The Death of Achilles

FOURTEEN

He drove up to the Department of Gendarmes in a fast cab, jumped out as it was still moving, and asked the sentry impatiently: “Two of our men just brought in a prisoner. Where are they?”

The gendarme wasn’t at all surprised by the peremptory tone of the determined man who was dressed in rags, but had a gleam of authority in his eyes.

“They went straight through to see His Excellency. Less than two minutes ago. And the prisoner’s being booked. He’s in the duty office.”

“Damn the blasted prisoner!” the disguised officer exclaimed with an irritable gesture. “I need Fandorin. You say he went to see His Excellency?”

“Yes, sir. Up the stairs and along the corridor on the left.”

“I know the way well enough!”

Achimas ran up the stairs from the vestibule to the second floor. He looked to the right. From behind the white door at the far end of the corridor he could hear the clash of metal on metal. It must be the gymnastics hall. Nothing dangerous there.

He turned to the left. The broad corridor was empty, with only occasional bustling messengers in uniforms or civilian clothes emerging from one office door, only to disappear immediately into another.

Achimas froze where he stood: After a long sequence of absurd misfortunes and reverses, Fortune had finally exchanged her wrath for favor. The Japanese was sitting outside a door bearing a plaque that read reception, holding the briefcase in his hands.

Fandorin must be reporting to the chief of police about the events of the night. Why had he gone in without the briefcase? He wanted to flaunt his success; he was playing for effect. The night had been full of events, and the detective would have a long story to tell, so Achimas had a few minutes to spare.

Walk up without hurrying. Stab him under the collarbone. Take the briefcase. Leave the same way he had come. All over in a moment.

Achimas considered the Japanese more closely. Gazing straight ahead, holding the briefcase with both hands, he looked like a taut spring. In Hong Kong, Achimas had been able to observe the Japanese mastery of unarmed combat. The masters of English boxing or French wrestling couldn’t possibly compare with it. This short fellow had thrown the massive Tartar innkeeper to the ground in a single movement. All over in a moment?

He couldn’t take the risk. If there was a hitch, the slightest commotion would bring people running from every direction.

He had to think — time was slipping away!

Achimas swung around and walked quickly toward the sound of clashing rapiers. When he opened the door marked officers’ gymnastics hall, he saw a dozen or so figures in masks and white fencing costumes. All playing at musketeers.

Aha, there was the door to the changing room.

He took off his rags and bast sandals, put on the first uniform jacket that came to hand, and chose a pair of boots that were his size — that was important. Hurry, hurry.

As he trotted back briskly in the opposite direction, his eye was caught by a plaque bearing the word mailroom.

The petty functionary behind the counter was sorting envelopes.

“Is there any correspondence for Captain Pevtsov?” asked Achimas, giving the first name that came to mind.

“No, sir.”

“Well, just take a look, will you?”

The functionary shrugged, stuck his nose into the ledger, and began rustling through the pages.

Unseen, Achimas snatched an official envelope with seals off the counter and slipped it up his cuff.

“All right, don’t bother. I’ll come back later.”

He strode smartly up to the Japanese and saluted.

“Mr. Masa.”

The oriental jumped to his feet and greeted the officer with a low bow.

“I have come to you on the instructions of Mr. Fandorin. Do you understand?”

The Japanese bowed even lower. Excellent; he didn’t have a word of Russian.

“Here are my written instructions to collect the briefcase from you.”

Achimas held out the envelope, pointing at the briefcase with it.

The Japanese hesitated. Achimas waited, counting off the passing seconds. The hand hidden behind his back was clutching a knife. Another five seconds and he would have to strike. He couldn’t wait any longer.

Five, four, three, two…

The Japanese bowed once again, gave him the briefcase, took the envelope with both hands, and pressed it to his forehead. Apparently his time to die had not yet come.

Achimas saluted, turned around, and walked into the reception area. He couldn’t possibly leave by the corridor — the Japanese would have found that strange.

A spacious room. Straight ahead, the police chief’s office. Fandorin must be in there. On the left a window. On the right a plaque with the words SECRET SECTION.

The adjutant was hovering outside his boss’s door, which was most opportune. Achimas gestured reassuringly to him and disappeared through the door on the right. His luck held again — Fortune was growing kinder with every moment. It was not an office, where he would have had to improvise, but a short corridor with windows overlooking a courtyard.

Farewell, officers and gentlemen.

Achimas Welde moved on to the third and final point in his plan of action.

The dashing captain of gendarmes walked up to the office floor of the governor- general’s house and asked the attendant in a curt voice where Court Counselor Khurtinsky’s office was, then strode off in the direction indicated, swinging his heavy briefcase.

Khurtinsky greeted the ‘urgent courier from St. Petersburg’ with a smile of phony amiability. Achimas also smiled, but sincerely, without a trace of pretense — he had been looking forward to this meeting for a long time.

“Hello, you scoundrel,” he said, gazing into the dull gray eyes of Mr. Nemo, Monsieur NN’s crafty helot. “I am Klonov. This is Sobolev’s briefcase. And this is your death.” He clicked open his clasp knife.

The court counselor’s face turned an intense white and his eyes an intense black, because the expanding pupils completely consumed the surrounding irises.

“I can explain everything,” the head of the secret chancelry mouthed almost soundlessly. “Only don’t kill me!”

“If I wanted to kill you, you would already be lying on the ground with your throat slit open. What I want from you is something else,” said Achimas, raising his voice in imitation of icy fury.

“Anything at all! Only for God’s sake keep your voice down!”

Khurtinsky stuck his head out into the reception area and told his secretary not to let anyone through.

“Listen, I can explain everything,” he whispered when he came back.

“You can explain to the Grand Duke, you Judas,” Achimas interrupted. “Sit down and write! Write!” He waved his knife in the air and Khurtinsky staggered backward in horror.

“All right, all right. But what shall I write?”

“The truth.”

Achimas stood behind the trembling functionary.

The court counselor glanced around in fright, but his eyes were already gray again, not black. No doubt the cunning Mr. Nemo was already pondering how he was going to wriggle out of this situation.

“Write:”

Pyotr Khurtinsky, am guilty of having committed a crime against my duty out of avarice and of having betrayed him whom I should have served faithfully and assisted in every way possible in his onerous obligations. God is my judge. I beg to inform Your Imperial Highness that…

As soon as Khurtinsky had written the word ‘judge,’ Achimas smashed his cervical vertebrae with a blow of his hand.

He hung the corpse up on the cord from the transom and regarded the look of surprise on the dead man’s face with satisfaction. It was not profitable to play the fool with Achimas Welde.

That was all. His business in Moscow was concluded.

Still wearing his gendarme uniform, Achimas sent a telegram from the post office to Monsieur NN at his secret address. He knew from the newspapers that Grand Duke Kirill Alexandrovich had left for St. Petersburg the previous day.

The text of the telegram was as follows:

Payment has been received. Mr. Nemo proved to be an untrustworthy partner. Difficulties have arisen with Mr. Fandorin of the Moscow branch of the company. Your good offices are required. Klonov.

After a moment’s hesitation, he gave his address at the Trinity. It involved a certain degree of risk, of course, but only within the bounds of what he considered acceptable. Now that he knew who NN was, the likelihood of a double cross seemed insignificant. NN was too important a figure to bother with such trivia.

And he really did need the Grand Duke’s help. The operation had been concluded, but the last thing he wanted was a police investigation following his trail back to Europe. That wouldn’t suit the future Count of Santa Croce at all. Mr. Fandorin was too perspicacious and quickwitted. Let them restrain him a little.

After that he dropped into the Bryansk Station and bought a ticket for the Paris train. Tomorrow, at eight o’clock in the morning, Achimas Welde would leave the city in which he had carried out his final commission. A brilliant professional career had been concluded with appropriate verve.

He suddenly felt like giving himself a present. A free man, especially one who had retired from business, could afford to indulge himself.

He wrote a letter:

Tomorrow at six a.m. be at the Trinity Inn on Khokhlovsky Lane. My room is number seven, with an entrance from the courtyard. Knock, twice, then three times, then twice again. I am leaving and I want to say good- bye. Nikolai.

He sent the letter from the station by the municipal post, with the envelope addressed as follows:

For delivery to Miss Tolle in person, the Anglia suites, corner of Petrovka Street and Stoleshnikov Lane.

It was all right; he could do it. Everything had been neatly tidied up. Of course, he couldn’t go showing his face at the Anglia again — Wanda might be under secret surveillance. But the surveillance would soon be lifted and the case closed; Monsieur NN would see to that.

He could give Wanda a good-bye present — the pitiful fifty thousand rubles she needed in order to feel free and live her life as she wished.

And perhaps even arrange a further meeting? In a different, free life.

The voice that had settled in the left half of Achimas’s chest only recently but had been drowned out by the louder considerations of business suddenly began running riot. “Why separate at all?” it whispered. “The Count of Santa Croce is quite a different matter from Achimas Welde. His Excellency does not have to live alone.”

The voice was instructed to be silent, but even so Achimas went back to the ticket office, returned his ticket, and bought one for a double sleeping compartment instead. The additional hundred twenty rubles was a mere trifle, and it would be more pleasant to travel without any neighbors. “Ha-ha,” commented the voice.

I’ll decide tomorrow, when I meet her, Achimas argued to himself. She will either get her fifty thousand or leave with me.

Suddenly he remembered that this had happened before. Twenty-five years ago, with Evgenia. But then he had avoided making a decision and not taken a horse for her. This time the horse was ready and waiting.

For the rest of the day Achimas thought about nothing else. In the evening he lay in his room, unable to fall asleep, something that had never happened to him before.

Eventually his thoughts became confused and unclear and gave way to a series of incoherent, fleeting images. Wanda appeared, then her face quivered slightly, and changed imperceptibly until it was transformed into Evgenia’s. Strange — he thought her features had been erased from his memory long ago. Wanda-Evgenia looked at him tenderly and said: “What transparent eyes you have, Lia. Like water.”

When the gentle knock came at the door Achimas, still not really awake, shot upright on the bed and grabbed his revolver from under the pillow. The gray light of dawn filled the window.

There was another knock, a simple sequence, with no intervals.

He went downstairs, stepping without making a sound.

“Mr. Klonov!” a voice called out. “An urgent telegram for you! From Monsieur NN!”

Achimas opened the door, holding the hand with the revolver behind his back.

He saw a tall man in a cloak. The face under the long peak of the cap was invisible, apart from the curled ends of the mustache. The messenger handed him an envelope and left without another word, disappearing into the hazy early- morning twilight.

Mr. Welde, the investigation has been halted. However, a slight complication has arisen. Collegiate Assessor Fandorin, acting on his own initiative, has learned of your whereabouts and intends to arrest you. We were informed of this by the chief of police in Moscow, who requested our sanction. We ordered him to take no action, but not to inform the collegiate assessor. Fandorin will arrive at your apartment at six in the morning. He will come alone, unaware that there will be no police to assist him. This man is acting in a way that threatens the outcome of the entire operation. Deal with him as you see fit. My thanks for a job well done. NN.

Achimas experienced two feelings at once, one pleasant and the other very unpleasant.

The pleasant feeling was simple enough. Killing Fandorin would make an impressive final entry in his service record and it would settle an old score. It would finally make everything neat and tidy.

But the second feeling was more complicated. How had Fandorin discovered the address? Obviously not from NN. And then six o’clock was the time set for Wanda’s visit. Could she really have betrayed him? That changed everything.

He looked at his watch. Half past four. More than enough time to prepare. There was absolutely no risk, of course — the advantages were all on Achimas’s side — but Mr. Fandorin was a serious individual and carelessness would be unpardonable.

And there was an additional difficulty involved. It was easy to kill someone who was not expecting to be attacked, but first he needed Fandorin to tell him how he knew the address.

Only let it not be from Wanda.

Nothing was more important than that to Achimas now.

From half past five he was at his post by the window, behind the curtain.

At three minutes past six a man in a stylish cream-colored jacket and fashionable narrow trousers entered the courtyard bathed in the soft light of morning. Now Achimas had an opportunity to study the face of his old acquaintance in detail. He liked the face — it was energetic and intelligent. A worthy opponent. He had only been unlucky with his allies.

Fandorin halted at the door and filled his lungs with air. Then for some reason he puffed out his cheeks and released the air in short bursts. Was this some kind of calisthenics?

He raised his hand and knocked gently.

Twice, then three times, then twice again.