He seemed proud of his speed. He had the build of a runner, and the Oprichniki looked to me the sort that would soon give up a chase if it became too swift.

Pierre's eyes focused on me once again. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. 'You weren't there. You couldn't have done that. But you knew. You must have known.' A realization dawned in his eyes. 'You sent them! They weren't Russian. We weren't their enemy. They had no reason to do that – not once they were satisfied.'

It was the second time he'd used the word. 'What do you mean – "satisfied"?' I asked him, but he had collapsed back on to the wagon. His eyes were still open, but his breathing was shallow and he showed no sign of recognition of the world around him. 'Pierre,' I persisted, 'what did you mean?' There was no answer. How could the Oprichniki be satisfied? What had he meant by that? A soldier isn't satisfied until the enemy is defeated – or surrenders. Did he mean that they wouldn't accept surrender when it was offered? Or had he meant that the Oprichniki had been after some sort of information – that they were satisfied once they'd been told what they wanted to know? I tried to imagine what the Oprichniki could possibly want to discover from the occupants of a French encampment – and what they would do with the information now they had it.

There was a slight commotion amongst the crowd and I saw that the traffic ahead was beginning to move again. It was clear that I would get no more from Pierre. I bent over and whispered in his ear, not knowing whether he could hear me. 'Next time you wake up, remember to speak Russian.'

The wagon began to roll away. It hadn't even occurred to me that this was a French soldier disguised in a Russian uniform – an infiltrator and a spy who should be arrested and executed as such. But I had felt no personal betrayal, as I had with Maks. It became clear again that there was no line of thought I could take that did not, eventually, end in Maks.

'Aleksei!' Vadim's voice was full of enthusiasm, and he grabbed me in a hearty embrace which I gratefully returned. It had been a long two days since I had seen him last. Dmitry stood beside us. He might not have shown his affection in that way at the best of times, but today he was wary of me. We quietly assessed each other; he trying to judge how much I knew; I trying to decide how I really felt about him. Initially he was just Dmitry – the same Dmitry I had known for years; slightly distant, sometimes selfish, sometimes blinkered, but fundamentally reliable. I had to remind myself that he had sent the Oprichniki after me to Desna and that was why Maks was dead, or at least dead sooner and less properly than he might otherwise have been. I had plenty of evidence now of how the Oprichniki worked. I could hold out little hope that they had treated Maks any differently. I had to remind myself that it was Dmitry who had left Domnikiia bruised and bleeding in order to get the information that he couldn't get from me. As we spoke, I let the memories and the images of Maks and Domnikiia flow over me in a rising tide of venom that I knew I would need if I was to take any action against Dmitry.

'So where's Maks?' asked Vadim.

'Why don't you ask him?' I replied, nodding towards Dmitry.

'No, Aleksei,' said Vadim sternly, sensing that order needed to be maintained, 'I'm asking you.'

'I went to Desna – that's where Maks had gone – and found him there.' I was looking at Dmitry throughout, trying to gauge his reaction to each thing that I said, searching for something that would help me to hate him. 'We talked for a while.'

'Did he confess?' asked Vadim.

And that of course was the reality of it. However much I might bemoan the injustice of what had happened, there was no doubt as to his guilt. 'Yes, he confessed. You know Maksim. He wouldn't waste time lying about what we already knew.'

'Was he ashamed? Repentant?' Vadim could tell that my story was not going to be completely straightforward.

'No.' I would have smiled at the memory of Maks' consistency, but I knew that I could allow myself no such self-indulgence that would soften me in my resolve against Dmitry. 'For him, it was just the logical conclusion of a long chain of reason. To dissuade him from his path, you'd have to dissuade two and two from being four.'

'So where is he, Aleksei?' Vadim was now overtly suspicious. 'I appreciate it wouldn't be wise to bring him here to Moscow. Did you manage to find some gaol that would take him?'

'No, Vadim. He's still in Desna. He always will be.'

'Still in Desna?' Then he cottoned on. 'Aleksei, you didn't…?'

'No, Vadim, I didn't.' My voice became harsh and I paced around them until I was behind Dmitry. 'But Maks and I weren't alone for long, were we, Dmitry Fetyukovich? Soon your friends the Oprichniki showed up, didn't they? And they wanted to exact vengeance for themselves. And how did they know where we were?' I was shouting in Dmitry's ear by now. 'Because Dmitry Fetyukovich told them. And how did he know? Because he beat up a mere girl to make her tell him. And so the Oprichniki made it very clear that either I left Maks with them, or I wouldn't leave at all. And so I left – not to save my own skin, but to give me a chance to get hold of Dmitry Fetyukovich and do this!'

I punched him sharply in the kidney. He bent forward, clutching his side. I placed my hands on his back, pushing him down on to my knee as I raised it sharply into his chest. He gasped, but still offered no retaliation. He was a bigger man than I and, from what I knew, a better fighter. I guessed that he had decided to take what was coming to him like a stoic. If he expected compassion from me at this reaction, he was to be surprised – as indeed was I. I had soaked myself in the anger generated by what he'd done to Domnikiia and Maks and, now, for one of the few times in my life, I was beyond my own control. I kicked his legs from under him and he collapsed to the ground, leaving himself prone for my repeated sharp kicks to his chest and stomach. As each blow connected, I thought to myself alternately 'Maks!' and 'Domnikiia!' and felt the same joy each time, as if I had been with them instead of here. I felt an energy throbbing through my leg as I kicked at him; an energy desperate to get out of me and into him. My entire mind and body abandoned themselves to the sensation. I no longer saw anything and no longer sensed anything except the feeling of exhilaration each time my foot pounded into his torso. It flooded my entire being, not as a pleasant sensation, but an all-consuming one. It was like the spasm that rips through one's body whilst vomiting, as I regurgitated on to Dmitry the hatred for him that I had nurtured within my belly.

'Aleksei! Aleksei! Captain Danilov!' I must have heard my name shouted half a dozen times before it penetrated my consciousness. Vadim had dragged me away from Dmitry, though I still tried to kick towards him. Something of a crowd of passersby had gathered round. Some were bent down over Dmitry, seeing if he was all right.

I breathed deeply. I felt satisfied – physically satisfied. Every extremity of my body felt that it had done its job and now, as a whole, I – almost as if it were 'we' – began to calm. I looked over to Dmitry's aching body and felt a pulse of guilt pass through me. Not guilt – pity. I pitied Dmitry's pain without feeling guilt at causing it. The glance from Dmitry's anguished eyes, as well as my own rational mind, told me that what I had done was allowable. Vadim himself confirmed it.

'That's enough, Aleksei Ivanovich. You were owed that – Dmitry knows it too – but we still have a war to fight. The next time you do that, do it to a Frenchman.'

Dmitry was rising to his feet. He lifted his hand for me to take and help him up, but I couldn't. I'd been in the army long enough to see many savage brawls that might have terminated with the death of either man, and yet seen those same men laughing and drinking together hours later. In this and many other things, I could not be as trivial as that. I couldn't belittle my own loss of control with something as easy as a handshake. It had frightened me and it should frighten Dmitry, and anyone else who saw it, to deter them from raising that wrath in me again. At the same time, I realized that the possibility that I hadn't lost control frightened me even more than the belief that I had. If the unrestrained violence that had just ejected from my body had been under my conscious control, guided by my intelligence and yet untrammelled by my conscience, then I was a dangerous creature indeed. But if it had been an uncontrollable frenzy, why had I only kicked his torso, where I could hurt him, and not his head, where I might kill? Perhaps there is some visceral, primeval instinct that tells a man how to hurt another man, without causing his death. Perhaps I'd learned it in that Turkish gaol in Silistria.