Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick

attempts to communicate with your government I have heard nothing from them. Only last night I sent another diplomatic note, via official channels. Once again it has been met with total silence. So, what do you suppose your government would do if they read that Russia is about to conclude a separate peace with Germany?”
    “They’d probably want to talk to you very quickly indeed. But how are they going to read this?”
    “Oh,” said Trotsky, casually, “they might read it in their morning paper. Maybe they read the Daily News …”
    He said no more, but he didn’t have to.
    Arthur knew he was going to do as he’d been asked.
    Or had he been told?

 
    6:35 P.M.
    ARTHUR LEAVES THE POST OFFICE, having sent not only the letter to Tabitha, but a telegraphed report for the News, too.
    By the time he gets back to the Elite he’s hot and feels dirty. There at the door, is the doorman’s girl, Kashka.
    “Please? When will the war end?”
    “Soon,” Arthur mumbles, forcing a smile, and makes his way wearily up to his floor, up to his room. Only then does he realize he didn’t set the scrap of paper in the door frame on his way out.
    For a minute he hovers, remembering Lockhart’s admonishments, then curses quietly. They are driving him crazy, all these people, with their games and deceits. The British, the Russians; the Bolshevik Reds and Tsarist Whites. If there’s someone waiting to murder him on the other side of his door, then so be it. At least if someone pointed a gun at him, he’d know which side he was on.
    *   *   *
    He sits down at his desk.
    Above it on the wall hang three pictures. Two watercolors of the Lakes, painted by his mother. The third is an Orthodox Russian icon of Saint Nicholas. He has had these with him throughout his time in Russia, he had them in the Glinka Street flat in Petrograd, but now he looks at them bitterly. Why do people set such great store by talismans like these?
    He catches sight of himself in the mirror, and is shocked by the face that stares back at him. In his mind he carries a very different image of himself, not the thin, unshaven face he sees now.
    *   *   *
    Ten to seven.
    There’s plenty of time, still. Too much time, if anything, for doubts and fears to chase each other round his head. But there’s enough time, at least, to have a bath and a shave.
    He puts out some clean clothes on the bed, then gets his things together from the dresser, his greatcoat from the hook, and locking his door once more, makes his way down the hall to the bathroom shared by the floor. He’s in luck, it’s empty.
    He shuts the door behind him, flicking the latch, and turns the tap on the old boiler that slowly sputters a trickle of hot water into the stained bathtub. He sits down on the toilet seat, knowing it will be a while before the bath is anywhere near ready.
    He shuts his eyes, and he thinks about Evgenia.
    She’s been ill. She’s getting better slowly, but was ill for days, and Arthur knows what that’s like. He’s had dysentery more than once during his time here and there is nothing he can do for her. Not right now. Not tonight.
    At least he knows her now.
    When he first met her, struck by her beauty and the teasing way she talked to him, it didn’t occur to him that there might be more to it. He saw her several more times, and once or twice, when he was leaving the Smolny late in the evening, he had walked her to her tram stop. Only after a few days was he cursed with an awful thought. How had he met her? That first day? He’d bumped into her three times in one evening.
    When he saw her for the third time, it was almost as if she was expecting him, waiting for him with her dish of potatoes. Of course, his work and her job meant they would see each other, but perhaps there was more to it than that. She was beautiful and tall and young and clever. Why on earth would she take an interest in an English journalist? Unless … someone had put her up to it … her