Read Field of Mars for Free Online Page B

surrounded by enemies! We’ve been humiliated by the Japanese. Who’s next, the Turks? Meanwhile our brothers in Serbia are fighting and dying to stave off conquest by Hapsburg pigs and the Jews of Vienna! We watch and dither and sit on our hands. No one is doing anything about it except us. We are the true patriots!’
    â€˜Does Nicholas ever listen to God?’ Evdaev suddenly blurted.
    â€˜He listens to her.’
    â€˜Yes . . .’
    â€˜And she listens to that fucking monkey Rasputin, with his chants and his séances. We need to get rid of him, all of them . . . It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
    â€˜But the boy . . .’
    â€˜Yes, yes. It’s terrible. It’s unsavoury, I admit, but the boy will be dead before he reaches the age of twenty whatever we do.’
    â€˜Yes, I know, Sergei . . . they must all go, they must die, I know that, but . . .’
    â€˜Yes, all of them. But our hands are clean. We’re sitting on a powder keg primed and ready to blow. When this little revolution comes, well . . . what they do is not our fault. They might spill some blood, but they won’t last. They’re too fragmented. One cell believes this, another believes that. But by doing this, we will clean out the stables and leave them empty and waiting for us, Nestor . . . Then when you become Tsar, we will hold Russia for all time. But we need a little war, a little revolution. First create a crisis, Nestor. Then control it.’
    â€˜To the death of the Romanov dynasty,’ he said and Evdaev smiled more broadly. They drank. He looked around the room. Dark, draped with carpets and tapestries found in the most distant corners of the East, a Japanese flag and crossed axes Evdaev had brought back from Port Arthur, all of it ringed with stuffed heads of boars, panthers, stags, pheasants and fish—prize specimens that Evdaev or one of his ancestors had taken at the hunt. A pair of crossed spears above the fireplace, a sooty canvas of a sixteenth-century noble in full boyar costume posed in front of a sulphurous horizon of burning trees and defeated barbarians.
    Andrianov had a happy moment. How far would these sanctimonious idiots go? He shook his head, gave a worried sigh.
    â€˜What?’ Evdaev looked up, suddenly nervous all over again.
    â€˜Well, I’ve been wondering who is paying for the vertika’s funeral? Someone should. We can’t just let her be thrown into a pit. In a way, she’s part of the Plan after all . . . She’s our sister.’
    â€˜Ah . . . yes, I suppose so.’ Evdaev looked suddenly sad. Almost as if someone had taken away his puppy.
    â€˜She’s our first real casualty. I suppose that in a way she’s fallen in the service of our battle, yes?’
    â€˜Oh, yes. Very true, very true, very true, she’s a heroine.’
    â€˜I suppose the bindery might cover the costs, that would be appropriate.’
    â€˜Yes, you’re right, Sergei. I’ll telephone. The company will take care of it. I’ll personally see to it.’ Suddenly Evdaev was gone all pious, a tragic note had crept into his voice like a bad actor.
    â€˜Yes, by all means. Let’s be seen to do the decent thing,’ Andrianov said, marvelling at the gullibility of ‘patriotic’ men.

FOUR
    Barely awake, Pyotr Ryzhkov was the last one to climb out of the carriage that had drawn to a halt on the shady side of the Nevsky Prospekt. It was his team and he had the training, the seniority, the responsibility . . . and the list. Hokhodiev and Dudenko waited while he fished it out of his pocket, and then stepped back to look at the numbers on the building. Behind him a troop of cavalry passed noisily down the wide boulevard. It was only the beginning of what would probably be an excruciatingly long day—a series of extravagant military ceremonies designed to ennoble the Tsar’s dedication of a new dock on the Admiralty Quay, a