Erast Fandorin 01 - The Winter Queen

by Boris Akunin

  The meal was over and done with in five minutes—the titular counselor and fugitive assassin clearly had more important matters to attend to. Brushing the crumbs from the table, Erast Fandorin wiped his hands on his long bohemian blouse, went over to the tattered armchair standing in the corner, fumbled under its upholstery, and took out a small blue attaché case. Fandorin was impatient to continue the work with which he had been occupied all day and which had already led him to an extremely important discovery.

  FOLLOWING THE TRAGIC EVENTS of the previous night Erast Fandorin had been obliged in spite of everything to pay a brief visit to his hotel in order to pick up at least his money and his passport. Now let his good friend Hippolyte—that villainous Judas—and his henchmen search the railway stations and seaports in vain for ‘Erasmus von Dorn.’ Who would pay any attention to a poor French artist who had taken up residence in the very foulest sink of the London slums? And though Fandorin may have been obliged to take his life in his hands and run the risk of going out to the post office, there had been a very good reason for that.

  But what should he make of Zurov? His part in the story was not entirely clear, but it was certainly unseemly at the very least. His Excellency was not simple, not simple at all. The gallant hussar and open-hearted soul performed the most devious of maneuvers. How cleverly he had passed on that address, how well he had worked it all out! In a word, a true game master! He knew that the stupid gudgeon would take the bait and swallow the hook as well. But no, His Excellency had used some other allegory, something about a moth. The moth had flown into the flame all right, flown in exactly as expected. And it had almost burned its wings. Serve the fool right. After all, it was clear enough that Bezhetskaya and Hippolyte had some interest in common. Only a romantic blockhead such as a certain titular counselor (who had, in fact, been promoted to that rank over the heads of other, more worthy individuals) could have seriously believed in a fatal passion in the Castilian style! And he had even tried to fill Ivan Franzevich Brilling’s head with all that nonsense. For shame! Ha-ha! How beautifully Count Hippolyte Zurov had expressed it: “I love her and I fear her, the witch. I’ll strangle her with my own hands.” No doubt he had enjoyed toying with the babe in arms! And how exquisitely he had pulled it off, every bit as good as the first time, with the duel. His moves had been calculated simply and unerringly: take up a position at the Winter Queen Hotel and wait there calmly until the stupid moth Erasmus came flying to the candle. This was not Moscow—there was no detective police, no gendarmes. Erast Fandorin could be taken with the greatest of ease. And all the clues securely buried. Might not Zurov perhaps be that Franz whom the butler had mentioned? Ugh, these hideous conspirators! But which one of them was the leader—Zurov or Bezhetskaya? It seemed more likely, after all, that she was…Erast Fandorin shivered as he recalled the events of the previous night and the plaintive shriek with which Amalia had collapsed when she was shot. Perhaps she had been wounded and not killed? But the dismal chill that enveloped his heart told him that she was dead, the beautiful queen was dead, and Fandorin would have to live with that terrible burden to the end of his days.

  It was, of course, entirely possible that the end was already near. Zurov knew who had killed her: he had seen Fandorin. The hunt must already be on right across London, right across England, even. But why had Zurov let him go last night? Why had he allowed him to escape? Had he been frightened off by the pistol in Fandorin’s hand? It was a riddle…

  There was, however, another, even more puzzling riddle—the contents of the attaché case. For a long time Fandorin had been quite unable to make any sense of the mysterious list. His check had revealed that the number of entries on the sheets of paper was exactly the same as the number of letters and all of the information matched, except that in addition to the date indicated in each letter, Bezhetskaya had also entered the date of its receipt.

  There were forty-five entries in all. The very earliest of them was dated the first of June, and the three latest had made their appearance even as Erast Fandorin watched. The ordinal numbers in the letters were all different; the lowest was 47F (the Kingdom of Belgium, director of a governmental department, received on the fifteenth of June) and the highest was 2347F (Italy, a lieutenant of dragoons, received on the ninth of June). The letters had been dispatched from a total of nine countries, of which the most frequently occurring were England and France. Russia only appeared once in the sequence. (N°994F, a full state counselor, received on the twenty-sixth of June, with a St. Petersburg stamp from the seventh of June on the envelope. Ooph, he mustn’t confuse the calendars! The seventh of June would be the nineteenth in the European style. That meant it had taken just a week to arrive.) For the most part, the positions and ranks mentioned were high—generals, senior officers, one admiral, one senator, even one Portuguese government minister—but there were also small fry, such as the lieutenant from Italy, a court investigator from France, and a captain of the Austro-Hungarian border guards.

  Taking everything together, Bezhetskaya appeared to be some kind of intermediary, a transmission link or living post box whose duties involved registering incoming information and then forwarding it—evidently to Mr. Nicholas Croog in St. Petersburg. It was reasonable to assume that the lists were forwarded once a month. It was also clear that some other individual had played the role of Miss Olsen before Bezhetskaya, a fact the hotel porter had not suspected.

  At that point the obvious came to an end and an urgent need arose to apply the deductive method. If only the chief were here, he would have instantly listed all the possible scenarios and everything would have been neatly sorted into its right place. But he was far away, and the unavoidable conclusion was that Brilling had been right, a thousand times right. There obviously existed a widely ramified secret organization with members in many countries—that was one. Queen Victoria and Disraeli had nothing to do with the case (otherwise why send the reports to St. Petersburg?)—that was two. Erast Fandorin had made a fool of himself with his English spies; this affair very definitely smacked of nihilists—that was three. And all the threads led nowhere else but back to Russia, which possessed the most fearsome and ruthless nihilists of all—that was four. And they included that treacherous werewolf Zurov.

  His chief may have been right, but even so Fandorin had not squandered his travel expenses in vain. Even in his worst nightmares Ivan Brilling could hardly have imagined the true might of the multiheaded hydra with which he was doing battle. These were no students and hysterical young ladies with little bombs and pistols. This was an entire secret order involving ministers of state, generals, court investigators, and even a full state counselor from St. Petersburg!

  That was when Erast Fandorin was struck by a sudden insight (by this time it was already after noon). A full state counselor—and a nihilist? It simply didn’t make sense. The head of the imperial guard in Brazil was not really a problem. Erast Fandorin had never been to Brazil and he had no idea of the local mores—but his imagination absolutely refused to picture a Russian state general holding a bomb in his hand. Fandorin was acquainted quite closely with one full state counselor, Feodor Trifonovich Sevriugin, the director of the provincial gymnasium he had attended for almost seven years. Could he possibly be a terrorist? Nonsense!

  Then suddenly Erast Fandorin’s heart was wrung with pity. These were no terrorists; these were all decent and respectable individuals! These were the victims of terror! Nihilists from various countries, each of them concealed behind a coded number, were reporting to central revolutionary HQ about the terrorist acts they had committed!

  And yet, he could not actually recall any ministers being killed in Portugal in June—all the newspapers would most certainly have reported it…Which meant that they must be prospective victims—that was it! The ‘numbers’ were requesting permission from HQ to commit acts of terror. And no names were given in order to maintain secrecy.

  Now everything fell into place; now everything was clear. Ivan Brilling h
ad said something about a thread connecting Akhtyrtsev to some dacha outside Moscow, but Fandorin, all fired up with his own fantastic ravings about spies, had not bothered to listen.

  But stop. What did they want with a lieutenant of dragoons? He really was very small fry. Very simple, was Erast Fandorin’s immediate reply to his own question. The unknown Italian obviously must have got under their feet somehow. In the same way that a youthful collegiate regular istrar from the Moscow detective police had once got under the feet of a certain white-eyed killer.

  What should he do? He was simply sitting things out here while the threat of death hung over so many honorable people! Fandorin felt especially sorry for the unknown general in St. Petersburg. No doubt he was a worthy man, already middle-aged and distinguished, with little children…And it appeared that these Carbonari* sent out their villainous communiqués every month. No wonder there was blood flowing right across Europe every day! And the threads led back nowhere else but to St. Petersburg. Erast Fandorin recalled the words once spoken by his chief: “The very fate of Russia is at stake.” Ah, Ivan Brilling, ah, Mr. State Counselor, not just the fate of Russia—the fate of the entire civilized world!

  He could inform the clerk Pyzhov secretly, so that the traitor in the embassy would not sniff anything out. But how? The traitor could be anyone at all, and it was dangerous for Fandorin to show his face near the embassy, even in the guise of a redheaded Frenchman in an artist’s blouse…He would have to take a risk, send a letter by municipal post to provincial secretary Pyzhov and mark it ‘to be delivered personally.’ Nothing superfluous, just his address and greetings from Ivan Franzevich Brilling. He was a clever man; he would understand everything. And they said the municipal post here delivered a letter to its addressee in little more than two hours…

  And that was what Fandorin had done, so that when evening came it found him waiting to see if there would be a cautious knock at the door.

  There was no knock, however. Everything turned out quite differently.

  LATER, WHEN IT WAS ALREADY AFTER MIDNIGHT, Erast Fandorin was sitting in the tattered armchair in which the attaché case was concealed. On the table the candle had almost burned itself out, in the corners of the room a hostile gloom had gathered and thickened, and outside the window an approaching storm occasionally rumbled alarmingly. The very air seemed oppressive and stifling, as if some invisible, corpulent individual had sat down on his chest and would not let him get his breath. Fandorin teetered uncertainly on the ill-defined boundary between wakefulness and sleep. Important thoughts of practical matters would suddenly become bogged down in irrelevant drivel, and then the young man would rouse himself and shake his head in order to avoid being sucked down into the whirlpool of sleep.

  During one of these lucid intervals something very peculiar happened. First there was a strange, shrill squeak. Then Erast Fandorin could scarcely believe his own eyes as he saw the key protruding from the keyhole begin to turn of its own accord. The door creaked sickeningly as it swung open into the room, and a bizarre vision appeared in the doorway: a puny little gentleman of indeterminate age with a round, clean-shaven face and narrow eyes nestling in beds of fine, radiating wrinkles.

  Fandorin shuddered and grabbed the revolver from the table, but the vision smiled sweetly, nodded contentedly, and cooed in extremely pleasant, honeyed tenor tones, “Well, here I am, my dear lad. Porfirii Pyzhov, son of Martin, servant of God, and provincial secretary, come flying to you the very moment you chose to beckon. Like the wind at the summons of Aeolus.”

  “How did you open the door?” Erast Fandorin whispered in fright. “I distinctly remember turning the key twice.”

  “With this—a magnetic picklock,” the long-awaited visitor readily explained, displaying some kind of elongated little bar, which, however, immediately disappeared back into his pocket. “An extremely handy little item. I borrowed it from a certain local thief. In my line of business I am obliged to maintain relations with the most dreadful types, denizens of the very darkest depths of society. The most absolute miserables, I assure you. Such types as Monsieur Hugo never even saw in his dreams. But they, too, are human souls and it is possible to find ways to approach them. In fact, I am very fond of the scum and I even collect them a little. As the poet put it: each amuses himself as he may, but all shall be brought low by death alone. Or as the Teut would have it Jedes Tierchen hat sein Pläsierchen—every little beastling has its own plaything.”

  It was quite evident that this strange man possessed the ability to rattle off nonsense on any subject whatsoever without the slightest difficulty, but his keen eyes were wasting no time. They had already thoroughly ransacked both Erast Fandorin’s person and the furnishings of his squalid chamber.

  “I am Erast Petrovich Fandorin. From Mr. Brilling. On extremely important business,” said the young man, although the first and second facts had been stated in his letter, and Pyzhov himself must undoubtedly have guessed the third. “Only he did not give me any password. Probably he forgot.”

  Erast Fandorin looked anxiously at Pyzhov, on whom his salvation now depended, but the little man merely threw up his short-fingered hands.

  “There is no need of any password. Sheer nonsense and games for children. Can a Russian fail to know another Russian? It is enough for me to gaze into your bright eyes”—Porfirii Pyzhov moved close up against Fandorin—“and I see everything as clearly as if it were laid out before me. A youth pure hearted and bold, filled with noble aspirations and patriotic devotion to his fatherland. Why, of course—in our department we have no other kind.”

  Fandorin frowned. It seemed to him that Provincial Secretary Pyzhov was playing the fool, taking him for some idiot child. And therefore Erast Fandorin related his story briefly and dryly, without any emotions. It transpired that Porfirii Pyzhov was capable of more than mere tongue wagging. He could also be an extremely attentive listener—in fact he had a positive talent for it. Pyzhov sat down on the edge of the bed, folded his hands across his belly, squeezed the narrow slits of his eyes even tighter—and it was as if he had disappeared. That is, he was quite literally all attention. Not once did Pyzhov interrupt, not once did he even stir. However, at times, at the key moments of the narrative, a subtle spark glimmered beneath his hooded eyelids.

  Erast Fandorin did not divulge his hypothesis concerning the letters—that he saved for Ivan Brilling—and in conclusion he said, “And so, Mr. Pyzhov, you see before you a fugitive and involuntary homicide. I urgently need to get across to the Continent. I need to get to Moscow, to see Mr. Brilling.”

  Pyzhov chewed on his lips and waited to see whether anything else would be said, then he asked in quiet voice, “And what of the attache case? Why not forward it with the diplomatic post? That would be more reliable. One never knows…From what you have told me, these gentlemen are serious individuals. They will be searching for you in Europe as well. Of course I shall get you across the Channel, my sweet angel. That is no great business. Provided you disdain not the fisherman’s frail bark, you shall sail tomorrow, and God speed! Riding the howling gale beneath your billowing sails.”

  All of his winds seem to be gales, thought Erast Fandorin, who in all honesty desperately did not wish to part with the attache case which it had cost him so dear to obtain. Porfirii Pyzhov, however, continued as if he had not noticed the young man’s hesitation.

  “I do not interfere in other people’s business, for I am an unassuming and incurious individual. However, I can see there are many things you are not telling me. And quite right, my peachy darling; the word is silver, but silence is golden. Ivan Franzevich Brilling is a high-flying bird, a haughty eagle, one might say, among starlings, who would not entrust important business to just anyone. Is that not so?”

  “In what sense?”

  “Why, regarding the attaché case. I would daub it with sealing wax on every side, give it to one of the more keen-witted couriers—and it would be wafted across to Moscow in an instant, as on a three-ho
rse sleigh with bells a-jingling. And for my part I would dispatch a coded telegram: accept, O ruler of the heavenly realms, this priceless gift.”

  God knows, Erast Fandorin did not crave honors. He did not desire decorations or even fame. He would have surrendered the attaché case to Pyzhov for the good of the cause, for, after all, a courier really would be more reliable. But in his imagination he had already rehearsed so many times the triumphant return to his chief, with the spectacular presentation of the precious attaché case and the thrilling account of all the adventures that had befallen him…and now was none of this to be?

  Cravenly putting his own interest first, Fandorin said austerely, “The attaché case is concealed in a secure hiding place. And I shall deliver it myself. I answer for it with my life. Please do not take offense, Mr. Pyzhov.”

  “Why, of course not, of course not.” Pyzhov made no attempt to insist. “Just as you wish. It will be less trouble for me. The devil take other people’s secrets—I have quite enough of my own. If it is in a secure place, so be it.” He got to his feet and ran his gaze over the bare walls of the tiny room. “You take a rest for the time being, my young friend. Youth needs sleep. I am an old man, and I have insomnia in any case, so in the meanwhile I shall issue instructions concerning the boat. Tomorrow—actually it is already today—I shall be here at very first light. I shall deliver you to the shore of the sea, embrace and kiss you in farewell and make the sign of the cross over you. And I shall remain here, an orphan abandoned in an alien land. Oh, it frets poor Ivan’s heart to be stuck in foreign parts.”

  At this point even Porfirii Pyzhov clearly realized that he had poured on the syrup a little too thickly, and he spread his arms in acknowledgment of his guilt.

  “I repent—my tongue has run away with me. But, you know, I have missed living Russian speech so badly. I do so yearn for elegant turns of phrase. Our embassy know-it-alls express themselves most of the time in French, and I have no one with whom I can share the inmost stirrings of my soul.”