Fandorin in English 1-10

The old man nodded his bald head submissively and hobbled towards the door. In the doorway he collided with a wild-looking man - skinny and jittery with long hair - but he didn't stare at him. He shuffled off rapidly along the corridor in his felt shoes, turned a corner and unlocked a closet with a key.

But it turned out not to be any ordinary closet: it had a concealed door in the inside corner. Behind the little door there was another small closet. Frol Grigorievich squeezed into it, sat down on a chair with a comfortable cushion on it, silently slid opened a small shutter in the wall and suddenly he was looking though glass at the whole of the secret study, and he could hear Erast Petrovich's slightly muffled voice: 'Thank you. For the time being you'll have to stay at the police station. For your own safety.'

The valet put on a pair of spectacles with thick lenses and pressed his face up close to the secret opening, but he only saw the back of the man leaving the room. So that was an interrogation, was it? - it hadn't even lasted three minutes. Vedishchev grunted sceptically and waited to see what would come next.

'Send in Burylin,' Fandorin ordered the adjutant.

A man with a fat Tatar face and insolent eyes came in. Without waiting to be invited, he sat down on a chair, crossed his legs and began swinging his expensive cane with a gold knob. It was obvious straight away that he was a millionaire.

'Well, are you going to take me to look at offal again?' the millionaire asked merrily. 'Only you won't catch me out like that. I have a thick skin. Who was that who went out? Vanka Stenich, wasn't it? Ooh, he turned his face away. As if he'd not had plenty of pickings from Burylin. He rode around Europe on my money, and he lived as my house guest. I felt sorry for him, the poor unfortunate. But he abused my hospitality. Ran away from me to England. Began to despise me - I was dirty and he decided he wanted a clean life. Well, let him go; he's a hopeless man - a genuine psychiatric case. Will you permit me to smoke a small cigar?'

All of the millionaire's questions went unanswered. Instead, Fandorin asked his own question, which Vedishchev didn't understand at all. At your meeting of fellow-students there was a man with long hair, rather shabby. Who is he?'

But Burylin understood the question and answered it willingly: 'Filka Rozen. He was thrown out of the medical faculty with me and Stenich, distinguished himself with honours in the line of immoral behaviour. He works as an assessor in a pawn shop. And he drinks, of course.' 'Where can I find him?'

'You won't find him anywhere. Before you came calling, like a fool I gave him five hundred roubles - turned sloppy in my old age, thinking of the old days. Until he's drunk it all to the last kopeck, he won't show up. Maybe he's living it up in some tavern in Moscow, or maybe in Peter, or maybe in Nizhny. That's the kind of character he is.'

For some reason this news made Fandorin extremely upset. He even jumped up off his chair, pulled those round green beads on a string out of his pocket and put them back again.

The man with the fat face observed the Collegiate Counsellor's strange behaviour with curiosity. He took out a fat cigar, lit it and scattered the ash on the carpet, the insolent rogue. But he didn't start asking questions; he waited.

'Tell me: why were you, Stenich and Rozen thrown out of the faculty, while Zakharov was only transferred to the anatomical pathology department?' Fandorin asked after a lengthy pause.

'It depended on who got up to how much mischief Burylin said with a laugh. 'Sotsky the biggest hothead amongst us, actually got sent to a punitive battalion. I felt sorry for the old dog; he had imagination, even if he was a rogue. I was under threat too, but it was all right: money got me out of it.' He winked a wild eye and puffed out cigar smoke. 'The girl students, our jolly companions, got it in the neck too - just for belonging to the female sex. They were sent to Siberia, under police surveillance. One became a morphine addict, another married a priest - I made inquiries.' The millionaire laughed. And at that time Zakharka the Englishman wasn't really outstanding in any way - that's why he got off with a lesser punishment. "He was present and did not stop it" - that's what the verdict said.'

Fandorin snapped his fingers as if he had just received a piece of good news that he'd been expecting for ages, but then Burylin took a piece of paper folded into four out of his pocket.

'It's odd that you should ask about Zakharov. This morning I received a very strange note from him, just a moment before your dogs arrived to take me away. A street urchin brought it. Here, read it.'

Frol Grigorievich twisted himself right round and flattened his nose against the glass, but there was no point - he couldn't read the letter from a distance. Only it was clear from all the signs that this was a highly important piece of paper. Erast Petrovich's eyes were glued to it.

'I'll give him some money, of course,' said the millionaire. 'Only there wasn't any special "old friendship" between the two of us; he's just being sentimental there. And what kind of melodrama is this: "Please remember me kindly, my brother"? What has he been up to, our Pluto? Did he dine on those girls that were lying on the tables in the morgue the other day?' Burylin threw his head back and laughed, delighted with his joke.

Fandorin was still examining the note. He walked across to the window, lifted the sheet of paper higher, and Vedishchev saw the scrawling, uneven lines of writing.

'Yes, it's such terrible scribble you can hardly even read it,' the millionaire said in his deep voice, looking round for somewhere to put the cigar he had finished smoking. As if it was written in a carriage or with a serious hangover.'

He didn't find anywhere. He almost threw it to the floor, but decided not to; he cast a guilty glance at the Collegiate Counsellor's back, wrapped the stub in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket. That's right.

'You can go, Burylin,' Erast Petrovich said without turning round. 'Until tomorrow you will remain under guard.'

The millionaire was highly incensed at that news. 'I've had enough; I've already spent one night feeding your police bedbugs! They're vicious beasts, and hungry. The way they threw themselves on an Orthodox believer's body!'

Fandorin wasn't listening. He pressed the bell button. The gendarme officer came in and dragged the rich man towards the door.

'But what about Zakharka?' Burylin shouted. 'He'll be calling for the money!'

'That's no concern of yours,' said Erast Petrovich, and he asked the officer: 'Has the reply to my inquiry arrived from the ministry?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Let me have it.'

The gendarme brought in some kind of telegram and went back out into the corridor.

The telegram produced a remarkable effect on Fandorin. He read it, threw it on to the desk and then suddenly did something very strange. He clapped his hands very quickly several times, and so loudly that Vedishchev banged his head against the glass in his surprise, and the gendarme, the adjutant and the secretary stuck their heads in at the door all at once.

'It's all right, gentlemen,' Fandorin reassured them. 'It's a Japanese exercise for focusing one's thoughts. Please go.'

And then even more wonders followed.

When the door closed behind his subordinates, Erast Petrovich suddenly started to get undressed. When he was left in just his underclothes, he took a travelling bag that Vedishchev hadn't noticed before out from under the desk and took a bundle out of the bag. The bundle contained clothes: tight striped trousers with footstraps, a cheap paper shirt-front, a crimson waistcoat and yellow check jacket.

The highly respectable Collegiate Counsellor was transformed into a pushy jerk, the kind that hover around the street girls in the evenings. He stood in front of the mirror, exactly a yard in front of Frol Vedishchev, combed his black hair into a straight parting, plastered it with brilliantine and coloured the grey at his temples. He twisted the ends of his slim moustache upwards and shaped them into two sharp points. (Bohemian wax, Frol Vedishchev guessed - he secured Prince Dolgorukoi's sideburns in exactly the same way, so that they stuck out like eagles' wings.)

Then Fandorin put something into his mouth and grinned, and a gold cap glinted on one tooth. He carried on pulling faces for a while and seemed perfectly content with his appearance.

The Yuletide masker took a small wallet out of the bag, opened it, and Vedishchev saw that it was no ordinary wallet: inside it he could see a small-calibre burnished steel gun barrel and a little drum like the one on a revolver. Fandorin put five shells into the drum, clicked the lid shut and tested the resistance of the lock with his finger - no doubt the lock played the role of a trigger. What will they think of next for killing a man? the valet thought, with a shake of his head. And where are you going dressed like a cheap dandy, Erast Petrovich?

As if he had heard the question, Fandorin turned towards the mirror and put on a beaver-fur cap, tilted at a dashing angle, winked familiarly and said in a low voice: 'Frol Grigorievich, light a candle for me at vespers. I won t get by without God's help today'

Ineska was suffering very badly, in body and in spirit - in body, because last night Slepen, her former ponce, had waited for the poor girl outside the City of Paris tavern and given her a thorough beating for betraying him. At least the creep hadn't rearranged her face. But her stomach and sides were battered black and blue - she couldn't even turn over at night; she just lay there shifting about until morning, gasping and feeling sorry for herself. The bruises weren't the worst thing - they'd heal up soon enough, but poor Ineska's little heart was aching so badly she could hardly stand it.

Her boyfriend had disappeared, her fairy-tale prince, the handsome Erastushka; he hadn't shown his sweet face for two days now. And Slepen was as brutal as ever and always making threats. Yesterday she'd had to give her old pimp almost everything she earned, and that was no good; decent girls who stayed faithful didn't do that.

Erastushka had gone missing; that lop-eared short-arse must have handed him over to the police and her pretty dove was sitting in the lock-up in the first Arbat station, the toughest in the whole of Moscow. If only she could send her darling a present, but that Sergeant Kulebyako there was a wild beast. He'd put her inside again, the same as last year, threaten to take away her yellow ticket, and then she'd end up servicing the whole police district for free, down to the last snot-nosed constable. It still made her sick to remember it, even now. Ineska would gladly have accepted that kind of humiliation if she could just help her sweetheart, but after all, Erastushka wasn't just any boyfriend: he had brains, he was nice and clean, choosy; he wouldn't want to touch Ineska after that. Not that their passion had actually come to anything yet, so to speak; love was only just beginning, but from the very first glance Ineska had taken such a fancy to his lovely blue eyes and white teeth, she'd really fallen for him; terrible it was, worse than with that hairdresser Zhorzhik when she was sixteen, rot his pretty face, the lousy snake - if he hadn't drunk himself to death by now, of course.

Ah, if only he'd show up soon, her sweet honey-bunch. He'd put that vicious bastard Slepen in his place and he'd be sweet and gentle with Ineska, pamper her a bit. She'd found out what he'd told her to, and hidden some money in her garter too -three and a half roubles in silver. He'd be pleased; she had something to greet him and treat him with.

Erastik. It was such a sweet name, like apple jam. Her darling's real name was probably something simpler, but then Ineska hadn't been a Spanish girl all her life either; she'd been born into God's world as Efrosinya, plain simple Froska in the family.

Inessa and Erast - that had a real ring to it, like music it was. If only she could stroll arm-in-arm with him through Grachyovka, so that Sanka Myasnaya, Liudka Kalancha and especially that Adelaidka could see what a fine fancy-man Ineska had, and turn green with envy.

After that, they'd come to her apertiment. It might be small, but it was clean, and stylish too: pictures from fashion magazines stuck on the walls, a velvet lampshade, and a big, tall mirror; the softest down mattress ever, and lots of pillows, a whole seven of them - Ineska had sewn all the pillowcases herself

Then, just as she was thinking her very sweetest thoughts, her cherished dream came true. First there was a tactful knock at the door - tap-tap-tap - and then Erastushka came in, in his beaver-fur cap and white muffler, with his wool-cloth coat with the beaver collar, hanging open. You'd never think he was from the Kutuzka jail.

Ineska's little heart just stood still. She leapt up off the bed just as she was, in her cotton nightshirt, with her hair hanging loose, and threw herself on her sweetheart's neck. She only managed to kiss his lips once; then he took hold of her by the shoulders and sat her down at the table. He looked at her sternly.

'Right, tell me,' he said.

Ineska understood - those vicious tongues had already been wagging.

She didn't try to deny anything; she wanted everything to be honest between them. 'Beat me,' she said, 'beat me, Erastushka; I'm to blame. Only I'm not all that much to blame - don't you go believing just anyone. Slepen tried to force me' (she was fibbing there, of course, but not so much really) 'and I wouldn't give him it, and he gave me a real battering. Here, look.'

She pulled up her shirt and showed him the blue, crimson and yellow patches. So he would feel sorry for her.

But it didn't soften him. Erastushka frowned. 'I'll have a word with Slepen afterwards; he won't bother you again. Get back to the point. Did you find who I told you to? - the one who went with that friend of yours and barely came out alive?

'I did, Erastushka, I found her; Glashka's her name. Glashka Beloboka from Pankratievsky Lane. She remembers the bastard all right - he nearly slit her throat open with that knife of his. Glashka still wraps a scarf round her neck, even now'

'Take me to her.'

'I will, Erastushka, I'll take you, but let's have a bit of cognac first.' She took a bottle she'd been keeping out of the little cupboard, put her bright-coloured Persian shawl on her shoulders and picked up a comb to fluff up her hair and make it all glossy.

'We'll have a drink later. I told you: take me there. Business first.'

Ineska sighed, feeling her heart melting: she loved strict men -couldn't help herself. She went over and looked up into his beautiful face, his angry eyes, his curly moustache. 'I think my legs are giving are giving way, Erastushka,' she whispered faintly.

But today wasn't Ineska's day for kissing and cuddling. There was a sudden crash and a clatter from a blow that almost knocked the door off its hinges, and there was Slepen standing in the doorway, evil drunk, with a vicious grin on his smarmy face. Oh the neighbours, those lousy Grachyovka rats, they'd told on her; they hadn't wasted any time.

'Lovey-doving?' he grinned. 'Forgotten about me, the poor orphan, have you?' Then the grin vanished from his rotten mug and his shaggy eyebrows moved together. 'I'll talk to you, Ineska, afterwards, you louse. Seems like you didn't learn your lesson. And as for you, mate, come out in the yard and we'll banter.'

Ineska rushed to the window - there were two of them in the yard: Slepen's stooges, Khryak and Mogila.

'Don't go!' she shouted. 'They'll kill you! Go away, Slepen, I'll make such a racket all Grachyovka'll come running' - and she had already filled her lungs with air to let out a howl; but Erastushka stopped her.

'Don't, Ineska, you heard what he said; let me have a talk with the man.'

'Erastik, Mogila carries a sawn-off under his coat,' Ineska explained to the dimwit. 'They'll shoot you. Shoot you and dump you in the sewer. They've done it before.'

But her boyfriend wouldn't listen; he wasn't interested. He took a big wallet out of his pocket, tortoiseshell. "Salright,' he said. ‘I’ll buy 'em off.' And he went out with Slepen, to certain death.

Ineska collapsed face down into the seven pillows and started whimpering - about her malicious fate, about her dream that hadn't come true, about the constant torment.

Out in the yard there were one, two, three, four quick shots, and then someone started howling - not just one person, a whole choir of them.

Ineska stopped whimpering and looked at the icon of the Mother of God in the corner, decorated for Easter with paper flowers and little coloured lamps. 'Mother of God,' Ineska asked her, 'work a miracle for Easter Sunday and let Erastushka be alive. It's all right if he's wounded; I'll nurse him well. Just let him be alive.'

The Heavenly Mediatress took pity on Ineska - the door creaked and Erastik came in. And not even wounded - he was as right as rain, and his lovely scarf hadn't even shifted a bit.

'There, I told you, Ineska; wipe that wet off your face. Slepen won't touch you any more; he can't. I put holes in both his grabbers. And the other two won't forget in a hurry either. Get dressed and take me to this Glashka of yours.'

And that dream of Ineska's did come true after all. She went strolling through the whole of Grachyovka on her prince's arm -she deliberately led him the long way round, though it was quicker to get to the Vladimir Road tavern, where Glashka lived, through the yards, across the rubbish tip and through the knacker's yard. Ineska had dressed herself up in her little velvet jacket and batiste blouse, and she'd put on her crepe-lizette skirt for the first time and even her boots that were only for dry weather - she didn't care. She powdered her face that was puffy from crying and backcombed her fringe. All in all, there was plenty to turn Sanka and Liudka green. It was just a pity they didn't meet Adelaidka; never mind, her girlfriends would give her the picture.

Ineska still couldn't get enough of looking at her darling, she kept looking into his face and chattering away like a magpie: 'She has a daughter, Glashka does - a real fright she is. That's what the good folks told me: "You ask for the Glashka with the ugly daughter." '

'Ugly? What way is she ugly?'

'She has this birthmark that covers half her face - wine colour; it's a real nightmare. I'd rather put my head in a noose than walk around looking like that. In the next house to us, there was this Nadka used to live there, a tailor's daughter ...' But before she had time to tell him about Nadka, they'd already reached the Vladimir Road. They walked up the creaking staircase where the rooms were.

Glashka's room was lousy, not a patch on Ineska's apertiment. Glashka was there, putting on her make-up in front of the mirror - she was going out to work the street soon.

'Look, Glafira, I've brought a good man to see you. Tell him what he asks about that evil bastard that cut you,' Ineska instructed her, then sat sedately in the corner.

Erastik immediately put a three-rouble note on the table. 'That's yours, Glashka, for your trouble. What sort of man was he? What did he look like?'

Glashka was a good-looking girl, though in her strict way Ineska thought she didn't keep herself clean. She didn't even look at the money.

'Everyone knows his kind: crazy' she answered and wiggled her shoulders this way and that.

She stuck the money up her skirt anyway - not that she was that interested, just to be polite. And she stared at Erast that hard, ran her peepers all over him, the shameless hussy, that Ineska's heart started fluttering.

'Men are always interested in me,' Glashka said modestly, to start her story. 'But that time I was really low. At Shrovetide I got these scabs all over my face, so bad I was scared to look in the mirror. I walked and walked and no one took any interest; I'd have been happy to do it for fifteen kopecks. That one's a big eater' - she nodded towards the curtain, from behind which they could hear the sound of sleepy snuffling. 'Plain terrible, it is. And anyway, this one comes up, very polite, he was—'

'That's right, that was the way he came up to me too, 'Ineska put in, feeling jealous. And just think, my face was all scratched and battered then too. I had a fight with that bitch Adelaidka. No one would come near me, no matter what I said, but this one comes up all on his own. "Don't be sad," he says, "now I'll give you joy." Only I didn't do like Glashka did, I didn't go with him, because

'I heard that already' Erastik interrupted her. 'You didn't get a proper sight of him. Keep quiet. Let Glafira talk.'

Glashka flashed her eyes, proud-like, at Ineska, and Ineska felt really bad. And it was her own stupid fault, wasn't it? - she'd brought him here herself

And he says to me: "Why such a long face? Come with me," he says. "I want to bring you joy." Well, I was feeling happy enough already. I'm thinking, I'll get a rouble here, or maybe two, I'll buy Matryoshka some bread, and some pies. Oh, I bought them all right, didn't I?... had to pay the doctur a fiver afterwards, to have my neck stitched up.'

She pointed to her neck, and there, under the powder, was a crimson line, smooth and narrow, like a thread.

'Tell me everything in the right order,' Erastushka told her.

Well, then, we come in here. He sat me on the bed - this one here - puts one hand on my shoulder and keeps the other behind his back. And he says - his voice is soft, like a woman's - "Do you think", he says, "that you're not beautiful?" So I blurts out: "I'm just fine, the face will heal up all right. It's my daughter that's disfigured for the rest of her life." He says, "What daughter's that?" "Over there," I say, "take a look at my little treasure," and I pulled back the curtain. As soon as he saw my Matryoshka -and she was sleeping then too; she's a sound sleeper, used to anything, she is - he started trembling, like, all over. And he says, "I'll make her into such a lovely beauty. And it'll make things easier for you too." I look a bit closer, and I can see he has something in his fist, behind his back, glinting like. Holy Mother, it was a knife! Sort of narrow and short.'

A scalpel?' Erastik asked, using a word they didn't understand.

'Eh?'

He just waved his hand: Come on, tell me more.

'I give him such a clout and I start yelling: "Help! Murder!" He looked at me, and his face was terrible, all twisted. "Quiet, you fool! You don't understand your own happiness!" And then he slashes at me! I jumped back, but even so he caught me across the throat. Well then I howled so loud, even Matryoshka woke up. Then she starts in wailing, and she's got a voice like a cat in heat in March. And he just turned and scarpered. And that's the whole adventure. It was the Holy Virgin saved me.'

Glashka made the sign of the cross over her forehead and then straight off, before she'd even lowered her hands, she asked: And you, good sir, you're interested for business, are you, or just in general?' And she fluttered her eyelids, the snake.

But Erast told her, strict like: 'Describe him to me, Glafira. What does he look like, this man?'

'Ordinary. A bit taller than me, shorter than you. He'd be up to here on you.' And she drew her finger across the side of Erastushka's head, real slow. Some people have no shame!

'His face is ordinary too. Clean, no moustache or beard. I don't know what else. Show him to me, and I'll recognise him straight away'

'We'll show him to you, we will,' Ineska's sweet darling muttered, wrinkling up his clear forehead and trying to figure something out. 'So he wanted to make things easier for you?'

'For that kind of help I'd unwind the evil bastard's guts with my bare hands,' Glashka said in a calm, convincing voice. 'Lord knows, we need the freaks too. Let my Matryoshka live - what's it to him?'

And from the way he talked, who is he - a gentleman or a working man? How was he dressed?'

'You couldn't tell from his clothes. Could have worked in a shop, or maybe some kind of clerk. But he spoke like a gent. I remembered one thing. When he looked at Matryoshka, he said to himself: "That's not ringworm, it's a rare nevus matevus." Nevus matevus - that's what he called my Matryoshka; I remembered that.'

'Nevus maternus,' Erastik said, putting her right. 'In doctor's talk that means "birth mark".'

He knows everything, he's so bright.

'Erastik, let's go, eh?' Ineska said, touching her sweetheart's sleeve. 'The cognac's still waiting.'

'Why go?' that cheeky bitch Glashka piped up. 'Since you're already here. I can find some cognac for a special guest, it's Shutov; I've been keeping it for Easter. So what's that your name is, you handsome man?'

Masahiro Shibata was sitting in his room, burning incense sticks and reading sutras in memory of the servant of the state Anisii Tulipov, who had departed this world in such an untimely fashion, his sister Sonya-san and the maid Palashka, whom the Japanese had his own special reasons to mourn.

Masa had arranged the room himself, spending no small amount of time and money on it. The straw mats that covered the floor had been brought on a steamboat all the way from Japan, and they had immediately made the room sunny and golden, and the floor had a jolly spring under your feet, not like stomping across cold, dead parquet made out of stupid oak. There was no furniture at all, but a spacious cupboard with a sliding door had been built into one of the walls, to hold a padded blanket and a pillow, as well as the whole of Masa's wardrobe: a cotton yukata robe, broad white cotton trousers and a similar jacket for rensu, two three-piece suits, for winter and summer, and the beautiful green livery that the Japanese servant respected so very much and only wore on special festive or solemn occasions. On the walls to delight the eye there were coloured lithographs of Tsar Alexander and Emperor Mutsuhito. And hanging in the corner, under the altar shelf, there was a scroll with an ancient wise saying: 'Live correctly and regret nothing.' Standing on the altar today there was a photograph: Masa and Anisii Tulipov in the Zoological Gardens. It had been taken the previous summer: Masa in his sandy-coloured summer suit and bowler hat, looking serious, Anisii with his mouth stretched into a smile that reached the ears sticking out from under his cap, and behind them an elephant with ears just the same, except that they were a bit bigger.

Masa was distracted from mournful thoughts on the vanity of the search for harmony and the fragility of the world by the telephone.

Fandorin's servant walked to the entrance hall through the dark, empty rooms - his master was somewhere in the city, looking for the murderer, in order to exact vengeance; his mistress had gone to the church and would probably not be back soon because tonight was the main Russian festival of Easter.

'Harro,' Masa said into the round bell mouth. 'This is Mista Fandorin's number. Who is speaking?'

'Mr Fandorin, is that you?' said a metallic voice, distorted by electrical howling. 'Erast Petrovich?'

'No, Mista Fandorin not here,' Masa said loudly, so that he could be heard above the howling. They had written in the newspapers that new telephones had appeared with an improved system which transmitted speech 'without the slightest loss of quality, remarkably loudly and clearly'. They ought to buy one. 'Prease ring back rater. Would you rike to reave a message?'

'No thank—' The voice had gone from a howl to a rustle. ‘I’ll phone later.'

'Prease make yourself wercome,' Masa said politely, and hung up.

Things were bad, very bad. This was the third night his master had not slept, and the mistress did not sleep either; she prayed all the time - either in the church or at home, in front of the icon. She had always prayed a lot, but never so much as now. All this would end very badly, although it was hard to see how things could be any worse than they were already.

If only the master would find whoever had killed Tiuri-san and murdered Sonya-san and Palasha. Find him and give his faithful servant a present - give that person to Masa. Not for long, just half an hour. No, an hour would be better ...

Engrossed in pleasant thoughts, he didn't notice the time passing. The clock struck eleven. Usually the people in the neighbouring houses were already asleep at this time, but today all the windows were lit up. It was a special night. Soon the bells would start chiming all over the city, and then different-coloured lights would explode in the sky, people in the streets would start singing and shouting, and tomorrow there would be a lot of drunks. Easter.

Perhaps he ought to go the church and stand with everyone and listen to the slow bass singing of the Christian bonzes. Anything was better than sitting all alone and waiting, waiting, waiting.

But he didn't have to wait any longer. The door slammed and he heard firm, confident footsteps. His master had returned!

'What, mourning all alone?' his master asked in Japanese, and touched him gently on the shoulder

Such displays of affection were not their custom, and the surprise broke Masa's reserve; he sobbed and then broke into tears. He didn't wipe the water from his face - let it flow. A man had no reason to be ashamed of crying, as long as it was not from pain or from fear.

The master's eyes were dry and bright. 'I haven't got everything I'd like to have,' he said. 'I thought we'd catch him red-handed. But we can't wait any longer. There's no time. The killer is still in Moscow today, but after a while he could be anywhere in the world. I have indirect evidence: I have a witness who can identify him. That's enough; he won't wriggle out of it.'

'You will take me with you?' Masa asked, overjoyed by the good news. 'You will?'

'Yes,' his master said, with a nod. 'He is a dangerous opponent, and I can't take any risks. I might need your help'

The telephone rang again.

'Master, someone phoned before. On secret business. He didn't give his name. He said he would call again.'

'Right then, you take the other phone and try to tell if it's the same person or not.'

Masa put the metal horn to his ear and prepared to listen.

'Hello. Erast Petrovich Fandorin's number. This is he,' the master said.

'Erast Petrovich, is that you?' the voice squeaked. Masa shrugged - he couldn't tell if it was the same person or someone else.

'Yes. With whom am I speaking?' 'This is Zakharov.'

'You!' The master's strong fingers clenched into a fist. 'Erast Petrovich, I have to explain things to you. I know everything is against me, but I didn't kill anyone, I swear to you!' 'Then who did?'

'I'll explain everything to you. Only give me your word of honour that you'll come alone, without the police. Otherwise I'll disappear, you'll never see me again and the killer will go free. Do you give me your word?'

'Yes,' the master answered without hesitation.

'I believe you, because I know you to be a man of honour. You have no need to fear: I am not dangerous to you, and I don't have a gun. I just want to be able to explain ... If you still are concerned, bring your Japanese along, I don't object to that. Only no police.'

'How do you know about my Japanese?'

'I know a great deal about you, Erast Petrovich. That's why you are the only one I trust... Come immediately, this minute to the Pokrovskaya Gates. You'll find the Hotel Tsargrad on Rogozhsky Val Street, a grey building with three storeys. You must come within the next hour. Go up to room number fifty-two and wait for me there. Once I'm sure that only the two of you have come, I'll come up and join you. I'll tell you the whole truth, and then you can decide what to do with me. I'll accept any decision you make.'

'There will be no police, my word of honour,' the master said, and hung up.

'That's it, Masa, that's it,' he said, and his face became a little less dead. 'He will be caught in the act. Give me some strong green tea. I shan't be sleeping again tonight.'

'What weapons shall I prepare?' Masa asked.

'I shall take my revolver; I shan't need anything else. And you take whatever you like. Remember: this man is a monster -strong, quick and unpredictable.' And he added in a quiet voice: 'I really have decided to manage without any police.'

Masa nodded understandingly. In a matter like this, of course it was better without the police.

I admit that I was wrong: not all detectives are ugly. This one, for instance, is very beautiful.

My heart swoons sweetly as I see him close the ring around me. Hide and seek!

But I can facilitate his enlightenment a little. If I am not mistaken in him, he is an exceptional man. He won't be frightened, but he will appreciate the lesson. I know it will cause him a lot of pain. At first. But later he will thank me himself. Who knows, perhaps we shall become fellow-thinkers and confederates. I think I can sense a kindred spirit. Or perhaps two kindred spirits. His Japanese servant comes from a nation that understands true Beauty. The supreme moment of existence for the inhabitants of those distant islands is to reveal to the world the Beauty of their belly. In Japan, those who die in this beautiful way are honoured as heroes. The sight of steaming entrails does not frighten anyone there.

Yes, there will be three of us, I can sense it.

How weary I am of my solitude. To share the burden between two or even three would be unspeakable happiness. After all, I am not a god; I am only a human being.

Understand me, Mr Fandorin. Help me.

But first I must open your eyes.

CHAPTER 9

A Bad End to an Unpleasant Story

Easter Sunday, 9 April, night

Clip-clop, clip-clop, the horseshoes clattered merrily over the cobblestones of the street, and the steel springs rustled gently. The Decorator was riding through the Moscow night in festive style, bowling along to the joyful pealing of the Easter bells and the booming of the cannon. There had been illuminated decorations on Tverskaya Street, different-coloured little lanterns, and now on the left, where the Kremlin was, the sky was suffused with all the colours of the rainbow - that was the Easter firework display. The boulevard was crowded. Talking, laughter, sparklers. Muscovites greeting people they knew, kissing, sometimes even the popping of a champagne cork.

And here was the turn on to Malaya Nikitskaya Street. Here it was deserted, dark, not a soul.

'Stop, my good man, we're here,' said the Decorator.

The cabbie jumped down from the coachbox and opened the droshky's door, decorated with paper garlands. He doffed his cap and uttered the holy words: 'Christ is risen.'

'Truly He is risen,' the Decorator replied with feeling, throwing back the veil, and kiss the good Christian on his stubbly cheek. The tip was an entire rouble. Such was the bright holiness of this hour.

'Thank you, lady' the cabby said with a bow, touched more by the kiss than by the rouble.

The Decorator's heart was serene and at peace.

The infallible instinct that had never deceived told him that this was a great night, when all the misfortunes and petty failures would be left behind. Happiness lay very close ahead. Everything would be good, very good.

Ah what a tour de force had been conceived this time. As a true master of his trade, Mr Fandorin could not fail to appreciate it. He would grieve, he would weep - after all, we are all only human - but afterwards he would think about what had happened and understand; he was sure to understand. After all, he was an intelligent man and he seemed capable of seeing Beauty.

The hope of new life, of recognition and understanding, warmed the Decorator's foolish, trusting heart. It is hard to bear the cross of a great mission alone. Even Christ's cross had been supported by Simon's shoulder.

Fandorin and his Japanese were dashing at top speed on their way to Rogozhsky Val Street. They would waste time finding room number fifty-two and waiting there. And if the Collegiate Counsellor should suspect anything, he would not find a telephone in the third-class Hotel Tsargrad.

The Decorator had time. There was no need to hurry.

The woman the Collegiate Counsellor loved was devout. She was in the church now, but the service in the nearby Church of the Resurrection would soon be over, and at midnight the woman would certainly come home - to set the table with the Easter feast and wait for her man.

Decorative gates with a crown, the yard beyond them, and then the dark windows of the outhouse. Here.

Throwing back the flimsy veil, the Decorator looked around and slipped in through the wrought-iron gate.

It would take a moment or two to fiddle with the door of the outhouse, but that was an easy job for such agile, talented fingers. The lock clicked, the hinges creaked, and the Decorator was already in the dark entrance hall.

No need to wait for such well accustomed eyes to adjust to the darkness: it was no hindrance to them. The Decorator walked quickly round all the rooms.

In the drawing room there was a momentary fright caused by the deafening chime of a huge clock in the shape of Big Ben. Was it really that late? Confused, the Decorator checked the time with a neat lady's wristwatch - no, Big Ben was fast, it was still a quarter to the hour.

The place for the sacred ritual still had to be chosen.

The Decorator was on top form today, soaring on the wings of inspiration - why not right here in the drawing room, on the dinner table?

It would be like this: Mr Fandorin would come in from the entrance hall, turn on the electric light and see the delightful sight.

That was decided then. Now where did they keep their tablecloth?

The Decorator rummaged in the linen cupboard, selected a snow-white lace cloth and put it on the broad table with its dull gleam of polished wood.

Yes, that would be beautiful. Wasn't that a Meissen dinner service in the sideboard? The fine china plates could be laid out round the edge of the table and the treasures could be laid on them as they were extracted. It would be the finest decoration ever created.

So, the design had been completed.

The Decorator went into the entrance hall, stood by the window and waited, filled with joyful anticipation and holy ecstasy.

The yard was suddenly bright - the moon had come out. A sign, a clear sign! It had been overcast and gloomy for so many weeks, but now a veil seemed to have been lifted from God's world. What a clear, starry sky! This was truly a bright and holy Easter night. The Decorator made the sign of the cross three times.

She was here!

A few quick blinks of the eyelashes to brush away the tears of ecstasy.

She was here. A short figure wearing a broad coat and hat came in unhurriedly through the gate. When she approached the door, it was clearly a hat of mourning, with ... with a black gauze veil. Ah, yes, that was for the boy, Anisii Tulipov. Don't grieve, my dear, he and the members of his household are already with the Lord. They are happy there. And you too will be happy, only be patient a little longer.

'Christ is risen.' The Decorator greeted her in a quiet, clear voice. 'Don't be frightened, my dear. I have come to bring you joy.'

The woman, however, did not appear to be frightened. She did not cry out or try to run away. On the contrary, she took a step forwards. The moon lit up the entrance hall with an intense, even glow, and the eyes behind the veil glinted.

'Why are we standing here like two Moslem women in yashmaks?' the Decorator joked. 'Let's show our faces.' The Decorator's veil was thrown back, revealing an affectionate smile, a smile from the heart. And let's not be formal with each other. We're going to get to know each other very well. We shall be closer than sisters. Come now, let me look at your pretty face. I know you are beautiful, but I shall help you to become even more so.'

The Decorator reached out one hand, but the woman did not jump back; she waited. Mr Fandorin had a good woman, calm and acquiescent. The Decorator had always liked women like that. It would be bad if she spoiled everything with a scream of horror and an expression of fear in her eyes. She would die instantly, with no pain or fright. That would be the Decorator's gift to her.

One hand drew the scalpel out of the little case that was attached to the Decorator's belt at the back; with the other threw back the fine gauze from the face of the fortunate woman.

The face revealed was broad and perfectly round, with slanting eyes. What kind of witchcraft was this? But there was no time to make any sense of it, because something in the entrance hall clicked and suddenly it was flooded with blindingly bright light, unbearable after the darkness.

With sensitive eyes screwed tightly shut against the pain, the Decorator heard a voice speaking through the darkness: Til give you joy right now, Pakhomenko. Or would you prefer me to call you by your former name, Mr Sotsky?'

Opening his eyes slightly, the Decorator saw the Japanese servant standing in front of him, fixing him with an unblinking stare. The Decorator did not turn round. Why should he turn round, when it was already clear that Mr Fandorin was behind him, probably holding a revolver in his hand? The cunning Collegiate Counsellor had not gone to the Hotel Tsargrad. He had not believed that Zakharov was guilty. Satan himself must have whispered the truth to Fandorin.

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani ? Or perhaps You have not abandoned me, but are testing the strength of my spirit?

Then let us test it.

Fandorin would not fire, because his bullet would go straight through the Decorator and hit the Japanese.

Thrust the scalpel into the short man's belly. Briefly, just below the diaphragm. Then, in a single movement, swing the Japanese round by his shoulders, shield himself with him and push him towards Fandorin. The door was only two quick bounds away, and then they would see who could run faster. Not even the fierce wolfhounds of Kherson had been able to catch convict number 3576. He'd manage to get away from Mr Collegiate Counsellor somehow.

Help me, O Lord!

His right hand flew forward as fast as an uncoiling spring, but the sharp blade cut nothing but air - the Japanese jumped backwards with unbelievable ease and struck the Decorator's wrist with the edge of his hand; the scalpel went flying to the floor with a sad tinkling sound, and the Asiatic froze on the spot again, holding his arms out slightly from his sides.

Instinct made the Decorator turn round. He saw the barrel of a revolver. Fandorin was holding the gun low, by his hip. If he fired from there, the bullet would take the top of the Decorator's skull off and not touch the Japanese. That changed things.

And the joy I will bring you is this,' Fandorin continued in the same level voice, as if the conversation had never been interrupted. 'I spare you the arrest, the investigation, the trial and the inevitable verdict. You will be shot while being detained.'

He has abandoned me. He truly has abandoned me, thought the Decorator, but this thought did not sadden him for long; it was displaced by a sudden joy. No, He has not abandoned me! He has decided to be merciful to me and is calling me, taking me to Himself! Release me now, O Lord.

The front door creaked open and a desperate woman's voice said: 'Erast, you mustn't!'

The Decorator came back from the celestial heights that had been about to open to him, down to earth. He turned round curiously and in the doorway he saw a very beautiful, stately woman in a black mourning dress and a black hat with a veil. The woman had a lilac shawl on her shoulders; in one hand she was holding a package of pashka Easter dessert and in the other a garland of paper roses.

'Angelina, why did you come back?' the Collegiate Counsellor said angrily. 'I asked you to stay in the Hotel Metropole tonight!'

A beautiful woman. She would hardly have been much more beautiful on the table, soaking in her own juices, with the petals of her body open. Only just a little bit.

'I felt something in my heart,' the beautiful woman told Fandorin, wringing her hands. 'Erast Petrovich, don't kill him; don't take the sin on your soul. Your soul will bend under the weight of it and snap.'

This was interesting. Now what would the Collegiate Counsellor say?

His cool composure had vanished without a trace; he was looking at the beautiful woman in angry confusion. The Japanese had been taken aback too: he was shaking his shaven head either at his master or his mistress with a very stupid expression.

Well, this is a family matter; we won't intrude. They can sort things out without our help.

In two quick bounds the Decorator had rounded the Japanese, and then it was five steps to the door and freedom - and Fandorin couldn't fire because the woman was too close. Goodbye, gentlemen!

A shapely leg in a black felt boot struck the Decorator across the ankle, and the Decorator was sent sprawling, with his forehead flying towards the doorpost. A blow. Darkness.

Everything was ready for the trial to begin.

The unconscious accused was sitting in an armchair in a woman's dress, but without any hat. He had an impressive purple bump coming up on his forehead.

The court bailiff, Masa, was standing beside him with his arms crossed on his chest.

Erast Petrovich had appointed Angelina as the judge and taken the role of prosecutor on himself.

But first there was an argument.

'I can't judge anyone,' said Angelina. 'The Emperor has judges for that; let them decide if he is guilty or not. Let them pronounce sentence.'

'What s-sentence?' Fandorin asked with a bitter laugh. He had started to stammer again after the criminal had been detained -in fact even more than before, as if he were trying to make up for lost time. 'Who needs a scandalous t-trial like that? They'll be only too glad to declare Sotsky insane and put him in a madhouse, from which he will quite definitely escape. No bars will hold a man like this. I was going to kill him, in the way one kills a mad dog, b-but you stopped me. Now decide his fate yourself, since you interfered. You know what this monster has done.'

'What if it's not him? Are you quite incapable of making a mistake?' Angelina protested passionately.

‘I’ll prove to you that he, and no one else, is the murderer. That's why I'm the prosecutor. You judge f-fairly. I couldn't find a more merciful judge for him in the whole wide world. And if you don't want to be his judge, then go to the Metropole and don't get in my way'

'No, I won't go away' she said; 'let there be a trial. But in a trial there's a counsel for the defence. Who's going to defend him?'

'I assure you that this gentleman will not allow anyone else to take on the role of counsel for the defence. He knows how to stand up for himself. Let's begin.'

Erast Petrovich nodded to Masa, and the valet stuck a bottle of smelling salts under the nose of the man in the chair.

The man in the woman's dress jerked his head and fluttered his eyelashes. The eyes were dull at first, then they turned a bright sky-blue colour and acquired intelligence. The soft features were illuminated by a good-natured smile.

'Your name and title?' Fandorin said sternly, trespassing somewhat on the prerogatives of the chairman of the court.

The seated man examined the scene around him. 'Have you decided to play out a trial? Very well, why not. Name and title? Sotsky ... former nobleman, former student, former convict number 3576. And now - nobody'

'Do you admit that you are guilty of committing a number of murders?' Erast Petrovich began reading from a notepad, pausing after each name: 'The prostitute Emma Elizabeth Smith on the third of April 1888 on Osborne Street in London; the prostitute Martha Tabram on the seventh of August 1888 near George Yard in London; the prostitute Mary Ann Nichols on the thirty-first of August 1888 on Back Row in London; the prostitute Ann Chapman on the eighth of September 1888 on Hanbury Street in London; the prostitute Elizabeth Stride on the thirtieth of September 1888 in Berner Street in London; the prostitute Catherine Eddows also on the thirtieth of September 1888 on Mitre Square in London; the prostitute Mary Jane Kelly on the ninth of November 1888 on Dorset Street in London; the prostitute Rose Millet on the twentieth of December 1888 on Poplar High Street in London; the prostitute Alexandra Zotova on the fifth of February 1889 in Svininsky Lane in Moscow; the beggar Marya Kosaya on the eleventh of February 1889 in Maly Tryokhsvyatsky Lane in Moscow; the prostitute Stepanida Andreichkina on the night of the third of April on Seleznyovsky Lane in Moscow; an unidentified beggar girl on the fifth of April 1889 near the Novotikhvinsk level crossing in Moscow; Court Counsellor Leontii Izhitsin and his maid Zinaida Matiushkina on the night of the fifth of April 1889 on Vozdvizhenskaya Street in Moscow; the spinster Sophia Tulipova and her nurse Pelageya Makarova on the seventh of April 1889 on Granatny Lane in Moscow; the Provincial Secretary Anisii Tulipov and the doctor Egor Zakharov on the night of the seventh of April at the Bozhedomka Cemetery in Moscow - in all eighteen people, eight of whom were killed by you in England and ten in Russia. And those are only the victims of which the investigation has certain knowledge. I repeat the question: do you admit that you are guilty of committing these crimes?'

Fandorin's voice seemed to have been strengthened by reading out the long list. It had become loud and resonant, as if the Collegiate Counsellor were speaking to a full courtroom. The stammer had also disappeared in some mysterious fashion.

'Well, that, my dear Erast Petrovich, depends on the evidence,' the accused replied amiably, apparently delighted with the proposed game. Well, let's say that I don't admit it. I'm really looking forward to hearing the opening address from the prosecution. Purely out of curiosity. Since you've decided to postpone my extermination.'

Well then, listen,' Fandorin replied sternly. He turned over the page of his notepad and continued speaking, addressing himself to Pakhomenko-Sotsky but looking at Angelina most of the time.

'First, the prehistory. In 1882 there was a scandal in Moscow that involved medical students and students from the Higher Courses for Women. You were the leader, the evil genius of this depraved circle and, because of that, you were the only member of it who was severely punished: you were sentenced to four years in a convict battalion - without any trial, in order to avoid publicity. You cruelly tormented unfortunate prostitutes who had no right of redress, and fate repaid you with equal cruelty. You were sent to the Kherson military prison, which is said to be more terrible than hard labour in Siberia. The year before last, following an investigation into a case of the abuse of power, the senior administrators of the punishment battalion were put on trial. But by then you were already far away ...'

Erast Petrovich hesitated and then continued after a brief pause: 'I am the prosecutor and I am not obliged to seek excuses for you, but I cannot pass over in silence the fact that the final transformation of a wanton youth into a ravenous, bloodthirsty beast was facilitated by society itself. The contrast between student life and the hell of a military prison would drive absolutely anyone insane. During the first year there you killed a man in self-defence. The military court acknowledged the mitigating circumstances, but it increased your sentence to eight years and when you were sent to the guardhouse, they put shackles on you and subjected you to a long period of solitary confinement. No doubt it was owing to the inhuman conditions in which you were kept that you turned into an inhuman monster. No, Sotsky you did not break, you did not lose your mind, you did not try to kill yourself. In order to survive, you became a different creature, with only an external resemblance to a human being. In 1886 your family, who had turned their backs on you long before, were informed that convict Sotsky had drowned in the Dnieper during an attempted escape. I sent an inquiry to the Department of Military Justice, asking if the fugitive's body had been found. They replied that it had not. That was the answer I had been expecting. The prison administration had simply concealed the fact of your successful escape. A very common business.'

The accused listened to Fandorin with lively interest, neither confirming what he said nor denying it.

'Tell me, my dear prosecutor: what was it that made you start raking through the case of the long-forgotten Sotsky? Forgive me for interrupting you, but this is an informal court, although I presume the verdict will be binding and not subject to appeal.'

'Two of the individuals who were included in the list of suspects had been your accomplices in the case of the Sadist Circle, and they mentioned your name. It turned out that forensic medical expert Zakharov, who was involved in the inquiry, had also belonged to the group. I realised straight away that the criminal could only be receiving news of the inquiry from Zakharov, and I was going to take a closer look at the people around him, but first I took the wrong path and suspected the factory-owner Burylin. Everything fitted very well.'

'And why didn't you suspect Zakharov himself ?'Sotsky asked, in a voice that sounded almost offended. After all, everything pointed to him, and I did everything I could to help things along.'

'No, I couldn't think that Zakharov was the murderer. He besmirched his name less than the others in the Sadist Circle case; he was only a passive observer of your cruel amusements. And in addition, Zakharov was frankly and aggressively cynical and that kind of character is not typical of maniacal killers. But these are circumstantial points; the main thing is that last year Zakharov only stayed in England for a month and a half, and he was in Moscow when most of the London murders took place. I checked that at the very beginning and immediately excluded him from the list of suspects. He could not have been Jack the Ripper.'

'You and your Jack the Ripper,' said Sotsky, with an irritated twitch of his shoulder. 'Well, let us suppose that while Zakharov was staying with relatives in England he read a lot in the newspapers about the Ripper and decided to continue his work in Moscow. I noticed just now that you count the number of victims in a strange manner. Investigator Izhitsin came to a different conclusion. He put thirteen corpses on the table, and you only accuse me of ten killings in Moscow. And that's including those who died after the "investigative experiment"; otherwise there would only be four. Your numbers don't add up somewhere, Mr Prosecutor.'

'On the contrary' said Erast Petrovich, not even slightly perturbed by this unexpected outburst. 'Of the thirteen bodies exhumed with signs of mutilation, four had been brought directly from the scene of the crime: Zotova, Marya Kosaya, Andreichkina and the unidentified girl, and you had also not managed to process two of your February victims according to your special method - clearly, someone must have frightened you off. The other nine bodies, the most horribly mutilated of all, were extracted from anonymous graves. The Moscow police are, of course, far from perfect, but it is impossible to imagine that no one paid any attention to bodies that had been mutilated in such a monstrous fashion. Here in Russia many people are murdered, but more simply, without all these fantasies. When they found Andreichkina slashed to pieces, look what an uproar it caused immediately. The Governor-General was informed straight away, and His Excellency assigned his Deputy for Special Assignments to investigate. I can say without bragging that the Prince only assigns me to cases that are of exceptional importance. And here we have almost ten mutilated bodies and nobody has made any fuss? Impossible.'

'Somehow I don't understand,' said Angelina, speaking for the first time since the trial had begun. 'Who did such things to these poor people?'

Erast Petrovich was clearly delighted by her question - the stubborn silence of the 'judge' had rendered the examination of the evidence meaningless.

'The earliest bodies were exhumed from the November ditch. However, that does not mean that Jack the Ripper had already arrived in Moscow in November.'

'Of course not!' said the accused, interrupting Fandorin. 'As far as I recall, the latest London murder was committed on Christmas Eve. I don't know if you will be able to prove to our charming judge that I am guilty of the Moscow murders, but you certainly won't be able to make me into Jack the Ripper.'

An icy, disdainful smile slid across Erast Petrovich's face, and he became stern and sombre again. 'I understand the meaning of your remark perfectly well. You cannot wriggle out of the Moscow murders. The more of them there are, the more monstrous and outrageous they are, the better for you - you are more likely be declared insane. But for Jack's crimes the English would be certain to demand your extradition, and Russian justice would be only too delighted to be rid of such a bothersome madman. If you go to England, where things are done openly, nothing will be hushed up in our Russian fashion. You would swing from the gallows there, my dear sir. Don't you want to?' Fandorin's voice shifted down an octave, as if his own throat had been caught in a noose. 'Don't even hope that you can leave your career in London behind you. The apparent mismatch of the dates is easily explained. "Watchman Pakhomenko" appeared at the Bozhedomka Cemetery shortly after the New Year. I assume that Zakharov got you the job for old times' sake. Most likely you met in London during his most recent visit. Of course, Zakharov did not know about your new amusements. He simply thought that you had escaped from prison. How could he refuse to help an old comrade whom life had treated so harshly? Well?'

Sotsky did not reply; he merely shrugged one shoulder as if to say: I'm listening, go on.

'Did things get too hot for you in London? Were the police getting too close? All right. You moved to your native country. I don't know what passport you used to cross the border, but you turned up in Moscow as a simple Ukrainian peasant, one of those godly wandering pilgrims, of whom there are so many in Russia. That's why there is no information about your arrival from abroad in the police records. You lived at the cemetery for a while, settled in, took a look around. Zakharov obviously felt sorry for you; he gave you protection and money You went for quite a long time without killing anybody - more than a month. Possibly you were intending to start a new life. But you weren't strong enough. After the excitement in London, ordinary life had become impossible for you. This peculiarity of the maniacal mind is well known to criminal science. Once someone has tasted blood, he can't stop. At first you took the opportunity offered by your job to hack up bodies from the graves; it was winter, so the bodies buried since the end of November had not begun to decompose. You tried a man's body once, but you didn't like it. It didn't match your "idea" somehow. By the way, what is your idea? Can you not tolerate sinful, ugly women? "I want to give you joy," "I will help to make you more beautiful" -do you use a scalpel to save fallen women from their ugliness? Is that the reason for the bloody kiss?'

The accused said nothing. His face became solemn and remote, the bright blue of his eyes dimmed as he half-closed his eyelids.

'And then lifeless bodies weren't good enough any longer. You made several attempts which, fortunately, were unsuccessful, and committed two murders. Or was it more?' Fandorin suddenly shouted out, rushing at the accused, shaking him so hard by the shoulders that his head almost flew off.

Answer me?'

'Erast!' Angelina shouted. 'Stop it!'

The Collegiate Counsellor started away from the seated man, took two hasty steps backwards and hid his hands behind his back, struggling to control his agitation. The Ripper, not frightened at all by Erast Petrovich's outburst, sat without moving, staring at Fandorin with an expression of calm superiority.

"What can you understand?' the full, fleshy lips whispered almost inaudibly.

Erast Petrovich frowned in frustration, tossed a lock of black hair back off his forehead and continued his interrupted speech: "On the evening of the third of April, a year after the first London murder, you killed the spinster Andreichkina and mutilated her body. A day later the juvenile beggar became your victim. After that, events moved very quickly. Izhitsin's "experiment" triggered a paroxysm of excitation which you discharged by killing and disembowelling Izhitsin himself, at the same time murdering his entirely innocent maid. From that moment on, you deviate from your "idea" and you kill in order to cover your tracks and avoid retribution. When you realised that the circle was closing in, you decided it would be more convenient to shift the blame on to your friend and protector Zakharov. Epecially since the forensic specialist had begun to suspect you - he must have put a few facts together, or else he knew something that I don't. In any case, on Friday evening Zakharov was writing a letter addressed to the investigators, in which he intended to expose you. He kept tearing it up and starting again. His assistant Grumov said that Zakharov locked himself in his office shortly after three, so he was struggling with his conscience until the evening, struggling with the understandable, but in the present instance entirely inappropriate, feelings of honour and esprit de corps, as well as simple compassion for a comrade whom life had treated harshly. You took the letter and collected all the torn pieces. But there were two scraps that you failed to notice. On one it said "longer remain silent" and on the other "erations of esprit de corps and sympathy for an old com". The meaning is obvious: Zakharov was writing that that he could no longer remain silent, and attempting to justify harbouring a murderer by referring to considerations of esprit de corps and sympathy for an old comrade. That was the moment when I was finally convinced that the killer had to be sought among Zakharov's former fellow students. Since it was a matter of "sympathy", then it had to be one of those whose lives had gone badly. That excluded the millionaire Burylin. There were only three left: Stenich, the alcoholic Rozen and Sotsky whose name kept coming up in the stories that the former "sadists" told me. He was supposed to be dead, but that had to be verified.'

'Erast Petrovich, why are you certain that this doctor, Zakharov, has been killed?' Angelina asked.

'Because he has disappeared, although he had no need to,' replied Erast Petrovich. 'Zakharov is not guilty of the murders and he had believed that he was sheltering a fugitive convict, not a bloody killer. But when he realised who he had been sheltering, he was frightened. He kept a loaded revolver beside his bed. He was afraid of you, Sotsky. After the murders in Granatny Lane you returned to the cemetery and saw Tulipov observing Zakharov's office. The guard dog did not bark at you; he knows you very well. Tulipov was absorbed in his observation work and failed to notice you. You realised that suspicion had fallen on Zakharov and decided to exploit the fact. In the report he dictated just before he died, Tulipov states that shortly after ten Zakharov went out of his study and there was some sort of clattering in the corridor. Obviously the murder took place at that very moment. You entered the house silently and waited for Zakharov to come out into the corridor for something. And that is why the rug disappeared from the corridor. It must have had bloodstains on it, so you removed it. When you were finished with Zakharov, you crept outside and attacked Tulipov from behind, inflicting mortal wounds and leaving him to bleed to death. I presume you saw him get up, stagger to the gates and then collapse again. You were afraid to go and finish him, because you knew that he had a weapon, and in any case you knew that his wounds were fatal. Without wasting any time, you dragged Zakharov's body out and buried it in the cemetery. I even know exactly where. You threw it into the April ditch for unidentified bodies and sprinkled earth over it. By the way, do you know how you gave yourself away?'

Sotsky started, and the calm, resigned expression was replaced once again by curiosity, but only for a few moments. Then the invisible curtain came down again, erasing all trace of living feeling.

'When I talked to you yesterday morning, you said you hadn't slept all night, that you had heard the shots, and then the door slamming and the sound of footsteps. That was supposed to make me think that Zakharov was alive and had gone into hiding. But in fact it made me think something else, If the watchman Pakhomenko's ears were sharp enough to hear footsteps from a distance, why could he not hear the blasts that Tulipov gave on his whistle when he came round? The answer is obvious: at that moment you were not in your hut; you were some distance away from the spot - for instance, at the far end of the cemetery, where the April ditch happens to be. That is one. If Zakharov had been the killer, he could not have gone out through the gates, because Tulipov was lying there wounded and had still not come round. The killer would certainly have finished him off. That is two. So now I had confirmation that Zakharov, who I already knew could not be the London maniac, was not involved in Tulipov's death. If he had nonetheless disappeared, it meant that he had been killed. If you bed about the circumstances of his disappearance, it meant that you were involved in it. And I remembered that both murders that were committed according to the "idea", the prostitute Andreichkina and the young beggar, were committed within fifteen minutes' walking distance of the Bozhedomka Cemetery - it was the late investigator Izhitsin who first noticed that, although he drew the wrong conclusions from it. Once I put these facts together with the fragments of phrases from the letter, I was almost certain that the "old comrade" with whom Zakharov sympathised and whom he did not wish to give away was you. Because of your job you were involved in the exhumation of the bodies and you knew a lot about how the investigation was developing. That is one. You were present at the "investigative experiment". That is two. You had access to the graves and the ditches. That is three. You knew Tulipov - in fact you were almost friends. That is four. In the list of those present at the experiment drawn up before he died, you are described as follows.'

Erast Petrovich walked across to the table, picked up a sheet of paper and read from it: 'Pakhomenko, the cemetery watchman. I don't know his first name and patronymic, the labourers call him "Pakhom". Age uncertain: between thirty and fifty. Above average height, strongly built. Round, gentle face, without a moustache or beard. Ukrainian accent. I have had several conversations with him on various subjects. I have listened to the story of his life (he was a wandering pilgrim and has seen a lot of things) and told him about myself. He is intelligent, observant, religious and kind. He has assisted me greatly in the investigation. Perhaps the only one of them whose innocence could not possibly be in the slightest doubt.'

A nice boy' the accused said, touched, and his words made the Collegiate Counsellor's face twitch, while the dispassionate court guard whispered something harsh and hissing in Japanese.

Even Angelina shuddered as she looked at the man in the chair.

'You made use of Tulipov's revelations on Friday when you entered his apartment and committed a double murder,' Erast Petrovich continued after a brief pause. And as for my ... domestic circumstances, they are known to many people, and Zakharov could have told you about them. So today or, in fact, yesterday morning already, I had only one suspect left: you. But I still had a few things to do. Firstly, establish what Sotsky looked like, secondly ascertain whether he really was dead and, finally, find witnesses who could identify you. Stenich described Sotsky to me as he was seven years ago. You have probably changed greatly in seven years, but height, the colour of the eyes and the shape of the nose are not subject to change, and all of those features matched. A telegram from the Department of Military Justice which included the details of Sotsky's time in prison and his supposedly unsuccessful attempt to escape, made it clear that the convict could quite well still be alive. My greatest difficulty was with witnesses. I had high hopes of the former "sadist" Filipp Rozen. When he spoke about Sotsky in my presence, he used a strange phrase that stuck in my memory. "He's dead, but I keep thinking I see him everywhere. Take yesterday ..." He never finished the phrase - someone interrupted him. But on that "yesterday", that is, on the fourth of April, Rozen was with Zakharov and the others at the cemetery. I wondered if he might have seen the watchman Pakhomenko there and spotted a resemblance to his old friend. Unfortunately I wasn't able to locate Rozen. But I did find a prostitute you tried to kill seven weeks ago at Shrovetide. She remembered you very well and she can identify you. At that stage I could have arrested you; there were enough solid clues. That is what I would have done if you yourself had not gone on the offensive. Then I realised that there is only way to stop someone like you

Sotsky appeared not to notice the threat behind these words. At least, he did not show the slightest sign of alarm - on the contrary, he smiled absent-mindedly at his own thoughts.

Ah yes, and there was the note that was sent to Burylin,' Fandorin remembered. A rather clumsy move. The note was really intended for me, was it not? The investigators had to be convinced that Zakharov was alive and in hiding. You even tried to imitate certain distinctive features of Zakharov's handwriting, but you only reinforced my conviction that the suspect was not an illiterate watchman but an educated man who knew Zakharov well and was acquainted with Burylin. That is - Sotsky Your telephone call when you took advantage of the technical shortcomings of the telephone to pretend to be Zakharov could not deceive me either. I have had occasion to use that trick myself. Your intention was also quite clear. You always act according to the same monstrous logic: if you find someone interesting, you kill those who are most dear to him. That was what you did in Tulipov's case. That was what you wanted to do with the daughter of the prostitute who had somehow attracted your perverted attention. You mentioned my Japanese servant very specifically - you clearly wanted him to come with me. Why? Why, of course, so that Angelina Samsonovna would be left at home alone. I would rather not think about the fate that you had in mind for her. I might not be able to restrain myself and

Fandorin broke off and swung round sharply to face Angelina: 'What is your verdict? Is he guilty or not?'

Pale and trembling, Angelina said in a quiet but firm voice: 'Now let him speak. Let him justify himself if he can.'

Sotsky said nothing, still smiling absent-mindedly. A minute passed, and then another, and just when it began to seem that the defence would not address the court at all, the lips of the accused moved and the words poured out - clear, measured, dignified words, as if it were not this man in fancy dress with a woman's face who was speaking, but some higher power with a superior knowledge of truth and justice.

'I do not need to justify anything to anyone. And I have only one judge - our Heavenly Father, who knows my motives and my innermost thoughts. I have always been a special case. Even when I was a child, I knew that I was special, not like everybody else. I was consumed by irresistible curiosity, I wanted to understand everything in the wonderful structure of God's world, to test everything, to try everything. I have always loved people, and they felt that and were drawn to me. I would have made a great healer, because nature gave me the talent to understand the sources of pain and suffering, and understanding is equivalent to salvation - every doctor knows that. The one thing I could not stand was ugliness; I saw it as an offence to God's work - ugliness enraged me and drove me into a fury. One day in a fit of such fury, I was unable to stop myself in time. An ugly old whore, whose very appearance was sacrilege against the name of the Lord, according to the way that I thought then, died as I was beating her with my cane. I did not fall into that fury under the influence of sadistic sensuality, as my judges imagined - no, it was the holy wrath of a soul imbued through and through with Beauty. From society's point of view it was just one more unfortunate accident - gilded youth has always got up to worse things than that. But I was not one of their privileged favourites, and they made an example of me to frighten the others. The only one, out of all of us! Now I understand that God had decided to choose me, I am the only one. But that is hard to understand at the age of twenty-four. I was not ready. For an educated man of sensitive feelings, the horrors of prison - no, a hundred times worse than that, the horrors of disciplinary confinement - are impossible to describe. I was subjected to cruel humiliation, I was the most abused and defenceless person in the entire barracks. I was tortured, subjected to rape, forced to walk around in a woman's dress. But I could feel some great power gradually maturing within me. It had been present within my being from the very beginning, and now it was putting out shoots and reaching up to the sun, like a fresh stalk breaking up through the earth in the spring. And one day I felt that I was ready. Fear left me and it has never returned. I killed my chief tormentor -killed him in front of everyone, grabbed hold of his ears with my hands and beat his half-shaved head against a wall. I was put in shackles and kept in the punishment cell for seven months. But I did not weaken or fall into consumptive despair. Every day I became stronger and more confident; my eyes learned to penetrate the darkness. Everyone was afraid of me - the guards, the officers, the other convicts. Even the rats left my cell. Every day I strained to understand what this important thing was that was knocking at the door of my soul and not being admitted. Everything around me was ugly and repulsive. I loved Beauty more than anything else in the world, and in my world there was absolutely none. So that this would not drive me insane, I remembered lectures from university and drew the structure of the human body on the earth floor with a chip of wood. Everything in it was rational, harmonious and beautiful. That was where Beauty was, that was where God was. In time God began to speak to me, and I realised that He was sending down my mysterious power. I escaped from the jail. My strength and stamina knew no bounds. Even the wolfhounds that were specially trained to hunt men could not catch me, the bullets did not hit me. I swam along the river at first, then across the estuary for many hours, until I was picked up by Turkish smugglers. I wandered around the Balkans and Europe. I was put in prison several times, but the prisons were easy to escape from, much easier than the Kherson fortress. Eventually I found a good job. In Whitechapel in London. In a slaughterhouse. I butchered the carcasses. My knowledge of surgery came in useful then. I was well respected and earned a lot; I saved money. But something was maturing within me again, as I looked at the beautiful displays of the rennet bags, the livers, the washed intestines for making sausages, the kidneys, the lungs. All this offal was put into bright, gay packaging and sent to the butchers' shops. Why does man show himself so little respect? I thought; surely the belly of the stupid cow, intended for the processing of coarse grass, is not more worthy of respect than our internal apparatus, created in the likeness of God? My enlightenment came a year ago, on the third of April. I was walking home from the evening shift. On a deserted street, where not a single lamp was lit, a repulsive hag approached me and suggested I should take her into one of the gateways. When I politely declined, she moved very close to me, searing my face with her filthy breath, and began shouting coarse obscenities. What a mockery of the image of God, I thought. What were all her internal organs working for day and night? Why was the tireless heart pumping the precious blood? Why were the myriads of cells in her organism being born, dying and being renewed again? What for? And I felt an irresistible urge to transform ugliness into Beauty, to look into the true essence of this creature who was so unattractive on the outside. I had my butcher's knife hanging on my belt. Later I bought a whole set of excellent scalpels, but that first time an ordinary butcher's instrument was enough. The result far surpassed all my expectations. The hideous woman was transformed! In front of my eyes she became beautiful! And I was awestruck at such obvious evidence of a miracle from God.'

The man in the chair shed a tear. He tried to continue, but just waved his arm and did not say another word.

'Is that enough for you?' Fandorin asked. 'Do you declare him guilty?'

'Yes,' Angelina whispered, and crossed herself. 'He is guilty of all these atrocities.'

'You can see for yourself that he cannot be allowed to live. He brings death and grief. He must be exterminated.'

Angelina started. 'No, Erast Petrovich. He is insane. He needs treatment. I don't know if it will work, but it has to be tried.'

'No, he isn't insane,' Erast Petrovich replied with conviction. 'He is cunning and calculating; he possesses a will of iron and he is exceptionally enterprising. What you see before you is not a madman, but a monster. Some people are born with a hump or a harelip. But there are others whose deformity is not visible to the naked eye. That kind of deformity is the most terrible kind. He is only a man in appearance, but in reality he lacks the most important, the most distinctive feature of a human being. He lacks that invisible, vital string that dwells in the human soul, sounding to tell a man if he has acted well or badly. It is still present even in the most inveterate villain. Its note may be weak, perhaps almost inaudible, but it still sounds. In the depths of his soul a man always knows the worth of his actions, if he has listened to that string even once in his life. You know what Sotsky has done, you heard what he said, you can see what he is like. He does not have the slightest idea that this string exists; his deeds are prompted by a completely different voice. In olden times they would have called him a servant of the devil. I put it more simply: he is not human. He does not repent of anything. And he cannot be stopped by ordinary means. He will not go to the gallows, and the walls of an insane asylum will not hold him. It will start all over again.'

'Erast Petrovich, you said that the English will demand his extradition,' Angelina exclaimed pitifully, as if she were clutching at her final straw. 'Let them kill him, only not you!'

Fandorin shook his head. 'The handover is a long process. He'll escape - from prison, from a convoy, from a train, from a ship. I cannot take that risk.'

'You have no trust in God,' she said sadly, hanging her head. 'God knows how and when to put an end to evil deeds.'

'I don't know about God. And I cannot be an impartial observer. In my view, that is the worst sin of all. No more, Angelina, I've decided.'

Erast Petrovich spoke to Masa in Japanese: 'Take him out into the yard.'

'Master, you have never killed an unarmed man before,' his servant replied agitatedly in the same language. 'You will suffer. And the mistress will be angry. I will do it myself.'

'That will not change anything. And the fact that he is unarmed makes no difference. To hold a duel would be mere showmanship. I should kill him just as easily even if he were armed. Let us do without any cheap theatrics.'

When Masa and Fandorin took the condemned man by the elbows to lead him out into the yard, Angelina cried out: 'Erast, for my sake, for our sake!'

The Decorator glanced back with a smile: 'My lady, you are a picture of beauty, but I assure you that on the table, surrounded by china plates, you would be even more beautiful.'

Angelina squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears, but she still heard the sound of the shot in the yard - dry and short, almost indistinguishable against the roaring of the firecrackers and the rockets flying into the starry sky.

Erast Petrovich came back alone. He stood in the doorway and wiped the sweat from his brow. His teeth chattered as he said: 'Do you know what he whispered? "Oh Lord, what happiness".'

They stayed like that for a long time: Angelina sitting with her eyes closed, the tears flowing out from under her eyelids; Fandorin wanting to go to her, but afraid.

Finally she stood up. She walked up to him, put her arms round him and kissed him passionately several times - on the forehead, on the eyes, on the lips.

'I'm going away, Erast Petrovich; remember me kindly'

Angelina ...' The Court Counsellor's face, already pale, turned ashen grey 'Surely not because of that vampire, that monster

Tm a hindrance to you; I divert you from your own path,' she interrupted, not listening to him. 'The sisters have been asking me to join them for a long time now, at the Boris and Gleb Convent. It is what I should have done from the very beginning, when my father passed away. And I have grown weak with you. I wanted a holiday. But that is what holidays are like: they don't last for long. I shall watch over you from a distance. And pray to God for you. Follow the promptings of your own soul, and if something goes wrong, don't be afraid: I will make amends through prayer.'

'You can't go into a c-convent,' Fandorin said rapidly, almost incoherently. 'You're not like them; you're so vital and passionate. You won't be able stand it. And without you, I won't be able to go on.'

'You will; you're strong. It's hard for you with me. It will be easier without me... And as for me being vital and passionate the sisters are just the same. God has no need of cold people. Forgive me, goodbye. I have known for a long time we should not be together.'

Erast Petrovich stood in silent confusion, sensing that there were no arguments that could make her alter her decision. And Angelina was silent too, gently stroking his cheek and his grey temple.

Out of the night, from the dark streets, so out of tune with this farewell, there came the incessant pealing of the Easter bells.

'It's all right, Erast Petrovich,' said Angelina. 'It's all right. Do you hear? Christ is risen.'

Prologue

The windows on the left were blank, sightless wall eyes, crusted with ice and wet snow. The panes of glass jangled dolefully as the wind hurled the soft, sticky flakes against them and swayed the heavy carcass of the carriage to and fro in an obstinate effort to shove the train off the slippery rails and send it tumbling over and over, like a long black sausage, across the broad white plain -over the frozen river, over the dead fields, and on towards the blurred streak of dark forest at the distant junction of earth and sky.

A wide expanse of this mournful landscape could be examined through the remarkably clear-sighted windows on the right, but what point was there in looking out at it? Nothing but snow, nothing but the wild whistling of the wind, the low, murky sky -darkness, cold and death.

On the inside, however, the ministerial saloon carriage was warm and welcoming: a cosy gloom, tinged with blue from the silk lampshade, logs crackling behind the bronze door of the stove, a teaspoon tinkling rhythmically in a glass. The small but excellently equipped study - with a conference table, leather armchairs and a map of the Empire on the wall - was hurtling along at a speed of fifty versts an hour through the raging blizzard and the dead light of the inclement winter dawn.

An old man with a virile and imperious face was dozing in one of the armchairs, with a warm Scottish rug pulled right up to his chin. Even in sleep the grey brows were knitted sternly, the corners of the mouth were set in world-weary folds, and from time to time the wrinkled eyelids fluttered nervously. The circle of light cast by the lamp swayed this way and that, repeatedly plucking out of the darkness a sturdy hand set on the mahogany armrest and glinting brightly in the diamond ring set on one finger.

On the table, directly below the lamp, there was a pile of newspapers. Lying on top was the illegal Zurich publication The People's Will,the very latest issue from only two days before. On the open page an article had been circled in angry red pencil:

Hiding the Butcher from Vengeance

Our editors have been informed by a highly reliable source that Adjutant General Khrapov, who last Thursday was removed from the positions of Deputy Minister of the Interior and commander of the Special Corps of Gendarmes, will shortly be appointed Governor General of Siberia and will depart to take up his new post immediately.

The motives underlying this move are only too clear. The Tsar wishes to save Khrapov from the people's revenge by hiding his vicious guard dog away for a while in a place as far removed as possible from the two capitals. But the sentence that our party has pronounced on this bloody satrap remains in force. By issuing the monstrous command to subject the political prisoner Polina Ivantsova to a savage flogging, Khrapov has set himself outside the laws of humanity. He cannot be allowed to live. The butcher has twice succeeded in evading his avengers, but nonetheless he is doomed.

From the same source we have learned that Khrapov has already been promised the portfolio of Minister of the Interior. The appointment to Siberia is a temporary measure intended to place Khrapov beyond the reach of the chastening sword of the people's wrath. The tsar's oprichniks anticipate being able to locate and eliminate our Combat Group, which has been instructed to carry the butcher's sentence into effect. And then, when the danger has passed, the minion Khrapov will make a triumphant return to St Petersburg and assume unlimited powers.

This shall not be! The wasted lives of our comrades cry out for retribution.

Unable to bear her shame, Ivantsova hanged herself in her cell. She was only seventeen years old.

The twenty-three-year-old student Skokova fired at the satrap, missed and was hanged.

One of our comrades from the Combat Group, whose name must remain secret, was killed by a splinter from his own bomb, and Khrapov survived yet again.

But never you mind, Your Excellency, no matter how much a string might twist and turn, it cannot go on for ever. Our Combat Group will seek you out even in Siberia.

A pleasant journey to you!

The locomotive gave a long, quavering howl, followed by several short blasts on its whisde: Whoo-ooo-ooo-ooo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!

The sleeper's lips trembled restlessly and a low, dull moan escaped from between them. The eyes opened, darting in bewilderment to the left - towards the white windows - and then to the right - towards the black ones; gradually their gaze cleared, acquiring intelligence and focus. The stern old man threw off the rug to reveal a velvet jacket, a white shirt and a black tie. Working his dry lips, he reached out and rang a small hand bell.

A moment later the door leading from the study into the reception room opened. A smart young lieutenant colonel in a blue gendarme uniform with white aiguillettes came dashing in, adjusting his sword belt.

'Good morning, Your Excellency!'

'Have we passed Tver?' the General asked in a thick voice, ignoring the greeting.

'Yes indeed, Ivan Fyodorovich. We're approaching Klin.'

'What do you mean, Klin?' the seated man asked, growing angry. Already? Why didn't you wake me earlier? Did you oversleep?'

The officer rubbed his creased cheek. 'Certainly not, sir. I saw you had fallen asleep. And I thought, Let Ivan Fyodorovich get a bit of a rest. It's all right, you'll have enough time to get washed and dressed and drink tea. There's a whole hour to go to Moscow'

The train slowed down, preparing to brake. Occasional lights began flitting past outside the windows and then widely spaced lamp posts and snow-covered roofs came into view.

The General yawned. All right, have them put the samovar on. I just can't seem to wake up somehow'

The gendarme saluted and went out, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

In the reception room there was a bright light burning and the air smelled of liqueur and cigar smoke. Sitting at the writing desk with his head propped in his hands was another officer -bright blond hair, light eyebrows and long eyelashes that made his pink face resemble a piglet's. He stretched, cracking his joints, and asked the Lieutenant Colonel: 'Well, how are things in there?'

'He wants tea. I'll see to it.'

A-ha,' the albino drawled and glanced out of the window. 'What's this - Klin? Sit down, Michel, I'll tell them about the samovar. I'll get out for a moment and stretch my legs. And at the same time I'll check to make sure those devils aren't dozing.'

He stood up, pulled down his uniform jacket and walked out, spurs jangling, into the third room of this remarkable carriage. The conditions here were basic: chairs along the walls, pegs for hanging outer clothing, a little table in the corner with tea things and a samovar. Two sturdy men wearing identical three-piece camlet suits and sporting identically curled moustaches (one of which was sandy-coloured and the other ginger), sitting motionless facing each other; another two men sleeping on chairs set together.

When the white-haired officer appeared, the two men who were sitting jumped to their feet, but he put one finger to his lips, as if to say: Let the others sleep, then pointed to the samovar and whispered: 'Tea for His Excellency. Phew, it's stuffy in here. I'm going out for a breath of air.'

In the small vestibule two gendarmes stood smartly to attention. The vestibule was not heated, and the sentries were wearing their greatcoats, caps and hoods.

'Are you off duty soon?' the officer asked, pulling on a pair of white gloves and peering out at the station platform as it slowly drifted closer.

'Only just come on, Your Honour!' the watch leader barked. 'Now it's all the way to Moscow for us.' 'All right, all right.'

The albino pushed the heavy door and a breath of fresh wind, damp snow and fuel oil blew into the carriage.

'Eight o'clock, and the sky's only just turning grey,' the officer sighed, speaking to no one in particular, and lowered one foot on to the top step.

The train had not yet stopped, its brakes were still screeching and grinding, but already there were two figures hurrying along the platform towards the saloon carriage: a short man carrying a lantern and a tall, slim man in a top hat and a loose, sporty mackintosh with a cape.

'There, that's the special!' cried the first man (the stationmaster, to judge from his peaked cap), turning to his companion.

The other man stopped in front of the open door, holding his top hat down on his head, and asked the officer: 'Are you M-Modzalevsky? - His Excellency's adjutant?'

Unlike the railway official, the man with the stammer did not shout, and yet his calm, clear voice was distinctly audible above the howling of the blizzard.

'No, I'm the head of his guard,' the white-haired man replied, trying to make out the fop's face.

It was a remarkable face: the features were subtle but severe, the moustache was neatly trimmed, the forehead dissected by a resolute vertical crease,

'Aha, Staff Captain v-von Seidlitz - excellent,' the stranger said with a nod of satisfaction, and immediately introduced himself. 'Fandorin, Deputy for Special Assignments to His Excellency the Governor General of M-Moscow. I expect you have heard of me.'

'Yes, Mr State Counsellor, we were informed by encrypted message that you would be responsible for Ivan Fyodorovich's safety in Moscow. But I had assumed you would meet us at the station there. Come up, come up, the snow's blowing in.'

The State Counsellor nodded farewell to the stationmaster and tripped lightly up the steep steps into the carriage, slamming the door shut behind him and reducing the sounds from outside to a hollow, rumbling echo.

'You have already entered the p-province of Moscow,' he explained, removing his top hat and shaking the snow off its crown. This revealed that his hair was black, but his temples, despite his young years, were completely grey. 'My jurisdiction, s-so to speak, starts here. We shall be stuck here at Klin for at least t-two hours - they're clearing snow off the line up ahead. We shall have time enough to agree everything and allocate responsibilities. But f-first I need to see His Excellency, introduce myself and c-convey an urgent message. Where can I leave my coat?'

'This way, please, into the guardroom. There's a coat rack in there/

Von Seidlitz showed the State Counsellor through into the first room, where the security guards in civilian dress were on duty. Then, after Fandorin had removed his mackintosh and put his soaking-wet top hat down on a chair, he showed him into the second room.

'Michel, this is State Counsellor Fandorin,' the head of the guard explained to the Lieutenant Colonel. 'We were told about him. He has an urgent communication for Ivan Fyodorovich.'

Michel stood up. 'His Excellency's adjutant, Modzalevsky. May I see your documents, please?'

'N-Naturally.' The official took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to the adjutant.

'He is Fandorin,' the head of the guard affirmed. 'His verbal portrait was given in the message, I remember it very clearly'

Modzalevsky carefully examined the seal and the photograph and returned the paper to its owner. 'Very good, Mr State Counsellor. I'll announce you.'

A minute later the State Counsellor was admitted into the kingdom of soft carpets, blue light and mahogany furnishings.

'Hello, Mr Fandorin,' the General growled amiably. He had already changed his velvet jacket for a military frock coat. 'Erast Petrovich, isn't it?'

'Yes ind-deed, Your Excellency'

'So you decided to engage your charge out on the route of approach? I commend your diligence, although I consider all this fuss entirely unnecessary. Firstly, I left St Petersburg in secret; secondly, I am not even slightly afraid of our revolutionary gentlemen; and thirdly, we are all of us in God's hands. If the Lord has spared Khrapov thus far, he must need the old war dog for something.' The General, evidently this self-same Khrapov, crossed himself devoutly.

'I have an extremely urgent and absolutely c-confidential message for Your Excellency,' the State Counsellor said impassively, with a glance at the adjutant. 'I beg your pardon, L-Lieutenant Colonel, but those are the instructions I was g-given.'

'Off you go, Misha,' said the new Governor General of Siberia, the man whom the newspaper from abroad had called a butcher and a satrap. 'Is the samovar ready? As soon as we finish talking business, I'll call you and we'll have some tea.' When the door closed behind his adjutant, he asked: 'Well, what have you got for me that's so mysterious? A telegram from the sovereign? Let's have it.'

The functionary moved close to the seated man, slipping one hand into the pocket of his beaver jacket, but then his eyes fell on the illegal newspaper with the article circled in red. The General caught the glance and his face darkened.

'The nihilist gentlemen continue to flatter me with their attention. A "butcher" they call me! I suppose you have also read all sorts of rubbish about me, Erast Petrovich. Don't believe the slanderous lies of vicious tongues; they turn everything back to front! She wasn't flogged by brutal jailers in my presence, that's pure slander!' His Excellency had clearly found the unfortunate incident of Ivantsova's suicide by hanging very disturbing, and it was still bothering him. 'I'm an honest soldier, I have two George medals - for Sebastopol and the second battle of Plevna!' he exclaimed heatedly. 'I was trying to save that girl from a penal sentence, the young fool! What if I did speak to her in a familiar fashion? I was only being fatherly! I have a granddaughter her age! And she slapped my face - me, an old man, an adjutant general - in front of my guards, in front of the prisoners. According to the law, the tramp should have got ten years for that! But I gave orders for her just to be whipped, and not to let the business get out - not to flog her half to death, as they wrote in the newspapers afterwards; just to give her ten lashes, and to go easy on her as well! And it wasn't the jailers who whipped her, it was a female warder. How could I know that crazy Ivantsova would lay hands on herself? She's not even blue-blooded, just an ordinary bourgeois girl - why all this nonsensical delicacy?' The General gestured angrily. 'Now I'll have her blood on my hands for ever. And afterwards another stupid fool tried to shoot me. I wrote to the sovereign, asking him not to have her hanged, but His Majesty was adamant. He wrote on my request in his own hand: "For those who raise the sword against my faithful servants there will be no mercy."' Moved by this memory, Khrapov began blinking and an old man's tear glinted briefly in his eye. 'Hunting me down like a wolf. I was only acting for the best... I don't understand it, for the life of me, I don't!'

The Governor General spread his hands in regretful despair, but the man with the black hair and grey temples snapped back, without a trace of a stammer: 'How could you ever understand the meaning of honour and human dignity? But that's all right: even if you don't understand, it will be a lesson to the other dogs.'

Ivan Fyodorovich gaped at this amazing official and tried to get up out of the chair, but the other man had already removed his hand from his pocket, and the object in it was not a telegram but a short dagger. The hand plunged the dagger straight to the General's heart. Khrapov's eyebrows crept upwards and his mouth dropped open, but no sound escaped from it. The Governor General's fingers clutched at the State Counsellor's hand, locking on to it, and the diamond ring flashed again in the lamplight. Then his head slumped backwards lifelessly and a thin trickle of scarlet blood ran down his chin.

The killer unclasped the dead man's fingers from his hand with fastidious disgust. Then he tore off his false moustache and rubbed his grey temples, which turned as black as the rest of his hair.

With a glance round at the closed door, the resolute man of action walked over to one of the blind windows overlooking the railway tracks, but the frame was frozen solid and absolutely refused to budge. The strange State Counsellor, however, was not disconcerted. He took hold of the curved handle with both hands and heaved. The veins stood out on his forehead, his clenched teeth ground together and - wonder of wonders! -the window frame squeaked and started moving downwards. A chilly blast flung powdery snow into the strong man's face and set the curtains flapping in delight. In a single agile movement the killer threw himself through the open frame and melted away into the grey morning twilight.

The scene in the study was transformed: overjoyed at this sudden opportunity, the wind started driving important documents across the carpet, tugging at the fringe of the tablecloth, tousling the grey hair on the General's head.

The blue lampshade began swaying impetuously and the patch of light began dodging about on the dead man's chest, revealing two letters carved into the ivory handle of the dagger driven in right up to the hilt: CG.

CHAPTER I

In which Fandorin finds himself under arrest

The day got off to a bad start Erast Petrovich Fandorin rose at the crack of dawn because at half past eight he had to be at the Nikolaevsky Station. He and his Japanese valet performed their usual comprehensive gymnastics routine, he drank green tea and was already shaving while performing his breathing exercises at the same time, when the telephone rang. It turned out that the State Counsellor need not have risen at such an ungodly hour after all: the express train from St Petersburg was expected to arrive two hours late because of snowdrifts on the railway line.

Since all the necessary instructions for ensuring the safety of the important visitor from the capital had been issued the previous day, Erast Petrovich could not immediately think of any way to occupy his unexpected leisure time. He thought of going to the station early, but decided against it. Why set his subordinates' nerves on edge unnecessarily? He could be quite certain that Colonel Sverchinsky, the acting head of the Provincial Office of Gendarmes, had carried out his instructions to the letter: platform one, at which the express train would arrive, was surrounded by agents in civilian clothes, there was an armoured carriage waiting right beside the platform, and the escort had been selected with meticulous care. It should really be quite enough to arrive at the station fifteen minutes ahead of time - and that merely for the sake of good order rather than to expose any oversights.

The task he had been set by His Excellency Prince Vladimir Andreevich Dolgorukoi was a highly responsible one, but not difficult: meet a VIP, accompany him to breakfast with the prince, after that escort him to the securely guarded residence on the Sparrow Hills to take a rest, and in the evening take the newly appointed Governor General of Siberia to the Chelyabinsk train, on to which the ministerial carriage would already have been coupled. That was really all there was to it.

There was only one point of difficulty, which had been tormenting Erast Petrovich since the previous day: should he shake the hand of Adjutant General Khrapov, who had sullied his own name with a base or, at the very least, unforgivably stupid act?

From the point of view of his position and career, of course, he ought to disregard his own feelings, especially since those who should know were predicting a rapid return to the highest echelons of power for the former gendarme commander. Fandorin, however, decided not to decline the handshake for a quite different reason - a guest is a guest, and it is not permissible to insult him. It would be sufficient to maintain a cool attitude and an emphatically official tone.

This decision was correct, indeed indisputably so, but nonetheless it had left the State Counsellor with an uneasy feeling: perhaps careerist considerations had played some part in it after all?

That was why Erast Petrovich was not at all upset by this unexpected delay - he now had extra time to resolve his complex moral dilemma.

Fandorin ordered his valet Masa to brew some strong coffee, settled into an armchair and began weighing up all the pros and cons again, involuntarily clenching and unclenching his right hand as he did so.

But before long his musings were interrupted by another ring, this time at the door. He heard the sound of voices in the hallway - at first quiet, and then loud. Someone was attempting to force his way through into the study, but Masa was keeping him out, making hissing and spluttering sounds eloquendy expressive of the former Japanese subject's bellicose state of mind.

'Who's there, Masa?' Erast Petrovich shouted, walking out of the study into the drawing room.

There he saw that he had unexpected visitors: the head of Moscow's Department of Security, Lieutenant Colonel of Gendarmes Burlyaev, accompanied by two gentlemen in check coats, evidently plain-clothes agents. Masa was holding his arms out wide, blocking the three men's way: he was clearly intending to move from words to action in the immediate future.

'My apologies, Mr Fandorin,' said Burlyaev, doffing his cap and running one hand through his stiff salt-and-pepper French crop. 'It's some kind of misunderstanding, but I have here a telegram from the Police Department' - he waved a piece of paper through the air - 'informing me that Adjutant General Khrapov has been murdered, and that ... er, er ... you killed him ... and that you must be placed under arrest immediately. They've completely lost their minds, but orders are orders ... You'd better calm your Japanese down, I've heard about the spry way he fights with his feet.'

The first thing Erast Petrovich felt was an absurd sense of relief at the realisation that the problem of the handshake had been resolved of its own accord, and it was only afterwards that the full, nightmarish force of what he had heard struck him.

Fandorin was only cleared of suspicion after the delayed express finally arrived. Before the train had even stopped moving, the white-haired Staff Captain leapt out of the ministerial carriage on to the platform and set off along it at a furious pace, spewing out curses with his face contorted in rage, towards the spot where the arrested State Counsellor was standing surrounded by police agents. But when he was only a few steps away, the Staff Captain slowed to a walk and then came to a complete halt. He fluttered his white eyelashes and punched himself hard on the thigh.

'It's not him. Like him, but not him! And not even really like him! Just the moustache, and the grey temples - no other similarity at all!' the officer muttered in bewilderment. 'Who's this you've brought? Where's Fandorin?'

'I assure you, M-Mr von Seidlitz, that I am Fandorin,' the State Counsellor said with exaggerated gentleness, as if he were speaking to someone who was mentally ill, and turned to Burlyaev, who had flushed a deep crimson. 'Pyotr Ivanovich, please tell your men that they can let go of my elbows now. Staff Captain, where are Lieutenant Colonel Modzalevsky and your men from the guard? I need to question them all and record their testimony'

'Question them? Record their testimony?' Seidlitz cried in a hoarse voice, raising his clenched fists to the heavens. 'What damned testimony! Don't you understand? He's dead, dead! My God, it's the end of everything; everything! I have to run, get the gendarmes and the police moving! If I don't find that masquerading blackguard, that—' He choked and starting hiccupping convulsively. 'But I will find him, I will, I'll exonerate myself! I'll move heaven and earth! Otherwise there'll be nothing for it but to blow my brains out!'

'Very well,' Erast Petrovich said in the same placid tone. 'I think I'll question the Staff Captain a little later when he recovers his composure. But let us make a start with the others now. Tell them to clear the stationmaster's office for us. I request Mr Sverchinsky and Mr Burlyaev to be present at the interrogation. And afterwards I shall go and report to His Excellency'

The head porter of the train, who had been maintaining a respectful distance, asked timidly: 'Your Honour, what are we to do with the body? Such an important person... Where should we take him?'

'What do you mean, where?' the State Counsellor asked in surprise. 'The morgue carriage will be here any minute; send him for a post-mortem.'

'... And then the adjutant Modzalevsky, who was the first to recover his wits, ran to the Klin passenger terminal and sent off a coded telegram to the Police Department.' Fandorin's lengthy report was nearing its end. 'The top hat, mackintosh and dagger have been sent to the laboratory for analysis. Khrapov is in the morgue. Seidlitz has been given a sedative injection.'

Silence fell in the room, broken only by the ticking of the clock and the quivering of the windowpanes under the pressure of the stormy February wind. The Governor General of the ancient capital of Russia, Prince Vladimir Andreevich Dolgorukoi, worked his wrinkled lips intently, tugged on his long, dyed moustache and scratched himself behind the ear, causing his chestnut wig to slip slightly to one side. Erast Petrovich had not often had occasion to see the all-powerful master of Russia's old capital in a state of such hopeless bewilderment.

'There's no way the St Petersburg camarilla will ever forgive me for this,' His Excellency said mournfully. 'It won't bother them that their damned Khrapov never even reached Moscow. Klin is part of Moscow province too ... Well then, Erast Petrovich, I suppose this is the end?'

The State Counsellor merely sighed in reply.

Dolgorukoi turned to the liveried servant standing at the door with a silver tray in his hands. The tray held several little bottles and phials and a small bowl of eucalyptus cough pastilles. The servant's name was Frol Grigorievich Vedishchev, and he held the modest position of valet, but the prince had no more devoted and experienced adviser than this wizened old man with his bald cranium, massive sideburns and gold-rimmed spectacles with thick lenses.

There was no one else in the study apart from these three.

'Well, Frolushka,' Dolgorukoi asked, his voice trembling, 'are we for the scrap heap then? Dismissed in dishonour. Scandal and disgrace

'Vladimir Andreevich,' the valet whined miserably, 'to hell with the sovereign's service. You've served long and well, thank God, and you're past eighty now ... Don't go tormenting yourself over this. The Tsar might not honour you, but the people of Moscow will remember you with a kind word. It's no small thing, after all: twenty-five years you've been looking after them, barely even sleeping at night. Let's go to Nice, to the sunshine. We'll sit on the porch and reminisce about the old days, why, at our age...'

The prince smiled sadly: 'I couldn't, Frol, you know that. I'll die without any work to do, I'll pine away in six months. It's Moscow that supports me, that's the only reason I'm still hale and hearty. I wouldn't mind if there were good cause, but they'll just throw me out for nothing at all. Everything in my city is in perfect order. It's unjust...' The tray of bottles began rattling in Vedishchev's hands and tears streamed down his cheeks.

'God is merciful, little father; perhaps this will pass over. Look at all the other things that have happened, but with God's help we survived. Erast Petrovich will find us the villain who killed the General, and the sovereign will mellow'

'He won't mellow,' Dolgorukoi muttered dejectedly. 'This is a matter of state security. When the sovereign power feels threatened, it has no pity on anyone. Everyone has to feel terrified, and especially its own - so that they will keep their eyes peeled and fear the authorities even more than the killers. It's my jurisdiction, so I'm answerable. There's only one thing I ask of God: to let me find the criminal quickly, using my own resources. At least then I won't leave in disgrace. I've served with dignity and my end will be dignified.' He cast a hopeful glance at his deputy for special assignments. 'Well, Erast Petrovich, will you be able to find this "CG" for me?'

Fandorin paused before replying in a quiet, uncertain voice. 'Vladimir Andreevich, you know me, I do not like to make empty promises. We cannot even be certain that after committing this atrocity the murderer made for Moscow and not St Petersburg ... After all, the Combat Group's activities are directed from St Petersburg.'

'Yes, yes, that's true,' the prince said, nodding sadly. 'Really, what am I thinking of? The combined forces of the entire Corps of Gendarmes and the Police Department have failed to catch these villains, and here I am appealing to you. Russia is a big country, the villain could have gone anywhere ... Do please forgive me. When he is drowning a man will clutch at any straw. And then, you have already rescued me from so many absolutely hopeless situations

Somewhat piqued at being compared to a straw, the State Counsellor cleared his throat and said in a mysterious tone: 'But nonetheless...'

'What "nonetheless"?' Vedishchev asked with a start, putting down the tray. He rapidly wiped his tear-stained face with a large handkerchief and ambled closer to Fandorin. 'You mean you have some kind of clue?'

'But nonetheless I can try,' Fandorin said thoughtfully. 'Indeed, I must. I was actually going to request Your Excellency to grant me the appropriate authority. By using my name, the killer has thrown down the gauntlet to me - not to mention those moments of extreme discomfort for which I was obliged to him this morning. Furthermore, I believe that when the criminal left Klin he did make his way towards Moscow It takes only one hour to get here by train from the scene of the crime, too short a time for us even to gather our wits. But it is nine hours back to St Petersburg in the opposite direction; in other words, he would still be travelling even as we speak. And in the meantime the investigation has begun, the search was already started at eleven o'clock, all the stations have been sealed and the railway gendarmes are checking the passengers on all trains within a distance of three hundred versts. No, he could not possibly have headed for St Petersburg.'

'But maybe he didn't go by rail at all?' the valet asked doubtfully. 'Maybe he got on a horse and trudged off to some place like Zamukhransk, to sit it out until the hue and cry die down?'

'Zamukhransk would be no g-good for sitting it out. In a place like that, everyone is in open view. The easiest place to hide is in a large city, where no one knows anyone else, and there is already a conspiratorial network of revolutionaries.'

The Governor General glanced quizzically at Erast Petrovich and clicked open the lid of his snuffbox, a gesture indicating his transition from a mood of despair to a state of intense thoughtfulness.

The State Counsellor waited while Prince Dolgorukoi charged both of his nostrils and gave vent to a thunderously loud sneeze. After Vedishchev had blotted his sovereign lord's eyes and nose with the same handkerchief that he had just used to wipe away his own tears, the prince asked: 'But how are you going to look for him, if he is here, in Moscow? This is a city of a million people. I can't even put the police and the gendarmes under your authority; the most I can do is oblige them to cooperate. You know yourself, my dear fellow, that the upper levels have been shuffling my request for you to be appointed head police-master from desk to desk for more than two months now. Just look at the chaotic state our police work is in.'

The chaos to which His Excellency was referring had developed in the old capital city following the dismissal of the previous head police-master, after it was discovered that he had taken the meaning of the words 'discretionary secret funds' rather too literally. A protracted bureaucratic intrigue was under way in St Petersburg: a court faction hostile to Prince Dolgorukoi absolutely refused to hand over a key appointment to one of the prince's creatures, but at the same time these implacable foes lacked the strength to impose their own placeman on the Governor General. And in the meantime the immense city had been left to carry on without its principal defender and guardian of law and order. In principle, the role of the head police-master was to lead and coordinate the activities of the Municipal Police and the Provincial Office of Gendarmes and the Department of Security, but the present state of affairs was an absolute shambles: Lieutenant Colonel Burlyaev of the Department of Security and Colonel Sverchinsky of the Office of Gendarmes wrote complaints about each other, and both of them complained of brazen obstruction by high-handed police superintendents.

'Yes, the situation at present is not propitious for joint operations,' Fandorin admitted, 'but in this p-particular case the disunity of the investigative agencies might just, perhaps, be to our advantage ...' Erast Petrovich puckered up his smooth forehead and his hand seemed to move of its own accord to draw out of his pocket the jade rosary beads that assisted the State Counsellor in focusing his thoughts.

The two old men, Prince Dolgorukoi and Vedishchev, well used to Fandorin's ways, waited with bated breath, their faces set in identical expressions, like little children at the circus who know for certain that the conjuror's top hat is empty and at the same time have no doubt that the sly trickster is about to pull a rabbit or a pigeon out of it.

The State Counsellor pulled out his rabbit. 'Allow me to ask exacdy why the criminal's plan succeeded so brilliandy,' Erast Petrovich began, and then paused as if he were really expecting a reply. 'The answer is very simple: he possessed detailed information concerning matters that very few people should have known about. That is one. The arrangements for the protection of Adjutant General Khrapov on his journey across Moscow province were only determined the day before yesterday, with the involvement of a very limited number of people. That is two. One of them, who knew the plan in its minutest details, betrayed that plan to the revolutionaries - either consciously or unconsciously. That is three. All we have to do is find this individual, and through him we shall find the Combat Group and the killer himself.'

'How do you mean, "unconsciously"?' the Governor General asked with a frown. 'Consciously, now - that's clear enough. Even in the state service there are turncoats. Some sell the nihilists secrets for money, some because the devil prompts them to do it. But when they're unconscious? You mean when they're drunk?'

'More likely out of carelessness,' Fandorin replied. 'The way it usually happens is that some official blurts out a secret to someone close to him who has connections with the terrorists -a son, a daughter, a lover. But that will merely add one more link to the chain.'

'Well then,' said the prince, reaching for his snuff again, 'the day before yesterday at the secret meeting concerning Ivan Fyodorovich's arrival (may the old sinner rest in peace), the only people present, apart from myself and you, were Sverchinsky and Burlyaev. Not even the police were involved - on instructions from Petersburg. So do we have to regard the heads of the Office of Gendarmes and the Department of Security as suspects? That seems rather outlandish. A ... aa ... choo!'

'Bless you,' Vedishchev put in, and began wiping His Excellency's nose again.

'Yes, even them,' Erast Petrovich declared decisively. And in addition, we need to find out who else in the Office and the Department was privy to all the details. I assume that can only be three or four people at most, no more.'

Frol Grigorievich gasped. 'Good Lord, why that's mere child's play to you! Vladimir Andreevich, for goodness' sake don't go into mourning yet. If this is the end of your career, then you'll leave the service with full honours, in style. They'll see you off waving and cheering, not with a boot up the backside! Erast Petrovich will have this Judas sorted out for us in a jiffy. "That is one, that is two, that is three," he'll say - and all done and dusted!'

'It's not as simple as that,' said the State Counsellor, with a shake of his head. 'Yes, the Office of Gendarmes is the first place where there could have been a leak. And the Department of Security is the second. But unfortunately there is a third possibility, which I shall not be able to investigate. The plan that we agreed for the protection of Khrapov was sent to St Petersburg for confirmation by coded telegram. It included information about me, as the person responsible for our visitor's safety -with an abstract of my service record, a verbal description, intelligence profile and so forth; in short, everything that is normally required in such cases. Seidlitz had no doubts about the false Fandorin, because the impersonator had been informed in minute detail about my appearance and even my st-stammer ... If the source of the leak is in St Petersburg, it is unlikely that I shall be able to do anything. My writ doesn't run there, as they say ... But even so the chances are two out of three that the trail begins in Moscow. And the killer is most likely hiding somewhere here. We have to look for him.'

From the Governor General's house the State Counsellor went directly to the Office of Gendarmes on Malaya Nikitskaya Street. As he rode in the prince's blue-velvet-upholstered carriage, he wondered what approach he ought to take with Colonel Sverchinsky. Of course, the hypothesis that Sverchinsky, a longstanding confidant of the prince and Vedishchev, could be involved with revolutionaries required a certain liveliness of the imagination, but the good Lord had endowed the State

Counsellor plentifully with that particular quality, and in the course of a life rich in adventures he had come across surprises more bizarre than that.

And so, what could be said about Colonel Stanislav Sverchinsky of the Special Corps of Gendarmes?

He was secretive, cunning and ambitious, but at the same time very cautious - he preferred to stay in the background. A meticulous career man. He knew how to bide his time and wait for his chance, and this time it seemed to have come: as yet he was only acting head of the Office of Gendarmes, but in all likelihood he would be confirmed in that post, and then the most mouth-watering career prospects would be open to him. Of course, it was well known in both Moscow and St Petersburg that Sverchinsky was Prince Dolgorukoi's man. If Vladimir Andreevich were to leave the old capital city for the sunny scrap heap of Nice, the colonel might never be confirmed in his coveted appointment. And so, as far as Stanislav Filippovich Sverchinsky's career prospects were concerned, the death of General Khrapov was a distressing, perhaps even fatal, event. At least, that was how matters appeared at first glance.

The journey from Tverskaya Street to Malaya Nikitskaya Street was no distance at all and were it not for the cold wind driving the slanting snow, Fandorin would have preferred to go on foot: walking was better for thinking. Here was the turn off the boulevard already. The carriage drove past the cast-iron railings of the mansion of Baron Evert-Kolokoltsev, where Fandorin lived in the outhouse, and two hundred paces further on the familiar yellowish-white building with a striped sentry box at the entrance emerged from the white shroud of the blizzard.

Fandorin climbed out, held down the top hat that was straining to take flight, and ran up the slippery steps. In the vestibule a familiar sergeant saluted the State Counsellor smartly and reported without waiting to be asked: 'In his office. He's expecting you. Your coat and hat, if you please, Your Honour. I'll take them to the cloakroom.'

Erast Petrovich thanked him absent-mindedly and looked round the familiar interior as if he were seeing it for the first time.

A corridor with a row of identical oilcloth-upholstered doors, drab pale-blue walls with perfunctory white skirting, and - at the far end - the gymnastics hall. Could state treason really be lurking here, within these walls?

The departmental adjutant on duty in the reception room was Lieutenant Smolyaninov, a ruddy-faced young man with lively black eyes and a dashingly curled moustache.

'Good health to you, Erast Petrovich,' he said, greeting the habitual visitor. 'Terrible weather, eh?'

'Yes, yes,' said the State Counsellor, nodding. 'May I go in?' And he walked straight into the office without any further ado, as an old colleague and, perhaps - in the near future - an immediate superior.

'Well, what news of happenings in higher places?' asked Sverchinsky, rising to greet him. 'What does Vladimir Andreevich say? What are we to do, what measures are we to take? I confess I'm at a loss.' He lowered his voice to a terrible whisper and asked: 'What do you think - will they dismiss him?'

'To some extent that will depend on the two of us.'

Fandorin lowered himself into an armchair, the Colonel sat down facing him, and the conversation immediately turned to business.

'Stanislav Filippovich, I shall be frank with you. We have a t-traitor among us, either here, in the Office of Gendarmes, or in the Department of Security'

'A traitor?' The Colonel shook his head violently, inflicting serious damage on the ideal parting that divided his smoothly slicked hairstyle into two symmetrical halves. 'Here?'

'Yes, a traitor or a blabbermouth, which in the given case is the same thing.' The State Counsellor expounded his reasoning to the Colonel.

Sverchinsky listened, twirling the ends of his moustache in agitation. Having heard Fandorin out, he set his hand on his heart and said with feeling: 'I entirely agree with you! Your reasoning is absolutely just and convincing. But I ask you please to exempt my office from suspicion. Our assignment in the matter of General Khrapov's arrival was extremely simple - to provide a uniformed escort. I didn't even take any special measures, simply ordered a mounted half-platoon to be made ready, and that was all. And I assure you, my esteemed Erast Petrovich, that in the entire Office only two men were aware of all the details: myself and Lieutenant Smolyaninov. I had to explain everything to him, as the adjutant. But you know him yourself; he's a responsible young man, bright and very high-minded, not the kind to fall down on the job. And I dare to hope that I am known to you as a man not given to gossiping.'

Erast Petrovich inclined his head diplomatically: 'That is precisely why I came to you in the first instance and am keeping nothing back from you.'

'I assure you, it must be the Petersburg crew or those types from Gnezdikovsky!' the Colonel said, opening his handsome, velvety eyes wide - by 'those types from Gnezdikovsky' he meant the Department of Security, located on Bolshoi Gnezdikovsky Lane. 'I can't say anything about Petersburg, I'm not in possession of adequate information; but Lieutenant Colonel Burlyaev has plenty of riff-raff among his helpers - former nihilists and all sorts of shady characters. That's the place you need to sound out. Of course, I wouldn't dream of accusing Pyotr Ivanovich himself, God forbid, but his agents were responsible for the secret security arrangements, so there must have been some kind of briefing and an explanation - to a pretty large group of highly dubious individuals. Very imprudent. And another thing...' Sverchinsky hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to continue.

'What?' asked Fandorin, looking him straight in the eye. 'Is there some other possible explanation that I have overlooked? Tell me, Stanislav Filippovich, tell me. We are speaking frankly here.'

'Well, there are also the secret agents, whom we refer to in our department as "collaborators" - that is, the members of revolutionary groups who collaborate with the police.'

'Agents provocateurs?' the State Counsellor enquired with a frown.

'No, not necessarily provocateurs. Sometimes simply informants. Our work would be quite impossible without them.'

'How could your spies know the detailed arrangements for the reception of a secret visitor, right down to the description of my appearance?' asked Erast Petrovich, knitting the black arrowheads of his eyebrows in a frown. 'I can't see why they should.'

The Colonel was clearly in some difficulty. He blushed slightly, twisted one side of his moustache into an even tighter curl and lowered his voice confidentially.

'There are different kinds of agents. And the way the authorised officers handle them varies too. Sometimes it's a matter of entirely private ... mmm... I would even say, intimate, contact. Well, you understand.'

'No,' said Fandorin with a shudder, looking at the other man in some fright. 'I do not understand and I do not wish to. Do you mean to tell me that for the good of the cause employees of the Office of Gendarmes and the Department of Security enter into sodomitical relations with their agents?'

Ah, why necessarily sodomitical!' Sverchinsky exclaimed, throwing his hands up. 'The collaborators include quite a large number of women, as a general rule quite young and good-looking. And you know what a free attitude our modern revolutionary youth and their associates have towards matters of sex.'

'Yes, yes,’ said the State Counsellor in a rather embarrassed tone. 'I have heard about it. I really do not have a very clear idea of the activities of the secret police. And I have not previously had any dealings with revolutionaries - mostly murderers, swindlers and foreign spies. However, Stanislav Filippovich, you are clearly pointing me in the direction of one of the Department's officers. Who is it? Which of them, in your view, has suspicious connections?'

The Colonel maintained his expression of moral torment for about half a minute and then, as if he had come to a difficult decision, he whispered: 'Erast Petrovich, my dear fellow, to some extent, of course, this is private business, but knowing you as I do to be a highly scrupulous and broadminded individual, I feel that I have no right to conceal the facts, especially since this is a matter of exceptional importance, in the face of which all personal considerations pale into insignificance, no matter—' At this point, having lost the thread of his tangled grammar, Sverchinsky broke off and began speaking more simply. 'I am in possession of information indicating that Lieutenant Colonel Burlyaev maintains an acquaintance with a certain Diana - of course, that is her agent's alias - a very mysterious individual who collaborates with the authorities without reward, out of ideological considerations, and therefore sets her own terms. For instance, we do not know her real name or where she lives -only the address of the secret apartment that the Department rents for her. From what we know, she is a young woman, or married lady, from a very good family. She has extremely wide and extremely useful contacts among the revolutionary circles of Moscow and St Petersburg, and she renders the police truly invaluable service ...'

'Is she Burlyaev's mistress, and could he have revealed secrets to her?' the State Counsellor asked impatiendy, interrupting Sverchinksy. 'Is that what you are hinting at?'

Stanislav Filippovich unbuttoned his stiff collar and moved . closer. 'I... I am not certain that she is his mistress, but I think it possible. Very possible, in fact. And if she is, Burlyaev could easily have told her things that he shouldn't have. You understand, double agents, especially of this complexion, are not very predictable. Today they collaborate with us, tomorrow they reverse direction and..."

'Very well, I'll bear it in mind.'

Erast Petrovich began thinking about something and suddenly changed the subject: 'I assume Frol Grigorievich has telephoned and asked you to offer me every possible assistance.'

Sverchinsky pressed his hands to his chest, as if to say: Everything that I can possibly do.

'Then I tell you what. For this investigation I shall require a smart assistant who can also act as my liaison officer. Will you lend me your Smolyaninov?'

The State Counsellor had not spent very long in the yellowish-white building, probably no more than half an hour; but when he came back out into the street, the city was unrecognisable. The wind had wearied of driving white dust through the crooked streets and the snow had settled in loose heaps on the roofs and roadways. In some magical manner, the sky, so recently completely obscured, had now cleared, and the low, grainy ceiling was gone, replaced by a joyous, soaring vault of blue, crowned, just as it should be, by a small circle of gold that glittered like a shiny new imperial. Church domes looking like New Year's tree toys had sprung up out of nowhere above the roofs of the buildings, the freshly fallen snow sparkled with all the colours of the rainbow, and Moscow had performed her favourite trick of changing from a frog into a princess so lovely that the sight of her took your very breath away.

Erast Petrovich looked around and even came to a halt, almost blinded by the bright radiance.

'How beautiful!' exclaimed Lieutenant Smolyaninov and then, suddenly ashamed of his excessive enthusiasm, felt it necessary to add: 'Really, what remarkable metamorphoses... Where are we going now, Mr State Counsellor?'

'To the Department of Security. This weather really is glorious. L-Let's walk there.'

Fandorin sent the carriage back to the Governor General's stables, and five minutes later the deputy for special assignments and his ruddy-cheeked companion were striding down Tver-skaya Street, which was already full of people strolling along, half-crazed by this sudden amnesty that nature had granted them, although the yard-keepers had barely even begun clearing the alleyways of snow.

Every now and then Erast Petrovich caught people glancing at him - sometimes in fright, sometimes in sympathy, sometimes with simple curiosity - and it was a while before he realised the reason. Ah yes, it was the fine young fellow in the blue gendarme's greatcoat, with a gun-holster and a sword, walking to one side and slightly behind him. A stranger could easily assume that the respectable-looking gentleman in the fur cloak and suede top hat was under armed escort. Two engineering students whom Fandorin did not know at all nodded as they walked towards him and gave his 'escort' a look of hatred and contempt. Erast Petrovich glanced round at the Lieutenant, but he was smiling as serenely as ever and seemed not to have noticed the young men's hostility.

'Smolyaninov, you are obviously going to spend several days with me. Don't wear your uniform; it may interfere with our work. Wear civilian clothes. And by the way, I've been wanting to ask you for a long time ... How did you come to be in the gendarmes corps? Your father's a privy counsellor, is he not? You could have served in the g-guards.'

Lieutenant Smolyaninov took the question as an invitation to reduce the respectful distance that he had been maintaining. In a single bound he overtook the State Counsellor and walked on shoulder to shoulder with him. 'What's so good about being in the guards?' he responded readily. 'Nothing but parades and drunken revels: it's boring. But serving in the gendarmes is pure pleasure. Secret missions, tailing dangerous criminals, sometimes even gunfights. Last year an anarchist holed up in a dacha at Novogireevo, do you remember? He held us off for three whole hours, wounded two of our men. He almost winged me too; the bullet whizzed by just past my cheek. Another half-inch, and it would have left a scar.'

The final words were spoken with obvious regret for an opportunity lost.

'But are you not distressed by the... the hostile attitude taken by society towards blue uniforms, especially among your own contemporaries?' Erast Petrovich looked at his companion with keen curiosity, but Smolyaninov's expression remained as untroubled as ever.

'I take no notice of it, because I serve Russia and my conscience is clear. And the prejudice against members of the gendarmes corps will evaporate when everyone realises how much we do to protect the state and victims of violence. I'm sure you know that the emblem assigned to the corps by the Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich is a white handkerchief for wiping away the tears of the unfortunate and the suffering.'

Such simple-hearted fervour made the State Counsellor look again at the Lieutenant, who began speaking with even greater passion: 'People think our branch of service is scandalous because they know so little about it. But in actual fact, it is far from easy to become a gendarme officer. Firsdy, they only take hereditary nobles, because we are the principal defenders of the throne. Secondly, they select the most deserving and well educated of the army officers, only those who have graduated from college with at least a first-class diploma. There mustn't be a single blot on your service record, and God forbid that you should have any debts. A gendarme's hands must be clean. Do you know what difficult exams I had to take? It was terrible. I got top marks for my essay on the subject "Russia in the twentieth century", but I still had to wait almost a year for a place on the training course, and after the course I waited another four months for a vacancy. Although it's true, Papa did get me a place in the Moscow office...' Smolyaninov need not have added that, and Erast Petrovich appreciated the young man's candour.

'Well, and what future awaits Russia in the twentieth century?' Fandorin asked, glancing sideways at this defender of the throne with obvious fellow-feeling.

'A very great one! We only need to reorientate the mood of the educated section of society, redirect their energies from destruction to creation, and we must also educate the unenlightened section of society and gradually nurture its self-respect and dignity. That's the most important thing! If we don't do that, then the trials in store for Russia are truly appalling

However, Erast Petrovich never discovered exactly what trials were in store for Russia, since they had already turned on to Bolshoi Gnezdikovsky Lane, and ahead of them they could see the unremarkable, two-storey green building that housed the Moscow Department of Security, or 'Okhranka'.

Anyone unfamiliar with the tangled branches of the tree of Russian statehood would have found it hard to understand what the difference was between the Department of Security and the Provincial Office of Gendarmes. Strictly speaking, the former was supposedly responsible for the detection of political criminals and the latter for their investigation and interrogation, but since in secret police work detection and investigation are often inseparable, both agencies performed the same job - they strove to eradicate the revolutionary plague by any and every means possible, regardless of the provisions of the law. Both the gendarmes and the okhranniks were serious people, tried and tested many times over, privy to the deepest of secrets, although the Office of Gendarmes was subordinated to the senior command of the Special Corps of Gendarmes, and the Department of Security, or Okhranka, was subordinated to the Police Department. The confusion was further exacerbated by the fact that senior officers of the Okhranka were often officially listed as serving in the Gendarmes Corps, and the provincial offices of gendarmes often included in their staff civilian officials from the Police Department. Evidently at some time in the past someone wise and experienced, with a none-too-flattering opinion of human nature, had decided that a single eye was insufficient for observing and overseeing the restive Empire. After all, the Lord himself had decreed that man should have not one eye but two. Two eyes were more practical for spotting sedition, and they reduced the risk of a single eye developing too high an opinion of itself. Therefore, by ancient tradition the relations between the two branches of the secret police were founded on jealousy and hostility, which were not only tolerated from on high but actually encouraged.

In Moscow the eternal enmity between gendarmes and okhranniks was mitigated to a certain extent by unified management - both sides were subordinated to the head police-master of the city - but under this arrangement the inhabitants of the green house were at a certain advantage: since they possessed a larger network of agents, they were better informed than their blue-uniformed colleagues about the life and moods of the great city, and for the top brass, better informed meant more valuable. The relative superiority of the Okhranka was evident even in the Department's location: in the immediate vicinity of the residence of the head police-master, with only a short walk across a closed yard from one back entrance to the other, whereas from Malaya Nikitskaya Street to the police-master's home was a brisk walk of at least a quarter of an hour.

However, the prolonged absence of a supreme police commander in Moscow had disrupted the fragile equilibrium between Malaya Nikitskaya Street and Gnezdikovsky Lane, a fact of which Erast Petrovich was well aware. Therefore Sverchinsky's insinuations concerning Lieutenant Colonel Burlyaev and his subordinates had to be regarded with a certain degree of circumspection.

Fandorin pushed open the plain door and found himself in a dark entrance hall with a low, cracked ceiling. Without slowing his stride, the State Counsellor nodded to an individual in civilian clothes (who bowed respectfully in reply, without speaking) and set off up the old winding stairs to the first floor. Smolyaninov clattered after him, holding his sword still.

Upstairs the ambience was quite different: a broad, brightly lit corridor with a carpet runner on the floor, the brisk tapping of typewriters from behind leather-upholstered doors, tasteful prints with views of old Moscow hanging on the walls.

The gendarme lieutenant, evidently in hostile territory for the first time, gazed around with undisguised curiosity.

'You sit here for a while,' said Erast Petrovich, pointing to a row of chairs, and walked into the commander's office.

'Glad to see you looking so well!' the Lieutenant Colonel declared, jumping up from behind the desk and hastening to shake his visitor's hand with exaggerated vivacity, although they had parted only some two hours previously and the State Counsellor had not given the slightest reason for any apprehension concerning his state of health.

Fandorin interpreted Burlyaev's nervousness as an indication of the Lieutenant Colonel's embarrassment over the recent arrest. However, all the appropriate apologies had been made in exaggeratedly verbose style at the railway station, and so the State Counsellor did not return to the annoying incident, regarding the matter as already closed, but went straight to the main point.

'Pyotr Ivanovich, yesterday you reported to me on the measures proposed for ensuring s-security during Adjutant General Khrapov's visit. I approved your proposals. As far as I recall, you allocated twelve agents to cover the General's arrival at the station, another four dressed as porters to accompany him in the street, and two brigades of seven men to patrol the environs of the mansion on the Sparrow Hills.'

'Precisely so,' Burlyaev confirmed cautiously, anticipating a trick.

'Were your agents informed of the name of the individual who w-was arriving?'

'Only the leaders of each brigade - four men in total, all highly reliable.'

'I see.' The State Counsellor crossed one leg over the other, set his top hat and gloves down on a nearby chair and enquired casually, 'I hope you did not forget to inform these four men that overall command of the security operation had been entrusted to me?'

The Lieutenant Colonel shrugged and spread his hands. 'Why no, I didn't do that, Erast Petrovich. I didn't think it necessary. Should I have done? My apologies.'

'Well then, apart from you no one in the entire department knew that I had been charged with receiving the General?' asked Fandorin, suddenly leaning forward.

'Only my closest aides knew that - Collegiate Assessor Mylnikov and my senior operations officer, Zubtsov - no one else. In our organisation it's not customary to gossip. Mylnikov, as you know, is in charge of the plain-clothes section, it could not have been kept from him. And Sergei Vitalievich Zubtsov is the most competent man I have; he was the one who invented the COM scenario. It's his professional pride and joy, you might say'

'I beg your pardon, what scenario was that?' Erast Petrovich asked in surprise.

'COM - Category One Meeting. That's our professional terminology. We conduct secret surveillance according to categories, depending on the number of agents involved. "Category Two Shadowing", "Category Three Arrest", and so forth. "Category One Meeting" is when we need to ensure the safety of an individual of the first rank. For instance, two weeks ago the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, arrived in Moscow. Thirty agents were involved then too: twelve at the station, four in droshkies and two teams of seven around the residence. But the "Supreme Category" is only used for His Imperial Majesty. All sixty agents work on that, and the Flying Squad comes down from St Petersburg as well. That's not counting the court security guards, the gendarmes and so forth.'

'I know Mylnikov,' Fandorin said in a thoughtful voice. 'Evstratii Pavlovich, I believe his name is? I've seen him in action; he's very adroit. Didn't he serve his way up from the ranks?'

'Yes, he rose from being a simple constable. Not well educated, but sharp and tenacious, very quick on the uptake. The agents all idolise him, and he looks out for them too. Worth his weight in gold; I'm delighted with him.'

'Gold?' Fandorin queried doubtfully. 'I've heard it s-said that Mylnikov is light-fingered. He lives beyond his means and supposedly there was even an internal investigation into the expenditure of official funds?'

Burlyaev lowered his voice confidentially.

'Erast Petrovich, Mylnikov has total control of substantial funds to provide financial incentives for the agents. How he disposes of that money is none of my concern. I require first-class service from his section, and that's what Evstratii Paviovich provides. What more can I ask?'

The Governor General's assistant for special assignments pondered this opinion and was clearly unable to think of any objections to it.

'Very well. Then what sort of man is Zubtsov? I hardly know him at all. That is, I've seen him, of course, but never worked with him. Do I remember aright that he is a former revolutionary?'

'Indeed he is,' the boss of the Okhranka replied with obvious relish. "That's a story I'm very proud of. I arrested Sergei Vitalievich myself, when he was still a student. He cost me a fair deal of trouble - at first he just scowled and wouldn't say a word. I had him in my punishment cell, on bread and water, and I yelled at him and threatened him with hard labour. But the way I finally got him was not through fear, but through persuasion. Looking at the lad, I could see he had very nimble wits, and people like that, by the very way their brains work, aren't naturally inclined to terror and other violent tactics. The bomb and the revolver are for the stupid ones, who don't have enough imagination to realise you can't butt your way through a brick wall. But I noticed that my Sergei Vitalievich liked to discuss parliamentarianism, an alliance of right-thinking patriots and so forth. Conducting his interrogations was a sheer pleasure -would you believe that sometimes we sat up in the holding cell until morning? He used to make critical comments about his comrades in the revolutionary group; I could see he understood how limited they were, that they were doomed, and he was looking for a way out: he wanted to correct social injustice, but without blowing the country to pieces with dynamite. I really liked that. I managed to get his case closed. Naturally, his comrades suspected he had betrayed them and they turned their backs on him. He was offended - his conscience was clear as far as they were concerned. You could say I was the only friend he had left. We used to meet to talk about this and that, and I told him what I could about my work, about the various difficulties and snags. And what do you think? Sergei Vitalievich started giving me advice - on the best way to talk to young people, how to tell a propagandist from a terrorist, which pieces of revolutionary literature I should read, and so forth. Extremely valuable advice it was too. One day over a glass of cognac I said to him: "Sergei Vitalievich, my dear fellow, I've grown quite fond of you over all these months, and it pains me to see the way you're torn between two truths. I understand that our nihilists have their own truth, only now there's no way back to them for you. But I tell you what," I said, "you join our truth and, by God, you'll find it's more profound. I can see you're a genuine patriot of the Russian land; you couldn't care less for all their Internationals. Well, I'm just as much a patriot as you are. Let's help Russia together." And what do you think? Sergei Vitalievich thought about it for a day or two, wrote a letter to his former friends - you know, saying our ways have parted, and so on -and then put in an application to be taken on to serve under my command. Now he's my right hand, and he'll go a long way yet, you'll see. And by the way, he's a passionate admirer of yours. He's simply in love with you, on my word of honour. Talks of nothing all the time except your great feats of deduction. Sometimes it makes me feel quite jealous.'

The Lieutenant Colonel laughed, apparently very pleased at having shown himself in a positive light and also having paid his future superior a smart compliment.

Fandorin, however, followed his usual habit and suddenly started talking about something else: ‘Ivan Petrovich, are you familiar with a certain lady by the name of Diana?'

Burlyaev stopped laughing and his face turned to stone, shedding some of its usual expression of coarse, soldierly forth-rightness - his glance was suddenly sharp and cautious.

'May I enquire, Mr State Counsellor, why you are interested in that lady?'

'You may,' Fandorin replied dispassionately. 'I am seeking the source from which information about our plan reached the t-terrorists. So far I have managed to establish that outside the Police Department the details were known only to you, Mylnikov, Zubtsov, Sverchinsky and his adjutant. Colonel Sverchinsky thinks it possible that the collaborator with the c-conspiratorial alias of Diana could have been informed of the security measures. You are acquainted with her, are you not?'

Burlyaev replied with sudden rancour: 'I am. She's a splendid collaborator, no doubt about it, but Sverchinsky's hints are misplaced. A clear case of the pot calling the kettle black! If anyone could have let something slip to her, then it's him. She can twist him round her little finger!'

'What, you mean Stanislav Filippovich is her lover?' the State Counsellor asked in astonishment, barely managing to swallow the words 'as well'.

"The devil only knows,' the Lieutenant Colonel growled in the same furious tone. 'It's very possible!'

The bewildered State Counsellor took a moment to gather his thoughts. 'And is she so very attractive, this Diana?'

'I really don't know! I've never seen her face.'

Pyotr Ivanovich emphasised the final word, which lent the entire phrase a distinct air of ambiguity. The Lieutenant Colonel evidently felt this himself, because he found it necessary to explain: 'You see, Diana doesn't show her face to any of our people. All the meetings take place at the secret apartment, in semi-darkness, and she wears a veil as well.'

'But that's quite unheard of!'

'She plays the romantic heroine,' Burlyaev said with a scowl. 'I'm sure Sverchinsky hasn't seen her face either. The other parts of her body - very probably; but our Diana conceals her face like a Turkish odalisque. That was a strict condition of her collaboration. She threatens to stop providing us with any help if there is even the slightest attempt to discover her real identity. There was a special instruction from the Police Department not to make any such attempts. Let her play the mysterious heroine, they said, just as long as she provides information.'

Erast Petrovich mentally compared the manner in which Burlyaev and Sverchinsky spoke about the mysterious collaborator and discovered distinct elements of similarity in the words and intonations of the two staff officers. Apparently the rivalry between the Office and the Department was not limited to the field of police work.

'I'll tell you what, Pyotr Ivanovich,' Fandorin said with a perfectly serious expression: 'you have intrigued me with this mysterious Diana of yours. Contact her and say I wish to see her immediately.'

CHAPTER 2

The man of steel rests

Seven hundred and eighty-two, seven hundred and eighty-three, seven hundred and eighty-four ...

The lean, muscular man with the stony face, calm grey eyes and resolute vertical crease in the centre of his forehead lay on the parquet floor, counting the beats of his own heart. The count proceeded automatically, without involving his thoughts or hindering them in any way. When the man was lying down, each heartbeat was precisely one second - that had been verified many times. The old habit, acquired during imprisonment at hard labour, of listening to the workings of his internal motor while he rested had become such an integral part of the man's very existence that sometimes he would wake in the middle of the night with a four-figure number in his mind and realise that he hadn't stopped counting even in his sleep.

There was a point to this arithmetic: it trained and disciplined his heart, heightened his endurance, strengthened his will and -most importantly - allowed him to relax his muscles and restore his strength in the space of only fifteen minutes (nine hundred heartbeats) just as well as he could have done in three hours of sound sleep. Once the man had had to go without sleep for a long time, when the common convicts in the Akatuisk penal prison had decided to kill him. Too afraid to come near him during the day, they had waited for darkness to come, and the same scene had been played out over and over again for many nights in a row.

The practice of lying on a hard surface had remained with him since the days of his early youth, when Green (that was what his comrades called him - no one knew his real name) had worked hard to develop his self-discipline and wean himself of everything that he regarded as 'luxury', including in this category any habits that were harmful or simply unnecessary for survival.

He could hear muted voices behind the closed door: the members of the Combat Group were excitedly discussing the details of the successful operation. Sometimes Bullfinch got carried away and raised his voice, and then the other two hissed at him. They thought Green was asleep. But he wasn't sleeping. He was resting, counting the beats of his heart and thinking about the old man who had grabbed hold of his wrist just before he died. He could still feel the touch of those dry, hot fingers on his skin. It prevented him from feeling any satisfaction in the neat execution of the operation - and the grey-eyed man had no other pleasures apart from the feeling of duty fulfilled.

Green knew the English meaning of his alias, but he experienced his own colour differently. Everything in the world had a colour, every object and concept, every person - that was something Green had felt since he was a little child; it was one of the special things about him. For instance, the word 'earth' was a clay-brown colour, the word 'apple' was bright pink even for a green winter apple, 'empire' was maroon, 'father' was a dense purple and 'mother' was crimson. Even the letters of the alphabet had their own coloration: 'A' was scarlet, 'B' was bright lemon-yellow, 'C was pale yellow. Green made no attempt to analyse why for him the sound and meaning of a thing, a phenomenon or a person had these particular colours and no others - he simply took note of this information, and the information rarely misled him. The fact was that every colour also had its own secret meaning on a scale that was an integral, fundamental element of Green's soul. Blue was doubt and unreliability, white was joy, red was sadness, and that made the Russian flag a strange combination: it had joy and sadness, both of them strangely equivocal. If the glow given off by a new acquaintance was blue, Green didn't exacdy regard him with overt mistrust, but he watched a person like that closely and assessed him with particular caution. And there was another thing: people were the only items in the whole of existence capable of changing their colour over time - as a result of their own actions, the company they kept and their age.

Green himself had once been sky-blue: soft, warm, amorphous. Later, when he decided to change himself, the sky-blue had faded and been gradually supplanted by an austere, limpid ash-grey. In time the once dominant light-blue tones had receded somewhere deep inside, reduced to secondary tints, and Green had become bright grey, like Damask steel - just as hard, supple, cold and resistant to rust.

The transformation had begun at the age of sixteen. Before that Green had been an ordinary grammar-school pupil - he used to paint landscapes in watercolour, recite poetry by Nekrasov and Lermontov, fall in love. But, of course, even then he had been different from his classmates - if only because they were all Russian and he was not. They didn't persecute him in the classroom, or bait him with being a 'Yid', because they could sense the future man of steel's intensity of feeling and calm, imperturbable strength; but he had no friends and he could not have had. The other pupils skipped lessons, talked back to the teachers and copied from cribs, but Green was obliged to earn top marks in every subject and conduct himself in the most exemplary fashion, because otherwise he would have been expelled, and that would have been too much for his father to bear.

The sky-blue youth would have gone on to graduate from the grammar school, then become a university student and after that a doctor, or perhaps - who could tell? - an artist, if the Governor General Chirkov had not suddenly taken it into his head that there were too many Jews in the city and given instructions for all the pharmacists, dentists and tradesmen who did not possess a permit to reside outside the pale to be sent back to their home towns. Green's father was a pharmacist, and so the family found itself back in the small southern town that Grinberg senior had left many years before in order to acquire a clean, respectable profession.

Green's natural response to such malicious, stupid injustice was one of genuine bewilderment, which passed through the stages of acute physical suffering and seething fury before it culminated in a craving for retaliation.

There was a lot of malicious, stupid injustice around. The juvenile Green had agonised over it earlier, but so far he had managed to pretend that he had more important things to do: justify his father's hopes, learn a useful trade, search within himself and grasp the reason why he had appeared in the world. But now that the inexorable locomotive of malicious stupidity had come hurtling down the rails straight at Green, puffing out menacing steam and tossing him aside down the embankment, it was impossible to resist the inner voice that demanded action.

All that year Green was left to his own devices. He was supposedly preparing to sit the final grammar-school examinations as an external student. And he did read a great deal: Gibbon, Locke, Mill, Guizot. He wanted to understand why people tormented each other, where injustice came from and what was the best way of putting it right. There was no direct answer to be found in the books, but with a little bit of serious thought, it could be read between the lines.

If society was not to become overgrown with scum like a stagnant pond, it needed the periodical shaking-up known as revolution. The advanced nations were those that had passed through this painful but necessary process - and the earlier the better. A class that had been on top for too long became necrotic, like callused skin, the pores of the country became blocked and, as society gradually smothered, life lost its meaning and rule became arbitrary. The state fell into dilapidation, like a house that has not been repaired for a long time, and once the process of disintegration had gone too far, there was no longer any point in propping and patching up the rotten structure. It had to be burned down, and a sturdy new house with bright windows built on the site of the fire.

But conflagrations did not simply happen of their own accord. There had to be people willing to take on the role of the match that would be consumed in starting the great fire. The mere thought of such a fate took Green's breath away. He was willing to be a match and to be consumed, but he realised that his assent alone was not enough. Also required were a will of steel, Herculean strength and irreproachable moral purity.

He had been born with a strong will; all he needed to do was develop it. So he devised an entire course of exercises for overcoming his own weaknesses - his main enemies. To conquer his fear of heights he spent hours at night walking backwards and forwards along the parapet of the railway bridge, forcing himself to keep his eyes fixed on the black, oily water below. To conquer his squeamishness he caught vipers in the forest and stared intently into their repulsive, hissing mouths while their spotted, springy whiplash bodies coiled furiously round his naked arm. To conquer his shyness he travelled to the fair at the district town and sang to the accompaniment of a barrel organ, and his listeners rolled around in laughter, because the sullen little Jewish half-wit had no voice and no ear.

Herculean strength was harder to obtain. Nature had given Green robust health, but made him ungainly and narrow-boned. For week after week, month after month, he spent ten, twelve or fourteen hours a day developing his physical strength. He followed his own method, dividing the muscles into those that were necessary and those that were not, and wasting no time on the unnecessary ones. He began by training his fingers and continued until he could bend a five-kopeck piece or even a three-kopeck piece between his thumb and forefinger. Then he turned his attention to his fists, pounding an inch-thick plank until his knuckles were broken and bloody, smearing the abrasions with iodine and then pounding again, until his fists were covered with calluses and the wood broke at his very first blow. In order to develop his shoulders, he took a job at a flour mill, carrying sacks that weighed four poods. He developed his stomach and waist with French gymnastics and his legs by riding a bicycle up hills and carrying it down them.

It was moral purity that gave him the greatest difficulty. Green quickly succeeded in renouncing intemperate eating habits and excessive domestic comfort, even though his mother cried when he toughened his will by fasting or went off to sleep on the sheet-metal roof on a rainy October night. But he was simply unable to deny his physiological needs. Fasting didn't help, nor did a hundred pull-ups on his patented English exercise bar. One day he decided to fight fire with fire and induce in himself an aversion to sexual activity. He went to the district town and hired the most repulsive slut at the station. It didn't work - in fact it only made things worse; and he was left with nothing but his willpower to rely on.

Green spent a year and four months whittling himself into a match. He still hadn't decided where he would find the box against which he was destined to be struck before being consumed in flame, but he already knew that blood would have to be spilled and he prepared himself thoroughly. He practised shooting at a target until he never missed. He learned to grab a knife out of his belt with lightning speed and throw it to hit a small melon at twelve paces. He pored over chemistry textbooks and manufactured an explosive mixture to his own formula.

He followed the activities of the resolute members of the People's Will party with trepidation as they pursued their unprecedented hunt of the Tsar himself. But somehow the Tsar evaded them: the autocrat was protected by a mysterious power that miraculously saved his life over and over again.

Green waited. He had begun to suspect what this mysterious power might be, but was still afraid to believe in such incredible good fortune. Could history really have chosen him, Grigory Grinberg, as its instrument? After all, he was still no more than a boy, only one of hundreds or even thousands of youngsters who dreamed, just as he did, of a brief life as a blazing match.

His wait came to an end one day in March when the surface of the long-frozen river waters cracked and buckled and the ice began to move.

Green had been mistaken. History had not chosen him, but another boy a few years older. He threw a bomb that shattered the Emperor's legs and his own chest. When he came to for a moment just before dying and was asked his name, he replied, 'I don't know,' then he was gone. His contemporaries showered curses on him, but he had earned the eternal gratitude of posterity.

Fate had enticed Green and duped him, but she did not abandon him. She did not release him from her iron embrace, but picked him up and dragged him, confused and numb with disappointment, along a circuitous route towards his goal.

The pogrom began when the pharmacist's son was away from the little town. Consumed by an insatiable, jealous curiosity, he had gone to Kiev to find out the details of the regicide - the newspaper reports had been vague, for the most part emphasising the effusive outpourings of loyal subjects.

On Sunday morning the alarm bell sounded in the Orthodox quarter on the other side of the river, where the goys lived. The community had sent their tavern-keeper, Mitrii Kuzmich, to Belotserkovsk on a special errand and he had returned, bringing confirmation that the rumours were true: the Emperor-Tsar had been killed by Yids - which meant you could give the sheenies a good beating with no fear of the consequences.

The crowd set off across the railway bridge that divided the little town into two parts, Orthodox and Jewish. They walked in a calm, orderly fashion, carrying church banners and singing. When they were met by representatives of the other community - the rabbi, the director of the Jewish college and the market warden - they did nothing to them, but they did not listen to them either. They simply pushed them aside and spread out through the quiet, narrow streets where the closed shutters stared at them blindly. They spent a long time wondering where to start, waiting for the impulse they needed to unlock the doors of their souls.

The tavern-keeper himself set things moving: he stove in the door of a tavern that had opened the previous year and ruined his trade. The crashing and clattering dispelled the people's lethargy, and put them in the right mood.

Everything happened just the way it was supposed to: they fired the synagogue, rummaged through the little houses, broke a few men's ribs, dragged a few around by their sidelocks and in the evening, when the barrels of wine hidden in the tavern's cellar were discovered, some of the lads even got their hands on the Yids' young wenches.

It was still light as they made their way back, bearing off their bales of plunder and drunks. Before they dispersed, the whole community decided not to work the next day, because it was a sin to work when the people were grieving so badly, but to go across the river again.

When Green came back that evening the little town was unrecognisable: broken doors, feathers and fluff drifting in the air, a smell of smoke and from the windows the sound of women wailing and children crying.

His parents had survived by sitting it out in the stone cellar, but the house was in an appalling state: the anti-Semites had smashed more than they had taken, and they had dealt most viciously of all with the books - in their furious zeal they had torn the pages out of all five hundred volumes.

Green found the sight of his father's white face and trembling lips unbearable. His father told him that the pharmacy had been ransacked in the morning, because there was medical alcohol there. But that was not the most terrible thing. They had smashed in the old tsaddikBelkin's head, and he had died, and because the cobbler's wife Gesa refused to give them her daughter, they had chopped away half of her face with an axe. The next day the mob would come again. The people had collected together nine hundred and fifty roubles and taken the money to the district police officer and the police officer had taken it, saying he would go to fetch a troop of armed men, and left, but he would not be back before the following morning, so they would have to endure yet more suffering.

As Green listened, he blanched in his terrible mortification. Was this what fate had been preparing him for? - not a blinding flash erupting from beneath the wheels of a gilded carriage with a thunderclap that would echo round the world, but a senseless death under the cudgels of a drunken rabble? - In a remote backwater, for the sake of wretched people in whom he felt no interest, with whom he had nothing in common? He couldn't even understand their hideous dialect properly, because he had always spoken Russian at home. Their customs seemed savage and absurd to him, and he himself was a stranger to them, the half-crazy son of a Jew who hadn't wanted to live like a Jew (and what, I ask you, had come of that?).

But the stupidity and malice of the world demanded retaliation, and Green knew that he had no choice.

In the morning the bell sounded again in the goys' quarter and a dense crowd, more numerous than the previous day's, set off from the marketplace towards the bridge. They weren't singing today. After the wine from the tavern and the neat alcohol from the pharmacy, they were bleary-eyed, but still brisk and determined. Many of them were dragging along trolleys and wheelbarrows. Walking at the front with an icon in his hands was the man of the moment, Mitrii Kuzmich, wearing a red shirt and a new knee-length coat of good-quality cloth.

Stepping on to the bridge, the crowd stretched out into a grey ribbon. On the river below porous ice floes drifted downstream, another unstoppable mass of grey.

Standing in the middle of the rails at the far end of the bridge was a tall young Yid with the collar of his coat turned up. He had his hands in his pockets and the sullen wind was tousling the black hair on his hatless head.

The men at the front drew closer and the young Yid took his right hand out of his pocket without saying a word. The hand was holding a heavy, black revolver.

The men at the front stopped, but those at the back could not see the revolver; they pressed forward, and the crowd kept moving at the same speed.

Then the dark-haired man fired over their heads. The report boomed hollowly in the clear morning air and the river took it up eagerly, echoing it over and over again: Cra-ack! Cra-ack! Cra-ack!

The crowd stopped.

The dark-haired man still did not speak - his face was serious and still. The black circle of the revolver's muzzle moved lower, staring straight into the eyes of those standing at the front.

Egorsha the carpenter, an unruly and dissolute man, worked furiously with his elbows as he squeezed his way through the crowd. He had spent the whole previous day lying in a drunken stupor and had not gone to beat the Yids, so now he was burning up with impatience.

'Come on, come on,' said Egorsha, laughing and pushing up the sleeve of his tattered coat. 'Don't you worry; he won't fire; he won't dare.'

The revolver immediately replied to Egorsha's words with a loud crack and blue smoke.

The carpenter gasped, clutching at his wounded shoulder and squatting down on his haunches, and the black barrel barked another four times at regular intervals.

Now there were no more bullets in the cylinder, and Green took a home-made bomb out of his left pocket. But he did not need to throw it because Mitrii Kuzmich, wounded in the knee, began howling so terribly - 'Oh, oh, they've killed me, they've killed me, good Orthodox believers!' - that the crowd shuddered and pressed back and then set off at a run, with men trampling each other, back across the bridge into the Orthodox quarter.

As he watched the backs of the fleeing men, Green felt for the first time that there was very little sky-blue left in him. His dominant colour was steel-grey now.

At twilight the district police officer arrived with a platoon of mounted police and was surprised to see that all was quiet in the little town. He spoke with the Jews first and then took the pharmacist's son away to jail.

Grigory Grinberg became Green at the age of twenty, after one of his repeated escapes. He had walked one and a half thousand versts and then, just outside Tobolsk, been caught in a stupid police raid on tramps. He had had to give some kind of name, and that was what he called himself - not in memory of his old surname, but in honour of Ignatii Grinevitsky, who had killed the Tsar.

At the one thousand eight hundredth heartbeat he felt that his strength was fully restored and got lightly to his feet, without touching the floor with his hands. He had a lot of time. It was evening now; there was the whole night ahead.

He did not know how long he would have to spend in Moscow.

Probably about two weeks at least. Until they took the plainclothes police agents off the turnpikes and the railway stations. Green was not concerned for himself; he had plenty of patience. Eight months of solitary confinement was good training for that. But the lads in the group were young and hot-headed; it would be hard for them.

He walked out of the bedroom into the drawing room, where the other three were sitting.

'Why aren't you sleeping?' asked Bullfinch, the very youngest of all, flustered. 'It's my fault, isn't it? I was talking too loud.'

All the members of the group were on familiar terms, regardless of their age or services to the revolution. What point was there in formality if tomorrow, or next week, or next month you might all go to your death together? Of all the people in the world Green only spoke like that to these three: Bullfinch, Emelya and Rahmet. There had been others before, but they were all dead.

Bullfinch was looking fresh, which was natural enough - they hadn't taken the boy on the operation, although he had begged them to, even weeping in his rage. The other two looked cheerful but tired, which was also only natural.

The operation had gone off more easily than expected. The blizzard had helped, but the greatest help of all had been the snowdrift on this side of Klin, a genuine gift of fate. Rahmet and Emelya had been waiting with a sleigh three versts from the station. According to the plan Green had been supposed to throw himself out of a window while the train was moving, and he could have been hurt. Then they would have picked him up. Or the guards could have spotted him as he jumped and opened fire. The sleigh would have come in handy in that case too.

Things had turned out better than that. Green had simply run along the track, entirely unharmed. He hadn't even got cold -running the three versts had warmed him up.

They had driven round the water meadows of the Sestra river, where workmen were clearing the line. At the next station they had stolen an old abandoned handcar and ridden it all the way to Sortirovochnaya Station in Moscow. Of course, pumping the rusty lever for fifty-something versts in the wind and driving snow had not been easy. It was hardly surprising that the lads had exhausted themselves: they weren't made of steel. First Rahmet had weakened, and then the doughty Emelya. Green had had to work the handle on his own for the entire second half of the journey.

'You're like the dragon Gorynich, you're Greenich!' Emelya said, shaking his flaxen-haired head in admiration. 'You crawled into your cave for half an hour, cast off your old scales, grew back the heads that had been cut off and now you're as good as new. Look at me, a big strapping hulk, but I haven't got my breath back yet, my tongue's still hanging out.'

Emelya was a good soldier. Strong, without any prissy intelligentsia pretensions. A wonderful, calming dark-brown colour. He had chosen his own alias, in honour of Emelya Pugachev; before that he had been known as Nikifor Tyunin. He was an armoury artisan, a genuine proletarian. Broad-shouldered and pie-faced, with a childish little nose and genial round eyes. It wasn't often that the oppressed class threw up steadfast, class-conscious warriors, but when one of these strapping heroes did appear, you could put your life in his hands with complete confidence. Green had personally selected Emelya from five candidates sent by the party. That was after Sable had failed when he flung his bomb at Khrapov, and a vacancy had appeared in the Combat Group. Green had tested the novice's strength of nerve and quickness of wit and been satisfied.

Emelya had really shown what he was worth during the operation in Ekaterinburg. When the Governor's droshky had driven up to the undistinguished townhouse on Mikhelson Street at the time indicated in the letter (and even, as promised, with no escort), Green had walked up to the fat man who was laboriously climbing out of the carriage and shot him twice at point-blank range. But when he ran through a passage to the next street, where Emelya was waiting disguised as a cab driver, they'd had a stroke of bad luck: at that very moment a police officer and two constables just happened to be walking past the false cabby. The policemen had heard the shots in the distance, and now here was a man running out of the yard - straight into their arms. Green had already thrown his revolver away. He felled one of them with a blow to the chin, but the other two clung to his arms and the one on the ground started blowing his whisde. Things were looking really bad, but the novice Emelya hadn't lost his head. He climbed down from his coachbox without hurrying and hit one constable on the back of the head with his massive fist so hard that he instantly went limp, and Green dealt with the other one himself. They had driven off like the wind, to the trilling of the police whistle.

It warmed his heart to look at Emelya. The people won't carry on just lounging their lives away for ever, he thought. The ones with keen wits and active consciences have already started waking up. And that means the sacrifices are not in vain and the blood - ours and theirs - is not spilt for nothing.

'So that's what sleeping on the floor and absorbing the juices of the earth does for you,' Rahmet said with a smile, tossing a picturesque lock of hair back off his forehead.

'I'd just started composing a poem about you, Green.'

And he declaimed:

Once there was a Green of iron

With a talent to rely on,

Scorning sheets and feather bed,

On bare boards he laid his head.

'There's another version too.' Rahmet raised his hand to stop Bullfinch laughing and continued:

Once there was a poor knight errant,

Green the Fearless was his name,

With a very useful talent

-He slept on floors to earn his fame.

His comrades laughed in unison and Green thought to himself: That's a verse from Pushkin he rewrote; I suppose it's funny. He knew that he didn't understand when something was funny, but that didn't matter, it wasn't important. And he mentally corrected the verse: I'm not iron, I'm steel.

He couldn't help himself - this thrill-seeking adventurer Rahmet simply wasn't to his liking, although he had to admit that he did a lot of good for the cause. Green had chosen him the previous autumn, when he needed a partner for a foreign operation - he couldn't take Emelya to Paris.

He had arranged for Rahmet to escape from the prison carriage as he was being driven away from the courthouse after sentencing. At the time all the newspapers were full of the story: the Uhlan cornet Seleznyov had interceded with his commanding officer for one of his men and in response to the colonel's crude insults had challenged him to a duel. And when his affronter had refused to accept the challenge, he had shot him dead in front of the entire regiment.

What Green had especially liked about this gallant story was the fact that a junior officer had not been afraid to ruin his entire life for the sake of a simple man. There was a promising recklessness in that, and Green had even imagined a certain kinship of souls - a familiar fury in response to base stupidity.

However, Nikolai Seleznyov's motivation had turned out to be something quite different. On close acquaintance, his colour proved to be an alarming cornflower-blue. 'I'm terribly inquisitive; I like new experiences,' Rahmet used to repeat frequently. What drove the fugitive cornet on through life was curiosity, a pointless and useless feeling that forced him to try first one dish and then another - the spicier and hotter the better. Green realised that he had not shot the colonel out of a sense of justice, but because the entire regiment was watching with bated breath, waiting to see what would happen. And he had joined the revolutionaries out of a craving for adventures. He had enjoyed the shooting during his escape, and he had enjoyed the trip to Paris even more.

Green had no illusions left about Rahmet's motives. He had chosen his alias in honour of the hero of Chernyshevsky's 'What is to be Done?', but he was a different sort of creature altogether. As long as he still found terrorist operations interesting, he would stay. Once his curiosity was satisfied, he'd be off, and never be seen again.

Green's secret concern in dealing with Rahmet was to extract the maximum benefit for the cause from this vacuous individual. The idea he had in mind was to send him on one of those important missions from which no one returns. Let him throw himself, a living bomb, under the hooves of the team pulling the carriage of a minister or a provincial governor. Rahmet wouldn't be afraid of certain death - that was one trick life hadn't shown him yet. If the operation at Klin had been a failure, Rahmet's mission would have been to blow up Khrapov this evening at the Yaroslavl Station, just before he left for Siberia. Well, Khrapov was dead already, but there would be others; autocracy kept plenty of other vicious guard dogs. The important thing was not to miss the moment when boredom appeared in Rahmet's eyes.

This was the only reason why Green had kept him in the group after what had happened with Shverubovich in December.

The order had come from the party to execute the traitor who had betrayed the comrades in Riga and sent them to the gallows. Green didn't like that kind of work, so he had not objected when Rahmet volunteered to do it.

Instead of simply shooting Shverubovich, Rahmet had chosen to be more inventive and splash sulphuric acid into his face. He had said it was to put a fright into any other stoolpigeons, but in reality he had simply wanted to see what it looked like when a living man's eyes poured out of their sockets and his lips and nose fell off. Ever since then Green had been unable to look at Rahmet without a feeling of revulsion, but he put up with him for the good of the cause.

'You should go to bed,* he said in a quiet voice. 'I know it's only ten. But you should sleep. It's an early start tomorrow. We're changing apartments.'

He glanced round at the white door of the study where the owner of this apartment, Semyon Lvovich Aronson, a private lecturer at the Higher Technical College, was sitting. They had planned to stay at a different address in Moscow, but there had been a surprise waiting for them. The female courier who met the group at the agreed spot had warned them that they couldn't go to the meeting place - it had just been discovered that the engineer Larionov, who owned the apartment, was an agent of the Okhranka.

The courier had a strange alias: Needle. Green, still reeling after pumping the handcar, had told her: 'You Muscovites do poor work. An agent at a meeting place could destroy the entire Combat Group.'

He had said it without malice, simply stating a fact, but Needle had taken offence.

Green didn't know much about her. He thought she came from a rich family. A dry, gangling, ageing young lady. Bloodless, pursed lips; dull, colourless hair arranged in a tight bun at the back of her head - there were plenty like that in the revolution.

'If we did poor work, we wouldn't have exposed Larionov,' Needle had retorted. 'Tell me, Green, do you absolutely need an apartment with a telephone? It's not that easy.'

'I know, but there must be a telephone - for emergency contact, an alarm signal, warning,' he explained, promising himself to make do in future with only his own resources, without help from the party.

'Then we'll have to assign you to one of the reserve addresses, with one of the sympathisers. Moscow's not St Petersburg; not many people have their own telephones here.'

That was how the group had come to be billeted at the private lecturer's place. Needle had said he was more of a liberal than a revolutionary, and he didn't approve of terrorist methods. That was all right: he was an honest man with progressive views and he wouldn't refuse to help; but there was no point in telling him any details.

Having taken Green and his people to a fine apartment house on Ostozhenka Street (a spacious apartment on the very top floor, and that was valuable, because there was access to the roof), before she left the courier had briskly and succinctly explained the elementary rules of the clandestine operation to their jittery host.

'Your building is the tallest in this part of the city, and that is convenient. From my mezzanine floor I can see your windows through binoculars. If everything is calm, do not close the curtains in the drawing room. Two closed curtains mean disaster. One closed curtain is the alarm signal. I'll telephone you and ask for Professor Brandt. You will reply: "You are mistaken, this is a different number" - and in that case I shall come immediately; or if you say: "You are mistaken, this is private lecturer Aronson's number" - I shall send a combat squad to assist you. Will you remember that?'

Aronson nodded, pale-faced, and when Needle left he muttered that the 'comrades' could use the apartment as they saw fit, that he had given the servants time off, and if he was needed, he would be in his study. And in half a day he hadn't peeped out of there even once. He was a real 'sympathiser' all right. No, we can't stay here for two weeks, Green had decided immediately. Tomorrow we have to find a new place.

'What's the point in sleeping?' Rahmet asked with a shrug. 'Of course, you gentlemen do as you wish, but I'd rather pay a visit to that Judas Larionov - before he realises he's been discovered. Twenty-eight Povarskaya Street, isn't it? Not so far away'

'That's right!' Bullfinch agreed enthusiastically. 'I'd like to go along. It would be even better if I went on my own, because you've already done your job for the day. I can manage, honest I can! He'll open the door, and I'll ask: "Are you engineer Larionov?" That's so as not to kill an innocent man by mistake. And then I'll say: "Take this, you traitor." I'll shoot him in the heart - three times to make sure - and run for it. A piece of cake.'

Rahmet threw his head back and laughed loudly. 'A piece of cake, of course it is! You shoot him - go on, just try. When I let von Bock have it point-blank on the parade ground, his eyes leapt out of their sockets, I swear to God! Two little red balls. I dreamed about it for ages. Used to wake up at night in a cold sweat. A piece of cake .. .’

And what about Shverubovich with his face melting, Green thought, do you dream about him?

'It's all right; if it's for the cause, I can do it,' Bullfinch declared manfully, turning pale and then immediately flushing bright red. He had got his nickname from the constant high colour of his cheeks and the light-coloured fluff that covered them. 'The bastard betrayed his own, didn't he?'

Green had known Bullfinch for a long time, a lot longer than the others. He was a special boy, bred from precious stock - the son of a hanged regicide and a female member of the People's Will party, who had died in a prison cell while on hunger strike; the child of unmarried parents, not christened in church, raised by comrades of his mother and father; the first free citizen of the future free Russia; with no garbage in his head, no filth polluting his soul. Some day boys like that would be quite ordinary, but for now he was one of a kind, the invaluable product of a painful process of evolution, and so Green had really not wanted to take Bullfinch into the group.

But how could he not have taken him? Three years earlier, when Green had escaped from the state prison and was making his way home the long way round the world - through China, Japan and America - he had been detained for a while in Switzerland. Just hanging about with nothing to do, waiting for the escort to guide him across the border. Bullfinch had only just been sent there from Russia, where his guardians had been arrested yet again, and there was no one in Zurich to take care of the little lad. They had asked Green, and he had agreed because at that time there was nothing else he could do to help the party. The escort was delayed and then disappeared completely. Before they managed to arrange a new one, a whole year had gone by.

For some reason Green didn't find the boy a burden - quite the opposite, in fact; perhaps because for the first time in a long time he was obliged to concern himself not with the whole of mankind but with one single individual. And not even an adult, but a raw young boy.

One day, after a long, serious conversation, Green made his young ward a promise: when Bullfinch grew up, Green would let him work with him, no matter what he might happen to be doing at the time. The Combat Group had not even been thought of then, or Green would never have promised such a thing.

Then he had come back home to Russia and set to work. He often remembered the boy, but of course he completely forgot about his promise. And then, just two months ago, in Peter, they had brought Bullfinch to him in a clandestine apartment. Here, comrade Green, meet our young reinforcements from the emigration. Bullfinch had gazed at him with adoration in his eyes and started talking about the promise almost from the very first moment. There was nothing Green could do about it - he didn't know how to go back on his word.

He had taken care of the boy and kept him away from the action, but things couldn't go on like that for ever. And after all, Bullfinch was grown up now - eighteen years old. The same age Green had been on that railway bridge.

Not just yet, he had told himself the previous night, as he prepared for the operation. Next time. And he had ordered Bullfinch to leave for Moscow - supposedly to check on their contacts.

Bullfinch was a delicate peach colour. What kind of warrior would he make? Though it did sometimes happen that people like that turned out to be genuine heroes. He ought to arrange a baptism of fire for the boy, but the execution of a traitor was not the right place to start.

'Nobody's going anywhere,' Green said with authority. 'Everybody sleep. I'll take first watch. Rahmet's on in two hours. I'll wake him.'

'E-eh,' said the former cornet with a smile. 'You're a fine man in every way, Green, only boring. Terror's not the right business for you. You ought to be a bookkeeper in a bank.' But he didn't argue, he knew there was no point.

They drew lots. Rahmet got the bed to sleep on, Emelya got the divan and Bullfinch got the folded blanket.

For fifteen minutes he heard talking and laughter from behind the door, and then everything was quiet. After that their host looked out of the study, his gold pince-nez glinting in the semi-darkness, and muttered uncertainly: 'Good evening.'

Green nodded, but the private lecturer didn't go away.

Green felt that he had to show some consideration. After all, this was inconvenient for the man, and risky. They gave you penal servitude for harbouring terrorists. He said politely: 'I know we've incommoded you, Semyon Lvovich. Be patient -we'll leave tomorrow.'

Aronson hesitated, as if there were something he was afraid to ask, and Green guessed that he wanted to talk. After all, he was a cultured man, a member of the intelligentsia. Once he got started, he wouldn't stop until morning.

Oh no. Firstly, it was not a good idea to strike up a speculative conversation with an unproven individual, and secondly, he had something serious to think over.

'I'm in your way here,' he said, getting up decisively. 'I'll sit in the kitchen for a while.'

He sat down on a hard chair beside a curtained entrance (he had already checked it: it was the servant girl's box room). He started thinking about 'TG'. For perhaps the thousandth time in the last few months.

It had all started in September, a few days after Sable blew himself up - he had thrown a bomb at Khrapov as the General was coming out of a church, but the device had struck the kerb of the pavement and all the shrapnel had been thrown back at the bomber.

That was when the first letter had come.

No, it hadn't come; it had been found - on the dining table in the apartment where the Combat Group was quartered at the time, a place to which only very few people had access.

It wasn't really a group - that was just a name, because after Sable's death Green was the only active warrior left. The helpers and the couriers didn't count.

The Combat Group had been formed after Green returned to Russia illegally. He had spent a long time assessing where he could be most useful, where he should apply the match so that the blaze would flare up as fiercely as possible. He had transported leaflets, helped to set up an underground printing works, guarded the party congress. All this was necessary, but he had not forged himself into a man of steel in order to do work that anyone could manage.