Field of Mars

by Stephen Miller

  A great investigator, Gulka nodded with an almost invisible smile. A very special man, whose life, death, or salvation was his to command: a pathetic policeman who had unknowingly elevated himself to become the most dangerous man in all of Russia: Chief Inspector Velimir Antonovich Zezulin.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘We must have surprised them.’ The manager looked as if he were going to collapse from the excitement. ‘I thought I heard noises, as I was unlocking the door. At first I thought, well, frankly I thought it was birds, pigeons outside the doors, but then, you see, I realized, once inside … from the smell.’

  The St Petersburg Police Commander glanced around the large showroom. There was, indeed, a low cloud of smoke, a smell of burned metal that still lingered, caused by the thieves when they had attempted to cut their way through the thick door of the safe that was walled into the back of Khrisloff’s, the famously exclusive house of jewellers. During the night there had been a robbery, and upon arriving, the commander had immediately been presented with a list of the stolen items.

  ‘And you say they gained entrance to your shop?’

  ‘Through the roof. Well, not through our roof, our roof is especially constructed, for protection against just this type of thing. They entered through the roof of the building next door, then came through the wall.’ The commander looked to the top of the stairs where one of the younger officers was inspecting a neat hole that had been cut through the plaster at the top of the landing.

  ‘Very serious … very serious,’ said the gendarme commander as he ignored the list and crossed the room to climb the stairway. On the first floor was a much plainer workshop, divided into long tables, individual kiosks, and tiny furnaces where craftsmen created the exquisite necklaces and the tiny ‘hares’ which Khrisloff’s had designed to compete with the famous eggs by Fabergé, just up the street.

  ‘And they even knew to come through the upper stories, because the lower floor of the building has iron bars set into the walls, for protection against exactly this sort of thing.’ The manager was going on behind him as they climbed to the landing where the thieves had penetrated the wall to make their entrance. The commander bent over and looked through it into the next-door building.

  ‘Mmm, yes … if you will excuse me, monsieur?’

  The commander crawled through the hole and found himself in the upper offices of a rather ornately furnished securities investment firm. All around was a clear trail left by the departing jewel thieves; the bricks piled neatly beside the hole in the wall between the investment house and Khrisloff’s, the marks where they had retracted their hoses and cutting torches when they had fled. He felt a cold draught and took a few steps into the central waiting-room; above him a ragged hatch had been sawn through the ceiling and roof, a wet patch on the floor where they’d wiped up the snow that had fallen through the hole.

  Several nearly identical middle-aged men, clad in sober black suits, white shirts and gleaming spectacles, watched his progress. The commander turned to the nearest, a rather gruff and portly gentleman. ‘What sort of things go on here?’

  ‘Ah … this is the firm of Mendrochovich and Lubensky, excellency,’ said the man with an almost imperceptible bow, as if that explained everything. ‘We are a financial house, monsieur.’

  ‘Stocks, bonds, legal services, that sort of thing?’ the commander said. He thought he had heard of the firm before.

  ‘Most certainly, sir. Financial transactions of all types.’

  ‘Ah, well … but there is no money, nothing missing in here, I take it?’ the commander asked as he reached down to brushing the brick dust off his trousers.

  ‘Nothing whatsoever,’ the elder man said, looking around his destroyed offices, and, with the work it needed to put things right, his holidays spoilt. ‘There’s a safety deposit box vault on this floor, and another in the basement, but evidently they didn’t know about it. We just deal with documents up here, nothing of value in any case.’

  Which, of course, was inaccurate.

  TWENTY-THREE

  After the burglary they let him go home. They’d be watching they said, but Ryzhkov doubted it; Tomlinovich’s resources were limited, it was obvious. He slept like a dead man all that day, the window cracked to let the cold air blow the mustiness out of his bedroom. He woke to a momentary illusion of freedom. But only one test was completed, Tomlinovich had emphasized; the murder charge still hung over Ryzhkov’s head and his services might be required at a moment’s notice. Moreover, his next task was to subvert his own section: to recruit Hokhodiev and Dima into the deputy minister’s service.

  It wouldn’t be hard to do, since they’d already agreed to help him track down Lavrik in the first place and because, after less than a month’s association with the case, Ryzhkov found Fauré to be one of the few honest men in the empire. In the unlikely event that some form of ‘democratikos’ ever broke out in Russia, a sharp politician like Boris Fauré might be able to make a real difference—an aristocrat with his own money, so he wouldn’t be on the take.

  All the leaves were stripped from the linden tree outside his window at 17 Pushkinskaya and relentless snows crusted around the mullions. Zezulin was sick and had not come into the office, Izachik said. Everyone was preparing for the New Year’s holidays.

  Later, when they came in, he took Kostya and Dima for a lunch at the Bell and explained that he had been attached to the Ministry of Justice case and asked if he could prevail upon each of them for assistance. Hokhodiev sat there, eyeing his empty beer glass and rubbing his nose. Dima lounged in the corner of the booth, his head resting against the cushions, saying ‘Yeah-yeah’ to each of Ryzhkov’s points.

  Ryzhkov explained that he was limited in what he could tell them, and that there were many things he did not know himself. The only real certainty was that their discovery of Lavrik’s murder had led to other, greater things. ‘So … I need your help. Or I’ll try to keep you out of it, if that’s what you want, but—’

  ‘And we don’t know them, they are supposedly Ministry people, but they know us?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said, unable to keep the defeat out of his voice.

  ‘Not much to bargain with,’ Dudenko said. He had pulled a tiny screwdriver out of his jacket pocket and was picking his nails. ‘Not much of a lever there …’

  ‘Well, shit. Well, why not? You say you trust this fellow?’ Hokhodiev sighed.

  ‘Trust. What is trust? I don’t know, Kostya. There’s not a lot of choice, but, so far, yes,’ Ryzhkov said flatly. He was being made to bring them along, but he wasn’t going to try and turn them into believers.

  Dima unfolded from the corner and arched himself over the table, began to peck at the wooden surface of their table with the screwdriver, as if to test its hardness ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You have to take the point of view that if he’s against a scum like the baron then, you know …’ He looked over at Hokhodiev, who was still thinking about it.

  ‘How dangerous do you think this might be getting, brother?’ Hokhodiev said quietly.

  ‘You saw what they did to the baron and his daughter. They were involved in something, that much is obvious. But for us, it’s not bad now. Just a mountain of paper at the moment.’ It was true enough. Fauré’s team had been poring through the stacks of photographs they’d been able to make of the contents of Lavrik’s shelves in the Mendrochovich and Lubensky vault, a trove of documents, contracts, proposals for business ventures, and internal memoranda.

  ‘I am getting too old for this, you know?’ Hokhodiev looked up, but his smile didn’t seem that happy.

  ‘If you don’t want to, I can’t make you,’ he said. ‘They don’t tell me much, and I’m just on call. We’ll have to work with them, do whatever they say.’

  ‘And they can fix this up …’ Hokhodiev waggled a finger in the direction of 17 Pushkinskaya.

  ‘I guess a deputy minister has a lot of weight.’

  ‘Things are getting exotic,’ Dima said qu
ietly.

  ‘Oh, I’m coming along, don’t worry about that,’ Hokhodiev said. ‘It’s just that I had the idea that if we could just nurse Zezulin along, in a few years Lena and I might be able to retire.’ They started laughing at the idea of retirement on an Okhrana pension.

  ‘Retirement is a wonderful idea, so yes, let’s hold on to Brother Zezulin.’ Ryzhkov raised his glass. ‘Besides, if they find out what a slug he is, they’ll only replace him and make our lives hell.’

  ‘Yes, and that would make it impossible for us to have fun with you on your various fruitless crusades, eh?’ Hokhodiev smiled.

  ‘By all means. Whatever happens we’ll have to keep our heads down and look busy,’ Dima said, and they all laughed again.

  Over the next few days he went through his backlog of work at 17 Pushkinskaya and attended morning briefings at Tomlinovich’s new headquarters. The Ministry of Justice team was billeted on the second floor of an old building on Kryukov Street, a large open room that had recently been occupied by a shoe manufacturer.

  The entire floor was empty, all the furniture gone except for some exceedingly uncomfortable bent-wood chairs that had been found at the last minute. Each day there would be something new delivered up the stairs and placed discreetly on the landing. One morning two desks arrived. Then a trunk full of battered electric lamps. The only things new about the place were the locks on the doors.

  The name of the secretary was Sinazyorksy. He slept beside the telephones in a corner of the shoe factory. Ryzhkov spent the mornings locked in a completely vacant office waiting while Tomlinovich came and went with Fauré’s latest questions, all of them relayed by telephone. It was all small-scale and careless. He came to know the entire group: Dziga, the little one who’d shot him, and Jekes, their gigantic driver.

  Now they were sifting through the results, trying names and faces out on him. By virtue of the sham burglary they’d managed to photograph a good deal of Baron Oleg Lavrik’s business correspondence. But from the questions they asked him, Ryzhkov could form only an incomplete idea of the direction of Fauré’s investigation.

  Tomlinovich came in at the tail-end of one of the morning meetings, carrying a large envelope. He took out a notebook and what looked like a journal, splayed them on the table across from Ryzhkov.

  ‘Well, we’ve found out that it was blackmail,’ Tomlinovich said. ‘Lavrik had a lifeboat prepared, monies set aside for him and his daughter. Tickets for Stockholm. Take a look.’ The notebook was small, about the size of a playing card. It was new and completely blank except for the first page which had four telephone numbers, all of them written at the same time. Numbers only, no names. The journal was older and most of it had been ripped or razored out. The back third was intact and consisted of what looked like a series of notations. It was a kind of crude code the baron must have used.

  ‘Stock tips?’ Ryzhkov mused as he thumbed through the book.

  ‘No, there’s not enough of them,’ Tomlinovich said quietly. ‘Appointments, perhaps.’ Tomlinovich reached into the envelope and took out a sheaf of photographs, spread them across the table in front of him.

  Six photographs. All of them taken in dim light with long exposure times. Just for an instant Ryzhkov thought they had been spoiled in the darkroom; they were a confusion of whorls and wispy shapes, as if someone had decided to make an artistic interpretation of the rushing waters of a stream, or leaves falling in a stiff breeze. Then he recognized Lavrik.

  The girl’s head was nearly below the frame, her face pressed into Lavrik’s groin, her hand holding something that he could not see. Lavrik looked down on her with his pouchy eyes; his face seemed slack, devoid of emotion, as if he were mesmerized by the traffic on the Nevsky and not by Ekatarina Lvova. Ryzhkov let out a long sigh, looked up to see Tomlinovich looking at him. One by one he made himself inspect the other photographs.

  Here there had been much movement—the girl was a white smear spread out in front of him, only her hands were still, where they gripped the edge of something, a table, a headboard. Then he realized he was looking at the table in the Iron Room.

  In the blurring Ryzhkov saw the fury of the event, saw the frenzied rape, saw something in the baron’s hands; something like reins, or a kind of scarf that he must have wrapped around her neck. Lavrik held the reins in both hands, the force of his passion causing her to be arched backwards; her blonde hair had come undone and whipped like flames.

  Now Lavrik’s distorted face looked like an abstract painter’s version of a beast from hell; his mouth was open, the whites of his eyes bulged out, his false teeth were a bright slash across his face.

  ‘He kept these,’ Tomlinovich said. ‘It’s pretty damning, eh? First he paid for them, probably one at a time, and then he kept them …’

  ‘Yes. I suppose there is no limit to stupidity,’ Ryzhkov said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the photographs. He tried to rearrange them into what he thought was the correct sequence; from the comparative calm of fellatio, to the hurricane of strangulation that had engulfed the girl. He was surprised at how composed he was. He had imagined the scene for months, now that he had a version of it in front of his eyes, it was not nearly as shocking as he had anticipated. He found that he could look at the photographs objectively, as evidence—just some confused marks on photographic paper, a swirling record of something hideous and untranslatable. He could be detached about it all.

  ‘And then there is this one …’ Tomlinovich pointed to the last photograph. The door to the Iron Room had been thrown open and a portion of the hallway was revealed. A second person was silhouetted in the doorway. The light revealed Lavrik, his body a huge white blob, cringing in the blast of light, one of the damned looking for a hiding place. He and a second man were struggling over something hidden between them. Ryzhkov thought that one long pale mark was Ekatarina’s arm, but it might only be a trick of the light.

  ‘Is that one there the little one, do you think?’ Tomlinovich said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said, staring at the twisted shape of the second man in the doorway. ‘It must be.’

  ‘We thought so, too. But look, here’s something good, here’s something we can use. Just who is this, right at the back here?’ Tomlinovich held a magnifying glass out for him to use. ‘See? Right here, reflected in this mirror in the hall? One of the prostitutes, yes? Isn’t this one of the girls that you talked to that night, perhaps? This woman here, whoever she is, if we track her down, she could identify the second man. What do you think about that, eh?’ Tomlinovich was looking at him steadily.

  In the glass he saw …

  Vera. Frightened, trying to run, naked … or near enough. The dark nipples, the hair come awry, the V between her legs. The open mouth screaming.

  ‘Hey, Ryzhkov … here … Come on …’ Someone was holding him by the shoulder. He turned to look at the man, someone young, rancid tobacco breath, wearing spectacles. Oh, yes. Sinazyorksy, yes …

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s all right. Just sit for a bit and relax for Christ’s sake. We’re all under a strain,’ Tomlinovich was saying, and Sinazyorksy’s grip tightened on his shoulder.

  ‘It’s simple, Ryzhkov. You just go back through your notes, find the whores and track them down. We bring them in and put it gently, eh? Help us, girls, or there’ll be hell to pay. It’s a good enough plan. You can get started right away, yes? What’s wrong?’

  He sat there looking up at Tomlinovich’s pouchy face, trying to come up with some excuse. His mind was a fog, the photographs danced through his imagination. A gust of wind rattled the high factory windows.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, what’s wrong? Is there anything wrong?’ he heard himself saying, as the younger man held him down in the chair. But everything was wrong. Now they knew about Vera.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, get him a drink,’ Tomlinovich said, a smile creasing his face like a long bloodless gash.

  TWENTY-FOUR
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  Flakes of snow following a week of boredom. The holiday stopping everything in its tracks, even the pursuit of justice. For Ryzhkov there was no summons from Tomlinovich; he moved through a slow charade at 17 Pushkinskaya for the benefit of Zezulin who hadn’t noticed a thing. If he’d believed the newspapers, Russia was heading into the abyss; the society pages were the proof of the coming apocalypse—the ornate parties, the benefactions, the orations, the acceptance of awards for philanthropy, the carefully stated opinions of the rich and high-born.

  And there was the bad, dark weather, the freezing air off the river and canals that penetrated the thickest cloak, the snow and icy rain that swept along the prospekts, the grimy fog that froze to every surface, the multiplying barges of firewood crowding the canals. The putrid smell of smoke in the air, and the desperate cries of men selling warmth.

  Ryzhkov wandered through the bitterly cold streets of Petersburg, hands thrust into pockets, chin jammed down into his collar, running from doorway to doorway to get out of the icy rain. Would he ever get used to the strange configuration of numbers? The calligraphy of a brave new age, a year that sounded so modern that he could have never imagined writing it: 1914.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Vera said after she had let all the smoke out. ‘You say that all through the holidays, people have been walking along watching us, tracking our movements, reading our mail …’

  He had taken a long pull himself from the little hookah she had brought along, and he held the hashish smoke in as long as his lungs would allow, then let it out in a great long stream towards the ceiling, coughed experimentally, and was careful to remember to put his thumb over his end of pipe so that she could take her turn.