The Turkish Gambit

by Boris Akunin

  “How marvelous!” exclaimed Mitya. “Isn’t it wonderful, Varvara Andreevna?”

  Varya said nothing because she wasn’t sure whether it was wonderful or not. Sobolev’s impetuous derring-do had set her head spinning. And there was the little question of what she was supposed to do. Was she to march to the sound of drums with the chasseurs, holding Gulnora’s reins?

  “Gridnev, I’m leaving you my escort. You’ll guard the bank or the locals will loot it and then blame Sobolev,” said the general.

  “But your excellency! Mikhail Dmitrievich!” the ensign howled. “I want to go to Constantinople, too!”

  “Then who would protect Varvara Andreevna?” Paladin asked reproachfully, throating his r’s.

  Sobolev took a gold watch out of his pocket and the lid rang as he flicked it open.

  “Half-past five. In two or two and a half hours it will start to get light. Hey there, Gukmasov!”

  “Yes, your excellency,” said the handsome cornet as he dashed into the office.

  “Assemble the companies! Call the battalion to marching order! Banners and drums to the fore. Let’s march in style! Saddle up Gulnora! Look lively! We depart at six hundred hours!”

  The orderly dashed out. Sobolev stretched sweetly and said: “Well now, Varvara Andreevna, I shall either be a greater hero than Bonaparte or finally lose my foolish head at last.”

  “You won’t lose it,” she replied, gazing at the general in sincere admiration—he looked so wonderfully fine just at that moment, the Russian Achilles.

  “Touch wood,” said Sobolev superstitiously, reaching for the table.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind!” Perepyolkin piped up. “With your permission, Mikhail Dmitrievich, I can call Gukmasov back!”

  He took a step toward the door, but just at that very moment . . .

  AT THAT MOMENT there was a loud clattering of numerous pairs of boots on the staircase, the door swung open, and two men entered the room—Lavrenty Arkadievich Mizinov and Fandorin.

  “Erast Petrovich!” Varya squealed and almost flung herself on his neck, but she stopped herself just in time.

  Mizinov rumbled: “Aha, here he is! Excellent!”

  “Your excellency!” Sobelev said with a frown, spotting the gendarmes in blue uniforms behind the first two men. “Why are you here? Of course, I’m guilty of acting on my own initiative, but arresting me is really going rather too far.”

  “Arrest you?” Mizinov was amazed. “What on earth for? We barely managed to get through to you on handcars with half a company of gendarmes. The telegraph isn’t working and the railway line has been cut. We came under fire three times and lost seven men. I’ve got a bullet hole here in my greatcoat.” He showed Sobolev his sleeve.

  Erast Petrovich stepped forward. He hadn’t changed at all while he had been away, but he looked a real dandy in his civilian clothes: a top hat, a cape, a starched collar.

  “Hello, Varvara Andreevna,” the titular counselor said cordially. “How well your hair has grown. I think perhaps it is better like that.”

  He bowed briefly to Sobolev.

  “My congratulations on the diamond-studded sword, your excellency. That is a great honor.”

  He nodded quickly to Perepyolkin and finally turned toward the French correspondent.

  “Salaam aleichem, Anwar-effendi.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In which Fandorin

  makes a long speech

  DIE WIENER ZEITUNG (Vienna)

  21 (9) January 1878

  The balance of power between the combatants in the final stage of the war is such that we can no longer disregard the danger of pan-Slavic expansion that threatens the southern borders of the dual monarchy. Tsar Alexander and his satellites of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro have amassed a concentrated force of 700,000 men, equipped with one and a half thousand cannon. Against whom is it directed, one might ask? Against a demoralized Turkish army which, even according to the most optimistic estimates, can at present number no more than 120,000 hungry, frightened soldiers?

  This is no joke, gentlemen. One would have to be an ostrich with one’s head buried in the sand not to see the danger hanging over the whole of enlightened Europe. To procrastinate is to perish. If we simply sit back and do nothing, watching the Scythian hordes . . .

  FANDORIN THREW HIS CAPE BACK off his shoulder and the burnished steel of a small, handsome revolver glinted dully in his right hand. The very same instant, Mizinov clicked his fingers and three gendarmes entered the room and trained their carbines on the correspondent.

  “What sort of tomfoolery is this?” barked Sobolev. “What’s all this ‘salaam-aleichem’ and ‘effendi’ nonsense?”

  Varya glanced around at Charles. He was standing by the wall with his arms crossed on his chest, watching the titular counselor with a wary, sarcastic smile.

  “Erast Petrovich!” Varya babbled. “Surely you went to get McLaughlin!”

  “Varvara Andreevna, I went to England, but not for McLaughlin. It was quite c-clear to me that he was not and could not be there.”

  “But you didn’t say a word when His Majesty . . .” Varya bit her tongue before she could blurt out a state secret.

  “My arguments would have been m-mere speculation. And I had to go to Europe in any case.”

  “And what did you discover there?”

  “As was to be expected, the machinations of the British cabinet have nothing to do with the case. That is one. Yes, they do not like us in London. Yes, they are preparing for a great war. But murdering messengers and organizing sabotage—that would not do at all. It would contradict the British sense of fair play. And Count Shuvalov told me the same thing.

  “I visited the offices of the Daily Post and was convinced of McLaughlin’s absolute innocence. That is t-two. His friends and colleagues describe Seamus as a straightforward and forthright man who is hostile to British policy and who may, indeed, have connections with the Irish nationalist movement. There is absolutely no way he could be represented as an agent of the perfidious Disraeli.

  “On the return journey, since it lay on my route, I stopped off in Paris, where I was delayed for some time. I called into the offices of the Revue Parisienne.”

  Paladin made a slight movement and the gendarmes raised their carbines to their shoulders, ready to shoot. The journalist shook his head emphatically and put his hands back under the tails of his riding coat.

  “And there it became clear,” Erast Petrovich continued as though nothing had happened, “that the illustrious Charles Paladin had never been seen in the offices of his own publication. That is three. He sent in his brilliant articles, essays, and sketches by post or telegraph.”

  “Well, what of it?” Sobolev objected in exasperation. “Charles is no effete socialite; he’s a man of adventure.”

  “And to an even greater d-degree than your excellency supposes. I rummaged through the files of the Revue Parisienne, and some very curious coincidences came to light. Monsieur Paladin’s first published articles were submitted from Bulgaria ten years ago, at the very time when the Danubian Vilajet was governed by Midhat Pasha, whose secretary was the young official Anwar. In eighteen sixty-eight, Paladin submits a number of brilliant articles on the mores of the sultan’s court from Constantinople. This is during Midhat Pasha’s first period of ascendancy, when he is invited to the capital to lead the council of state. A year later, the reformer is dispatched into honorable exile to distant Mesopotamia, and, as though bewitched, the fluent pen of the talented journalist also moves from Constantinople to Baghdad. For three years (the precise period for which Midhat Pasha governed Iraq), Paladin writes about excavations of Assyrian cities, Arab sheikhs, and the Suez Canal.”

  “You’re stacking the deck!” Sobolev interrupted angrily. “Charles traveled all over the Near East. He also wrote from other places that you don’t mention, because they don’t fit your hypothesis. In seventy-three, for instance, he was with me in Khiva. We survi
ved raging thirst and searing heat together. And there was no Midhat there, Mister Investigator!”

  “And from where did he travel to Central Asia?” Fandorin asked the general.

  “From Iran, I think.”

  “I believe it was not from Iran, but from Iraq. In late eighteen seventy-three, the newspaper publishes his lyrical sketches about Greece. Why Greece all of a sudden? Why, because at that time our Anwareffendi’s patron was moved to Salonika. By the way, Varvara Andreevna, do you recall the marvelous feuilleton about the old boots?”

  Varya nodded, gazing at Fandorin as if she were spellbound. What he was saying was so obviously absurd, but how confidently, how elegantly and masterfully he said it! And he had completely stopped stammering.

  “It mentioned a shipwreck that took place in the Gulf of Therma in November eighteen seventy-three. The city of Salonika happens to lie on the shore of the gulf. From the same article, I learned that in eighteen sixty-seven the author had been in Sofia, and in eighteen seventy-one in Mesopotamia, for that was precisely when the Arab nomads slaughtered Sir Andrew Wayard’s British archaeological expedition. It was after the ‘Old Boots’ that I first began to suspect Monsieur Paladin seriously, but he threw me off the track more than once with his cunning maneuvers. And now”—Fandorin put his revolver away and turned toward Mizinov—“let us summarize the damage inflicted on us by the activities of Mr. Anwar. Monsieur Paladin joined the war correspondents’ corps in late June last year. At that time our armies were advancing victoriously. The barrier of the Danube had been crossed, the Turkish army was demoralized, the road lay open to Sofia, and from there to Constantinople. General Gurko’s forces had already taken the Shipka Pass, the key to the Great Balkan Range. We had, in effect, already won the war. But what happens after that? Due to a fatal confusion in the coding of a message, our army occupies the irrelevant city of Nikopol, and meanwhile Osman Pasha’s army corps enters the empty Plevna unhindered, completely cutting off our advance. Let us recall the circumstances of that mysterious story. Cryptographer Yablokov commits a serious offence by leaving a secret message unattended on his table. Why did Yablokov do this? Because he was overwhelmed by news of the unexpected arrival of his fiancée, Miss Suvorova.”

  Everyone looked at Varya, making her feel as though she were an item of material evidence.

  “But who informed Yablokov of his fiancée’s arrival? The journalist Paladin. When the cryptographer went dashing off, insane with joy, all that had to be done was to rewrite the coded message, replacing the word ‘Plevna’ with the word ‘Nikopol.’ Our military code is not exactly complicated, to put it mildly. Paladin knew about the Russian army’s forthcoming maneuver, because he was there when I told you, Mikhail Dmitrievich, about Osman Pasha. Do you recall the first time we met?”

  Sobolev nodded morosely.

  “Well, then, to continue, let us recall the story of the mythical Ali-bei, whom Paladin supposedly interviewed. That ‘interview’ has cost us two thousand dead, and now the Russian army is bogged down at Plevna with no end in sight. It was a risky ploy—Anwar inevitably attracted suspicion to himself, but he had no alternative. If it came to it, the Russians could have simply left a covering force to contain Osman and pushed their main forces further south. However, the failure of the first assault created an exaggerated idea of the danger of Plevna in the mind of our command, and the full might of the army was turned against a little Bulgarian town.”

  “Wait, Erast Petrovich, Ali-bei really did exist after all!” Varya exclaimed. “Our scouts saw him in Plevna!”

  “We shall come back to that a little later. But for now let us recall the circumstances of the second battle of Plevna, the blame for which we laid on the treacherous Romanian Colonel Lukan, who had apparently betrayed our plan of battle to the Turks. You were right, Lavrenty Arkadievich—the ‘J’ in Lukan’s notebook does stand for ‘journalist.’ But it does not mean McLaughlin, it stands for Paladin. He was able to recruit the Romanian dandy with no great difficulty—his gambling debts and inordinate vanity made the colonel easy prey. And in Bucharest, Paladin cunningly exploited Miss Suvorova in order to rid himself of an agent who was no longer useful and had actually begun to be dangerous. And in addition, I assume, Anwar needed to meet with Osman Pasha. Banishment from the army—purely temporary, and with his rehabilitation planned beforehand—gave him the opportunity to do so. The French correspondent was absent for a month. And it was precisely during that period that our intelligence service reported that the Turkish commander had a mysterious adviser called Ali-bei. This same Ali-bei deliberately made fleeting appearances in crowded public places, sporting his conspicuous beard. You must have had a great laugh at our expense, Mister Spy.”

  Paladin did not respond. He was watching the titular counselor carefully, as if he were waiting for something.

  “Ali-bei’s appearance in Plevna was necessary in order to clear the journalist Paladin of the suspicion caused by that ill-starred interview. I have no doubt, indeed, that Anwar used that month to great advantage to himself. No doubt he reached an agreement with Osman Pasha on joint plans of action for the future and acquired some reliable contacts. After all, our counterintelligence operations did not prevent correspondents from having their own informants in the besieged town. If he wished, Anwar-effendi could even have visited Constantinople for a few days, since Plevna’s lines of communication were still open. It would have been very simple—once he reached Sofia, he could have caught a train and the next day he would have been in Istanbul.

  “The third assault was especially dangerous for Osman Pasha, above all because of Mikhail Dmitrievich’s surprise attack. But luck was with Anwar and not with us. We were confounded by a fatal coincidence—on his way to headquarters, Zurov galloped past the correspondents and shouted out to them that you were in Plevna. Naturally Anwar realized the significance of this statement perfectly well, and also the reason why Zurov had been dispatched to command headquarters. Somehow he had to gain time, give Osman Pasha a chance to regroup and dislodge Mikhail Dmitrievich and his small detachment from Plevna before reinforcements arrived. And yet again Anwar took a risk and improvised. Boldly, brilliantly, creatively—and, as always, mercilessly.

  “When the journalists heard about the successful incursion on the southern flank, they all went dashing to their telegraph apparatuses, but Anwar set off in pursuit of Zurov and Kazanzaki. On his famous mount, Yataghan, he overhauled them with no difficulty. Once they reached a deserted spot, he shot them both. Evidently when he made his move he was galloping along between Zurov and Kazanzaki, with the captain on his right and the gendarme on his left. Anwar shoots the hussar in the left temple, at point-blank range, and a moment later dispatches a bullet into the forehead of the lieutenant colonel, who has turned toward him at the sound of the shot. The whole thing took no more than a second. There were troops moving all around, but the horsemen were riding along a depression. No one could see them, and the shots could hardly have attracted attention in the middle of an artillery barrage. The killer left Zurov’s body lying where it was, but thrust the gendarme’s dagger into his shoulder. In other words, first he shot him, and then he stabbed him when he was already dead, and not, as we initially believed, the other way round. Anwar’s intent is clear—to cast suspicion on Kazanzaki. For the same reason, he moved the lieutenant colonel’s body to the nearest bushes and staged a suicide.”

  “But what about the letter?” Varya reminded him. “From that—what was his name—Shalunishka?”

  “A magnificent ploy,” Fandorin acknowledged. “Turkish intelligence had evidently been aware of Kazanzaki’s unnatural inclinations since his old days in Tiflis. I presume that Anwar-effendi kept an eye on the lieutenant colonel, bearing in mind the possibility of resorting to blackmail at some time in the future. When events took an unexpected turn, he used the information to good effect to throw us off the scent. Anwar simply took a blank sheet of paper and dashed off a caricature of a letter from a homos
exual lover. But he somewhat overdid it; even at the time I thought the letter seemed suspicious. In the first place, it is hard to believe that a Georgian prince could write such abominable Russian—he ought at least to have had a grammar-school education. And, in the second place, perhaps you recall my asking Lavrenty Arkadievich about the envelope and learning that the letter had been lying in the dead man’s pocket unprotected? But in that case, how could it have remained so clean and crisp? Kazanzaki must have been carrying it around with him for an entire year.”

  “This is all very fine,” Mizinov said impatiently, “and this is the second time in the last twenty-four hours that you’ve expounded your ideas on this matter to me. But I ask you once again: Why were you so secretive? Why didn’t you share your doubts earlier?”

  “If one rejects one explanation, one must propose another, and I simply could not make all the pieces fit together,” replied Erast Petrovich. “My opponent employed far too wide a range of devices. I am ashamed to admit it, but for a time my main suspect was Mr. Perepyolkin.”

  “Eremei?” Sobolev exclaimed in astonishment, throwing his hands up in disbelief. “Come now, gentlemen, this is sheer paranoia.”

  Perepyolkin himself blinked several times and nervously unbuttoned his tight collar.

  “Yes, it is stupid,” Fandorin agreed. “But in whatever direction we went, we kept tripping over the lieutenant colonel. Even the way he made his first appearance seemed rather suspicious—the miraculous liberation from captivity, the failed shot at point-blank range; Bashi-Bazouks usually shoot better than that. And then the business with the coded message—it was Perepyolkin who delivered the telegram with the order to attack Nikopol to General Kriedener. And who was it that egged on the credulous journalist Paladin to sneak into Plevna under the very noses of the Turks? And the mysterious letter ‘J.’ Thanks to Zurov’s easy wit, everyone had begun to call Eremei Ionovich ‘Jerome.’ That is on the one hand. On the other hand, you must admit that Anwareffendi’s cover was ideal. I could construct any number of logical hypotheses, but the moment I looked at Charles Paladin, all my arguments crumbled to dust. Just take a look at this man.”