Mihail winked at her. She gave him a puzzled look but said nothing.
Soon the ohranik and the gendarme came to them.
‘Papers!’
They both handed over their passports. The ohranik examined Mihail’s first, while the gendarme swung his gaze up and down the carriage, trying to appear necessary to the whole business.
‘Name?’
‘Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin. Lieutenant – Grenadier Sappers, Pyetr Nikolayevich Battalion.’ The rank and battalion were evident from his uniform.
‘Not with your regiment?’
‘On leave.’ Mihail held up his bandaged left hand. Blood had started to seep through from the effort of moving Dusya’s bag.
‘Turkmenistan?’
‘Geok Tepe.’
The ohranik nodded approvingly. ‘That was good work Skobyelev did out there.’ He turned to Dusya, examining her papers. ‘And you?’ he asked, without looking up.
‘Yevdokia Yegorovna Nikonova.’
‘Mrs?’
‘Miss.’
He glanced between her and Mihail. ‘You two travelling together?’ he asked.
Dusya opened her lips to answer, but no sound came. Her eyes fell to the floor.
‘Yevdokia Yegorovna is a friend of my brother,’ said Mihail. He could have left her to her fate, but she was pretty and he enjoyed the thrill of taking an unnecessary risk.
Dusya looked up, her eyes fixed on him. She might have blushed, but with her sickly skin it was impossible to tell.
‘We’re engaged to be married,’ she said, a little too quickly. She was not used to this, and seemed inadequately trained.
‘She and my brother, I should say,’ explained Mihail casually. ‘Not she and myself.’ He gave a slight chuckle and Dusya joined in, more naturally this time. ‘It’s pure chance I bumped into her,’ he added, distancing himself in case his ruse proved insufficient.
‘I see. How far are you going?’
‘To Petersburg,’ said Mihail.
‘Only as far as Moscow’ was Dusya’s response. Was that a hint of apology in her eyes?
‘I’ll be returning to Moscow in time for the wedding,’ Mihail added. He said no more. It wouldn’t do to be too helpful.
The ohranik nodded and he and his henchman moved on. Mihail raised his hand to his face and as he did so slipped his thumb between his first two fingers, making the sign of the sheesh at their backs. They could not see, but the gesture was not for their benefit. Dusya saw and her face suppressed a smirk. The ohranik turned, but already Mihail’s palm was open and innocent. He watched them as they questioned the remainder of the carriage’s occupants, but they didn’t look back again. At last they were finished, and climbed down to the platform. A moment later Mihail heard a slow creak followed by a clang as the brakes were released and the train began slowly to ease its way out of the station.
Somewhere behind Mihail a man stood up and walked down the carriage in their direction. He was tall – as tall as Dmitry – and heavily built, with a thick beard. He took another seat a little way ahead of them, but Mihail noticed the glance that was exchanged between him and Dusya as he passed. Mihail, it seemed, might have done well as an extemporized guardian for the young lady, but she had never been alone.
The train was fully up to speed before she dared to look him in the face again. She seemed keen to say something, but uttered not a word. She rubbed her temple again and her eyebrows became pinched.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Mihail. ‘You don’t need to explain.’
She gave a meek, embarrassed smile and turned away again, but she had misunderstood. She didn’t need to explain because he understood perfectly well. Beyond that familiar odour – a scent that made Mihail feel almost at home – there were the symptoms: the bulging eyes, the pallid complexion, the headaches. He’d been warned about them on almost his first day at the Imperial Technical School, and he’d seen it more than once in the field, in men who were less than familiar with the tools of their trade.
They were the symptoms of prolonged exposure to nitroglycerin.
The train slowed and finally came to a halt. It was impossible for Iuda to determine where he was, but it had been twelve days since they left Geok Tepe. They’d travelled by land, then by water, and then by land again, until finally his coffin had been loaded on to a train. They had changed trains once more since then. One thing he felt sure of, although he could see nothing of the outside world, was that the nights were getting longer, which meant they were heading north.