Mihail.
The tsar remained silent. Konstantin filled the gap with ‘Of course not,’ but there was little enthusiasm to it.
‘But if that’s his plan,’ said Mihail, ‘then his only interest in you would be to see your death.’
Aleksandr paused. His face was grey. His brother took a step towards him, but Aleksandr waved him back. At last he spoke, but it seemed to have nothing to do with the matter at hand.
‘Fifteen years ago I visited Paris. I was the guest of the emperor, Napoleon III. He was not to remain emperor for very long. It was just a year since my son Niks died. A year too since Lincoln was murdered, after he’d freed his slaves. I was walking in the Tuileries Gardens. There was a gypsy there and she read my palm. She was very honest – perhaps she didn’t understand who I was. She told me that she foresaw seven attempts to murder me, that six times my life would hang by a thread and that the seventh attempt would be the last.’
Mihail said nothing. He began to count the number of times they had attempted to kill Aleksandr, but the tsar provided the answer for him.
‘So far there have been six plots – shootings, bombings – but all with the intent of seeing me dead.’
‘The next attempt will come soon,’ announced Mihail. ‘They’re digging a tunnel underneath Malaya Sadovaya Street.’ Even as he spoke, he was realizing the full meaning of what he had witnessed there. ‘They’re going to fill it with nitroglycerin and blow you up as you ride over.’
‘Then that,’ replied the tsar, ‘will be seven.’
Iuda looked down into the cathedral, in precisely the opposite direction to most of those who came to view its architectural splendour. They would strain their necks to look up at the dome from the floor below, whereas he was perched among the gilded angels that ringed the lower reaches of Saint Isaac’s central tower, and could look down and see all who came and all who departed. He had arrived here soon after dark on Sunday evening, mingling with the congregation who came for vespers before slipping up one of the many staircases that were hidden within the church’s thick stone walls. The people had left and then the priest had left and all had become silent.
The two figures had emerged from the corner beside the Nevsky Chapel; one tall, the other taller still. Zmyeevich and Dmitry. They slipped out of the cathedral and into the darkness. Iuda waited. He had last fed the night before, so he was neither distracted by hunger nor drowsy with satisfaction. He spent some time wandering around the quiet, empty building, remembering his conversations with de Montferrand and how he had needed to couch the necessities of his modifications in terms of the aesthetics that would appeal to the architect’s mind. But what Iuda had planned was beautiful, regardless of its function – anyone would see that, when the sun shone.
He skulked back to his perch to wait. In the small hours Zmyeevich returned, alone. Iuda guessed that Dmitry would not be far behind, but he was wrong. Soon dawn began to break. Beams of light cut across the geometric patterns of the marble floor as the earliest rays of the sun entered from the east through the building’s long windows. To the south and east he had opened every door, every shutter and every gate to ensure that the sun should fill the space inside. A cathedral should be a place of light – that’s what he’d said to de Montferrand. But a cathedral should be a place of shadow too, and knowing the paths of shadow through the light could be of great benefit to a vampire.
He waited a few more hours. It was Monday, and the church would be quiet for most of the day, and he would be safer if the sun was allowed to get a little higher – the ideal inclination had been calculated with utmost precision. At about ten o’clock he began to move. He would not confront Zmyeevich down in the cellar below – that would be suicidal. But it would be simple enough to lure him up to the cathedral, where light would be Iuda’s friend.
And then came a slight perturbation to Iuda’s plans. The northern door of the cathedral creaked open and in walked a figure that Iuda had scarcely paid attention to when first they met, but who had thwarted him since.