The State Counsellor - Fandorin 06

by Boris Akunin

  'Esfir...' Erast Petrovich whispered, overcome. 'Oh God ...'

  The prince took a knife out of his pocket, slashed the rope, and the body slumped to the floor, flapping its arms with the inanimate grace of a rag doll and banging its forehead against the parquet floor before becoming truly motionless.

  Ah, damn.' Pozharsky squatted down and clicked his tongue in annoyance. 'She had outlived her usefulness, but even so it's a pity. She was a quite remarkable character. And I wanted to give you a little treat ... Well, now's there's nothing to be done, you'll see this beauty already withered and faded.'

  He took the dead woman by the shoulders and turned her on to her back.

  Erast Petrovich involuntarily squeezed his eyes shut, but then, ashamed of his own weakness, he forced himself to open them.

  The sudden shock of what he saw made him squeeze them shut again. And then he began fluttering his eyelashes in consternation.

  Fandorin had never seen the woman lying on the floor before -once seen, a face like that could never be forgotten. One half of it was perfectly normal and even rather pretty in a way, but the features of the other half were flattened and squashed, so that the slit of the eye was set almost vertically, and the cheek bone overlapped the ear.

  Pozharsky laughed, very pleased with the effect produced.

  'Lovely, isn't she, the she-devil? A birth trauma. The obstetrician grabbed her clumsily with the forceps. Now do you understand Mademoiselle Diana's reason for behaving the way she did? What else could she feel for the men who recoiled from her in horror in the light of day? What else but hate? That's why she liked to live in this enchanted castle, this realm of gloom and silence. Here she was not an unfortunate freak, but the most radiant beauty that any man's imagination could possibly conjure up. Brrrr!' Gleb Georgievich shuddered as he looked at that terrible mask and complained. 'It's all very well for you, but when I think that I spent half of yesterday gratifying a monster like that, it gives me the shivers.'

  Erast Petrovich stood there in state of total emotional numbness, still stunned by the shock, but he already knew that the first emotion he would feel as soon as his heart recovered slightly would be acute shame.

  'But then, it's quite possible that in hell, where the newly departed has undoubtedly gone, it is precisely her kind that are regarded as the foremost beauties,' the prince remarked philosophically. Anyway, our plan remains in force, Erast Petrovich. Don't forget: the snowdrift is on the right.'

  CHAPTER 14

  The pit

  Pozharsky was late.

  Six minutes past nine. Green put his watch back in the pocket of his greatcoat. His Colt was in there too, and his fingers folded firmly round the comfortably fluted butt.

  The revolution wasn't in such a bad way after all, if the top brass of the criminal investigation authorities were obliged to meet like conspirators, in secret from their own subordinates. The enemy's camp had been plunged into alarm and uncertainty; everyone there was afraid of his own shadow; they didn't trust anyone. And they were right not to.

  Or did they have their suspicions about TG?

  It was all very simple. No cause could ever triumph if its supporters were more concerned for their own well-being than anything else. That was why the victory of the revolution was inevitable.

  Only you won't live to see it, Green reminded himself, in order to drive that azure blue back deep inside, the azure that had been struggling so hard to rise to the surface after what had happened yesterday. You are a match, and. you've already been burning for longer than usual. And you yourself excluded the joys of life from your own existence.

  State Counsellor Fandorin was sitting on the next bench, tapping one glove on his knee in his boredom, gazing at the jackdaws hopping about in the branches of an old oak tree.

  This handsome, foppishly dressed man was about to die. And it would be impossible ever to find out what he had been thinking about during the final minutes of his life.

  Green shuddered at this unexpected thought. When you're training your sights on the enemy, you mustn't think about his mother and his children, he thought, reminding himself of what he had told Bullfinch many times. Once a man had put on the enemy's uniform, he was no longer a civilian, but a soldier.

  The greatcoat that Green was wearing was thick, made of good cloth. Nobel had brought it from home - his father was a retired general. Needle had glued on Green's grey moustache and sideburns - an excellent disguise.

  There was Bullfinch walking along the path of the park, dressed as a grammar-school boy. He was supposed to have checked the street to make sure everything was clear. As he walked past, he nodded lightly and then sat down on the bench beside Fandorin. He scooped up some fresh snow and crammed it into his mouth. He was nervous.

  Nobel and Schwartz were scraping down the avenue with spades. Emelya was standing on the other side of the railings, pretending to be a police constable. Marat and Beaver, dressed in artisans' kaftans and felt boots, were playing at stick-knife right beside the entrance to the park. Pozharsky and Fandorin had chosen an excellent time for their talk: no strollers, not even any chance passers-by.

  'You can go whistle for your three kopecks! That for your money,' Marat shouted, cocking a snook and jumping to one side. And he set off along the avenue, whistling, casually sticking his hands in his pockets as he went.

  That was the signal; it meant Pozharsky had shown up.

  Beaver went rushing at Marat: 'What d'you think you're playing at?' he shouted (Beaver was a fine, calm young lad, an ex-student). 'Come on, pay up!' And behind him the long-awaited deputy director of police appeared. Wearing a Guards greatcoat, a white royal-retinue cap, with a sabre. A fine conspirator.

  Pozharsky stopped at the entrance to the square, planted his bright, gleaming boots in a wide stance, grasped his sword belt in picturesque fashion and shouted: 'Nihilist gentlemen! You are completely surrounded! I recommend you to surrender!' And that very second he ducked nimbly behind the fence and disappeared behind the snow-covered bushes.

  Green glanced round at Fandorin, but the State Counsellor, suddenly roused from his reverie, also displayed remarkable agility. He grabbed Bullfinch by the collar and pulled him close, and then for some strange reason plunged into the tall snowdrift on the right of his bench.

  Suddenly there was a tremendous rumbling and crashing from all sides, as if someone were ripping the very world in half.

  Green saw Marat throw up his hands and jerk violently, as if he had been struck hard in the back. He saw Beaver firing from under his elbow, aiming somewhere upwards and off to one side.

  He grabbed the Colt out of his pocket and went dashing to help Bullfinch. A bullet knocked his hat off his head and grazed his temple. Green swayed, lost his balance and collapsed into the snowdrift on the left of the next bench.

  What happened next was quite incredible.

  The snowdrift proved to be much deeper than he could have imagined from its appearance. There was a loud crack from somewhere, for a moment everything went dark, and then he landed hard on some solid surface. An avalanche of white immediately collapsed on him, and Green began floundering about in it, completely unable to understand what was happening.

  When he somehow managed to get to his feet, he saw that he was standing in a deep pit, buried up to his chest in snow. He could see the sky, the clouds, the branches of the trees. The shooting was even louder now, and he could almost make out the individual shots, snatched up and amplified by the echo.

  Up above there was a battle going on, and here was he, the man of steel, sheltering in a trench!

  Green jumped up and his fingers touched the edge of the pit, but there was nothing to grab hold of. Then he discovered that he had lost his revolver in the fall, and searching for it in the snowy mush looked as if it would be long job, perhaps even a hopeless one.

  Never mind, if only he could just clamber out somehow. He started furiously tamping down the snow - with his hands, his feet, even his buttocks. And
then suddenly the firing stopped. The silence made Green afraid for the first rime in many long

  years. He'd thought he would never again feel that chilly, heart-stopping sensation.

  Was it really all over? So quickly?

  He climbed on to the hard-tamped snow and stuck his head up out of the pit, but immediately squatted back down again. There was a line of men in civilian clothes walking towards the railings, holding smoking carbines and revolvers in their hands.

  You couldn't even shoot yourself without a gun. Just sit there, like a wolf who's fallen into a trap, and wait for them to drag you out by the scruff of the neck.

  He squatted down and began fumbling about feverishly in the snow. If he could only find it, if he could only find it. Just at that moment Green could not imagine any greater happiness.

  Hopeless. The revolver was probably somewhere right at the very bottom.

  Swinging round, Green suddenly saw a black hole that led off somewhere to one side. Without even pausing for thought, he stepped into it and realised it was an underground passage: narrow, a little higher than the height of a man, smelling of frozen earth.

  He had no time to feel surprise.

  He ran into the darkness, with his shoulders bumping against the walls of the passage.

  Quite soon, after about fifty strides, he saw a glimmer of light up ahead. Moving faster, he suddenly found himself in an open trench. It was screened off with planks, and up above it on the stone wall of a building there was a sign: 'Mobius and Sons. Colonial Goods'.

  Then Green remembered: in the side street that led to the square, there had been some kind of trench, with a hastily cobbled together wooden fence along its edges. That was where he was.

  He clambered out of the trench. The side street was empty, but he could hear the sound of many voices from the square.

  He pressed himself against the wall of the building and peeped round the corner.

  The men in civilian clothes were dragging bodies on to the avenue of the park. Green saw two agents dragging along a policeman, and didn't immediately realise who it was, because the skirts of the dead man's greatcoat had turned up to conceal his face. A thick book in a familiar binding fell out from behind his lapel: The Count of Monte Cristo. Emelya had brought it with him to the operation - he'd been afraid they might not be going back to the apartment and he wouldn't find out if the count ever took his revenge on the traitors or not.

  'What is all this, eh?' a frightened voice asked behind Green.

  It was a yard-keeper, sticking his head out from a gateway. Wearing an apron, and his metal badge. He looked at the man covered in snow and explained guiltily: 'I'm just staying put, not sticking my head out, like we were told. Who was that you got, eh? Khitrovka gangsters? Bombers?'

  'Bombers,' Green replied, and set off along the street at a fast walk.

  It was still very early.

  'We're leaving,' he said to Needle when she opened the door. 'Quick.'

  She turned pale, but didn't ask any questions, just dashed to put her shoes on.

  Green took two revolvers, cartridges, the jar of explosive mixture and several detonators. The finished casings had to be left behind.

  Not until they were down in the street and safely round the corner did it finally become clear that the apartment was not surrounded. The police had obviously been certain that the Combat Group would come to the trap and decided to avoid external surveillance, in order not to give themselves away by accident.

  'Where to?' Green asked. 'Not to a hotel. They'll be looking.'

  Needle hesitated and then said: 'To my house. Only... Never mind, you'll see for yourself.'

  She told the cab driver to take them to Count Dobrinsky's house on Prechistenka Street.

  On the way, Green told her in a low voice what had happened at Briusov Square. Needle's face never quivered, but the tears streamed down her cheeks one after another.

  The sleigh stopped in front of a large, old pair of cast-iron gates embellished with a crown. Through the railings Green could see a yard and a large three-storey palace that had probably once been gorgeous and magnificent, but now its paint had flaked off and it was clearly abandoned.

  'Nobody lives there; the doors are boarded up,' Needle explained, as if she were making excuses. 'When my father died, I let all the servants go. But I can't sell it. My father entailed the house to my son. If I have one. And if I don't, when I die it goes to the Council of the Order of St George

  So what they said about Conjuror's fiancee was true: she was a count's daughter, Green thought absent-mindedly, his mind gradually stealing up on the most important question.

  Needle led him past the. locked gates and along the railings to a little annexe with a mezzanine, one wing of which reached right out to the street.

  'The family doctor used to live here,' said Needle. 'Now I do. Alone.' But he was no longer listening.

  He followed her through some room without even bothering to look around him. He sat down in an armchair.

  'What do we do now?' Needle asked.

  'I have to think for a while,' Green replied in a steady voice.

  'Can I sit beside you? I won't bother you

  But she did bother him. Her gentle, turquoise gaze would not allow his mind to organise itself; all sorts of peripheral and entirely unnecessary thoughts crowded into his head. With an effort of will, Green forced himself not to stray from a straight line and concentrate on the essential task. The essential task was called TG. And apart from Green there was no one to solve it.

  What did he have to work on?

  Only his own well-trained memory. That was where he should look.

  TG had sent eight letters altogether.

  The first had been about Bogdanov, the Governor of Ekaterinburg. It had arrived soon after the unsuccessful attempt on Khrapov's life, on 23 September last year. Appeared out of nowhere on the dining table of the clandestine apartment on Fontanka Street. Written on an Underwood typewriter.

  The second had been about general of gendarmes Selivanov. It had simply turned up in the pocket of Green's coat in December last year. At a party 'wedding'. The typewriter was an Underwood again.

  The third had been about Pozharsky and the unnamed 'important agent', who had turned out to be Stasov, a member of the Central Committee in exile. It had been found on the floor in the clandestine apartment on Vasilievsky Island in St Petersburg on 15 January. The same typewriter.

  The fourth had been about Khrapov. At the Kolpino dacha. Emelya had picked up the note that was wrapped round a stone, lying under the open window. That was on 16 February. TG had used an Underwood again.

  So, the first four letters had been received in St Petersburg, and almost five months had passed between the first and the last. But in Moscow TG's pace had been feverish - four letters in four days.

  The fifth had been about Rahmet, and it had said Sverchinsky would be at the Nikolaevsky Station that night. It came on Tuesday the nineteenth. Once again, just as at the 'wedding', in some mysterious manner it had appeared in the pocket of his coat while it was hanging up. The typewriter had changed; this time it was a Remington No. 5. The Underwood had evidently been left behind in Peter.

  The sixth had been about the police blockade at the railway goods sheds and the new apartment. That was on Wednesday the twentieth. The letter was brought by Matvei, who found it in the pocket of his sheepskin coat. It was typed on a Remington.

  The seventh had been about the Petrosov Baths. Dropped through the door on 21 February. The Remington again.

  The last one, the eighth, luring them into the trap, had arrived in the same way. That was yesterday, Friday. The typewriter was a Remington.

  What followed from all this?

  Why had TG first provided invaluable help, and then betrayed him?

  For the same reason as others turned traitor: he had been arrested and broken. Or he had been discovered and deliberately fed false information. Never mind, that was irrelevant.

&
nbsp; The important question was: who was he?

  In four cases out of eight TG or his intermediary had been in Green's immediate vicinity. In the other four, for some reason he hadn't wanted to come close to Green, or hadn't been able to, and he had acted, not from the inside, but from the outside: through an open window, through the door, through Matvei. Well, the situation at Kolpino was clear enough: after the January expropriation Green had put the group in quarantine and they had stayed at the dacha without going anywhere or seeing anyone.

  But in Moscow TG had only had direct access to Green on one occasion, 19 February, when Ace gave his briefing before the attack on the state currency-shipping carriage. After that for some reason TG no longer had direct access. What had happened between Tuesday and Wednesday?

  Green jerked upright in his chair, suddenly struck by the arithmetical simplicity of the solution. Why hadn't he thought of it before! Because there simply hadn't been that genuine, absolute necessity that lends such a wonderfully keen edge to the workings of thought.

  'What is it?' Needle asked in fright. 'Are you feeling unwell?'

  Without answering, he grabbed a pencil and a sheet of paper from the table. He paused for about a minute, then quickly dashed off a few lines and wrote an address at the top.

  'This is for the telegraph office. The extra urgent rate.'

  CHAPTER 15

  in which Fandorin learns to be flexible

  Green was not as Erast Petrovich had imagined him to be. The State Counsellor could not see anything fiendish or especially bloodthirsty about the man sitting on the next bench. A severe face, its features stamped in metal, a face that was hard to imagine smiling. And quite young still, despite the clumsy masquerade with that grey moustache and those sideburns.