“So if he also gave them the names . . .”
“We don’t need to assume that. He wouldn’t have any reason to think you were involved with the same thing. There is still hope, if we can convince the British to disbelieve him entirely.”
Though it took some effort, he smiled. “Look at you. Being optimistic.”
She breathed a laugh, but it faded to heavy solemnity. “Even I can hope sometimes. But if that hope proves vain . . . You must know, Evgeni. I will do whatever it takes. Whatever must be done to get these names, to stop this mutiny. I will do whatever must be done to earn the right to return to Russia with our heads held high. We will be honored by the party. We will advance. We will have a chance at a good life.”
Her hand was squeezing his in a way she’d never done before. A way that made his heart race. “Together?”
The beat of silence felt like fear. But then she squeezed all the harder. “Together.”
He lifted their joined hands, kissed the back of hers. His brother wouldn’t understand, but it would all work out. This was Evgeni’s chance to do something big, something that would be for the Bolsheviks what Zivon’s skills had been for the imperialists. A chance to make a name for himself. And a future with the woman he loved.
All he had to do was make sure Zivon couldn’t ruin it. After that, his brother would rebound. He may be angry over what was about to happen, especially if he realized Evgeni’s involvement. But it wasn’t the end of his life or even his career. Just a nudge to a new one. A wall thrown up to redirect him, to keep him from making a mistake that would affect them all.
Claire had it all wrong. It wasn’t bad that the castle kept the hero from making a mistake. It was necessary. Because people, individuals, couldn’t always be trusted to make the right decision.
Sometimes the state had to make it for them.
Nadya drew in a long breath. “Regardless of how this all goes, we must leave here soon. Get home. The White Army will be losing heart. We should rejoin the ranks to help rout them.”
Evgeni nodded. The newspaper this morning had actually had news of Russia in it—or of a particular Russian, anyway. Czar Nicholas had finally been executed, along with his family.
It was over. Final. The White Army would feel the blow, and any hopes of the provisional government taking control again would surely die. The old ways were gone forever, the Romanov line at an end. The future belonged to the people now. “It will work. Zivon will have no choice but to seek a quieter life.” He stood and shot her a smile as he scattered a handful of crumbs he’d been saving. “Ready to go back inside?” he asked as the pigeons flocked to the offering with loud coos.
She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t quite hide her grin. “You are such a softy.”
“I have to be, to offset you, Madame Rock.”
She chuckled and stood, wrapping her arm around his. “I suppose this is why we make a good pair. Balance is important.”
They strolled the five minutes back to their building at a leisurely pace. Though as they neared it, a commotion at the door had Evgeni pulling up, slowing her with a hand on her arm. “Something is amiss.”
A crowd had gathered outside the front door, including a woman weeping loudly. He recognized her vaguely as an upstairs neighbor. He’d held the door for her a few times, tipping his hat and greeting her in French that she didn’t understand but in which she wouldn’t hear his Russian accent so keenly. She usually came and went with an adolescent boy in tow.
The same boy now being carried out toward the ambulance parked at the curb.
Nadya’s fingers tightened around Evgeni’s arm. Even as they watched, someone pulled a sheet up over the boy’s face. Not, however, before Evgeni glimpsed his blue lips.
The curse that slipped out was Russian, but quiet enough that he doubted anyone else had heard him.
It seemed that the flu going around the city and being discussed in all the papers had found its way to their corner of London.
THURSDAY, 25 JULY 1918
Over the last three weeks, Zivon had grown sadly accustomed to the new, somber Clarke. He still jogged with him in the mornings, and they still walked to and from the OB together most days. But any offers Zivon made for other outings were always met with quiet refusal. “Not today,” he’d always say. “You’ll want to spend the evening with Miss Blackwell.” Even when Zivon tried to tell him Lily was busy, he’d find another excuse. He was too tired or had brought work home from the office or was in the middle of a good book.
He looked over at Clarke now from only the corner of his eye and prayed. Prayed that God would show him how to be a friend to this man. He’d known him only four months, but that had been time enough that this ache in Clarke’s heart pierced Zivon’s too.
“I was thinking,” he said as the parade grounds came within sight, “that I may attend a lecture this evening at Kings College, given by one of the members of my church. Lily already has plans with a friend. Would you perhaps want to join me? It ought to be a good one. He will be discussing The Brothers Karamazov. Have you read it?”
Clarke shook his head. “Thanks all the same. I don’t imagine it would be terribly interesting since I haven’t.”
“You may be surprised. It was hearing a talk given on War and Peace that made me decide to read Tolstoy as a young man.”
The turn of his friend’s lips looked token at best. “I find it hard to believe you weren’t reading Tolstoy already at twelve.”
“Well, I did not say how young a man. But I was thirteen, I will have you know.”
The subdued chuckle wasn’t much bigger than the echo of a smile had been. “Did your brother share your literary bent, or did you have friends in St. Petersburg that joined you in your lecture-going?”
Did. Zivon slid a hand into his pocket, where Batya’s pocket watch resided. Would he ever get used to using past tense for the people who should still be at his side? “Evgeni . . . indulged me. But he and our father were more men of action than words. I took after my mother.”
Clarke made some reply, but Zivon’s attention shifted from the easy conversation. Something wasn’t right. He slowed, listened.
Voices. Too many voices, all coming from ahead, near the OB. The pedestrians walking toward them, away from the building, kept looking over their shoulders. Ahead of them, a man carrying a large camera broke into a jog.
“Reporters. At the OB.” Zivon drifted to a halt the moment they came within sight of the parade grounds. It wasn’t unusual for men from the press to be there, but not in a crowd like that. And not outside. Usually, when more than a few gathered, it was because DID was holding a press conference.
These, though, were not the orderly collection of fellows here for promised news. These were rather a roiling, shouting group best defined by the word mob.
His chest constricted. He’d had enough of those to last him a lifetime. “We had probably better go the long way round and come in at the back.”
“No argument from me.”
They fell in with a few others in the naval reserve uniform who had apparently come to the same conclusion. When they reached the back door—the one through which Lily habitually came and went—De Wilde stood there with a newspaper in hand and a serious look on her face.