Two Cases for the Czar

by Gorg Huff

  "You said he'd be on a horse," the sergeant complained, and it was a clear complaint now, as though it was our description that had allowed him to slip into the city and kill Corporal Bolshov.

  "No. We said he left Ufa on a stolen horse. Which he did. He may have sold it, or it may have been injured. He may even have abandoned it, like he did this rifle," Miroslava said, precise as always.

  "Well, where is he now?" The sergeant still sounded resentful.

  "He will realize that you will have found the body, and he will run again. He can't buy or steal a horse like he did in Ufa. The city is under siege, with the gates closed. He might try going to ground." Miroslava shook her head. "No, it doesn't fit the man. He's a runner, not a hider. And besides, he doesn't know the city. He'll have no idea where to hide. That just leaves the docks. He'll try to catch one of the riverboats. He won't want to go back to Ufa, but he might try to escape into Old Russia, or he might head south toward the Caspian Sea. I think he'll go for Old Russia. He at least speaks the language. But it may depend on which boat is leaving soonest. We need to move."

  Quickly, Miroslava pulled off her dressing gown and grabbed up her blouse and the culottes she wore by preference. She strapped on the pistol's shoulder holster, then checked the pistol.

  The grizzled sergeant was looking poleaxed. I wasn't sure if it was because of the sight of breast and thigh as she changed or because of the shoulder holster and pistol, or just Miroslava being Miroslava.

  I was busy following suit, even to the shoulder holster and pistol. I, however, didn't even rate a glance from the sergeant, as mesmerized by Miroslava as he was. Then the three of us made for the docks.

  Location: Kazan Docks

  Date: May 25, 1637

  Piotr was feeling desperate. He looked at the small building a bit up the hill from the docks, then down at the docks. A boardwalk along the river with five piers set about forty feet apart. Three of the piers had a riverboat tied up to them. The other two had a few small fishing boats. He went into the small building and looked around. There were perhaps a dozen people. There was a blackboard on the far wall with the three river boats listed. Each listing had a drawn symbol and the riverboats name an arrival time, a projected departure time to the hour and a destination. Two of them also had ticket prices. There was a family sitting on one of the benches, eating sandwiches of some sort, and two men at a table talking. Next to the blackboard was a counter with a man in a blue coat behind it. The man had looked up when he came in, then gone back to his work.

  Piotr didn't like how things had gone, none of them. It wasn't fair. He should have . . . he never should have needed to become a burglar. He never should have been forced to leave Moscow. Sheremetev never should have locked up the czar. The czar never should have escaped. The Cherkasski clan never should have fought Sheremetev, and lost. And idiot Ivan never should have run off to Ufa, and then made Piotr into a frigging stable hand, cleaning up after horses. It wasn't fair.

  He looked back at the blackboard. There were three river boats docked right now. One was going back to Ufa and he seriously considered that one. No one would expect it. But, no. He wasn't being chased from Ufa, not here. The reason he had to get out of Kazan was lying in a jakes in the transient barracks near the south gate.

  They would be as likely to search the Ufa boat as the others. The next boat was heading for Nizhny Novgorod. It was a cargo boat, not taking passengers. The third was a passenger and cargo ship heading for the Caspian Sea. No, two reasons. First, they would be looking at a passenger ship, and second, he didn't want to go to the Caspian Sea. He wanted to go home to Moscow. To a town where he knew people, where he could make deals, where he would be safe.

  He didn't try to buy a ticket. There was no ticket to buy. He just turned and headed for Pier 2, where the boat to Nizhny Novgorod was unloading a cargo of potatoes and beets, and in turn would be loading a cargo of pipe valves, whatever those were. He walked casually down the pier, looking at the smaller fishing boats. There it was. Two levels tall, flat bottomed, about thirty feet wide and sixty long, with a big smoke stack two-thirds of the way back and a tall cabin behind the smoke stack for the crew. It was a conversion, not a purpose-built steamer. Those were still pretty rare. But it was a good conversion, and had been plying the Volga with steam power for three years now.

  It was also busy. There were dozens of men walking up the ramp to board, picking up sacks of potatoes and dumping them onto a cart. As soon as one cart was loaded, it would be hauled off and another took its place. It was going to take hours to unload and reload the boat.

  Piotr looked around and tried to figure out how he could get onto the boat without being noticed. He considered joining one of the work crews, but they weren't carrying guns or saddlebags. No kind of bags, except bags of potatoes on their way off the boat. He thought about waiting until after dark, but that wouldn't work. The boat would be leaving by mid-afternoon. Bribe someone on the crew? Too risky.

  Then he had it. He wouldn't board from the pier at all. He would bribe one of the fishing boats to take him around and board from the other side. No one would be looking there.

  Piotr set about looking for a small boat that he could rent.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Miroslava walked into the station followed by me and the sergeant whose name we still didn't know. She looked briefly at the blackboard and I followed her glance. You didn't need to be able to read to read the blackboard. There were drawings to identify the river boats and if you had enough numbers, which most people did, you could make out the rest. Having examined the room, Miroslava headed straight for the ticket office.

  "No, he didn't buy a ticket," the station agent said after looking at the police sketch.

  "What about the River Queen?" Miroslava asked.

  "He couldn't buy a ticket on that boat, even if he wanted to," the ticket agent insisted. "I know the captains of all three of the river boats at dock now, and they all prefer to use the ticket office. And, the River Queen doesn't take passengers, ever. Captain Ivan Vitsin is an old bastard who hates everyone and only barely tolerates his crew. He don't take passengers."

  Miroslava nodded grimly and turned away.

  I asked, "What now?"

  "He's here," Miroslava said, "or he will be."

  "Nope," the station agent said. "He won't. He's been and gone. I never said he didn't come here. He just didn't buy a ticket. That's what you asked about, missy." The station agent laughed.

  He was right, I realized. Miroslava had shown him the sketch and asked, "Did this man, in an army tunic, brown hair, medium beard, brown eyes, about so high, buy a ticket?"

  "He came in, looked at the board. Then left. Slipped right by you, he did."

  The sergeant started for the station agent, and Miroslava said, "No, Sergeant. He is quite correct. My question was imprecise. Now, sir, the reason the sergeant is upset is because the man we are looking for murdered a friend of his about four hours ago. So please tell us, how long ago was it when he came in, looked at the board, and left?"

  The station agent, who after the sergeant's reaction was visibly nervous, said, "Maybe a quarter of an hour, maybe half an hour. No more."

  "Very well. Since he didn't buy a ticket, he will be attempting to slip on to one of the river boats. Probably the River Queen, or he would have bought a ticket. How would he do that?"

  "He couldn't," the station agent insisted. "Captain Vitsin keeps a watch on the boarding ramp and counts everything that comes or goes from his boat."

  "He'll find a way," Miroslava said, and headed for the door.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Once out of the station, Miroslava stopped and examined the riverfront. We had a bit of height, but not that much. There were quite a few boats, but only three large ones, and all three of them were sporting the smoke stacks of steam power. It was just so much more efficient than using people to haul the boats upriver. Even some of the little fishing boats had small steam engines. Suddenly, Miroslav
a pointed. A small boat was edging its way up to the river side of the River Queen. In it was a boy of perhaps twelve and a man in an army tunic. That was all we could see from where we were. We started running down the path.

  We hit the boardwalk and lost sight of the small boat, then ran up the pier, where we were forced to slow by the people carrying crates onto the River Queen.

  We negotiated the traffic jam, got to the boarding ramp, and were met by an irate Captain Ivan Vitsin.

  "What do you think you're doing? This is my boat." He stood at the top of the ramp, counting boxes as they came aboard and we apparently had interrupted his count.

  The sergeant was having none of that. He drew a pistol. It was a chamber loading caplock, long and clumsy compared to ours, but still much more convenient than a rifle.

  The captain backed away.

  "You have a stowaway, Captain, coming over your starboard gunnel, probably right now," Miroslava said as she ran up the gangplank.

  I followed and the sergeant was right behind me.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Piotr heard Miroslava's shout as he was pulling himself up from the dinghy by the railing of the River Queen. He dropped back into the dinghy and hissed at the kid he'd bribed to bring him here, "Row." The kid just sat there. So Piotr pulled his gun.

  The kid still didn't move. "Row, you little shit, or I'll put a bullet into you."

  The kid grabbed the oars and banged one into the side of the River Queen.

  Piotr looked up to see faces appearing over the railing, and the kid, seeing his chance, jumped overboard into the muddy water of the Volga.

  Piotr looked at the splash and heard a woman's voice. "Give up, Piotr. You have no place to run." She sounded quite calm about it. He looked up to see a pretty woman looking down at him from the railing of the River Queen.

  And he recognized her. She was dressed differently, but she was one of the dancers at the Happy Bottom. What was a whore from Ufa doing dressed like a lady in Kazan? Without any real intent, the gun in his hand followed his eyes to point at the woman.

  The first bullet hit him in the chest, the second in the gut.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  When the gun came up, I drew and fired without thought. But I, to this day, don't know whether I or the sergeant shot first.

  Piotr went backward over the side of the dinghy into the muddy Volga and the saddlebags went with him. I looked over and saw Miroslava. She hadn't even moved.

  "You!" shouted the sergeant, pointing his pistol at the kid in the river. "If I have to fish you out of the water, I'm going to shoot you first. Get your scrawny ass back here."

  The boy swam choppily back to the dinghy and climbed aboard it, then from the dinghy to the boat. There was only about four feet from the dinghy to the deck. As soon as he was aboard, the sergeant reached out, grabbed the boy by his shirt and shouted in his face, "You're under arrest for aiding a murderer."

  Which I wasn't sure was even a crime.

  In the meantime, the saddlebags, which were probably full of money, had sunk to the bottom of the Volga, about four feet from where the dinghy was tied.

  But the thing that I was most concerned about was Miroslava. She had frozen at the critical moment. She hadn't even started to draw. She hadn't ducked behind the railing. Nothing.

  I moved close to her. “Are you all right? You seemed… paralyzed.”

  She looked at me as if I’d spoken to her in ancient Aramaic. “I don’t understand. I was simply being rational. With his attention focused on me, you—the sergeant also—were able to aim and fire quite easily.”

  Captain Ivan Vitsin started yelling that he wanted us all off his ship.

  "And why do you want us off your ship?" asked the sergeant, whose name we still didn't know. "Has this kid been ferrying other stuff out to your boat? Are you dealing contraband?"

  "No," Miroslava said. "He's just a misanthrope."

  There was silence. The word was English, and up-timer English at that. Actually, it was Greek, but for our purposes it was up-timer English, and Miroslava used it because Oleg Bobrov had read it to her from a book. Mirosalva was learning English and Oleg was a teenager from the Dacha, who was making extra money by being one of Miroslava's tutors. I knew the word from my reading of up-timer texts.

  The effect here was to freeze everyone in place while they all tried to figure out what she was talking about. Which was precisely what she wanted. "Sergeant! What is your name?" Miroslava asked, looking quite angry herself now.

  "Dimitri Vedenin, ma'am," Sergeant Vedenin said, coming to attention, hand still holding the kid who was soaked and shaking and looked like just over five feet of not quite drowned rat.

  "Sergeant Vedenin, I realize that it was all over quite suddenly, but the man you wanted to punish is dead. You shot him. He's right there, floating in the river. And you're going to want to fish him and his saddlebags out of the river, by the way. Now, you—" She pointed at the boy. "What is your name?"

  "Vadim, ma'am." The boy's voice cracked on the ma'am.

  "Why did you row him," she asked, pointing at the body in the river, "to this boat?"

  "He had a gun." Vadim's eyes shifted. In fact, the answer was entirely shifty.

  "And?"

  "He paid me. A half ruble."

  A skilled factory worker in Ufa got perhaps a ruble a day. For a kid like this, a half ruble was a week's pay. But the kid was still being shifty.

  "How much?"

  "You're a witch," Vadim accused.

  "No," I said. "But she is very smart and a friend of the czarina, so you'd be better off lying to a witch with a bag full of spells. How much did he pay you? We can always search you if we need to."

  The kid, looking highly put upon, fished two wet half ruble notes out of his belt pouch.

  Sergeant Vedenin and Captain Vitsin both reached for the money.

  "Stop!" Miroslava's voice held all the bite of a commander ordering the regiment he commanded to fire.

  "What I said to Vadim applies to you men as well," I pointed out. "Bubble bubble, toil and trouble." Yes, quoting Shakespeare had the same effect as up-timer English words borrowed from the Greek. People stop and stare because they don't know what the heck you're talking about.

  "That money belongs to Vadim," Miroslava said, "until and unless a competent court says otherwise." She sighed. "Which it probably will."

  "He helped that man try to sneak onto my boat." Captain Vitsin didn't quite shout. "He owes me for that."

  "Then file a claim," Miroslava said. "If you think you have a case. I don't, by the way. All Vadim did was row a boat, probably his boat or at least his family's boat . . ." She lifted an eyebrow at Vadim, and he nodded. ". . . out to the side of your boat, and for all he knew, you were fully informed of the whole arrangement."

  "But, but . . ."

  "Let it go, Captain," I said. "No one actually snuck onto your boat."

  "You're here!" Captain Vitsin muttered.

  "We didn't sneak aboard, Captain," Miroslava said.

  Sergeant Vedenin was still holding Vadim by the shirt front, and didn't look in any hurry to let him go.

  "Sergeant," I said. "We are going to need to get those saddlebags out of the river. They probably contain quite a bit of money, and it won't last all that long, soaking in the river. At least, the paper bills won't. And before anyone gets any ideas, the disposition of that money is going to be determined by the czar's court. So why don't you leave Vadim in my . . . well, Miroslava's custody. She is the consulting detective, after all. And go see about getting a diver to fetch it."

  "I can get it," Vadim said. "The river's only about eight feet deep here."

  Which actually made sense. Vadim was already wet anyway.

  "You think we're gonna trust you?" Sergeant Vedenin shook him.

  "Why not?" I asked. "The saddlebags are closed and buckled. I saw that. To get at any money, the boy would have to open the bags, then take out the money, then close the bags, all underwater
. And you can search him when he comes back on board. Meanwhile, those bills are getting wetter and wetter. The up-timers had processes for fixing dyes, and they were used on our money, but the quality of the paper and the fixatives aren't up to up-timer standards."

  The truth was, I was bluffing. As it happens, I have no idea how good the dye fixing of ruble, kopek, and denga notes was. And still don't. The ink hadn't run when we fished the saddle bags out of the river. And the saddle bags were still buckled shut.

  It took a few days to work everything out, and by then Miroslava and I were back in Ufa, I was back at work on the condensers for the Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin class aircraft, and Miroslava was investigating another mystery.

  Two cases for the Czar—solved. How many more would there be?

  Character List

  Alexei: Bar guard

  Anatoly: Bouncer at The Happy Bottom

  Aslonav, Evgeny Ivanovich: Colonel Cop commander dvoriane minor service nobility.

  Azim, Abdul: Mayor of Kazan

  Baranov, Pavel Borisovich: Cop who becomes the first Detective in Ufa

  Bershov, Fyodor: Kazan councilman

  Birkin, Iakov Petrovich, colonel, Sheremetev's army outside Kazan

  Birkin, Ivan Vasilevich, general, Sheremetev's army

  Blinov, Gregori: Pawn shop owner

  Blinov, Kirill: assistant to Simeon Budanov

  Bobrov, Oleg: Teenager at Ufa Dacha, tutoring Miroslava

  Budanov, Simeon: head of Ufa Embassy Bureau

  Buturlin, Timofei Fedorovich: Colonel, Garrison Commander, Ufa

  Cherkasski, Ivan: employer of the thief

  Chernoff, Larisa Karolevna: Karol’s daughter by Marina

  Chernoff, Zia Ivaneva: Karol Chernoff’s aunt, sent to Ufa

  Daniil: Bar guard

  Dariya: bar girl

  Denisov, Valeria: robbery victim

  Devornikov, Svetlana, Gregori and children, son Nikola

  Dominika: Bar girl, Marina’s special friend

  Drozdov, Elena: Owner of The Happy Bottom. Insists on being called Madam.

  Drysi: Telegraph operator

  Egor Petrovich: Employee of the gun shop