A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

the Dardanelles at this very moment, and I would be giving Miki and Pippa a villa on the Aegean for a wedding present.’

      Meshchersky laughed, Rodzianko applauded. ‘Continue. Nestor, please…’ Sazonov said solemnly, polite enough to hear him out. Someone clapped him on the back to start him up again.

      ‘And had we taken that golden opportunity, the Austrians would have backed down because we would have assured them we had no designs on their territory. That would have been the way to placate them.’

      Sazonov nodded, smiled, and glanced down at his shoes. There was a chuckle of disbelief at Evdaev’s directness, and to buttress his statements Evdaev turned to Rodzianko. ‘Did you not urge such a course? Did you not say we should profit from the war fever?’ For a moment everyone held their breath. After all, Rodzianko was a politician, and his opinions on foreign policy were only the opinions of a loud-voiced civilian who represented the vague force of the ‘people’, something unknown waiting in the wings.

      Before Rodzianko could speak, Sazonov stepped in, trying to cut the argument short, measuring the men’s discretion with a glance. ‘Everyone likes an opportunity, Nestor, but I can tell you the Turkish question was carefully considered and it was rejected at the highest levels,’ he said quietly, formally. The men nodded gravely. Everyone knew this meant Tsar Nicholas, there was no higher level.

      Sazonov glanced at them with his sharp eyes, nodded and then turned to Evdaev. ‘But, yes, Nestor, I agree. It would have been heroic, a glorious stroke, to take Constantinople.’ He reached up and grasped Evdaev’s forearm, one Roman to another. ‘Pure heroics, pure glory, fraught with danger, of course, and only history will judge if it was not the best thing to do,’ the Foreign Minister said with a small bow, and then left the little circle.

      ‘He’s ill,’ Ostrov said.

      ‘He’s next,’ Meshchersky shot right back, and they all laughed at Sazonov’s departing figure.

      By the end of the night, Evdaev found himself by the window staring out at the trees blowing in the glow of the streetlamps. It had begun to rain, a slanting downpour that discouraged one from the prospect of simply getting to one’s carriage, making it easier to stay at the party. He was thinking about his own plans to leave the city, spend a bit of time at Soroki, but then he would have to return. He would be busy, Sergei had told him; everything must be ready for the turning of the weather in spring.

      Weather, he thought. That was the true story of Russia: a nation held prisoner by the thermometer, hostage of the moon, the snow, the flooding river, the infinite reach of the continent. A titanic nation moulded by titanic forces, that engendered a race of titanic men.