The Death of Achilles (12 page)

Here at last was a door with a brass plaque: HANS-GEORG KNABE. Fandorin tugged hard on the bronze handle — it wasn’t locked. After that he moved quickly, but took precautionary measures. He held the revolver out in front of him and flicked the safety catch off.

The long corridor was dimly lit, the only light entering from an open window at its far end. That was why Erast Petrovich, anticipating danger from ahead and from the side, but not from below, failed to notice the elongated object lying under his feet and stumbled over it, almost sprawling full length. He turned swiftly and prepared to fire, but there was no need.

Lying facedown on the floor, with one hand flung forward, was a familiar figure in a checked jacket with its back flaps parted. Witchcraft, was the first thought that came into Erast Petrovich’s mind. He turned the man over onto his back and immediately saw the wooden handle of a butcher’s knife protruding from his right side. Witchcraft apparently had nothing to do with the case. The secret agent was dead, and to judge from the blood pulsing from the wound, he had only just been killed.

Fandorin ran through all the rooms, peering intently through half-closed eyes. There was chaos all around, with everything turned upside down and books scattered across floors. In the bedroom, white fluff from a slashed eiderdown was swirling in the air like snow in a blizzard. And there was not a soul there.

Erast Petrovich glanced out the window that was intended to illuminate the corridor and saw the roof of an extension directly below him. So that was it!

Jumping down, the detective set off across the rumbling iron sheeting of the roof. The view from up there was quite remarkable: a scarlet sunset above the belfries and towers of Moscow, and a black flight of crows rippling across the scarlet. But the collegiate assessor, normally so sensitive to beauty, did not even glance at this wonderful panorama.

It was a strange business. The killer had disappeared, and yet there was absolutely nowhere he could have gone from that roof. He couldn’t have simply flown away, could he?

Two hours later, the apartment on Karyetny Ryad was unrecognizable. There were detectives darting around the crowded rooms, men from the code section numbering all the papers that had been found and assembling them in cardboard files, a gendarme photographer taking pictures of the body from various angles. The top brass — the chief of police, the head of the secret section of the governor’s chancellery, and the deputy for special assignments — occupied the kitchen, which had already been searched.

“And what ideas do the gentlemen detectives have?” asked Khurtin-sky, dispatching a pinch of tobacco into his nostril.

“The general picture is clear,” said Karachentsev with a shrug. “A mock robbery, staged for idiots. They wrecked everything, but didn’t take anything of value. And the secret hiding places haven’t been touched: the weapons, the codebook, the tools — they’re all still there. Evidently they were hoping we wouldn’t dig too deep.”

“Atish-oo!” the court counselor sneezed deafeningly, but no one blessed him.

The general turned away from him and continued, addressing Fandorin.

“One particularly ‘convincing’ detail is the murder weapon. The knife was taken from over there.” He pointed to a set of hooks on which knives of various sizes were hanging. One hook was empty. “Intended to suggest that the thief grabbed the first thing that came to hand. Typically German, rough-hewn cunning. The blow to the liver was delivered with supreme professionalism. Someone was waiting for our Herr Knabe in the dark corridor.”

“But who?” asked Pyotr Parmyonovich, carefully charging snuff into his other nostril.

The chief of police did not condescend to explain, and so Erast Petrovich had to do it.

“Probably someone from his own side. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else it could be.”

“The krauts panicked; they’re afraid of a diplomatic conflict,” Evgeny Osipovich said with a nod. “The robbery is a fiction, of course. Why bother to rip open the eiderdown? No, they were just trying to muddy the waters. It’s not good,
meine Herren
, not Christian, to do in your own agent like a pig in a slaughterhouse. But I understand the reason for the panic. In this case exposure could mean more than a mere scandal — it could mean war. The General Staff captain overplayed his hand a bit. Excessive zeal is a dangerous thing, and the careerist got what he deserved. In any case, gentlemen, our work is done. The events surrounding General Sobolev’s death have been clarified. From here on the people at the top make the decisions. What’s to be done with Wanda?”

“She has nothing to do with Sobolev’s death,” said Fandorin. “And she has been punished enough for her contacts with the German agent. She almost lost her life.”

“Leave the chanteuse alone,” Khurtinsky seconded him, “otherwise a lot of things will surface that we’d rather didn’t.”

“Well, then,” the chief of police summed up, evidently considering how he would compose his report to the ‘people at the top’.

“In two days the investigation has reconstituted the entire chain of events. The German agent Herr Knabe, wishing to distinguish himself in the eyes of his superiors, took it into his head, at his own risk, to eliminate our finest Russian general, well known for his militant anti-Germanism, and the acknowledged leader of the Russian nationalist party. Having learned of Sobolev’s forthcoming arrival in Moscow, Knabe arranged for the general to meet a demimondaine, to whom he gave a small bottle of a certain powerful poison. The female agent either chose not to use it or had no time to do so. The sealed bottle has been confiscated from her and is now in the Moscow Governor’s Department of the Gendarmes. The general’s death was the result of natural causes; however, Knabe did not know this and hurried to report his action to Berlin, anticipating a reward. His superiors in Berlin were horrified and, foreseeing the possible consequences of such a political murder, immediately decided to rid themselves of their overzealous agent, which they did. It is not envisaged that there will be any reason to take diplomatic action against the German government, especially since no attempt was actually made on the general’s life.” Evgeny Osipovich concluded his summary in his normal, unofficial tone of voice. “Our clever captain was destroyed by a fatal confluence of circumstances. Which was no more than the scoundrel deserved.”

Khurtinsky stood up.

“Amen to that. Now, gentlemen, you can finish up here, and with your permission I shall take my leave. His Excellency is waiting for my report.”

It was well after midnight when Erast Petrovich reached the hotel. Masa was in the corridor, standing motionless in front of the door.

“Master, she is here again,” the Japanese declared laconically.

“Who?”

“The woman in black. She came and she does not leave. I looked in the dictionary and said that I did not know when you would come back: “Master not here now. Here later.” She sat down and is still sitting. She has been sitting three hours, and I have been standing here.”

With a sigh, Erast Petrovich opened the door slightly and peered in through the gap. Sitting by the table with her hands folded on her knees was a golden-haired young woman in a mourning dress and a wide-brimmed hat with a black veil. He could see the long eyelashes lowered over her eyes, a thin, slightly aquiline nose, the delicate oval outline of her face. Hearing the door creak, the stranger raised her eyes and Fandorin froze when he saw how beautiful they were. Instinctively recoiling from the door, the collegiate assessor hissed: “Masa, but you said she was old. She’s no more than twenty-five!”

“European women look so old,” said Masa, shaking his head. “And anyway, master, is twenty-five years young?”

“You said she was ugly!”

“She is ugly, the poor thing. Yellow hair, a big nose, and watery eyes — just like yours, master.”

“I see,” whispered Erast Petrovich, stung. “So you’re the only handsome one here, are you?”

And, heaving another deep sigh, but this time for a quite different reason, he entered the room.

“Mr. Fandorin?” asked the young woman, rising abruptly. “You are conducting the investigation into the circumstances of Mikhail Dmitrievich Sobolev’s death, are you not? Gukmasov told me.”

Erast Petrovich bowed without speaking and gazed into the stranger’s face. The combination of willpower and fragility, intelligence and femininity was one not often seen in the features of a young woman’s face. Indeed, this lady was somehow strangely reminiscent of Wanda, except that there was not the slightest sign of cruelty or cynical mockery in the line of her mouth.

The night visitor walked up close to the young man, looked into his eyes, and in a voice trembling from either suppressed tears or fury, asked: “Are you aware that Mikhail Dmitrievich was murdered?”

Fandorin frowned.

“Yes, yes, he was murdered.” The girl’s eyes glinted feverishly. “Because of that accursed briefcase!”

In which everyone mourns and Fandorin wastes his time

From early on Sunday morning, the incessant pealing drifted across a tranquil sky, bleached almost white by brilliant sunlight. The day seemed to have turned out fine, and the golden onion domes of the innumerable churches shone so brightly that it made you blink to look at them. But the heart of this city sprawling across the low hills was filled with a chill anguish, and there was a doleful and despondent cadence to the constant droning of those far-famed bells — today the grieving people of Moscow were praying for the eternal repose of the recently departed servant of God, Mikhail.

The deceased had lived for a long time in St. Petersburg and only made brief, flying visits to Russia’s ancient capital, and yet Moscow had loved him more intensely than had cold, bureaucratic Peter, loved him with a devoted, womanly love, without sparing too much thought for the true virtues of its idol — it was enough that he was dashingly handsome and famed for his victories. And above all Sobolev was beloved of Muscovites because in him they sensed a genuine Russian soul, untainted by foreign arrogance and duplicity. This was the reason why lithographs of the bushy-bearded White General wielding his keen-edged saber hung in almost every house in Moscow, whether the inhabitants were minor functionaries, merchants, or bourgeois.

The city had not manifested such great grief even in March of the previous year, when the requiem was held for the treacherously slain emperor Alexander the Liberator, after which people had worn mourning for a whole year, without dressing up smartly, or organizing any festivities, or styling their hair or staging any comedies in the theaters.

Long before the funeral procession set out across the center of the city to Krasnye Vorota, where the requiem was due to be celebrated in the Church of the Three Hierarchs, the pavements, windows, balconies, and even roofs along Theater Lane, Lubyanka Street, and Myasnitskaya Street were thronged with hordes of spectators. Little boys perched in trees, and the most audacious of them even clung to drainpipes. The forces of the city garrison and cadets from the Alexander and Junker colleges were drawn up in ranks that lined the entire route to be traveled by the hearse. The funeral train — fifteen carriages decorated all over with flags, St. George crosses, and oak leaves — was already waiting at the Ryazan Station. Since St. Petersburg had chosen not to bid farewell to the hero, it was Mother Russia herself who would say the final good-bye, and her heart lay midway between Moscow and Ryazan, where the White General would finally be laid to rest in the village of Spasskoe in the district of Ranenburg.

The procession extended for a good verst. There were more than twenty velvet cushions bearing the orders and decorations of the deceased, with the Star of St. George, first class, carried by the commander of the St. Petersburg military district, General of Infantry Ganetsky. And the wreaths, all those wreaths! A huge one from the traders of Okhotny Ryad, and from the English Club, and the Moscow Bourgeois Council, and the Cavaliers of St. George — far too many to list them all. The hearse — a gun carriage covered with crimson velvet and surmounted by a canopy of gold — was preceded by heralds on horseback bearing inverted torches and the masters of ceremonies — the governor-general of Moscow and war minister. The coffin was followed by a solitary rider on a black Arabian steed — the brother and personal representative of the sovereign, Grand Duke Kirill Alexandrovich. Behind him came Sobolev’s famous snow-white Akhaltekin, draped with a black blanket of mourning, with adjutants leading him by the bridle. Then came the guard of honor, marching in slow time, carrying yet more wreaths, more modest in size, and the most important guests, walking along with their heads uncovered — high officials, generals, members of the Municipal Duma, financial magnates. It was a magnificent, quite incomparable spectacle.

Then, as though suddenly ashamed of its misplaced brightness, the June sunshine hid itself behind dark clouds. The day turned gray, and when the procession reached Krasnye Vorota, where a hundred thousand mourners stood sobbing and crossing themselves, a fine, miserable drizzle began to fall. Nature was finally in harmony with the mood of human society.

Fandorin squeezed his way through the dense crowd, trying to find the chief of police. He had gone to the general’s home on Tverskoi Boulevard shortly after seven, when it was barely light, but he had come too late — they told him that His Excellency had already left for the hotel Dusseaux. This was serious business, a special day, and a great responsibility. And everything depended on Evgeny Osipovich.

Then a string of misfortunes had followed. At the door of the hotel Dusseaux, a captain of gendarmes informed Erast Petrovich that the general “was here just this minute and went galloping off to the department.” But Karachentsev was not at the department on Malaya Nikitskaya Street, either — he had dashed away to restore order in front of the church, where people were in danger of being crushed.

Of course, Erast Petrovich’s urgent little matter of vital importance could have been decided by the governor-general. There was no need to search for him — there he was, clearly visible from all sides, at the very head of the procession, perched on his dappled-gray horse with a seat as firm as a bronze Cavalry Guard. No point in trying to get anywhere near him.