Free The Third Section by Jasper Kent Page A

number of patients – four, to be precise – had told him they no longer required his services. It was no great financial loss – Vitya never charged more than he knew his patients could afford, and these families were on the outer fringes of the aristocracy – but it troubled him that people who had once put so much trust in him could suddenly turn him away.
    Tamara understood immediately. This was just Larionov flexing his muscles. Those families were not significant of themselves, but as soon as Larionov whispered his lies into the ears of a more respected household there would be no stopping the gossip.
    The following day, Tamara had gone to visit Prince Larionov. He had screwed her there and then, in his salon, having told the footman to step outside. Tamara had tried to think of Vitya, but that only made it worse. As the weeks and months went by, she learned to think of nothing. But Vitya lost no more clients, and even gained a few, thanks to Larionov’s enthusiastic recommendation, as he never failed to explain to her. It was intended to make her feel worse, to feel more controlled by him than she already was – and it succeeded.
    After about a year Larionov grew tired of her and passed her on to a friend – passed her on, like a book he had enjoyed and was pleased to recommend to another. But already she had heard things from Larionov’s lips that he would hope never made it to the ear of the tsar, but never dreamed she would be in a position to tell. It was through her fourth lover that she became connected with the Third Section. By then Larionov had long forgotten her, but she had acquired a reputation among men in a certain stratum of society, and while no one was as barefaced as Larionov about it, Tamara could not doubt that Vitya’s new-found success was in some way down to her own. And when she thought that, she hated herself more. Vitya was a brilliant man – he didn’t need her help to succeed.
    The fourth man for whom Tamara acted as a harlot was Actual State Councillor Popov, of the Third Section – assistant to Dubyelt himself on all matters related to censorship. Tamara told Popov and Popov told Dubyelt and Dubyelt told Orlov and Orlov told His Majesty. Prince Larionov’s fall from favour was rapid, but not widely publicized. He was allowed to retire to his smallest country estate – a mere fifty serfs. Somewhere near Kazan, Tamara recalled. If he returned to Petersburg or Moscow he would be arrested. She would have liked that.
    Popov tired of her body too, but not of her mind. He introduced her to General Dubyelt and her status as a courtesan became officially sanctioned. There was no way out of it for her now – whatever power Larionov might have had to destroy her and Vitya’s lives was as nothing compared with what Dubyelt might achieve. And, she convinced herself, she was acting for her country – and risking less in that cause than the common soldier did every day.
    And then 1848 had come.
    She stopped. She was outside the Lavrovs’ home – her home – in the south of the Arbat. She threw what remained of her cigarette to the ground and it hissed as the snow melted and then extinguished the glowing tip. Five weathered stone steps separated her from the front door of the house in which she had grown up. She looked up to the window above – the window of what had once been her bedroom – and then turned and gazed out across the snow-blanketed street. She always remembered it as snowy, and always remembered watching and waiting. Sometimes it was to stare longingly at the figure of a man departing, sometimes eagerly, knowing that he would soon return. And then the memory came to her of the man just standing there in the street, almost at the spot where she stood now, his neck craned, like hers, to look up at the window. But that had been a different man and the more she tried to recall him the more the memory made her feel afraid, and also protective; protective of … her