The Man from St. Petersburg
before winding up the discussion. He said: “We could certainly agree to favor you over Austria or Turkey in that part of the world.”
    Aleks shook his head. “We want more than that,” he said firmly.
    It had been worth a try. Aleks was young and shy, but he could not be pushed around. Worse luck.
    Walden needed time to reflect now. For Britain to do as Russia wanted would mean a significant shift in international alignments, and such shifts, like movements of the earth’s crust, caused earthquakes in unexpected places.
    “You may like to talk with Churchill before we go any farther,” Aleks said with a little smile.
    You know damn well I will, Walden thought. He realized suddenly how well Aleks had handled the whole thing. First he had scared Walden with a completely outrageous demand; then, when he put forward his real demand, Walden had been so relieved that he welcomed it.
    I thought I was going to manipulate Aleks, but in the event he manipulated me.
    Walden smiled. “I’m proud of you, my boy,” he said.

    That morning Feliks figured out when, where and how he was going to kill Prince Orlov.
    The plan began to take shape in his mind while he read The Times in the library of the Jubilee Street club. His imagination was sparked by a paragraph in the Court Circular column:
Prince Aleksey Andreyevich Orlov arrived from St. Petersburg yesterday. He is to be the guest of the Earl and Countess of Walden for the London Season. Prince Orlov will be presented to their Majesties the King and Queen at the Court on Thursday, June 4th.
    Now he knew for certain that Orlov would be at a certain place, on a certain date, at a certain time. Information of this kind was essential to a carefully planned assassination. Feliks had anticipated that he would get the information either by speaking to one of Walden’s servants or by observing Orlov and identifying some habitual rendezvous. Now he had no need to take the risks involved in interviewing servants or trailing people. He wondered whether Orlov knew that his movements were being advertised by the newspapers, as if for the benefit of assassins. It was typically English, he thought.
    The next problem was how to get sufficiently close to Orlov to kill him. Even Feliks would have difficulty getting into a royal palace. But this question also was answered by The Times. On the same page as the Court Circular, sandwiched between a report of a dance given by Lady Bailey and the details of the latest wills, he read:
THE KING’S COURT
ARRANGEMENTS FOR CARRIAGES

In order to facilitate the arrangements for calling the carriages of the company at their Majesties’ Courts at Buckingham Palace, we are requested to state that in the case of the company having the privilege of the entree at the Pimlico entrance the coachman of each carriage returning to take up is required to leave with the constable stationed on the left of the gateway a card distinctly written with the name of the lady or gentleman to whom the carriage belongs, and in the case of the carriages of the general company returning to take up at the grand entrance a similar card should be handed to the constable stationed on the left of the archway leading to the Quadrangle of the Palace.
To enable the company to receive the advantage of the above arrangements, it is necessary that a footman should accompany each carriage, as no provision can be made for calling the carriages beyond giving the names to the footmen waiting at the door, with whom it rests to bring the carriage. The doors will be open for the reception of the company at 8:30 o’clock.
    Feliks read it several times: there was something about the prose style of The Times that made it extremely difficult to comprehend. It seemed at least to mean that as people left the palace their footmen were sent running to fetch their carriages, which would be parked somewhere else.
    There must be a way, he thought, that I can contrive to be in or on the Walden carriage when

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