A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

I don’t mind telling you, it makes you worry,’ Evdaev said quietly. At heart the man was a coward.

      ‘It’s been taken care of, Nestor.’

      ‘Yes, but…weren’t you saying that he, ah…Gosling, that he was the key? The key to the whole thing, yes?’

      ‘One of the keys, Nestor. One of the keys.’ They had been drinking. It was the only time to meet with Nestor. After the marches and inspections. After the parades and the endless war games were over. He wanted to leave and see Mina, but she would be asleep by now.

      ‘What about the detectives?’ Evdaev seemed nervous.

      ‘There were no detectives. She’s been delivered to the morgue.’

      ‘Suicide?’

      ‘Yes, Nestor. Not to worry.’

      ‘No witnesses, no names?’

      ‘You were there, did you see anything?’

      ‘I was downstairs. I stayed away.’ Evdaev was squirming in his seat. If he hadn’t been holding a glass of schnapps, he would have been wringing his hands.

      ‘Good. You did the right thing, and I didn’t want you anywhere near Gosling.’

      ‘Yes. I have no idea.’

      ‘That’s not your role. And you shouldn’t concern yourself further.’

      ‘Yes, thank you. I don’t mind telling you, this whole business…’ Evdaev sighed, wiped his hand across his brow.

      Andrianov smiled. The man was an utter coward, a baby. The whole day had been like that. All through his conversations he had become less and less impressed with his recruits into the scheme. Yes, they were all important men, necessary parts of the conspiracy; yes, they had all screwed up their courage to commit treason. Yes, they all had the necessary sentiments and ideological underpinnings to carry them through the storm, but underneath they were weak, ineffectual. They loved the romance of the code names, the secret rendezvous, and, of course, the payments. But for anything difficult, anything that might involve a little dirt or blood, all of them were play-actors. He even had his doubts about how Gulka would react in a crisis. Evdaev was fit to sit on a throne and take orders, fool enough to charge into battle, but for anything dangerous he had no will whatsoever. It was one more symptom of the dry rot that had disabled the whole of Russian society.

      ‘We have nothing to fear, Nestor. There are no names and no witnesses. Certainly no one reliable. It’s only a whorehouse, after all.’ Andrianov laughed and after a glance at him Evdaev did too, a little self-consciously. They touched glasses.

      Andrianov smiled. On the night of the consummation, he had pushed the first envelope across the surface of Evdaev’s table. Eagle, the great warrior, had been afraid to take it, recoiled from the thing as if it were a viper. By rights the prince should have reached for the telephone, called for the gendarmes. But he hadn’t. Instead he had listened, he had let Andrianov’s words draw him in, subduing his reason like the narcotic smoke of a genie’s lamp. Hardly believing as the logic coiled around him, overwhelmed him, seduced him.

      ‘I know what you love, Nestor,’ he said, and waited. ‘But me? I love my businesses. I have love for Mina, of course. My father’s house is one of my greatest treasures. But more than all of those…it’s Russia that I truly love.’

      Evdaev was nodding at him, staring into his glass and bobbing his head. Tears starting to form in his eyes.

      ‘And, yes, sometimes, when we love something, and it means everything to us, and it’s been hurt or broken, well…we have to repair it, restore it. So it is with Russia…we have to sweep out the cobwebs, break out the rot, and glue things back together. Is this not true, Nestor?’

      Nodding that big head.

      ‘We are not alone, you’re not alone, Nestor. Indeed, you are surrounded by secret friends and believers. And we offer you the world. We offer you the chance to be the saviour of your nation. We do this because honour prevents us from doing otherwise. I am here, and I devote myself to you, brother, and to our cause. And as a brother, I pledge my life to you.’ He let himself laugh a little. ‘But, I don’t have to tell you, you know. You’re a soldier. One small life, one life is nothing, not really.’

      ‘No,’ Evdaev said. Trying to make his voice courageous. It only came out as a burbling sound of drunken assent. Andrianov reached into his jacket, pushed a new envelope across the table. Nestor reached out quickly to save it from the spilled wine.

      ‘There will be more expenses. Men will have to be compensated. We will have to entertain, persuade, blackmail. There will be blood. It will not be pretty…’

      ‘I know,’ Evdaev said, serious now. Sobering up.

      ‘It’s not treason, Nestor.’

      And now the big face looked up at him. Stricken. A scared stupid boy waiting for the lash.

      ‘No…Is it treason to see? Is it treason to realize that we’re 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!’

      ‘Does Nicholas ever listen to God?’ Evdaev suddenly blurted.

      ‘He listens to her.’

      ‘Yes…’

      ‘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?’

      ‘But the boy…’

      ‘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.’

      ‘Yes, I know, Sergei…they must all go, they must die, I know that, but…’

      ‘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.

      ‘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.

      ‘What?’ Evdaev looked up, suddenly nervous all over again.

      ‘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.’

      ‘Ah…yes, I suppose so.’ Evdaev looked suddenly sad. Almost as if someone had taken away his puppy.

      ‘She’s our first real casualty. I suppose that in a way she’s fallen in the service of our battle, yes?’

      ‘Oh, yes. Very true, very true, very true, she’s a heroine.’

      ‘I suppose the bindery might cover the costs, that would be appropriate.’

      ‘Yes,