The Death of Achilles

SIX

In which a woman in black appears

Back at the hotel, there was a surprise in store for Erast Petrovich. As the young man approached suite 20, the door suddenly swung open and a buxom maid came running out toward him. Fandorin did not get a clear view of her face, since it was turned away, but there were certain eloquent details that did not escape the observant collegiate assessor’s attention: an apron worn back to front, a lace cap that had slipped to one side, and a dress that was buttoned crookedly. Masa was standing in the doorway, looking very pleased with himself and not in the least embarrassed by his master’s sudden return.

“Russian women are very good,” he declared with profound conviction. “I suspected this before and now I know for certain.”

“For certain?” Fandorin asked curiously, surveying his Japanese servant’s glistening features.

“Yes, master. They are passionate and do not demand presents for their love. Not like the female inhabitants of the French city of Paris.”

“But you don’t know Russian,” said Erast Petrovich with a shake of his head. “How did you explain yourself to her?”

“I did not know French, either, but to explain oneself to a woman, words are not needed,” Masa declared with a solemn expression. “The most important things are the breathing and the glance. If you breathe loud and fast, the woman understands that you are in love with her. And you must do this with your eyes.” He screwed up his already narrow eyes, which made them sparkle in quite an astonishing fashion. In reply Fandorin merely cleared his throat. “After that, all you need to do is to woo her a little, and a woman can no longer resist.”

“And how did you woo her?”

“There is a special approach for each woman, master. Thin ones like sweet things, fat ones like flowers. To the lovely woman who ran away on hearing your footsteps, I gave a sprig of magnolia, and then I gave her a neck massage.”

“Where did you get the magnolia?”

“There.” Masa pointed vaguely downward. “They are growing in pots.”

“And what is the point of the neck massage?”

The servant gave his master a pitying look.

“A neck massage develops into a shoulder massage, then into a back massage, then…”

“I see,” sighed Erast Petrovich. “You don’t need to continue. Better give me that little chest with my makeup kit instead.”

Masa perked up at that.

“Are we going to have an adventure?”

“We are not; I am. And another thing. This morning I had no time to do any gymnastics, and I need to be in good shape today.”

The Japanese began taking off the cotton dressing gown that he usually wore when he was at home.

“Master, shall we run across the ceiling or are we going to fight again? The ceiling is best. That is a very convenient wall.”

Surveying the wallpapered wall and molded ceiling, Fandorin felt doubtful.

“It’s awfully high. At least twelve shaku. Never mind, let’s try it.”

Masa was already standing ready in nothing but his loincloth. Around his forehead he tied a clean white rag with the hieroglyph for ‘diligence’ traced out on it in red ink. After changing into a pair of close-fitting tights and rubber slippers, Erast Petrovich jumped up and down for a while, then squatted down and gave the command: “Ichi, ni, san.” Both of them dashed at the wall and ran up it, and when they were just short of the ceiling, pushed off from the vertical, turning a back somersault in the air and landing on their feet.

“Master, I ran higher up — as far as that rose there, but you were two roses lower,” Masa boasted, pointing at the wallpaper.

Instead of answering, Fandorin called out once again: “Ichi, ni, san!” The vertiginous feat was repeated, and this time the servant touched the ceiling with his foot as he tumbled head over heels.

“I reached it, and you didn’t!” he declared. “Yes, master, even though your legs are considerably longer than mine.”

“You are made of rubber,” growled Fandorin, panting slightly. “All right, now we will fight.”

The Japanese bowed from the waist and adopted the combat position without any great enthusiasm: legs bent at the knees, feet turned out, arms relaxed.

Erast Fandorin leapt up, spun around in the air, and struck his partner quite hard on the back of the head with the toe of his slipper before Masa had time to turn away.

“First hit!” he shouted. “Come on!”

Masa created a distraction by tearing the white band off his forehead and tossing it to one side, and when Fandorin’s gaze involuntarily followed the flying object, the servant uttered a guttural cry, launched himself across the floor like a bouncing rubber ball, and tried to catch his master across the ankle with a hard kick. However, at the final moment Erast Petrovich leapt back, managing at the same time to strike the shorter man across the ear with the edge of his open hand.

“Second hit!”

The Japanese leapt agilely to his feet and began walking around the room with short, rapid steps, tracing out a semicircle. Fandorin shifted his weight lightly from one foot to the other where he stood, holding his upturned palms at the level of his waist.

“Ah, yes, master, I quite forgot,” said Masa, still walking. “It is unforgivable of me. A woman came to see you an hour ago. Dressed all in black.”

Erast Fandorin lowered his hands.

“What woman?”

He immediately received a blow from a foot to his chest. As he flew back against the wall, Masa exclaimed triumphantly: “First hit! An old, ugly woman. Her clothes were completely black. I could not understand what she wanted and she went away.”

Fandorin stood there, rubbing his bruised chest.

“It’s high time you learned some Russian. While I’m out, take the dictionary that I gave you and learn eighty words.”

“Forty will be enough!” Masa exclaimed indignantly. “You are simply taking your revenge.” And then, “I’ve learned two words already today: sweehar, which means ‘dear sir,’ and chainee — that’s Russian for ‘Japanese’.”

“I can guess who your teacher was. Just don’t ever think of calling me ‘sweetheart’. Eighty words, I said — eighty. Then next time you’ll fight fair.”

Erast Petrovich sat down in front of the mirror and started to apply his makeup. After considering several wigs, he selected a dark-brown one, with the hair cut to a single length and a neat center part. He turned down the ends of his curled black mustache and stuck a fluffy, lighter one over it, then glued on a thick, full beard cut short and square. He painted his eyebrows the appropriate color and moved them up and down for a while, stuck out his lips, extinguished the gleam in his eyes, pinched his ruddy cheeks, sprawled back in his chair, and, as if at the wave of a magic wand, was suddenly transformed into a boorish young merchant from Okhotny Ryad.

Shortly after seven in the evening a smart cab drove up to the Alpine Rose German restaurant on Sofiiskaya Street: a gleaming, lacquered droshky with steel springs, scarlet ribbons woven into the manes of the pair of black horses pulling it, and the spokes of the wheels painted yellow with ocher. The dashing cabbie roared out a deafening ‘whoa’ and cracked his whip boisterously.

“Wake up, Your Honor, here you are, delivered all proper and correct!”

The passenger in the back of the cab was snoring gently, sprawled out on the velvet seat — a young merchant in a long-skirted blue frock coat, crimson waistcoat, and tight-fitting boots. A gleaming top hat was perched at a devil-may- care angle on the reveler’s head.

The merchant opened his drowsy eyes and hiccupped: “Delivered? Where?”

“Where you ordered, Your Worship. This is it, the Rose itself.”

The restaurant was famous throughout Moscow, and there was a row of cabs lined up in front of it. The coachmen watched the noisy driver of the flashy cab with annoyance — shouting and yelling and cracking his whip like that, he was likely to frighten other people’s horses. One driver, a clean-shaven, high-strung- looking lad in a shiny leather coat, walked over to the troublemaker and set into him angrily.

“What do you think you’re doing, waving your whip around like that? This isn’t a gypsy fair! Now you’re here, stand in line like everyone else.” Then he added in a low voice, “Off you go, Sinelnikov. You got him here, now get going, don’t make yourself too obvious. I’ve got my carriage here. Tell Evgeny Osipovich everything’s going according to plan.”

The young merchant jumped down onto the pavement, staggered, and waved to the cabbie: “Off with you! I’ll be spending the night here.”

The smart driver cracked his whip, whistled like a bandit, and set off. The roistering trader from Okhotny Ryad took several uncertain steps and staggered. The clean-shaven young driver was there in a flash to take him by the elbow.

“Let me help, Your Worship. It wouldn’t do for you to go missing your step.”

He took a solicitous grip on the reveler’s elbow and whispered rapidly.

“Agent Klyuev, Your Honor. That’s my carriage there, with the chestnut mare. I’ll be waiting up on the box. Agent Nesznamov is at the rear entrance in an oilskin apron, playing the part of a knife-grinder. The mark arrived just ten minutes ago. He’s wearing a ginger beard. Seems very nervous. He’s armed, too — there’s a bulge under his armpit. And His Excellency told me to give you this.”

In the very doorway, the ‘cabbie’ deftly slipped a sheet of paper folded into eight into the young merchant’s pocket, then doffed his cap and bowed low from the waist, but he received no tip for his pains and could only grunt in annoyance when the door slammed in his face. To the jeers of the other drivers (“Hey, my bold fellow, didn’t you get your twenty kopecks, then?”) he plodded back to his droshky and climbed dejectedly up onto the box.

The Alpine Rose restaurant was regarded on the whole as a decorous European establishment — during the daytime, that is. Moscow’s Germans, both merchants and civil servants, flocked here for breakfast and lunch. They ate leg of pork with sauerkraut, drank genuine Bavarian beer, and read newspapers from Berlin, Vienna, and Riga. But come evening, all the boring beer-swillers went back home to tot up the balances in their account books, have supper, and get into their feather beds while it was still light, and a louder and more free-spending public began to converge on the Rose. For the most part they were foreigners, people of easy manners who preferred to take their fun in the European style rather than the Russian. If Russians did look in, it was more out of curiosity than anything else and also — in more recent times — to hear Mademoiselle Wanda sing.

The young merchant stopped in the white marble entrance hall, hiccupped as he surveyed the columns and the carpeted stairs, tossed his dazzling top hat to a flunky, and beckoned to the maitre d’hotel.

The first thing he did was to hand him a white one-ruble note. Then, enveloping him in cognac fumes, he demanded: “Now then, you German pepper sausage, you fix me up with a table, and not just one that happens to be standing empty anyway, but one I happen to fancy.”

“The place is rather crowded, sir,” the maitre d’hotel said with a shrug. He might have been German, but he spoke Russian like a true Muscovite.

“Fix me up,” the merchant said, wagging a threatening finger at him. “Or else I’ll make trouble! Oh, right, and where’s your privy here?”

The maitre d’hotel beckoned a flunky across with his finger and the rowdy customer was shown with all due deference to a room fitted out with the latest word in European technology: porcelain stools, flushing water, and washstands with mirrors. But our merchant was not interested in these German novelties. Ordering the flunky to wait outside, he went in, took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket, and began reading, frowning in concentration.

It was the transcript of a telephone conversation.

17 MINUTES PAST 2 IN THE AFTERNOON. PARTY 1-MALE, PARTY 2-FEMALE.

P1: Young lady, give me number 762, the Anglia… This is Georg Knabe here. Could you please call Miss Wanda.

Voice (sex not determined): One moment, sir.

P2: Wanda speaking. Who is this?

P1: (Note in the margin: “From this point on everything is in German.”) It’s me. An urgent matter. Very important. Tell me one thing. Did you do anything to him? You understand what I mean. Did you or didn’t you? Tell me the truth, I entreat you!

P2: (following a long pause): I didn’t do what you mean. Everything simply happened on its own. But what’s wrong with you? Your voice sounds very strange.

P1: You really didn’t do it? Oh, thanks be to God! You have no idea of the position I’m in. It’s like some terrible nightmare!

P2: I’m delighted to hear it. (One phrase inaudible.) P1: Don’t joke. Everyone has abandoned me! Instead of praise for showing initiative, there’s only black ingratitude. And that is not the worst thing. It could turn out that a certain event of which you know will not postpone the conflict, but, on the contrary, bring it closer — that is what I have been informed. But you didn’t do anything after all?

P2: I told you, no.

P1: Then where’s the bottle?

P2: In my room. And it’s still sealed.

P1: I must collect it from you. Today.

P2: I’m singing at the restaurant today and won’t be able to get away. I’ve already missed two evenings as it is.

P1: I know. I’ll be there. I’ve already booked a table. For seven o’clock. Don’t be surprised — I’ll be in disguise. This business has to be kept secret. Bring the bottle with you. And another thing, Fraulein Wanda. Recently you’ve been tending to get above yourself. Take care — I’m not the kind of man to take liberties with.

(P2 hangs up without replying.) Stenographed and translated from the German by Yuly Schmidt There was a note at the bottom in a slanting military hand: “Make sure he doesn’t get scared and do away with her! E.O.”

The young merchant emerged from the lavatory clearly refreshed. Accompanied by the maitre d ‘hotel, he entered the dining hall and cast a dull glance over the tables and their impossibly white tablecloths covered with gleaming silver and crystal. He spat on the brilliant parquet floor (the maitre d’hotel merely winced) and finally jabbed his finger in the direction of a table (an empty one, thank God) beside the wall. On the left of it there were two students in the company of several young milliners trilling with laughter, and on the right of it was a gentleman with a ginger beard in a checked jacket, sitting there watching the stage and sipping Moselle wine.

If not for agent Klyuev’s warning, Fandorin would never have recognized Herr Knabe. Another master of disguise. But then, in view of his primary professional activity, that was hardly surprising.

Scattered but enthusiastic applause broke out in the hall. Wanda had come out onto the low stage — slim and sinuous in a dress shimmering with sequins, looking like some magical serpent.

“What a scrawny thing; no meat on her at all,” a chubby milliner at the next table snorted, offended because both students were staring wide-eyed at the songstress.

Wanda swept the hall with her wide, radiant eyes and began singing in a quiet voice without any introduction, either words or music. The accompanist picked up the melody on the piano as she went along and began weaving a lacy pattern of chords around the low voice that pierced straight to the heart.

Beside a crossroads far away,

Buried in sand a body lies.

Above it blooms a dark-blue flower,

The flower of the suicides.

Chill evening wrapped the world in slumber

As at that spot I stood and sighed.

The moon shone on its gentle swaying…

The flower of the suicides.

A strange choice for a restaurant, thought Fandorin, listening to the German words of the song. From Heine, I think.

The hall went very quiet, then everyone began applauding at once, and the milliner who had recently been so jealous even shouted out ‘Bravo!’ Erast Petrovich realized that even he himself had perhaps slipped out of character, but nobody appeared to have noticed the inappropriately serious expression that had appeared on the young merchant’s drunken features. In any case, the man with the ginger beard, sitting at the table to the right, had been looking only at the stage.

The final chords of the mournful ballad still hung in the air when Wanda began snapping her fingers to set a rapid rhythm. With a shake of his shaggy head, the pianist rushed his ending, then crashed all ten digits down onto the keys, and the audience began swaying in their chairs in time to a rollicking Parisian chansonette.

Some Russian gentleman who looked like a factory owner performed a rather strange ritual: He called over a flower girl, took a bouquet of pan-sies out of her basket, wrapped them in a hundred-ruble note, and sent them to Wanda. Without a pause in her singing, she sniffed the bouquet and ordered it to be sent back, together with the hundred-ruble note. The factory owner, who had been acting as proud as a lion, was visibly deflated and gulped down two tall wineglasses of vodka in quick succession. The people around him in the hall kept casting derisive glances in his direction.

Erast Petrovich did not forget his role again. He played the fool a little, pouring champagne into a teacup, and from there into the saucer. He puffed out his cheeks and sipped at the champagne with a loud slurping noise — but only drank a tiny amount, in order not to get tipsy. He ordered the waiter to bring some more champagne (“And not Lanvin, either — the real stuff, Moet”) and roast a piglet, only it had to be still alive, and first they had to bring it and show it to him: “I know what you krauts are like; you’ll slip me some old carcass from the icehouse.” Fandorin was counting on the fact that it would take a long time to find a live piglet, and in the meantime the situation would be resolved in one way or another.

The disguised Knabe squinted across at his noisy neighbor in annoyance, but without taking any great interest in him. The secret agent took out his Breguet watch four times; it was obvious that he was nervous. At five minutes to eight Wanda announced that she was singing her last song before the intermission and struck up a sentimental Irish ballad about a girl called Molly, whose true love failed to return from war. Some of the people sitting in the hall were wiping tears from their faces.

She’ll finish the song in a moment and sit at Knabe’s table, Fandorin assumed, and prepared himself by lowering his forehead onto his elbow, as if he had dozed off, but he tossed back the strand of hair from over his right ear and, applying the science of concentration, shut off all of his senses except for hearing. He became transformed, as it were, into his own right ear. Wanda’s singing now seemed to be coming from far away, but he could hear the slightest movement made by Herr Knabe with great clarity. The German was restless: squeaking his chair, scraping his feet, then suddenly starting to tap his heels. Just in case, Erast Petrovich turned his head and half-opened one eye — and was just in time to see the gentleman with the ginger beard slipping out through the side door.

The hall broke into thunderous applause.

“A goddess!” shouted a student, moved almost to tears. The milliners were clapping loudly.

Herr Knabe’s stealthy departure was not at all to the collegiate assessor’s liking. In combination with the disguise and the false name, it suggested alarming possibilities.

The young merchant rose abruptly to his feet, knocking over his chair, and declared in a confidential tone to the festive group at the next table: “Got to go relieve myself.” Swaying slightly on his feet, he headed for the side exit.

“Sir!” shouted a waiter, racing up behind him. “The lavatory is not that way.”

“Go away,” said the barbarian, shoving the waiter aside without even turning around. “I’ll go wherever I want.”

The waiter froze on the spot in horror, and the merchant continued on his way in broad, rapid strides. Oh, this was not good. He needed to hurry. Wanda had already flitted off the stage into the wings.

Just as he reached the door a new obstacle arose for the capricious client in the form of a desperately squealing piglet being carried in his direction.

“Here, just as you ordered!” said the panting chef, proudly displaying his trophy. “Alive and kicking. Shall we roast it for you?”

Erast Petrovich looked at the piglet’s little eyes filled with terror and suddenly felt sorry for the poor creature, born into the world only to end up in the belly of some glutton.

The merchant growled: “Not big enough yet, let him put on a bit of fat!”

The chef dejectedly clutched the cloven-hoofed beast to his breast as the ignorant boor stumbled against the doorpost and staggered out into the corridor.

Right, Fandorin thought feverishly. The entrance hall is on the right. That means the offices and Wanda’s dressing room are on the left.

He set off down the corridor at a run. Around the corner he heard a scream coming from a dimly lit recess. There was some kind of commotion going on there.

Erast Petrovich dashed toward the sound and saw the man with the ginger beard clutching Wanda from behind, holding one hand over the songstress’s mouth and forcing a narrow steel blade up toward her throat.

Wanda had grabbed the broad wrist covered in reddish hair with both her hands, but the distance between the blade and her slim neck was closing rapidly.

“Stop! Police!” Fandorin cried in a voice hoarse with tension. Displaying phenomenally rapid reactions, Herr Knabe pushed the floundering Wanda straight at Erast Petrovich, who involuntarily put his arms around the songstress’s thin shoulders. She clung to her savior with a grip of iron, trembling all over. In two bounds the German was past them and dashing away down the corridor, fumbling under his armpit as he ran. Fandorin saw the running man’s hand emerge, holding something black and heavy, and he barely had time to drag Wanda to the floor and shield her. A second later and the bullet would have pierced both their bodies. For an instant the collegiate assessor was deafened by the thunderous roar that filled the narrow corridor. Wanda squealed in despair and began thrashing about under the young man.

“It is I, Fandorin!” he panted as he struggled to stand up. “Let go of me.”

He tried to leap to his feet, but Wanda, still lying on the floor, was clutching him tightly by the ankle and sobbing hysterically: “Why did he do that? Why? Oh, don’t leave me!”

It was useless trying to pull his foot free — the songstress was clinging on tight and wouldn’t let go. Then Erast Petrovich said in an emphatically calm voice: “You know yourself, why. But, God be praised, you’re safe now.”

He unclasped her fingers gently but firmly and ran off in pursuit of the secret agent. It was all right; Klyuev was at the entrance, a sound officer, he wouldn’t let him go. At the very least he would delay him.

However, when Fandorin burst out of the doors of the restaurant onto the embankment, he discovered that things had gone about as badly as possible. Knabe was already sitting in an ‘egoist’ — an English single-seater carriage — and lashing a lean, sleek gelding with his whip. The horse flailed at the air with its front hooves and set off so sharply that the German was thrown back hard against his seat.

The sound officer Klyuev was sitting on the pavement, holding his head in his hands with blood running out between his fingers.

“Sorry, let him get away,” he groaned dully. “I told him — “Stop,” and he hit me on the forehead with the butt—”

“Get up!” Erast Petrovich tugged at the wounded man’s shoulder and forced him to his feet. “He’ll get away!”

With a great effort of self-control, Klyuev smeared the dark-red sludge across his face and began hobbling sideways toward the droshky.

“I’m all right, it’s just that everything’s spinning,” he muttered, clambering up onto the coachbox.

Fandorin leapt up beside him in a single bound, Klyuev cracked the reins, and the chestnut mare set off with its hooves clip-clopping loudly over the cobblestones, gradually picking up speed. But it was slow, too slow. The ‘egoist’ already had a start of a hundred paces!

“Harder!” Erast Petrovich shouted at the groggy Klyuev. “Drive harder!”

At breakneck speed, with houses, shop signs, and astounded pedestrians flashing past in a blur, both carriages tore along the short Sofiiskaya Street and out onto the broad Lubyanka, where the chase began in earnest. A policeman on duty opposite Mobius’s photographic studio began whistling in furious indignation and waving his fist at the scofflaws, but that was all. Ah, if only I had a telephone apparatus in the carriage, Fandorin fantasized, I could call Karachentsev and have a couple of carriages sent out from the gendarme station to cut him off. A useless, idiotic fantasy — their only hope now was the chestnut mare, and that dear creature was giving her all, desperately flinging out her sturdy legs, shaking her mane, glancing back over her shoulder with one insanely goggling eye — as if she were asking if this was all right, or should she kick even harder. Kick, my darling, kick, Erast Petrovich implored her. Klyuev seemed to have recovered a little and he stood up, cracking his whip and hallooing so wildly that an entire Mongol horde seemed to be hurtling down the quiet evening street.

The distance to the ‘egoist’ had been reduced a little bit. Knabe looked back in alarm once, then again, and seemed to realize that he wouldn’t get away. When there were about thirty paces remaining between them, the German agent turned around, holding out the revolver in his left hand, and fired. Klyuev ducked.

“Damn, he’s a good shot! That one whistled right past my ear! That’s a Reichsrevolver he’s blasting away with! Shoot, Your Honor! Aim at the horse! He’s outpacing us!”

“What has that poor horse done wrong?” growled Fandorin, remembering the piglet. In fact, of course, the interests of the fatherland would have outweighed his compassion for the dun gelding, but the problem was that his Herstal-Agent wasn’t designed for accurate shooting at such a distance. God forbid, he might hit Herr Knabe instead of the horse, and the entire operation would be ruined.

At the corner of Sretensky Boulevard the German turned around once again, taking a little longer to aim before his barrel belched smoke and flame. Klyuev instantly collapsed backward, on top of Erast Petrovich. One eye gaped in fright into the collegiate assessor’s face; the place of the other had been taken by a red hole.

“Your Excel —” his lips began to say, but they did not finish.

The carriage swung to one side and Fandorin was obliged to shove the fallen man aside unceremoniously. He grabbed the reins, and just in time, or the carriage would have been smashed to smithereens against the cast-iron railings of the boulevard. The excited chestnut mare was still trying to run on, but the left front wheel had jammed against a stone post.

Erast Petrovich leaned down over the police agent and saw that his one remaining eye was no longer frightened, but staring fixedly upward, as though Klyuev were looking at something very interesting, far more interesting than the sky or the clouds.

Fandorin mechanically reached up to remove his hat, but he had none, for his remarkable topper had been left behind in the cloakroom at the Alpine Rose.

This was a fine result: an officer killed and Knabe allowed to escape!

But where exactly could he have escaped to? Apart from the house on Karyetny Ryad, the German had nowhere else to go. He had to call in there, if only for five minutes — to pick up his emergency documents and money, and destroy any compromising materials.

There was no time to indulge in mourning. Erast Petrovich took the dead man under the arms and dragged him out of the droshky. He sat him with his back against the railings.

“You sit here for a while, Klyuev,” the collegiate assessor muttered and, paying no attention to the passersby who had frozen in poses of horrified curiosity, he climbed back up onto the coachbox.

The ‘egoist’ was standing at the entrance of the beautiful apartment house on the third floor of which the Moscow representative of the banking firm Kerbel und Schmidt resided. The dun gelding, covered in thick lather, was nervously shifting its hooves and shaking its wet head. Fan-dorin dashed into the hallway.

“Stop! Where are you going?” yelled the fat-faced doorman, grabbing hold of his arm, but he was immediately sent flying by a punch delivered to his jaw without any superfluous explanations.

Upstairs a door slammed. It sounded like the third floor! Erast Petro-vich bounded up two steps at a time, holding the Herstal at the ready. He would have to shoot him twice, in the right arm and the left. The German had tried to slit Wanda’s throat with his right hand, and he had fired with his left, which meant he was ambidextrous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Khurtinsky stood up.

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

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

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

“Who?”

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

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

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

“You said she was ugly!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fandorin frowned.

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