Erast Fandorin 01 - The Winter Queen

by Boris Akunin

  The Englishman was still sitting there—he had not gone away. There was an obstinate nation for you now. The Englishman had appeared early in the morning, when the post office had barely even opened, and having seated himself beside the partition with his newspaper, had sat there the whole day long, without eating or drinking or even, begging your pardon, leaving his post to do the necessary. As if he were rooted to the spot. Clearly someone must have made an appointment to meet him and failed to keep it. That happens often enough around here, but for a Briton it would be incomprehensible. They’re such a disciplined people, so punctual. Whenever anyone, especially anyone of a foreign appearance, approached the window, the Englishman would draw himself up in eager anticipation and even shift his blue spectacles to the very tip of his nose. But so far none of them had been the one he was expecting. A Russian, now, would have given way to indignation long ago, thrown his hands up in the air, and begun complaining loudly to everyone in earshot; but this fellow just stuck his nose into his Times and carried on sitting there.

  Or perhaps the fellow had nowhere to go. Came here straight from the railway station—look at that checked traveling suit he had on, and the traveling bag—thinking he would be met, but he hadn’t been. What else could he do? When he came back from lunch, Kondratii Shtukin had taken pity on the son of Albion and sent the doorman Trifon across to ask whether there was anything he needed, but the gentleman in checks had only shaken his head irritably and handed Trifon twenty kopecks, as much as to say: leave me alone. Well, have it your own way.

  A little shrimp of a man who had the look of a cabdriver appeared at the window and pushed across a crumpled passport.

  “Take a look, would you, dear chap. See if there’s anything for Nikola Mitrofanich Krug.”

  “Where are you expecting it from?” Kondratii Shtukin asked strictly, taking the passport.

  The reply was unexpected. “From England, from London.”

  The remarkable thing was that a letter from London was found—only not under the Russian letter K, but the Latin letter C. Look at that now, “Mr. Nicholas M. Croog,” if you don’t mind! The things you do see at the poste restante counter!

  “But is that definitely you?” Shtukin asked, more out of curiosity than suspicion.

  “Not a doubt about it,” the cabdriver replied rather rudely, thrusting his clawlike hand in through the window and snatching up the yellow envelope with the ‘urgent’ stamp.

  Kondratii Shtukin handed him the register. “Are you able to sign for it?”

  “As well as anyone else.” And the boor entered some kind of scrawl in the ‘received’ column.

  Shtukin followed the departure of this unpleasant customer with a wrathful eye, then cast his now customary sideways glance at the Englishman, but he had disappeared. He must have finally despaired of his appointment.

  ERAST FANDORIN WAITED OUTSIDE for the cabdriver with a sinking heart. So that was ‘Nicholas Croog’! The further he pursued it, the more confusing this whole business became. But the most important thing was that his six-day tactical forced march across Europe had not been in vain! He had overtaken the letter and intercepted it. Now he would have something of substance to present to his chief. But he must not let this Krug get away from him!

  The cabby hired by Fandorin for the entire day was dawdling away the time beside a stone post. He was feeling dazed by the imposed idleness and tormented by the thought that he had asked the strange gentleman for only five rubles—for this kind of excruciating torture he should have demanded six. When his fare finally reappeared, the cabby drew himself up straight and tightened his reins, but Erast Fandorin did not even glance in his direction.

  The mark appeared. He walked down the steps, donned a blue peaked cap, and set off toward a carriage standing nearby. Fandorin unhurriedly set off in pursuit. The mark halted by the carriage, doffed his cap, and bowed, then held out the yellow envelope. A man’s hand in a white glove emerged from the window and took the envelope.

  Fandorin increased his pace in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the unknown man’s face. He succeeded.

  Sitting in the carriage and inspecting the wax seals against the light was a ginger-haired gentleman with piercing green eyes and a pale face with a profuse scattering of freckles. Fandorin recognized him immediately: but of course—Mr. Gerald Cunningham as large as life, the brilliant pedagogue, friend of orphans, and right-hand man of Lady Astair.

  The cabby’s sufferings proved to have been all in vain. It would not be difficult to ascertain Mr. Cunningham’s address. In the meantime there was more urgent business that required attention.

  Kondratii Shtukin was in for a surprise: the Englishman came back, and now he was in a terrible hurry. He ran over to the telegram reception counter, stuck his head right in through the window, and began dictating something very urgent to Mikhal Nikolaich. And Mikhal Nikolaich began fussing and bustling about and hurrying, which was really not like him at all.

  Shtukin was stung by curiosity. He got to his feet—fortunately there were no customers waiting—and as if he were simply taking a stroll, he set out in the direction of the telegraph apparatus at the far side of the hall. Halting beside Mikhal Nikolaich, who was working away intently with his key, he bent over a little and read the hastily scribbled message:

  To the Criminal Investigation Division, Moscow Police, State Counselor

  Mr. Brilling.

  I have returned. Please contact me urgently. I await your reply by the apparatus.

  Fandorin

  So that was it—now he understood. Shtukin glanced at the ‘Englishman’ with different eyes. A detective, are we? Hunting down bandits? Well, well.

  The agent strode agitatedly around the hall for about ten minutes, no longer, before Mikhal Nikolaich, who had remained by the apparatus, gestured to him and held out the ribbon with the return telegram.

  Kondratii Kondratievich Shtukin was on the spot in a flash and he read the message on the ribbon.

  TO MR FANDORIN STOP

  MR BRILLING IS IN SPB STOP

  ADDRESS KATENINSKAYA ST STOP

  SIVERS HOUSE STOP

  DUTY OFFICER LOMEIKO

  For some reason this reply delighted the gentleman in checks quite remarkably. He even clapped his hands and inquired of Shtukin, who was observing him with interest, “Where is Kateninskaya Street? Is it far?”

  “Not at all,” Kondratii Shtukin replied courteously. “It’s very handy from here. Take the public coach, get out at the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Liteiny Prospect, and then…”

  “Never mind, I have a cab,” the agent interrupted, and with a flourish of his traveling bag, he set off for the door at a run.

  ERAST FANDORIN LIKED THE LOOK of Kateninskaya Street. It looked, in fact, exactly like the most respectable streets of Berlin or Vienna: asphalt, brand-new electric streetlamps, and substantial houses of several stories. In a word—Europe.

  Sivers House with the stone knights on the pediment and the en-tranceway brightly illuminated, even though the evening was still light, was especially fine. But then, where else would a man like Ivan Franzevich Brilling live? It was quite impossible to imagine him residing in some dilapidated old mansion with a dusty yard and an orchard of apple trees.

  The obliging doorkeeper reassured Erast Fandorin by informing him that Mr. Brilling was home. “Got in just five minutes ago, sir.”

  Today everything was going right for Fandorin; today he could do nothing wrong.

  Taking the steps two at a time, he flew up to the second floor and rang the electric bell that was polished to a golden gleam.

  Ivan Brilling opened the door himself. He had not yet had time to change and had only removed his frock coat. The bright enamel colors of a brand-new Cross of St. Vladimir glittered where it hung below his starched collar.

  “Chief, it’s me,” Fandorin announced gleefully, savoring the effect produced by his words.

  The effect certainly did exceed all expectations.

/>   Ivan Franzevich Brilling stood there dumbfounded and waved his hands about as if he were trying to say: Holy Spirit preserve us! Get thee behind me, Satan!

  Erast Fandorin laughed.

  “Well, weren’t you expecting to see me?”

  “Fandorin! Where have you sprung from? I’d given up hope of ever seeing you alive again.”

  “But why?” the returned traveler inquired, not without a trace of coquettishness.

  “Why naturally! You disappeared without trace. The last time you were seen was in Paris on the twenty-sixth. You never arrived in London. I asked Pyzhov and he told me you had disappeared without trace—the police were looking for you!”

  “I sent you a detailed letter from London to the address of the Moscow detective office. All about Pyzhov and everything else. I expect it will arrive today or tomorrow. I didn’t know that you were in St. Petersburg.”

  His chief frowned anxiously.

  “You look quite awful. Have you fallen ill?”

  “To be perfectly honest, I am desperately hungry. I spent the whole day on guard duty at the post office and I haven’t had a single bite.”

  “Guard duty at the post office? No, no, don’t tell me about it. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. First of all I will give you some tea and pastries. My Semyon, the scoundrel, has been drinking heavily for the last two days, so I’m keeping house for myself. I mostly live on sweetmeats and fancy cakes from Filippov’s. You do like sweet things, don’t you?”

  “Very much,” Erast Fandorin confirmed enthusiastically.

  “So do I. It’s a relic of my orphan childhood. You don’t object if we eat in the kitchen, bachelor fashion?”

  As they walked down the corridor Fandorin had time to observe that Brilling’s flat, although it was not very large, was furnished in a most practical and precise fashion—everything that was necessary but nothing superfluous. Fandorin’s interest was particularly attracted by a lacquered box with two black metal horns or tubes hanging on the wall.

  “That is a genuine miracle of modern science,” Ivan Franzevich explained. “It is called Bell’s apparatus. It has only just arrived from America, from an agent of ours. There is an inventor of genius there, a certain Mr. Bell, thanks to whom it is now possible to conduct a conversation at a considerable distance, even a distance of several versts.* The sound is transmitted along wires like telegraph wires. This is an experimental model—the apparatus is not yet in production. In the whole of Europe there are only two lines: one has been laid from my apartment to the secretariat of the head of the Third Section; the other has been installed in Berlin between the Kaiser’s study and Bismarck’s chancellery. So we are keeping well abreast of progress.”

  “Magnificent!” Erast Fandorin exclaimed in admiration. “How is it? Can you hear clearly?”

  “Not very, but you can make it out. Sometimes there is a loud crackling in the tube…Would you be happy with orangeade instead of tea? I somehow can’t quite get the hang of the samovar.”

  “I should say so,” Erast Fandorin reassured his chief, and like a good sorcerer Brilling set a bottle of orangeade on the table before him, together with a large dish covered with eclairs, cream puffs, light, fluffy marzipans, and flaky almond cones. “Tuck in,” said Ivan Brilling, “and in the meantime I will bring you up to date on our business. Afterward it will be your turn for confession.”

  Fandorin nodded, his mouth stuffed full and his chin lightly dusted with fine powdered sugar.

  “So,” his chief began, “as far as I recall, you set out for St. Petersburg to collect the dipomatic post on the twenty-seventh of May. Immediately after that, events took an interesting turn here and I regretted having let you go—we needed every last man. I discovered through agents in the field that some time ago a small but extremely active cell of radical revolutionaries, absolute madmen, had been established in Moscow. Whereas ordinary terrorists set themselves the goal of exterminating those who ‘stain their hands with blood,’ meaning the highest officials of the state, these people had decided to attack ‘the exultant crowd of idle boasters.’ ”

  “Who?” asked Fandorin, puzzled and himself absorbed in attacking a most delicate eclair.

  “You know, the poem by Nekrasov:”

  For the exultant crowd of idle boasters,

  Who stain their hands with others’ crimson blood,

  Lead me into the camp of love’s promoters,

  Who perish for the greater cause of good.

  “Well then, our ‘perishers for the cause of greater good’ have demarcated their areas of responsibility. The leading organization has been allocated those who ‘stain their hands’—the ministers, governors, and generals. And our Moscow faction has decided to deal with ‘those who exult,’ those same individuals who are also ‘bloated and gorged.’ As we managed to learn through an agent who infiltrated the group, the faction has taken the name Azazel—as a token of their daredevil opposition to the will of God. A whole series of murders was planned among the gilded youth, the ‘parasites’ and the ‘high livers.’ Bezhetskaya was also a member of Azazel; from what we know she must be the emissary of an international anarchist organization. The suicide—effectively the murder—of Pyotr Kokorin, which she organized, was Azazel’s first operation. But I suppose you will be telling me all about Bezhetskaya. The next victim was Akhtyrtsev, who was of even greater interest to the conspirators because he was the grandson of the chancellor Prince Korchakov. You see, my young friend, the terrorists’ plan was insane but at the same time devilishly cunning. They calculated that it is far easier to reach the offspring of important people than those people themselves, but that the blow struck against the hierarchy of the state is no less powerful. Prince Korchakov, by the way, is so crushed by the death of his grandson that he has almost given up working and is seriously contemplating retirement. And he is an extremely distinguished man, who has been responsible in many respects for shaping modern Russia.”

  “What dark villainy!” Erast Fandorin cried in outrage, even setting aside an unfinished marzipan.

  “But when I discovered that Azazel’s ultimate goal was the assassination of the tsarevich—”

  “It can’t be true!”

  “I’m afraid it is. Well then, when that was discovered, I was ordered to take decisive action. I was obliged to comply, although I would have preferred to piece together the whole picture first, but you understand, with the life of His Imperial Highness himself at risk…We carried out an operation, but it didn’t go entirely smoothly. On the first of June the terrorists were planning to hold a gathering at the dacha in Kuzminki. You remember, I told you about that? At that time, of course, you were keen to pursue your own ideas. How did it go, by the way? Did you come up with anything?”

  Erast Fandorin began lowing with his mouth full and swallowed an unchewed piece of a cream cone, but Brilling relented. “All right, all right, later. Eat. And so, we surrounded the dacha. I could use only my own agents from St. Petersburg, without involving the Moscow gendarmerie and police—at all costs I had to avoid publicity.” Ivan Brilling sighed angrily. “That was my fault. I was overcautious. Basically, because we didn’t have enough men, we failed to spread our net widely enough. There was an exchange of fire. Two agents were wounded and one was killed. I’ll never forgive myself…We didn’t manage to take anyone alive—all we got were four corpses. The description of one of them was rather like your white-eyed fellow. Although he didn’t have any eyes left as such. He blew half his skull away with his last bullet. In the basement we found a laboratory for producing infernal devices and some papers—but, as I said, there is a great deal about the plans and connections of Azazel that remains a mystery. An unsolvable one, I’m afraid…Even so the emperor, the chancellor, and the head of the corps of gendarmes were very pleased with our operation. I told General Mizinov about you. Of course, you weren’t in at the finish, but you helped us a great deal in the course of the investigation. If you have no objection, we can carry on w
orking together in future. I take your fate into my own hands…Are you feeling stronger now? Right, now you tell me everything. What happened over in London? Did you manage to pick up Bezhetskaya’s trail? What’s all this hellish business with Pyzhov? Is he dead? All in the right order, starting at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

  The nearer his chief’s story had drawn to its end, the brighter the envy had glowed in Erast Fandorin’s eyes, and his own adventures, which he had been so proud of only recently, seemed to pale and fade in significance. An attempt on the life of the tsarevich! An exchange of fire! An infernal device! Fate had mocked Fandorin cruelly—tempted him with glory and led him off the main highway onto a miserable country track…

  However, he gave Ivan Brilling a detailed account of his epic quest—except that he related the circumstances under which he had been deprived of the blue attaché case rather vaguely and even blushed a little, a fact that apparently did not escape the attention of Brilling, who listened to the narrative in gloomy silence. When he reached the denouement, Erast Fandorin took heart again and he brightened up, unable to resist the temptation of dramatic effect.

  “And I did see the man!” he exclaimed when he came to the scene outside the St. Petersburg post office. “I know who holds in his hands the contents of the attaché case and all the threads of the organization! Azazel is still alive, Ivan Franzevich, but it is in our hands!”

  “Tell me then, devil take it!” his chief exclaimed. “Enough of this puerile posturing! Who is this man? Where is he?”

  “Here, in St. Petersburg,” said Fandorin, savoring his revenge. “A certain Gerald Cunningham, senior assistant to Lady Astair, whom I have more than once drawn to your attention.” At this point Erast Fandorin cleared his throat tactfully. “So the business with Kokorin’s will is explained. And now it is clear why Bezhetskaya directed her admirers to the Astair Houses. And note how cunningly that red-haired gentleman chose his lair. What a cover, eh? Orphans, branches all over the world, an altruistic patroness to whom all doors are open. All very clever, you must admit.”