Erast Fandorin 04 - The Death of Achilles

by Boris Akunin

  “And if he is a state agent, after all, then I shall find myself rapidly shunted into retirement. In the best case, that is,” Karachentsev objected gloomily.

  “Evgeny Osipovich, it is hardly likely in any case that you will be able to hush the matter up, and it would be a sin — not even so much because of Sobolev as because of one terrible question: What mysterious p-power is toying with the fate of Russia? By what right? And what ideas will this power come up with tomorrow?”

  “Are you hinting at the Masons?” the general asked in amazement. “Count Tolstov is a member of a lodge, certainly, and so is Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Plevako, the director of the Department of Police. Half the movers and shakers in St. Petersburg are Masons. But they have no use for political murder; they can twist anyone they like into a ram’s horn by using the law.”

  “I don’t mean the Masons,” said Fandorin, wrinkling his smooth forehead in annoyance. “Everybody knows about them. What we have here is an absolutely genuine conspiracy, not the operetta kind. And if we are successful, Your Excellency, you could discover the key to an Aladdin’s cave that would take your breath away.”

  Evgeny Osipovich shuffled his ginger eyebrows in agitation. It was an enticing prospect, very enticing. And he could show that Judas, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich (his so-called comrade), and even Count Tolstov a thing or two. Don’t trifle with Karachentsev; don’t go trying to make a fool out of him. You’ve overplayed your hand, gentlemen, now look what a mess you’re in! Secret surveillance of a conspirator is all well and good — in a case like this, discretion was required. But to allow a national hero to be killed under the very noses of your agents — that is scandalous. You St. Petersburg know-it-alls have botched the job! And now you’re probably quaking in your armchairs, tearing your hair out. And here comes Evgeny Osipovich offering you the cunning rogue on a plate: Here’s your villain, take him! Hmm, or perhaps he should be offered up on a plate to someone a little higher? Oh, this was truly momentous business!

  In his mind’s eye, the chief of police pictured prospects of such transcendental glory that they took his breath away. But at the same time he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was afraid.

  “Very well,” Karachentsev said tentatively. “Let us say we have arrested Klonov. But he just clams up and won’t say a word. Belying on his patrons to protect him. Then what are we going to do?”

  “A perfectly reasonable way to state the matter,” said the collegiate assessor with a nod, betraying no sign of his delight that the conversation had moved on from the theoretical stage to the practical. “I have been thinking about that, too. To take Klonov will be very difficult, and to make him talk will be a hundred times harder. Therefore I have a proposal.”

  Evgeny Osipovich pricked up his ears at that, knowing from experience that this bright young man would not propose anything stupid and would take on the most difficult tasks himself.

  “Your people will blockade the Trinity from all sides so that the cockroach cannot slip out,” said Fandorin, prodding passionately at the map.

  “A cordon here, and one here, and here. Close off all the open courtyards throughout the entire district — fortunately it will be early in the morning and most people will still be asleep. Around the Trinity itself just a few of your best agents, three or four men, no more. They must act with extreme caution, and be well disguised in order not to frighten him off, God forbid. Their job is to wait for my signal. I shall go into Klonov’s room alone and play a game of confessions with him. He will not kill me straight away, because he will want to discover how much I know, where I came from, and what my interest is in all this. He and I will perform an elegant pas de deux: I shall part the curtain slightly for him, he will tell me a few frank truths; then I shall have another turn, and then so will he, quite certain that he can eliminate me at any moment. This way Klonov will be more talkative than if we arrest him. And I do not see any other way.”

  “But think of the risk,” said Karachentsev. “If you’re right and he is such a virtuoso in the art of murder, then, God forbid…”

  Erast Petrovich shrugged his shoulders flippantly.

  “As Confucius said, the noble man must bear responsibility for his own errors.”

  “Well, then, God be with you. This is serious business. They’ll either give you a medal or take your head off.” The police chief’s voice trembled with feeling. He shook Fandorin’s hand firmly. “Go to your hotel, Erast Petrovich, and catch up on your sleep as well as you can. Don’t be concerned about anything, I shall organize the operation in person and make sure everything is done absolutely right. When you go to the Trinity in the morning, you will see for yourself how good my lads’ disguises are.”

  “You are just like Vasilisa the Wise in the fairy tale, Your Excellency,” the collegiate assessor laughed, displaying his white teeth: “ “Sleep, Ivanushka, morning is wiser than evening.” Well, I really am a little tired, and tomorrow is an important day. I shall be at the Trinity at precisely six o’clock. The signal at which your men should come to my assistance is a whistle. Until there is a whistle they must not interfere, no matter what. And if something happens — do not let him get away. That is a p-personal request, Evgeny Osipovich.”

  “Don’t worry,” the general said seriously, still holding the young man by the hand. “The whole thing will come off like clockwork. I’ll detail my most valued agents, and more than enough of them. But take care and don’t go doing anything rash, you daredevil.”

  Erast Petrovich had long ago trained himself to wake at the time that he had determined the day before. At precisely five o’clock he opened his eyes and smiled, because the very edge of the sun was just appearing over the windowsill and it looked as if someone bald and round-headed were peeping in at the window.

  As he shaved, Fandorin whistled an aria from The Love Potion and even took a certain pleasure in admiring his own remarkably handsome face in the mirror. A samurai is not supposed to take breakfast before battle, and so instead of his morning coffee the collegiate assessor worked with his weights for a while and prepared his equipment thoroughly and unhurriedly. He armed himself to the very fullest extent of his arsenal, for he was facing a serious opponent.

  Masa helped his master equip himself, demonstrating an increasingly obvious concern. Eventually he could hold back no longer.

  “Master, your face is the one you have when death is very near.”

  “But you know that a genuine samurai must wake every day fully prepared to die,” Erast Petrovich joked as he put on his jacket of light-colored wild silk.

  “In Japan you always took me with you,” his servant complained. “I know that I have already failed you twice, but it will not happen again. I swear — if it does may I be born a jellyfish in the next life! Take me with you, master. I beg you.”

  Fandorin gave him an affectionate flick on his little nose.

  “This time there will be nothing you can do to help me. I must be alone. But in any case, I am not really alone; I have an entire army of policemen with me. It is my enemy who is all alone.”

  “Is he dangerous?”

  “Very. The same one who tricked you into giving him the briefcase.”

  Masa snorted, knitted his sparse eyebrows, and said no more.

  Erast Petrovich decided to make his way on foot. Ah, how lovely Moscow was after the rain! The freshness of the air, the pink haze of daybreak, the quietness. If he had to die, then let it be on just such a heavenly morning, the collegiate assessor thought, and immediately rebuked himself for his predisposition to melodrama. Walking at a comfortable stroll and whistling as he went, he came out onto Lubyanskaya Square, where the cabbies were watering their horses at the fountain. He turned onto Solyanka Street and blissfully inhaled the aroma of fresh bread wafting from the open windows of a bakery in a semi-basement.

  And now here was his corner. The houses here were a bit poorer, the pavement a bit narrower, and on the final approach to the Trinity, th
e landscape shed its final remaining elements of picturesqueness: There were puddles in the roadway, rickety, lopsided fences, flaking painted walls. Erast Petrovich was very pleased that for all his keen powers of observation, he had been unable to spot the police cordon.

  At the entrance to the yard he looked at his watch — five minutes to six. Exactly on time. Wooden gates with a crooked sign hanging on them: trinity inn. A jumble of single-story buildings, every room with a separate entrance. There was number one, number two, three, four, five, six. Number seven ought to be around the corner, on the left.

  If only Klonov didn’t start shooting straight off, before he was drawn into conversation. He needed to prepare some phrase that would disconcert him. For instance: “Greetings from Mademoiselle Wanda.” Or something a bit more complicated than that: “Are you aware that Sobolev is actually still alive?” The essential thing was not to lose the initiative. And then to follow his intuition. He could feel his trusty Herstal weighing down his pocket.

  Erast Petrovich turned in resolutely at the gates. A yardkeeper in a dirty apron was lazily dragging a broom through a puddle. He glanced at the elegant gentleman out of the corner of his eye and Erast Petrovich winked at him discreetly. A most convincing yardkeeper, no doubt about it. There was another agent sitting over by the gates, pretending to be drunk: snoring, with his cap tipped down over his face. That was pretty good, too. Fandorin glanced over his shoulder and saw a fat-bellied woman in a shapeless coat, trudging along the street with a brightly patterned shawl pulled right down over her eyes. That was going a bit too far, the collegiate assessor thought, with a shake of his head. It almost bordered on the farcical.

  Apartment seven was indeed the first one around the corner, in the inner yard. Two steps leading up to a low porch and ‘No. 7’ written on the door in white oil paint.

  Erast Petrovich halted and took a deep breath, filling his lungs completely with air, then breathed it out in short, even jerks.

  He raised his hand and knocked gently.

  Twice, three times, then twice again.

  * * *

  PART TWO

  ACHIMAS

  Skyrovsk

  * * *

  ONE

  His father was called Pelef, which in ancient Hebrew means ‘flight’. In the year of his birth disaster befell the Brothers of Christ, who had lived in Moravia for two hundred years: The emperor revoked the dispensation under which the community was exempted from military service, because he had begun a great war with another emperor and he needed many soldiers.

  The community picked up and left in a single night, abandoning their land and houses. They moved to Prussia. The Brothers of Christ did not care what differences the emperors might argue over — their strict faith forbade them to serve earthly masters, to swear an oath of loyalty to them, to take weapons in their hands, or to wear a uniform with buttons bearing coats of arms, which are impressions from the seal of Satan. This was why the Brothers’ long brown camisoles, the cut of which had scarcely changed in two and a half centuries, had no buttons; only cord fastenings were tolerated.

  There were fellow believers living in Prussia. They had come there long, long before, also fleeing from the Antichrist. The king had granted hem the possession of land in perpetuity and exempted them from military service on condition that they would drain the boundless Prussian marshes. For two generations the Brothers had struggled with the impassable quagmire until finally the third generation conquered it and then they had lived a life free of care and hunger on fertile lands rich in loam. They greeted their fellow believers from Moravia warmly, shared with them everything that they had, and they all lived a fine, peaceful life together.

  Having attained the age of twenty-one years, Pelef married. The Lord gave him a good wife, and at the appointed time she bore him a son. But then the Most High chose to subject His faithful servants to grievous trials. First there was a plague, and many people died, including Pelef’s wife and son. He did not complain, even though the color of life had changed from white to black. But the Most High wanted more than this, and He chose to reveal His love to His favored ones in the full measure of its rigor and intransigence. A new, enlightened king decreed that in his realm all were equal and annulled the law granted by that other king who had lived so long ago. Now even the Jews and the Mennonites and the Brothers of Christ were all obliged to serve in the army and defend their homeland with weapons in their hands. But the Brothers’ true homeland did not lie among the drained marshes of Prussia, but rather in the heavens above, and therefore the Convention of Spiritual Elders consulted and decided that they must travel to the east, to the lands of the Russian tsar. There was a community there also, and from that place there sometimes came letters, which traveled for a long time, with trustworthy people, because the state post service was the handiwork of the Evil One. In their letters the fellow believers wrote that the land in those parts was rich, while the authorities were tolerant and content with relatively small bribes.

  They gathered together their goods and chattels, sold what they could, and abandoned the rest. Riding in carts for seven times seven days, they arrived in a country with the difficult name of Melitopolst-schina. The land there was indeed rich, but twelve young families and the widower Pelef decided that they wanted to travel farther, because they had never seen mountains, but only read about them in holy books. They could not even imagine how it was possible for the earth to rise up into the firmament of heaven for a distance of many thousand cubits, right up to God’s clouds. The young believers wished to see this, and Pelef did not care where he went. He liked to ride through forests and open fields on a cart harnessed to bulls, because this distracted him from thoughts of Rachel and little Ahav, who had remained behind forever in the damp Prussian soil.

  The mountains proved to be exactly as they were described in the books. They were called the Caucasus, and they stretched out along the horizon in both directions as far as the eye could see. Pelef forgot about Rachel and Ahav, because here everything was different, and they even had to walk differently, not like before, but down from above or up from below. In the very first year he married.

  This was how it came about: The Brothers of Christ were cutting timber on the only shallow slope, clearing a field for plow land. The local girls watched as the foreign men in the long, funny coats deftly chopped down the centuries-old pines and rooted out the stubborn stumps. The girls laughed and giggled and ate nuts. One of them, fifteen-year-old Fatima, was taken by the looks of the giant with white hair and a white beard. He was big and strong, but calm and kind, not like the men from her aul, who were quick-tempered and rapid in their movements.

  Fatima had to be christened and wear different clothes — a black dress and white cap. She had to change her name — instead of Fatima she became Sarah. She had to work in the house and on the farm from dawn till dusk, learn a foreign language, and on Sunday she had to pray and sing all day long in the prayer house, which had been built before the dwelling houses. But Fatima was not dismayed by all this, because she was happy with white-haired Pelef and because Allah had not promised woman an easy life.

  The following summer, as Sarah-Fatima lay in the torment of childbirth, wild Chechens came down from the mountains, burned the crop of wheat, and drove away the cattle. Pelef watched as they led away the horse, two bulls, and three cows and prayed that the Lord would not abandon him and allow his rage to erupt. And therefore the father gave his son, whose first cry rang out at the very moment when the greedy tongues of flame began licking at the smoothly planed walls of the prayer house, the name of Achimas, which means ‘brother of rage’.

  The next year the Abreks came back for more booty, but they left with nothing, because a blockhouse now stood on the outskirts of the rebuilt village, and in it there lived a sergeant major and ten soldiers. For this the Brothers had paid the military commander five hundred rubles.

  The boy was big when he was born. Sarah-Fatima almost died when he was coming
out of her. She could not give birth again, but she did not wish to, because she could not forgive her husband for standing and watching as the brigands led away the horse, the bulls, and the cows.

  In his childhood Achimas had two gods and three languages. His father’s God, strict and unforgiving, taught that if someone smote you on the right cheek, then you must offer them the left; that if a man rejoiced in this life, he would weep his fill in the next; that grief and suffering were not to be feared, for they were a boon and a blessing, a sign of the special love of the Most High. His mother’s God, whose name was not to be spoken out loud, was kind: He allowed you to feel happy and play games and did not demand that you forgive those who offended you. He could only speak of the kind God in a whisper, when no one but his mother was near, and this meant that his father’s God was more important. He spoke in a language that was called ‘die Sprdche,’ which was a mixture of Dutch and German. His mother’s God spoke Chechen. Achimas’s other language was Russian, which he was taught by the soldiers from the blockhouse. The boy was fascinated by their swords and rifles, but that was forbidden, absolutely forbidden, because the more important God forbade his people even to touch weapons. But his mother whispered: Never mind, you can if you want. She took her son into the forest to tell him stories about the bold warriors from his clan, taught him how to trip people up and punch them with his fist.