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dead. But he didn’t listen. The fool didn’t even wear the bulletproof vest we gave him. He said it smelt bad.’
    The son of the assassinated Tsar set up the Okhrana to stem the tide of assassination and revolution. Many of the opposition fled abroad to escape the clutches of the Okhrana. They didn’t realize that the European network under the General’s control could see as far – if not further – than the home headquarters in St Petersburg. The General’s European Okhrana had very close links with the French Sûreté and its counterparts in Berlin and Vienna. They had officers in every major European capital. Their principal tactic was based on infiltrating the opposition groups. Sometimes they used
agents provocateurs
. They had a number of very attractive women on their books, prepared to sleep with a Bolshevik or a Menshevik, they didn’t really mind which, or delve through his rubbish bins.The General, oddly enough for a man in his profession, was not fond of violence. As a last resort he would call in his hard men, former soldiers of the Foreign Legion, who took their most reluctant prisoners to a chateau hidden deep in the mountains of the Cevennes. Some of the victims were never seen again.
    He was a great believer in punctuality, the General. At precisely three o’clock in the afternoon, on the day Powerscourt met Natasha Shaporova again, a certain Captain Yuri Gorodetsky was shown into his office. The Captain was the senior officer in London who had a special appointment to see his boss.
    ‘Good afternoon, Captain. I believe you have come on urgent business. You must have your hands full, with the Ballets Russes in town. They can be guaranteed to cause a certain amount of chaos wherever they go. God knows, they cause enough trouble every time they come to Paris. I don’t think that rogue Diaghilev has paid his hotel bill from the time he was here three years ago.’
    ‘I don’t think he’s changed, General. I don’t think he’ll ever change. I want your advice on a slightly different matter this afternoon, if you would.’
    ‘Please, carry on.’
    ‘I’m sure you remember that big bank robbery in Tiflis a few years back? The one where some people were killed and the Bolsheviks made off with an enormous amount of money?’
    The General nodded. ‘Not one of our better days, I fear.’
    ‘As you know, the Bolsheviks couldn’t get their hands on most of the cash. The haul was enormous, three hundred and forty-one thousand roubles. Thiswas the snag. Most of the money, over a quarter of a million roubles, was in five-hundred-rouble notes. Most people have never set eyes on one of these. But the authorities knew the numbers. They sent them to every bank in Russia. Lenin organized a plot to cash some of the notes abroad. We managed to stop that. Now he’s going to try again, in London this time.’
    ‘Is he, by God?’ said the General, taking a large cigar from the top drawer of his enormous desk. ‘You’ve done well to track this plot down.’
    ‘Thank you, General. There is a link with the Ballets Russes, as it happens. Lenin has a follower who works part of the time for the Ballets Russes, a member of Lenin’s gang, currently holed up in Cracow. They spend a lot of time in the Café Noworolski apparently, reading the newspapers and planning the revolution. I don’t think this contact brought the money with him. I suspect, but I’m not sure, that the banknotes were smuggled in by the Ballets Russes. Some of those female dancers take enough stuff with them to fill Selfridge’s department store, or the Galeries Lafayette here in the Boulevard Haussmann. This is the important thing, General. Lenin’s man has been meeting with a lot of home-grown revolutionaries in London. Our friends in the Metropolitan Police keep a very close eye on these characters. We believe that they are going to send a number of local revolutionaries in their best suits into a collection of banks across the City of