Field of Mars

by Stephen Miller

  He finished his drink as another pair of rumourmongers waltzed through the door of the Komet, and abruptly made up his mind to get out before he was sick all over the floor or struck somebody.

  ‘Nothing more for you, Monsieur Ryzhkov?’ came Izov’s plea behind him.

  ‘Nothing, no …’ he said, waving the man off, walking surprisingly steadily towards the door. Vera was backstage somewhere, and wouldn’t talk to him anyway even if he forced his way back there, to what? To apologize? To beg? Suddenly the atmosphere in the room was too close. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to get out, get out into the cold air where he didn’t have to listen to or think about any more theories about how the world as they all knew it was about to end.

  From the beginning Tomlinovich had separated Vera and Larissa, turned them against each other, pressed them to confirm every detail of each other’s story. And it started to fall apart right away, even before they were shown the books of police photographs or the lists of names. Fauré had given him a free rein; short of thumb-screws he could do whatever he needed to get statements identifying the second man in the Iron Room. To demonstrate his power, Tomlinovich engineered it so that the questioning took all night. A messenger was sent to the Komet to tell Izov. Tomlinovich shrugged and said he hoped it would not be a problem.

  Pyotr sat in the adjacent office, his head against the wall, smoking endlessly and listening as it all crumbled around her. At the beginning he felt like a traitor for listening in, but then even that changed. Everything changed.

  Because what they found out was Vera’s big secret, the one she’d kept even from him.

  ‘Everything you’ve told us is a lie! We know that he came to you! To you! You never mentioned that, did you? You never told us that you’re the one that got the girl in the first place, right? You knew him. You planned it with him!’

  For a long moment there was nothing. Then Tomlinovich’s voice. He would start quiet and build a staircase until he was yelling at her. Through the glass he saw Sinazyorksy bringing Larissa some food. He wondered for how long she’d held out, how big the deal was, what they had dealt for or threatened her with. Through the wall he could hear Vera crying.

  ‘We know you went out and picked her up. Where did he first meet you, in the bindery? No …’

  He unlocked his body, stood, poised, trying to hear her answer. Their voices would come in and out, get too quiet for him to hear through the walls, then they’d flare up again when Tomlinovich lost his temper.

  ‘—Don’t tell me that! Don’t try to sell me rubbish! People saw you. You’re responsible!’

  He paced across the room, not wanting to hear her answer.

  Her voice when it came was angry. ‘I’ve told you everything. If I say yes, will this be over now?’

  ‘It’s over when we tell you. You know this fellow don’t you? Where does he live? How much did he pay you? Tell me something good … Say it, Say it!’ Tomlinovich demanded through the wall, over and over and over again.

  He didn’t want to hear it, but he did anyway.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘“Yes,” what?’

  ‘Yes, I asked her if she wanted to work … he asked me … so I asked her …’

  ‘So he could kill her, right?’

  The answer came in fragments. ‘… doing this for years, all her life … I was going to be there … It was extra money … wasn’t scared, so I wasn’t … what do you think a whore does?’ She ended it by shrieking at Tomlinovich. ‘No … I didn’t know … I didn’t know …’ Then he heard her sobbing again.

  ‘You’re going to have to be a good girl, you’re going to have to prove yourself, you’re going to look through some pictures, help us get him. You see that, don’t you?’

  Her reply was too quiet for him to hear, but after a long moment the door opened and Tomlinovich went out, crossed the big room to where they were keeping Larissa. Through the opened door he saw her stand and try to slap him, but he just put out a heavy hand and pushed her down into the chair again. A few minutes later Sinazyorksy came out and locked her inside.

  When Tomlinovich saw him standing there he waddled over. They met there at the door of the office. The big man stopped a pace or two away, a little out of reach, stared at him for a long moment with a little smile. Ryzhkov tried to make his face into a mask but it was impossible now.

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, Ryzhkov.’

  ‘Funny?’ It wasn’t the word he would have chosen. ‘Yes, funny. Funny in the way life works out. You try and do a colleague a favour, you trust someone, you have the best of intentions but …’ The big man shrugged, looked over to the little room where they were keeping Vera. ‘So, now we’ve got this little one for murder, too. Now we can use her any way we want. And we’ve got big plans.’ The smile grew larger.

  ‘Yes … now we’ve got both of you.’ Tomlinovich pointed one pudgy finger at Ryzhkov’s chest. ‘Bang …’ he said.

  Then he went back into the room to torture Vera some more.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘I give you Mr X.’

  Fauré’s voice echoed in his mind as Ryzhkov watched the man, the goal of all their work. He seemed happy enough, strolling down the still-snowy prospekt, the air sharp as a knife. Pausing to eye the merchandise on display at Eliseff’s. Lingering there for a few moments, pondering a purchase? Waiting for someone? Pirouetting from leg to leg. A sharp little customer, Ryzhkov thought. A paladin of the modern age, cheerfully absorbing all the pleasures the great capital of Petersburg could bestow on a perfect winter Sunday. The day was brisk with clear skies, people had flocked to the Nevsky to see and be seen. Above the throng a triangle of geese flew across the rooftops, surely the very last to leave for the south.

  ‘Count Ivo Smyrba. He holds the post of Attaché for the Kingdom of Bulgaria. In essence, this Smyrba is a business agent. We know that he was manipulating the pervert Lavrik in order to facilitate the cabal’s interests here in Russia.’

  Now a smile crossed Smyrba’s face. He nodded at someone, tipped his hat. Fished in his pocket for a cigarette. Ryzhkov caught a glimpse of Hokhodiev as he passed them, and then paused in front of a bird-seller’s stall up ahead. Ryzhkov followed Smyrba down the Nevsky, ambling along past the crowded Gostiny Dvor market, matching Smyrba’s pace. He thought he knew where the man was going and then, yes, ahead of him Smyrba stopped at the corner, and when the gendarme blew his whistle, crossed the Nevsky at the Kazan Cathedral and headed for the bridge.

  It turned out that Tomlinovich had got a lot out of Vera.

  She finally admitted she’d met Smyrba at Madame Hillé’s. They had talked on a few occasions, although she claimed to remember nothing of the conversations. Probably because she did scenes he’d asked her about procuring a child for his friend. He’d only had to bring the idea up a couple of times before they’d set a date. She’d been happy to take the money, she said. Such things were normal. That was her not-so-pretty bedtime story.

  Ryzhkov had seen her for about five minutes since then. There wasn’t much to say. She’d lied the whole time. Strung him along pretty well. She’d blubbered, she’d cried, protested and fought it all the way. Trying to minimize her own role in the plot. Well, she was an actress and a whore. She could get very emotional. As far as the death of Katya Lvova was concerned, she’d confessed that she should have seen it coming.

  Maybe he should have, too.

  When it was all over Fauré had let her go. Warned her, or paid her off. Ryzhkov wasn’t sure about the arrangements. He’d tried to stay away from most of it. Maybe that was better. There were things he would never know, Ryzhkov realized. Things he would never understand. Things that he probably ought to put out of his mind.

  So, maybe it was time to put some illusions aside, forget about the girl, and follow the spy.

  It was good to get down to work on something that was substantial. A real human being instead of a memory or a rumour. It had only taken them a few days to develop a perfect sche
dule for Smyrba. So far his habits had been inflexible; breakfast at the Astoria Hotel, either in his suite or in the restaurant. From there he was driven to his office at the Embassy of Bulgaria. Often there were meetings at various locations around Petersburg. Often these took the form of luncheons at fine restaurants, mostly along the Nevsky, although twice Smyrba had been tempted across the bridge to Dacha Ernst which was located in the park near the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul.

  ‘… the evidence: copies of Putilov munitions contracts, dummied-up shipping orders to Odessa … bribes distributed in order to secure contracts to construct an entire series of dreadnoughts. As a result of Count Smyrba’s machinations, these contracts were awarded to the German shipyard Blom & Voss. Imagine! A German shipyard building Russian battleships! I’m sure we’ll get the very best …’

  Now Smyrba was strolling along the Fontanka, his little shined boots picking their way past the icy patches, tipping his hat to the younger women, nodding to the gentlemen, keeping to the sunny side of the street, a newspaper under his arm, and Pyotr Ryzhkov stopped directly behind him, stood there inhaling his smoke. The cigarettes were expensive, sweet. Across the street a horse bolted and for a moment everyone looked. A droshky slewed sideways and a driver screamed out a curse. As quickly as it happened, it was over. Smyrba turned to his neighbours there on the kerb … laughing.

  ‘… fixing of bids from three different firms … contracts for rubber belts, tyres for military vehicles. Boots for infantrymen. A series of orders for rifles. Most of this matériel was purchased with Bulgarian funds, but diverted to Serbia at a time when Smyrba’s own government was at war with them!’

  ‘We have military corruption, fraud, and embezzlement. Obviously this is of absolute importance. What’s Russia’s situation? Do we have any guns at all? Or is it only a charade? Only a set of tin soldiers waiting to be led into hell?’

  Smyrba’s shoulder, a fine spray of dandruff on the overcoat, or maybe it was only ash from the cigarette. Now Ryzhkov was walking across the street, too close he knew, but actually touching the man, brushing against the fine woollen sleeve, all the time looking for signals, following Smyrba’s gaze, trying to think his thoughts and see what he saw.

  A sudden flight of pigeons and above them the bells rang out in the dome of St Isaac’s, calling to God for a blessing, calling the faithful to prayer. Smyrba crossed the street to the ornate doors of his mistress’s house, where he would while away the holy afternoon.

  ‘Altogether, more than eleven million roubles worth of treason against his own nation and ours …’

  Smyrba was a milkmaid, Ryzhkov had told them: no matter how far he went, he’d always come back to tend the cows. That was the way to work it, follow him, don’t arrest him, just let him go, give him slack. He wasn’t trying to hide anything, he was too confident for that. We watch him, we make a list of his friends, where he goes, who he meets. We stay in the shadows, understood? If Tomlinovich wanted information, that was the way to get it. Mark down all the dates and times, get any observable evidence, friends, addresses or whatever occurred that might make it easier to elevate the investigation to the next step.

  The next step was Ryzhkov and Tomlinovich using a pass key to get into Count Ivo Smyrba’s fashionable suite at the Astoria.

  The rooms were immaculate. Ryzhkov looked at the desk, checked around the edges of the drawers with a torch to see if the count had left any ‘seals’. Nothing. Nothing in the obvious places, under the bedding or beneath the edges of the carpet.

  ‘The Serbs pay him, but not enough to live like this. He’s supposed to be a military attaché but he doesn’t do anything …’ Tomlinovich went on, talking to himself. Ryzhkov had succeeded in picking the lock on the secretaire that sat beside the windows that looked down on to the plaza.

  ‘Here we are, then,’ he said. Tomlinovich came over to look. Inside the drawer were cheque books, stationery. The edge of something that looked like a journal. Ryzhkov started to pick it up.

  ‘No.’ Tomlinovich moved his hand away and, extracting a pad from his jacket, diagrammed the position of the articles of everything in the drawer. Only when he was finished did he pick up the journal, grunting to himself when he encountered a particularly inept passage.

  ‘A literary genius?’ Ryzhkov had put the cheque stubs back inside.

  ‘No … not at all. But a dangerous man nonetheless.’ ‘He doesn’t seem all that dangerous to me,’ Ryzhkov said. He’d found a pistol, a little silver-plated four-shot revolver, the kind of gun a woman would carry in her muff. Tomlinovich looked at it and shook his head and returned to his reading. A few seconds later he snorted, ‘Now he’s moaning to himself about how much he misses his fucking dogs.’ Tomlinovich snapped the journal closed for a moment and rolled his eyes. ‘It’s people like this who are going to destroy us all.’

  ‘This might be useful.’ Ryzhkov smiled and held out a thin leather-covered book to Tomlinovich. The count had kept it sheltered under his expensive lambskin prophylactics. It was full of phone numbers and addresses.

  Tomlinovich smiled for the first time that morning, raised himself from the windowseat, came over and riffled through the little book. ‘Yes …’ he said, eyes glinting like a little boy who’d found something particularly naughty. Then Tomlinovich took the book over to the coffee table, re-positioned a lamp so that it wouldn’t cast a glare on the paper, reached in his jacket pocket, and came out with the smallest camera that Ryzhkov had ever seen, even more miniaturized than the ones they had used at Mendrochovich and Lubensky. ‘That’s nice,’ Ryzhkov said, coming closer so he could see the gadget. It was narrower than a packet of cigarettes, the lens smaller than his little fingernail.

  ‘Very special, very expensive …’ wheezed Tomlinovich as he extracted a tiny chain from the body of the camera and began photographing the pages.

  Ryzhkov watched for a moment, then finished looking through the drawers, carefully used a handkerchief to wipe his fingerprints off Smyrba’s toy revolver. After he’d done all that he went into the bathroom, rolled up his sleeves, stepped up on the seat of the toilet and reached into the tank. Inside was an oilcloth package which was so heavy that it had sunk to the bottom.

  When they opened it they found a thick stack of French banknotes, all in new bills, and neatly tied up beneath were three passports.

  The telephone rang. It was Hokhodiev calling from in front of the Stroganoff Palace. ‘Our milkmaid is on the path,’ he said and rang off.

  ‘What’s our time like?’

  ‘We’re all right,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘We’re going to do as much of this as we can and then we’re leaving.’

  He helped while Tomlinovich photographed the passports and leafed through the francs checking the serial numbers. The notes were nearly all new ones, they had come straight from a bank. All of comparatively large denominations. There was too much for them to count accurately. They got to up to eighty thousand francs before Pyotr stopped it.

  There was a knock on the door, three, two, one, and Ryzhkov let Sinazyorksy in. Even Sinazyorksy lost his composure when he saw the pile of money on the bed. ‘We’re almost ready,’ he said.

  ‘Try and buy us a little more time—five minutes, eh?’ Tomlinovich said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Sinazyorksy said. ‘Don’t let any of that stick to your fingers, eh?’ he said to Ryzhkov and then he was gone, out the door in an instant.

  ‘Yes, very good advice,’ Tomlinovich smiled and made another exposure with his tiny camera.

  Outside Sinazyorksy bought them the five minutes by holding up the rest of the cabs, so that Smyrba would have to either wait in the queue or jump into a huge pile of filthy snow. The infuriated little man finally reached his rooms and changed, dashing straight back out again. Angrily fleeing the Astoria in a state of anxiety about being late for his next engagement—a dinner meeting with business associates and embassy officials. The day had left its mark, however, and listening, Dima Dudenko heard him complain loudly
about the condition of the fish, and, citing its bitter quality, return a bottle of wine to the kitchen.

  The skies over the city dark and lowering, the wind rising and a fire lit in the stove in the corner of the shoe factory on Kryukov Street. Boris Fauré poised in front of a map of Europe, standing in the fading light from the dusty factory window, urging them on:

  ‘Serbia is divided. Divided between two groups: the first—those who want to slowly build enough military power to re-claim the provinces that Austria-Hungary has taken from them. The second—a shadowy faction made up of terrorists and disgruntled militarists. This second group is actually in control of the situation. And now they will do anything for guns. Anything. They are desperate to create a war with the Austrians. They even think they can win. And while we Russians may sympathize with our fellow Slavs and agree with their natural tendencies to overthrow the Habsburg yoke, this second group is nothing more than a collection of fanatics, willing to shed whatever blood is necessary to further their ends,’ Fauré said sadly.

  Fauré looked directly into Ryzhkov’s eyes. ‘We’ve arranged for Smyrba to be recalled to Bulgaria. He suspects nothing, but he’ll be detained, arrested, and hanged. That’s something that should make you smile, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ryzhkov said, but he didn’t actually smile about it.

  ‘So, we’ve found and effectively eliminated our Mr X—Ivo Smyrba: a traitor and a spy. Vermin. As reprehensible as they come, but now we see he is only one of a group of maniacs who are getting stronger every day. So, please accept my apologies, but there are still larger fish to lure into our nets, eh? Smyrba and his friends have allies within our government, those who want Russia to play big brother to the Serbs and protect all their nationalistic dreams of revenge. You know these crazy Serbs. They have long memories which go back six hundred years.’ Fauré gave a bitter chuckle, ‘They remember their sacred defeat at Kosovo Field like it was yesterday. But now the Serbian cart is driving the Russian horse.’