me you mentioned his conversation and Yurovsky denied it.’

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘He did.’

‘He was certain to deny it,’ Jumeaux said.

‘I don’t see why,’ Paul Martin interrupted. ‘If he wants to use Anna’s money, it was a perfect opportunity to talk her into helping them. He didn’t, did he?’ She might have known he would see through her – he used to laugh at her because he said she was so transparent. A clean-cut American kid. He had called her that once and it infuriated her.

‘No,’ she said, trying not to look at him. ‘He certainly didn’t. I told you; he denied everything.’

‘He is in love with you, Madame Martin?’ Jumeaux asked.

‘Yes,’ Anna admitted. ‘Yes, I think he is.’

‘Then he wouldn’t want to mix you up in something as dangerous as this business. What you don’t know can’t be got out of you. It minimized your risk. But there certainly is a risk.’

He leaned forward and knocked ash out of his pipe. He glanced round him and then back at her.

‘You have a beautiful apartment, Madame. As I was saying, these people, these fools who think they can throw stones at the KGB, not only bring trouble to themselves. Everyone connected with them becomes suspect. If you take my advice, Madame Martin – and I know it’s what your husband would like you to do – you’d pack up and go on a long trip. Go to the States. Forget about Nicholas Yurovsky.’

‘I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I can’t just walk away. Paul said that you could explain what it was all about. Why should Nicholas care about Soviet Russia? He was born here!’

‘Yes,’ Jumeaux nodded. ‘And his mother was a Frenchwoman. Has he ever talked to you about her? No. Understandable, perhaps. The Druets didn’t behave very well – he was brought up by his grandmother, Countess Zia. So, in spite of being born and growing up in France, he was steeped in the legends. But the real trouble began with his father. Has he ever talked about him?’

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But this weekend I found a gold watch, one of those old-fashioned fob watches. There was a picture of a Russian officer in the back of it. Nicholas said that was his father. That’s all I know about him.’

‘Well,’ Raoul Jumeaux said. ‘If you’re not in a hurry, Madame, and Paul here would like to fill up my glass for me, I’ll tell you about Count Michael Yurovsky and his friends. Ah, thank you, Paul.’

He settled a little into the sofa. ‘Your health, Madame.’ He raised his glass. ‘Most of the White Russians stayed in Paris. Some had brought jewellery or had foreign bank accounts, most had nothing. They congregated together, they were received with sympathy in France to start with, and then with indifference. Their attempts at political intrigue were an embarrassment to our governments; they didn’t integrate. There were men and women living in Paris in the twenties and thirties who acted and talked as if a counter-revolution would sweep the Reds away and they could all go home again. They preserved their language, their customs and their religion. Many of them starved. You won’t remember the old movies – the taxi-driver turns out to be a prince –’ He filled his pipe and lit it. ‘If you want to understand Nicholas Yurovsky and the men and women like him,’ Jumeaux said, ‘then you have to go back, Madame. Not too far. But back to 1943. To the middle of the war, when France was occupied by the Nazis. I have a special interest in this case, you see. I knew Nicholas Yurovsky’s father.’

Count Michael Vladimirovich Yurovsky met his wife when he had been working for her father for a year. Eticnne Druet was a shrewd businessman who had made a fortune in textiles; he employed the Russian aristocrat with some misgivings. The émigrés had a reputation for being difficult to assimilate; there were sad stories of suicides among the older ones who found themselves unable to adjust to a life of near-penury and exile. But Michael Yurovsky was different; he worked hard, he showed no resentment at taking orders or performing the humblest duty. Etienne admired him; he had dignity and style, and he charmed everyone. There were rumours about him, of course; tales that he had been a Cossack officer in the counterrevolution, or, as some described it, the White Terror. He never mentioned the circumstances in which he left Russia. He had a mother living in Paris, in modest style, and two sisters had died in the influenza epidemic. Etienne introduced him to his family, and it was obvious to everyone that his daughter and heiress, Liliane, had fallen head over heels in love with the Russian. She was a pretty girl, and her father doted on her. In spite of her wealth, she couldn’t hope to be accepted within the narrow confines of French society. When she became engaged to Michael Yurovsky, Etienne was delighted. He bought them a handsome house at Vermeuil in Normandy, promoted his son-in-law into a top job in Druet Textiles, and swelled with pride to think that his daughter was a countess.

Liliane was very happy, until the war broke out. Michael had horrified her by suggesting that he should enlist and fight for France. Etienne used all his influence to dissuade him, and by 1940 France was defeated and occupied by the German army. As far as Liliane was concerned, the war was over. Desperately in love with her husband, and with their son toddling in the nursery, patriotism never entered her head; she listened anxiously to her father and her husband as they discussed the future, and couldn’t think of anything but the immediate safety of her own family and her home. France was defeated. There were German troops occupying the main towns, pouring into Paris, gathering for the final assault against England. By the end of the year the whole of Europe would be dominated, directly or through alliance, by Nazi Germany. Etienne Druet made his decision. He had spent his life building up a profitable business and a fortune. He had his daughter and his grandson to consider. The war was lost, and the old way of life would never return. Survival on the best terms possible was the only sensible course. He drove to the local headquarters of the German army and offered to assist the occupying forces in any way he could. Within three months his factories were making uniforms for the Wehrmacht. German officers were entertained at his flat in Paris, and invited to Vermeuil where Liliane made them welcome. Etienne Druet, his daughter and son-in-law became known collaborators; they were criticized by a few but most of the people they knew were doing the same.

At Vermeuil itself, life continued with little alteration, and the war seemed to have detoured round them. There were no shortages of food or luxuries; Liliane became pregnant again; Michael Yurovsky travelled to Paris and back at the weekends, and petrol was always available. When Germany attacked Russia, the influence of Etienne Druet protected Michael. It was suggested that he could obtain French citizenship without any difficulty. Father and daughter were surprised at how vehemently he refused.

No one had troubled them. It was two years later and the little boy Nicholas had a sister. Michael Yurovsky had come down from Paris; petrol was short now; an old taxi, powered by a gas bag tied to the roof, had jogged along the road and brought him from the station. He couldn’t find Liliane, so he went to the nursery, where a village girl was looking after the children, and took his son in his arms. The child was very blond, like his mother, but he had his father’s tilted blue eyes; he hugged him round the neck and kissed him. The baby, as dark as Michael, cooed in her bassinette. It was a mild, sunny evening; the house was peaceful, the countryside breathed gently round them. The girl watched the Count playing with his son. He talked to him in Russian and was teaching him different words. The Countess didn’t like this, because she said it confused the little boy. She liked the Countess, but there was something very aloof and withdrawn about the Count. Always polite, but very much the aristocrat. The girl grimaced at him when his back was turned. Who did he think he was, anyway – working for old M. Druet, marrying the daughter to get himself set up for life? Rubbing noses with the Germans, all of them.

People in Vermeuil were sensible enough; nobody wanted trouble, but when you saw the perks some of them got – fresh butter, bottles of brandy, she even had silk stockings. Marie had worked for them since the little girl was born. She loved looking after the baby, but the boy Nicholas was self-willed and difficult. She didn’t like the way his eyes tipped up at the corners. His father’s were the same. It made them both look so foreign. Michael Yurovsky didn’t notice her antagonism; his wife, who loved him better than anything or anybody in the world, sensed the same quality of reserve, and suffered silently because of it. He stood apart, a private person who had never revealed himself completely to her, a man whose past had been severed like a limb. He kissed his son, smoothing the child’s fair hair, and murmured to him in Russian.

‘Go to Marie now, I want to kiss Olga. Then I shall find your mama.’

Nicholas held on to him obstinately. ‘No, Papa. Niki, kiss Niki. Potsyelui myenya – he used the Russian words and the Count smiled. He bent over the baby’s cot, lifted her and held her for a moment. Then he put her back, nodded politely to the girl, who was holding Nicholas, struggling against her knee. ‘Goodnight,’ he said. ‘Goodnight, Niki. We’ll go for a walk tomorrow morning; after breakfast Marie will bring you down stairs.’

He walked slowly down the corridor, past the pictures bought with his father-in-law’s money, across the big hallway which had been furnished from the same source, out of the house which didn’t belong to him, into the evening sunshine. He cast a tall shadow as he walked across the lawn, a slim man in his forty-fourth year, with a soldier’s stride, his eyes narrowed against the still bright evening sunshine. His wife was in the garden, getting vegetables for their evening meal. She did the cooking now, because there was such a shortage of people active enough to work. The nursemaid and the old pensioner who kept the garden tidy and looked after the produce were all they had left.

Liliane had grumbled bitterly as she had to cope with more and more domestic work; Michael didn’t comment. He was proof against the changes which upset his wife so much. Little could hurt him, or if he were truthful, animate him now. He paused to light a cigarette, fitting it into a holder. He had kept that with him. It was amber, with a gold band. His General used to smoke cigars, thin, black, vilely strong. Michael crossed to the edge of the lawn and turned down the path to the vegetable garden. He had seen his General only half-a-dozen times in the last twenty years. The last time he had brought him down to Vermeuil the visit had been a disaster. Liliane had burst into tears and begged Michael never to bring him there again. She hadn’t understood: he didn’t blame her. All she saw was a down-at-heel old man, sodden with vodka, spilling out tales of violence and bloodshed that horrified her. To Michael, it was his old commander, the man who had treated him as a son; the bravest, most feared of all the White generals, now living in a dirty room in the Quartier, doing odd jobs. He had lost his job as a circus rider for getting drunk.

Michael saw his wife coming towards him; she carried a basket over her arm, full of vegetables. She smiled, and hurried as she saw him.

He took the heavy basket from her and they walked back to the house, she linking her arm through his. There was no doubt about her love for him. He had been very lucky. He loved her too, in his way. He liked her father and accepted the life they offered him. But the core of him was cold. It had died long ago in his homeland. He went into the kitchen with her and poured her a glass of wine.

‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a telephone call today. The General has asked to come and see me.’ She was standing by the big wooden table, sipping the wine. She turned to him with a look of alarm and then disgust.

‘That man! Oh, Michael, no – you promised me last time – I can’t have him here again. He was so drunk – so, so horrible –’ she stopped, seeing his face. She hated that cold look, it frightened her with its threat of withdrawal. Of course he loved her; he said so. But deep within her there was a quiver of doubt. He was angry with her. That dreadful old Russian meant so much to him, and she couldn’t understand why. They’d been in the army together twenty years ago. But they had nothing in common. Nothing. She began to cut up the greens; there were tears in her eyes.

‘You needn’t worry,’ Michael Yurovsky said. ‘He’s quite sober; we had a long talk this morning. He’s only coming for an hour. It needn’t disturb you.’

‘What does he want?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you just send him some money if he’s in a bad way …’

He turned at the door and looked at her. He shook his head, more at some inner thought than at her.

‘You don’t give charity to Alexander Shuvalov,’ he said. He went out and closed the door. Liliane prepared the vegetable stew. If he didn’t want money, why was he coming …? Why was he intruding on their lives again? She thought of the General and shuddered. He was sixty years old, the same age as her father. He had reminded her of a wild beast, crouched over their dining-room table with a glass of vodka in his hand, talking in Russian to her husband. He had a way of shouting with laughter and banging his fist into his cupped hand. She had understood some of it, when they spoke French out of courtesy to her. Tales of old battles, names of comrades, incidents which meant little to her. And then suddenly the old man had swung round to her, red-eyed and leering with drunken joy. ‘You know, Madame – you know how many of those scum we killed in our Caucasian campaign – thirty thousand! Shot them, buried them, burned them – thirty thousand of the swine!’

She had stared in horror from him to Michael, and seen the smile of reminiscence on his face and heard him say in his quiet voice, ‘No General – between thirty-five and forty, I should say.’

She had made every excuse to herself afterwards. Shuvalov’s bedroom was a shambles; broken glass and cigar burns on the sheets, a stench of human sweat and vodka, a frightened maid who had complained that the Russian had lurched after her in the corridor on his way to bed. But the real reason why she never wanted him in the house again was that brief, terrifying glimpse of a Michael Yurovsky she had never known. She heard their two spaniels barking, and slipped out of the kitchen to the door into the hall. A car had come to a stop in front of the entrance. A car. Nobody had petrol now except the Germans. Michael had gone outside to meet him. She came to the window and looked out. It was a camouflaged army car, with a Wehrmacht corporal at the wheel. Her husband was shaking hands with the small, lean figure; for a moment the older man embraced him. They turned to come into the house and Liliane had a clear view of Alexander Shuvalov. He looked sunburned and fit, a furred cap pulled rakishly on one side. He was dressed in the uniform of a German general.

Alexander Shuvalov leaned against the sofa, one arm stretched along the back. His legs, encased in shining boots, were crossed, one foot swinging. He was smoking one of his thin cigars. Michael Yurovsky had gone down to his cellars and found their last bottle of vintage champagne. The General looked at him, and smiled. He had never married, never had a son that he could acknowledge. Michael Yurovsky had arrived at his headquarters one bitterly cold October day in 1918, with what was left of his men and horses, and demanded to fight with him. The boy had a look on his face that Shuvalov had seen before. Anguish, despair and hate. Something had touched him that night; some chord of compassion, of empathy with the young man standing shaking with cold and weariness, and hunger too, in the dark doorway of the room. He made him sit down and eat before he let him speak.

That was the beginning of their friendship; even his admirers described Alexander Shuvalov as a ferocious beast, living on vodka, loot and war, a throwback to his own wild tribal ancestors, that twentieth-century Russian society had completely failed to tame. But he loved Michael Yurovsky as if there had been a blood tie between them. He kept him close to him in action; taught him his own tricks of fighting a mounted war, how to ravage the enemy like a wolf and slip away like a fox; how to live off the land and the people without conscience, to punish collaboration with the Bolsheviks by means of total devastation. To take no prisoners; to commandeer horses, food, clothing and money in the name of the imprisoned Tsar. They had been great days; days which Shuvalov had shared so closely with the young man, now middle-aged, who was sitting opposite to him in his handsome French country house.

He leaned forward.

‘Tell me, Michael. Before we go any further into this, tell me the truth. How happy have you been in the last twenty years?’

Michael Yurovsky hesitated. He had no expectation of happiness; that had vanished long ago when the Revolution erupted, and the world became a place of death and devastation. His only instinct, second to that of vengeance, had been to survive. To survive the Civil War when it was lost and to exist with some degree of dignity in exile. He had disapproved of the attitude of many of his fellow émigrés; he despised their self-pity and expectation that others should provide for them. He abandoned the old attitudes because they were irrelevant to his new status in an alien society, where goodwill was so important.

He loved his wife in a gentle way, but without the passion of heart and mind which she lavished upon him. He adored his children, but they were in a separate compartment of his inner life, reserved for his mother and his family and his past. Shuvalov had a place in it. His wife would never understand the bond between them, and he had never tried to explain it. Had he been happy in the last twenty years? It was not a question he had asked himself and he didn’t know how to answer.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Compared to most of our people I’ve been very lucky. Liliane is a very good wife – I have Niki and Olga. I didn’t expect to be happy. That was all over when my father died. I don’t see the relevance of your question, General.’

‘Like hell you don’t,’ Shuvalov said. ‘I know you too well, my friend, to be taken in by all this …’ He waved his hand at the room. ‘You may deceive yourself, but you haven’t fooled me. You’re no fat cat, lapping up someone else’s cream! You’ve got a nice little rich wife, two fine children, a father-in-law who’s well in with the Germans, and nothing to worry about, eh? If you were happy with it, you wouldn’t have had to think about it. Well, I’ll tell you the truth. You’re like a dead man. There’s nothing in your belly – there’s nothing here, either.’ He tapped his own chest above the heart. ‘You’re empty inside. I was the same; yes, I didn’t have your luck, I was broke and living like a dog for the past twenty years, scraping a few francs here and there, getting drunk and running away from the emptiness. But the sickness is the same for both of us. We’re Russians; we can never belong anywhere else. We fought for our homeland and we lost; everything we had was taken from us, the people we loved were butchered. In the end we were running like rats to save our lives – remember?’

‘Yes,’ Michael Yurovsky said in a low voice. ‘I remember. I remember it all.’

‘We’ve been like dead men ever since,’ Shuvalov said.

It was very quiet in the room; the evening sun was dipping behind the skyline, and the shadows lengthened. Soon it would be necessary to switch on the lamps.

‘Forty thousand Cossacks have joined the German army,’ Shuvalov said. ‘Thousands of Ukrainians went over to them when they invaded. Exiles from all over Europe are joining the special Russian divisions under General Daslov – remember him? The old commanders of 1919 have come forward, and they’re going back to fight the enemy. I need you, Michael. Alone, we are nothing. With the power of Germany behind us, we can help defeat the Reds and free our country.’

Michael Yurovsky didn’t answer. He sipped the last of his champagne. There was a tightness in his throat and chest. It was insane; the General, in his German uniform with white flashes on his collar denoting this Cossack army, was saying things that should never be said; or listened to. Telling him to cast off his life for the past twenty years, to break the ring of habit that had protected him, and using the expression of his vanished youth, pull on his boots again. It was incredible, crazy.

‘I have two children,’ he said slowly.

‘Yes,’ Shuvalov said. ‘Two children who will never see their homeland. They’ll be exiles like their father; your son will be a Frenchman, with a great Russian name. You owe it to him to strike at the swine who butchered his grandfather and robbed his family of its inheritance!’

‘It’s all over,’ Michael said slowly. ‘You’re talking about the past.’

‘I’m talking about the German summer offensive,’ Shuvalov said angrily. ‘A million men are going to be launched against the Stalinists. And we’re going to be among them. If Germany takes Moscow, Russia will be liberated. And I believe we’re going to win; I believe that Russia will be a free country again, free for us to go home; think of it, Michael – think of going back at last …’ He paused, watching the other man in the dimming light. He was pale, and his hands were gripping together.

‘I’ve had enough,’ the General said slowly. ‘When I was called by General Daslov, I knew it was a sign from God. My life hasn’t been worth living since we left Russia. I used to think of it. One bullet, that’s all I needed to get out of it. No more shame, no more hunger; I’ve swept the streets! If I’m killed this time, I shall die decently, like a man and a Russian. It’s my destiny now. I know it. It’s your destiny too.’

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ Michael Yurovsky said. ‘I’d made my life. I’d shut the past away.’ He got up and poured some champagne into Shuvalov’s glass and then refilled his own. The bottle was empty.

‘You’re right, of course. If Germany defeats the Red armies, Russia will be freed from Communism. Do you really believe this offensive will succeed?’

‘I know it will; Germany has to break the Reds this spring or she loses the war,’ Shuvalov said. ‘You’re like my son to me. I want you back.’

There was a moment’s silence then Shuvalov leaned back. He watched Michael Yurovsky quietly. It was the crisis point when his decision would be made, and the old Cossack had a deeply intuitive feeling for the younger man which warned him to say nothing more.

Suddenly Michael stood up; he fitted a cigarette into his holder, lit it with the gold lighter Liliane had given him for his last birthday.

‘I’ve never really felt this was my home,’ he said. ‘Nothing belongs to me; Druet paid for everything. I took it, but I didn’t admire myself. I married a rich girl because she was rich, and pretended to myself that I loved her enough to justify it. In a way, I’ve been kept as much as Kramov who moved down to Monte Carlo and slept with the old women. But I if go with you, General, I throw my security away.’

‘If you don’t,’ Shuvalov answered, ‘you’ve thrown yourself away. In the end a man needs to be among his own people. If we win you won’t need Druet or his money. You’ll be a Russian again.’

‘I’m teaching my son to speak Russian,’ Michael said. He smiled slightly. ‘Liliane doesn’t like it; she says it confuses the child. But he’s learning. He can say quite a few words.’

‘I want you on my personal staff,’ the General said. ‘With the rank of colonel. I have a special job for you, my son. Something you could do better than anyone else.’

He always called Michael his son in the old days. ‘We will leave for Poland in the middle of next month.’ He came and put his hands on Michael Yurovsky’s shoulders. He still had a grip like iron.

‘You’re coming with me, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Yurovsky said. ‘Yes, General, I’ve made up my mind. I’m coming with you.’

‘Thank God,’ the General said. ‘Your son will be proud of you.’

He hated seeing Liliane cry. Her face puckered and her mouth turned down like a child’s, and the tears seemed to gush rather than flow.

‘Don’t,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t upset yourself, sweetheart. Listen to me – try to understand …’

‘I can’t,’ she wept. ‘I think you’ve gone mad.’ They were in the drawing room, and the smell of the General’s cigars was still in the air. Michael had his arm round her; she was slumped against him on the sofa, devastated by what he had told her.

‘I’ve never talked to you about what happened,’ he said slowly. ‘That was wrong of me. I shut it out because I wanted to forget. And when the General came that time you seemed so upset by it all. Will you listen to me now?’ He turned her face towards him; he felt more love for her at that moment than at any time in their life together. ‘Wipe your eyes; don’t cry any more.’

She gazed at him in despair; the last few minutes seemed like a nightmare. He was going to join a Russian division and fight with the Germans on the Eastern front. At first she had genuinely thought he was playing some kind of cruel joke on her. When she realized that he was serious, she became hysterical. Now, gazing at him, seeing the concern and the tenderness in his face, Liliane forced herself to be calm. It wasn’t certain; he hadn’t really made up his mind.… If she could make him feel sorry enough for her and the children.…

‘My family were very rich,’ Michael Yurovsky said. ‘We owned vast estates, and my father was a friend of the Tsar Nicholas. You know that he sent my mother and my two sisters out of Russia before the Revolution because he could see what was coming. We had a wonderful childhood, a wonderful life, my sisters and my parents and I. My father was a man of culture and humanity; he lived to serve his country and his Tsar, and when the opportunity came to leave and save his life, he wouldn’t take it. I was serving in his old regiment at the front, and he stayed behind. He stayed to look after his people and his home. Do you know how he died, Liliane?’

She shook her head. Little of what he was saying made any impression. What did all this matter now?

‘He was taken out by the Bolsheviks, with my aunt who was an invalid, and some of the servants who’d been with us all their lives and wouldn’t run away. They stood them all against the wall of my mother’s conservatory, and opened fire on them. Then they killed them off with bayonets, and beat them with rifle butts if they were not quite dead.’ He paused; his arm was no longer comforting around her. The grip was tight, and she tried to ease away from him. ‘The same sort of thing happened to our friends and the rest of my family; only some of the Vorontzovs escaped. Murder, rape, looting, destruction. Nobody was spared. My uncles and aunts, my mother’s parents who were in their eighties – the commissars used to have a special form of entertainment for their women. They called them cellar parties. They’d get drunk and have in the prisoners.… I had a beautiful cousin, Natalie Vorontzova. She was sixteen, and my mother used to talk about us marrying one day. She died in a cellar party. I didn’t find that out until Shuvalov and I captured the town near the Vorontzovs’ estate and I went looking for them. Do you know what we did that night? We rounded up every man and woman and brought them to the square. There were two prisoners left in the jail; they pointed out the Reds to us. We shot them all. The place was full of bodies. I picked my way through them, wondering if any of them had helped to kill Natalie. The local commissars and the members of the Soviet had got away. We only caught the scum.’

Liliane was sitting upright; she watched him in silence. He was very pale, and he looked strange. It was as if he had worn a mask for the seven years they had been married, and now she was seeing the real man.

‘My country,’ he said, ‘was ravaged by Jews and Mongols, instruments of an international Marxist conspiracy to conquer the world. They killed millions, and they’ve gone on killing them. Not just people like us, the aristocrats, the officer class. That was easy. We were all wiped out. The Church was destroyed, its priests murdered or deported, our shrines were desecrated. The whole of Russia’s history and culture was destroyed. In the name of freedom and humanity, Russia was chained in the worst tyranny she has ever known.’

Liliane turned to him. ‘But what can you do about it? All right, it was terrible, your family were murdered, I’m sure you had a horrible time but it was all so long ago! Nothing’s going to change it now – you’ve been living here since you were twenty: your home is here, your children are here – your responsibility is to us!’

He looked at her; her face was red and her eyes swollen: there was a look of obstinacy, impatience and fear in them. He realized that she hadn’t listened to a word with understanding.

‘You talk about going to fight with the German army,’ she went on, not seeing her mistake. ‘Don’t you see what that makes you – putting on German uniform. My God, Michael, just supposing things go against them! Supposing they lose the war!’

‘What will happen to your father – what will happen to all the people who have collaborated, most of all the Druet family? There’s no shame in doing openly what we’ve done privately since they came here. If I wear their uniform it’s because their enemies are my enemies. And the enemies of the whole civilized world. I have an opportunity to fight for the liberation of my country. There are hundreds of thousands of Russians, prisoners of war, civilians, émigrés, people from all over Russia, who’ve welcomed the German army and come over to fight with them against the Reds! Doesn’t that show anything? Doesn’t that explain to you, Liliane, that I can’t stay back and refuse to join with them?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t. You’ve no right to leave your family and go and get yourself killed. It isn’t your war, whatever you say – that’s just a lot of crazy nonsense, talking about liberating Russia! It’s that dreadful man, that Shuvalov, dragging you into his clutches again – let him go and fight the Communists and I hope they catch him and hang him!’ She stared at him, tears coming again, a great sense of anger and betrayal growing in her.

‘If you loved me or the children,’ she accused, ‘you wouldn’t have even listened to him!’

Michael Yurovsky stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I hoped you’d understand.’ He took out his holder, and fitted a cigarette into it.

‘I understand one thing,’ his wife said. ‘I’m going to my father, and we’ll see what he thinks of all this. He’ll have something to say to you, after all he’s given you! Where would you be without him – without me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘But I shall soon find out.’ He walked out of the room, closing the door quietly. He went outside into the garden; there was a half moon, and the evening was mild. Behind him, the house rose like a cliff, its windows blacked out to prevent any light from showing. Not that there had been any Allied air raids. They were miles away from any military target.

He felt a sense of anti-climax. It had been a sad, degrading scene with his wife; the most surprising thing was the way he had explained his own emotions, defined his duty. He knew now that the passion and eloquence were not for Liliane but for himself. Like the waters of a captive lake, they had gushed out and turned into a flood. He had ceased to hide from what he was and who he was – he had knocked the struts supporting him away, and for the first time he felt alive. And free. Shuvalov’s words came back to him. ‘Your son will be proud of you.’ He would talk to the child tomorrow, prepare him.… When he grew up, if the worst happened and he was killed in Russia, Nicholas would understand.

He left Vermeuil two weeks later; a German staff car came to take him on the first stage of his journey to the headquarters in the East. Shuvalov had arranged everything; the driver was in German uniform, but he sported the same white flashes on his collar. He saluted and spoke to Michael Yurovsky in Russian. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. His accent proclaimed him a Western Ukrainian – Michael knew that the territory had been annexed from Poland by the Soviet Union in 1939. The boy and his family had been introduced to the joys of Communism without any choice. He must have made his choice when the Germans invaded. He had a round fresh-complexioned face and little blue eyes; he wore his astrakhan cap pulled forward on his head. His name was Krosnevsky.

Michael gave him his luggage, and stood for a moment on the steps of his house. Not his home. The word didn’t occur to him in connection with Vermeuil. Liliane had refused to come down and say goodbye. She was shut up in the nursery, preventing the children from coming to see him leave. There had been a painful scene with his father-in-law, in which Etienne had accused him of gross ingratitude and irresponsibility. Michael hadn’t tried to defend himself. The Druets didn’t understand. How could they, when they hadn’t made any effort to resist the ravishers of their own country …? He had tried hard to comfort his wife, to persuade her that what he was doing was inevitable and that he couldn’t respect himself if he declined his duty. He had tried, unwillingly, to arouse her greed by describing the estates which would be restored to him when the war was won. Nothing succeeded with Liliane; she had looked at him with red eyes and dismissed the idea as fantasy. He was bored with her and he didn’t love his children; that was why he was abandoning them in order to consort with a lot of dirty traitors who were fighting with the Germans against their own people.

Her bitterest invective had been directed against Alexander Shuvalov. ‘That disgusting brute! Talking about burning people and burying them alive! My God, if that’s what all of you were like, it’s a good thing Russia went Communist.’

Michael had turned and walked out of the room, leaving her shouting after him in the same vein. If he’d stayed, he would have hit her.

It was strange, but now that the decision was made, the days passed lightly, in spite of the atmosphere with his wife, and his father-in-law’s refusal to speak to him after the final quarrel. He travelled to Paris, saw Shuvalov, who entertained him handsomely to lunch at the Ritz with a group of Russian officers, some of whom had names he knew, and others who were definitely Soviet fugitives. There was an atmosphere of festivity and excitement; one of the guests was a certain General von Bronsart, a German whose home in Poland had given him a command of Russian as well as Polish. Toasts were drunk to victory; Shuvalov, his eyes burning with vodka, flung his arm round Michael’s shoulders and promised him a place in the first Free Russian column to enter Moscow after it fell to the German army. He had gone to be measured for his uniforms. It gave him a feeling of identity to be a soldier again. Field grey, with the white flashes on his collar, a Cossack cap, soft Russian-style cavalry boots. He stared at himself, and remembered Shuvalov’s words that day at Vermeuil. ‘It’s my destiny. Yours too. If I die now, I’ll die decently, like a man and a Russian.’ Standing in the cubicle before a full-length mirror, with the fitter fidgeting over the cut of his jacket, Michael Yurovsky had seen himself as a complete entity for the first time in twenty-four years. It was entirely possible, even probable, that he would be killed in the spring offensive. There were many worse ways to die. A creeping old age, a passive surrender of life in the big bedroom at Vermeuil, never having known what it meant to be himself again. His only anguish was for his children. But his son Nicholas would not forget him. He had taken the child on his knee and told him gently that he was going away for a time. To fight, he said. To fight the enemies of their country, which he hoped Nicholas would be able to see one day. Holy Russia. He used the old phrase, and made the little boy repeat it.

‘Never forget this,’ he said to the child, who was gazing up at him, his mouth turned down ready to cry. ‘You may live in France but you are a Russian, just like me. And one day, when our country is free, you will be able to go there. I shall take you. It is the greatest country in the world. The most beautiful. Take care of your mama, and be good while I’m gone.’ He had laid his hand on his son’s head and blessed him as his own father had done to him.

He walked down the steps and the driver sprang to the door of the staff car and opened it. Michael glanced upwards at the façade of the house. There was no one at the windows. He got inside and drove away. His destination was a prisoner-of-war camp near Nantes. His first duty was to recruit men for Shuvalov from the thousands of Russians held there.

Anna had been sitting very still; Paul had given Jumeaux a refill, she had refused anything. Pipe smoke hung in the air of the elegant drawing room, and its smell was pungent. Jumeaux paused and looked at her. ‘This must sound an odd story to you,’ he said. ‘Nobody realized how many of these people fought on the German side. We were all brainwashed during the war, Madame, about our gallant Russian allies. I say we, because I was a member of the Free French forces, and of course I was as subject to propaganda as anyone.’

‘I’ve never heard of anything like it,’ she said. ‘I’d no idea there was a Russian division or Cossacks fighting in Russia …’

‘No,’ he said, and grinned a rueful grin at Paul. ‘It wouldn’t have looked very good, would it, to let people know that there were nearly a million Russians who preferred to live under the Nazis instead of our great ally Stalin. We took good care not to let the secret out. Poor bastards.’ He sucked at his pipe, fumbled for matches and re-lit it.

‘Liliane Yurovsky was a stupid woman,’ Jumeaux said. ‘Not bad-hearted, but stupid. She’d never understood her husband and she couldn’t forgive him. She took it as a personal rejection. But if she’d lived and things had gone differently, her son Nicholas wouldn’t be mixed up in this mess today.’

‘It’s getting late,’ Paul Martin said. ‘And I’m hungry. Why don’t we go out and get some dinner?’

Anna got up. ‘I’ll make something for us,’ she said.

‘I think we’d be better to go somewhere quiet and eat,’ Jumeaux said. ‘Paul, what about that place near the Madeleine – we had lunch there one day and it was very good …’

‘Le Réduit,’ Paul said. ‘We’ll go there. My car’s outside.’ Anna sat in the front beside him, Jumeaux in the back. They drove in silence through the crowded city, bright with lights, tourists wandering slowly down the broad streets, window shopping and idling, the pavement cafés crammed with people. She hadn’t sat in a car with Paul for so long she’d forgotten how he drove. It was an uncomfortable experience; he was a fast, aggressive driver, always jerking and accelerating. The restaurant was in a side street quite close to the massive Madeleine Church, brooding at the top of its pyramid of steps. It was an unpretentious little place, with wooden tables and no concession to décor. Anna knew from long experience that in such places the best food in Paris was often to be found. Paul sat himself beside her; Jumeaux had disappeared into the back to wash.

‘You look a bit harrowed,’ he said. ‘Don’t get too emotional about it, because you haven’t heard anything yet.’

‘Why is he taking all this trouble,’ she asked him. ‘He must have a motive, besides being a friend of yours.’

‘Oh, he has,’ Paul admitted. ‘Jumeaux’s as tough as they come. He’s wearing two hats at the moment, darling. One is the SDECE and the other is old Paul Martin’s good friend. They just happen to coincide, that’s all. But I want you to hear it through. You won’t like it.’

‘I don’t have to listen,’ she pointed out. There was something about his attitude that grated on her. He already knew the story, and had formed his own conclusions about the effect it would have on her. He had been wrong about her reactions before, and he could well be wrong again. It might be a pity that Jumeaux told the story with such conviction. She had a very clear mental picture of Count Michael Yurovsky in her mind. And of the child, with his fair hair and Russian eyes, embracing his father before he went away to the war.

‘Ah,’ Jumeaux said, when the meal was finished. ‘That was good. I like this place. Trust Paul to know the best places to eat.’ He ordered coffee.

‘Tell me,’ Anna said. ‘What happened to Nicholas’s father? Was he killed?’ She saw him glance quickly at Paul and then his eyes came back to her.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘He was certainly killed. But his first task when he joined Shuvalov was to persuade Soviet prisoners to fight for Germany. He was very effective. Let me tell you about it.’

The camp was a huge complex fifteen kilometres outside Nantes. Michael Yurovsky was entertained to lunch in the Commandant’s quarters before he went to inspect and speak to the prisoners. The Commandant was a huge, bearish man, almost a caricature of the ugly German, bullet-headed and coarse; his fat body bulged in the black uniform of the SS. His name was Pfizer, and Yurovsky abhorred the type. He had seen its like in Russia, wearing the uniform of the Bolsheviks and the Whites in turn; a brutal, pitiless bully, delighting in oppressing the helpless. He managed to be polite; he was already dreading what he would find among his fellow-countrymen.

They were drawn up in ranks in the main square of the camp: row after row of men in their dirty, tattered khaki uniforms, their heads shaven to the skull, faces so gaunt with hunger that Yurovsky felt as if he were looking at human skeletons. Few had anything but bloody rags bound round their feet. There was an indescribable stench even in the open air, and the atmosphere of wretched apathy was shot through with fear. Ranks of SS guards carrying whips, as if they were driving cattle, moved among the men. There was a total silence. Nobody dared to move. Yurovsky followed the Commandant to a small platform, about four feet above ground level. There was an empty socket about nine inches in diameter in the centre of it, and he glanced down. The outline of a trap door was clearly visible. He realized with horror that he was standing on a gallows. Pfizer had a junior officer with him, and this officer used a loudhailer to shout orders in Russian. The SS man spoke with a Polish accent. He told them that a Russian officer had come to address them; those who accepted his offer would be recruited into labour battalions, and not forced to take up arms. Yurovsky turned to the Commandant.

‘What is this about labour battalions? I’ve come here for fighting troops!’

‘These are Red Army men,’ Pfizer said. ‘They won’t fight against their own. Once they’re in a labour battalion it’s up to you to arm them. They’ll go along.’ He laughed. ‘Give ’em a taste of food and women and they’ll fight all right. Scum!’

Yurovsky looked at him.

‘I’m not tricking any man into joining us,’ he said. ‘Give me the loudhailer.’

The sun was beating down upon them; there were three thousand men, and the only food had been a bowl of cabbage soup and two ounces of black bread. They got the same ration at night, with the addition of one potato to the soup. They had been in the camp since the beginning of the year, and already a third of them had died of starvation and ill-treatment. They stared at the smartly dressed man in his odd uniform; German field grey, with a Cossack cap. He spoke to them in clear, cultivated Russian, with an accent that was unfamiliar. He explained the formation of a Russian division dedicated to fighting against the tyranny of the present Soviet government. Any man who felt in conscience that he could join this division would be released and treated as a member of the armed forces with full pay and privileges. He guaranteed that no force would be used to persuade them, and nobody would be penalized if they decided to stay where they were. Some of the men shuffled their feet, and muttered to each other.

A Red Army corporal who had been captured outside Kiev glared at Michael Yurovsky through eyelids crusted with sores from malnutrition. ‘That bastard,’ he hissed to his neighbour. ‘That’s one of the stinking swine from the old days – my father told me about them – standing up there trying to get us to turn traitor!’

‘Be quiet,’ his neighbour snarled. ‘Watch your mouth …’

The corporal had fought desperately before he was captured; his home had been overrun by the advancing Germans and most of the villagers he had grown up with were shot for harbouring guerrillas. He was weak with dysentery and lack of food. He had been beaten and kicked by the troops when he was captured, and herded in a stinking cattle truck with hundreds of Russian prisoners, many of them badly wounded, on a nightmare trip across Europe to the camp at Nantes. Nothing but hatred for the Germans had kept his spirit intact. Now, looking at the elegant figure of Michael Yurovsky, symbol of the aristocracy he had been brought up to despise, recruiting for the very army which had ravaged his homeland and murdered his friends, something snapped inside him.

He pushed forward, stumbling; Michael saw him and for a moment imagined that he had his first volunteer. The corporal reached the front rank; he weaved a little with weakness, looking up at the figures on the platform. He summoned his breath and yelled.

‘You stinking bastard! You won’t find any traitors here – long live Stalin!’

He was seized so quickly that Michael Yurovsky heard the Commandant bellow something in German and the next moment there were three shots. The Russian lay on the ground, shot dead. He swung round on the German, aghast.

‘That man was a prisoner-of-war! You’d no right to shoot him!’

Pfizer grimaced. ‘Red swine – don’t worry, Colonel. You’ll get your volunteers after this.’

Even as Yurovsky turned back to the ranks of wretches lined up in front of him, there was a movement and men began to come forward. He stood helplessly, watching them gather in front of the platform. The dead corporal lay sprawled on the ground; prisoners stepped over his body.

Yurovsky turned to the commandant. ‘I want to see all these men individually. I’d like an office put at my disposal.’

‘It’s not the normal practice,’ Pfizer said. ‘The last one of your people who came here didn’t talk to them. He didn’t mind a few of them getting shot. They weren’t so hungry then and they were full of fight.’

‘I’m not interested in my predecessor’s methods,’ Yurovsky said. He turned and stepped down from the platform. ‘I want to see each man.’

They gave him one of the store-rooms; he had a table and a chair and the SS liaison officer who spoke Russian was with him.

It took a long time; the window showed a darkening sky by the time the last man stood before him. Yurovsky asked the same question as he had done with all the others; there must have been several hundred of them.

‘Why do you want to join us? Don’t be afraid to answer truthfully.’

All but a few told lies; he knew that. They couldn’t give the real reason in case this odd sort of officer refused to take them. They were dying of hunger; their life expectancy from sheer mistreatment and hard labour was less than a few months. Once out of the camp, many thought they might escape. Others only wanted to survive, and saw no further than freedom and decent rations instead of a slow death.

But others were different. They had lost friends, parents, suffered imprisonment themselves. And not at the hands of the invading Germans. These were the victims of Soviet laws, where free speech, religious observance, or a lukewarm attitude to official directives was ferociously punished. These men, and there were a number of them, wanted to go back and fight. By the end of that day Yurovsky was exhausted. He drove to Nantes, where he was the guest of the German district commander and for the first time in many years he went to bed too drunk to undress. He remembered the driver, Krosnevsky, taking off his boots. The scene in the camp haunted him; images of horror merged again and again in the contorted face of the man who had spat defiance at him and been shot down. ‘Traitor.’ It was an epithet that stung. ‘The last one of your people who came here didn’t talk to them … he didn’t mind a few of them getting shot …’ The gross face, its brutish eyes gleaming, swam in front of him, distorted by the effects of the alcohol. He could have walked away and refused to carry on. He could have left the camp and the men in it, and told Shuvalov to find someone else for this particular task. And they would have died of hunger; been shot, beaten to death, worked till they collapsed. The men who had signed up with him would live; whatever their motives he had saved their lives. He thought in confusion that it was as much a rescue operation as a recruiting drive for Shuvalov’s division. And these were simple people, peasants, dragged across Europe away from their homes. They knew nothing of the outside world except brutality and suffering since their capture.

It was his responsibility, and that of his brother officers, to educate them and convert them to the cause of Russian freedom. By the time he joined Shuvalov in Poland, he had visited five major camps and personally recruited five thousand Russians for the German army. It was already March and the great spring offensive against the Red Army was planned for the second week in April. He had written to Liliane but received no reply. He had resigned himself to her attitude. He could only hope that if Germany was victorious and the Soviet defence collapsed, he might be alive to convince her that he had done the right thing. And see his children again.