The Winter Queen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

in which the narrative takes a sharp change of direction

TOTALLY BEMUSED, POOR ERAST FANDORIN took a few steps forward.

“Stop!” his chief barked out furiously. “And stop waving that gun around—it isn’t loaded. You might at least have taken the trouble to glance into the cylinder! Why must you be so trusting, damn you! You can never trust anyone but yourself!”

Brilling took an identical Herstal out of his left pocket and dropped the smoking Smith & Wesson on the floor at Fandorin’s feet.

“My gun here is fully loaded, as you will learn soon enough,” Ivan Brilling babbled feverishly, becoming more and more agitated with every word. “I shall place it in the hand of the unfortunate Cunningham here, and it will be obvious that you killed each other in an exchange of fire. You will be guaranteed an honorable funeral with heartfelt speeches of farewell. I know that means a lot to you. And stop looking at me like that, you damned greenhorn!”

Fandorin realized with horror that his chief was absolutely crazy, and in a desperate attempt to awaken Brilling’s suddenly clouded reason he shouted, “Chief, it’s me, Fandorin! Ivan Franzevich Brilling! State counselor!”

“Full state counselor,” said Brilling with a crooked smile. “You’re behind the times, Fandorin. The emperor’s decree was promulgated on the seventh of June. For a successful operation to disarm the terrorist organization Azazel. So you may address me as Your Excellency.”

Brilling’s dark silhouette against the window looked as if it had been cut out with scissors and pasted on gray paper. Dehind his back the dead branches of the dry elm radiated in all directions, forming a sinister spiderweb. A line from a childish jingle ran through Fandorin’s head: “ “Will you step into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly.”

Brilling’s face suddenly contorted agonizingly, and Fandorin realized that his chief had hardened his heart sufficiently and now he could fire at any moment. Out of nowhere a thought suddenly came to him, shattering instantly into a string of brief thought particles: the safety catch had to be off, otherwise you couldn’t fire it, that meant half a second or a quarter of a second, not enough time, not nearly enough…

Erast Fandorin squeezed his eyes tight shut and with a bloodcurdling howl he flung himself forward, aiming his head at his chief’s chin. They were no more than five paces apart. Fandorin did not hear the click of the safety catch, but the shot thundered past him into the ceiling, as Brilling and Fandorin went flying over the windowsill together and tumbled out the window.

Fandorin’s chest collided with the trunk of the dry elm and he went crashing downward, breaking off branches and scraping his face as he fell. The stunning impact when he struck the ground almost made him lose consciousness, but his keen instinct for survival would not allow it. Erast Fandorin raised himself up on all fours, glaring around like a madman.

His chief was nowhere to be seen, but his small black Herstal was lying beside the wall. Fandorin, still on all fours, pounced like a cat, grabbed the gun, and began turning his head in all directions.

But Brilling had disappeared.

Fandorin only thought to look up when he heard the strained, wheezing sound.

Ivan Franzevich Brilling was dangling in the air in an awkward and unnatural position. His polished gaiters were twitching a little above Fandorin’s head. Protruding from just below his Cross of St. Vladimir, where a crimson stain was creeping across his starched white shirt, was the sharp stump of a broken branch that had pierced the newly created general right through. The most terrible thing of all was that the lucid gaze of his eyes was fixed on Erast Fandorin.

“Horrible,” his chief pronounced distinctly, wincing either in pain or disgust. “Horrible…” And then in a hoarse, unrecognizable voice he gasped out: “A-za-zel.”

An icy tremor ran through Fandorin’s body, but Brilling continued gasping for about half a minute before finally falling silent.

As if this were some agreed-on signal, there was a clattering of hooves and clanging of wheels from around the corner. The gendarmes had arrived in their droshkies.

ADJUTANT GENERAL LAVRENTII ARKADIEVICH MIZINOV, head of the Third Section and chief of the corps of gendarmes, rubbed his eyes, which were red with fatigue. The golden aiguillettes on his dress uniform jingled dully. During the last twenty-four hours he had had no chance to change his clothes, let alone to get any sleep. The previous evening a special messenger had dragged General Mizinov away from the ball in honor of the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich’s name day. And then it had all begun…

The general cast an unfriendly glance at the boy with the disheveled hair and badly scratched nose who was sitting beside him, poring over some papers. He hadn’t slept for two nights and he was still as fresh as a Yaroslavl cucumber. And he acted as if he had been sitting around in high-level offices all his life. Very well, let him work his sorcery. But this Brilling business! It simply defied comprehension!

“Well, Fandorin, will you be long? Or have you been distracted by yet another of your ‘ideas’?” the general asked strictly, feeling that after a sleepless night and an exhausting day he was unlikely to be having any more ideas himself.

“Just a moment, Your Excellency, just a moment,” the young whip-persnapper mumbled. “There are just five entries left. I did warn you that the list might be in code. See what a cunning code it is. They haven’t been able to identify half the letters, and I don’t remember everyone who was in it myself…Aha, this is the postmaster from Denmark, that’s who he is. Right, then, what’s this? The first letter’s not decoded. There’s a cross, and a cross for the second one, too, and the third and the fourth—two m’s, then another cross, then an n, then a d with a question mark, and the last two are missing. That gives us cross cross MM cross ND(?) cross cross.”

“Such gibberish.” General Mizinov sighed. “Brilling would have guessed it in a moment. Are you quite sure it wasn’t just a fit of temporary insanity? It’s impossible even to imagine that…”

“Absolutely sure, Your Excellency,” Erast Fandorin repeated for the umpteenth time. “And I quite distinctly heard him say ‘Azazel.’ Wait! I’ve remembered! Bezhetskaya had some commander or other on her list. We must assume this is him.”

“Commander is a rank in the British and American fleets,” Mizinov explained. “It corresponds to our captain second class.” He strode angrily across the room. “Azazel, Azazel, what is this Azazel that has come to plague us? So far we clearly don’t know a single thing about it! Brilling’s Moscow investigation is totally worthless! We must assume it’s all nonsense, invention, lies—including all those terrorists and that attempt on the tsarevich’s life! He’s bound to have tucked away all the loose ends! Palmed us off with a few corpses. Or did he really hand us some nihilist idiots? That would be just like him—he was a very, very capable man…Curses—where can the results of that search have got to? They’ve been rummaging in there for days now!”

The door opened quietly and a glum, skinny face wearing gold-rimmed spectacles was thrust through the crack.

“Captain Belozerov, Your Excellency.”

“At last! Talk of the devil! Send him in.”

A middle-aged officer of the gendarmes, whom Fandorin had seen the previous day at Cunningham’s house, walked into the office, squinting and screwing up his weary eyes.

“We have it, Your Excellency,” he reported in a low voice. “We divided the entire house and the garden into squares and turned everything upside down and went through it all with a fine-tooth comb—not a thing. Then Agent Ailenson, a detective with an excellent nose for a lead, thought of sounding out the walls in the basement of the Astair House. And what do you think, General? We discovered a hidden compartment containing twenty boxes with about two hundred cards in each. The cipher was strange—some kind of hieroglyphs, quite different from the one in the letter. I gave instructions for the boxes to be brought here. I’ve set the entire cryptography section onto it and they’re about to start work.”

“Well done, Belozerov, well done,” said the general in a more generous mood now. “And that man with the nose, recommend him for a decoration. Well, then, let us pay a visit to the cipher room. Come along, Fandorin—it will be interesting for you, too. You can finish up later—there’s no great hurry now.”

They went up two floors and set off quickly along an endless corridor. As they turned a corner they saw an official running toward them, waving his hands in the air.

“Disaster, Your Excellency, disaster! The ink is fading before our very eyes. We can’t understand it!”

Mizinov set off at a trot, which did not at all suit his corpulent figure: the gold tassels on his epaulets fluttered like the wings of a moth. Belozerov and Fandorin disrespectfully overtook their high-ranking superior and were the first to burst in through the tall white doors.

The large room completely filled with tables was in absolute turmoil. About a dozen officials were dashing about, fussing over stacks of neat white cards set out across the tables. Erast Fandorin snatched one up and caught a brief glimpse of barely discernible figures resembling Chinese hieroglyphs. Before his eyes the hieroglyphs disappeared and the card was left absolutely blank.

“What devil’s work is this?” exclaimed the general, panting heavily. “Some kind of invisible ink?”

“I’m afraid it is far worse than that, Your Excellency,” said a gentleman with the appearance of a professor, examining a card against the light. “Captain, didn’t you say the card file was kept in something like a photographic booth?”

“Precisely so, sir,” Belozerov confirmed.

“And can you recall what kind of lighting it had? Perhaps a red lamp?”

“Absolutely right. It was a red electrical lamp.”

“Just as I thought. Alas, General Mizinov, the card archive has been lost to us and cannot be restored.”

“How’s that?” the general exclaimed furiously. “Not good enough, Mister Collegiate Counselor, you must think of something. You’re a master of your trade, a leading light—”

“But not a magician, Your Excellency. The cards were obviously treated with a special solution and it is only possible to work with them in red light. Now the layer to which the characters were applied has been exposed to daylight. Very clever, you must admit. It’s the first time I’ve come across anything of the sort.”

The general knitted his shaggy eyebrows and began snorting menacingly. The room fell silent, with the silence that comes before a storm. But the peal of thunder never came.

“Let’s go, Fandorin,” Mizinov said in a dejected tone. “You have work to finish.”

THE FINAL TWO ENCODED ENTRIES remained undeciphered. They contained information that had arrived on the final day, the thirtieth of June, and Fandorin was unable to identify them. The time had come to sum up the situation.

Striding to and fro across his office, the weary General Mizinov reasoned out loud. “So, let us draw together the little that we do have. There exists a certain international organization with the provisional name of Azazel. To judge from the number of cards, which we shall now never be able to read, it has three thousand eight hundred and fifty-four members. We know something at least about forty-seven of them, or rather forty-five, since two of the entries remained undeciphered. However, that something amounts to no more than their nationality and the positions that they occupy. No name, no age, no address…What else do we know? The names of two dead Azazelians, Cunningham and Brilling. And, in addition, there is Amalia Bezhetskaya in England—if this Zurov of yours has not killed her, if she is still in England, and if that really is her name…Azazel acts aggressively, killing without hesitation. There is clearly some global purpose involved. But what is it? They are not Masons, because I myself am a member of a Masonic lodge, and no ordinary one either. Hmm…Remember, Fandorin, you didn’t hear that.”

Erast Fandorin lowered his eyes meekly.

“It is not the Socialist International,” Mizinov continued, “because the gentlemen communists don’t have the stomach for this kind of business. And Brilling couldn’t possibly have been a revolutionary. It’s out of the question. Whatever he might have got up to in secret, my dear deputy hunted down nihilists with a will, and very successfully. What then does Azazel want? That, after all, is the most important thing! And we have not a single thing to go on. Cunningham is dead. Brilling is dead. Nikolai Krug is a mere functionary, a pawn. That scoundrel Pyzhov is dead. All the leads have been lopped off…” General Mizinov spread his arms in a gesture of indignation. “No, I don’t understand a single thing! I knew Brilling for more than ten years. I was the one who made his career! I discovered him myself. Judge for yourself, Fandorin. When I was governor-general of Kharkov I used to hold all kinds of competitions for students in order to encourage patriotic feelings and the desire for useful reform in the younger generation. I was introduced to a skinny, awkward youth, a final-year gymnasium pupil who had written a very sensible and passionate composition on the subject ‘The Future of Russia.’ Believe me, he had the spirit and the background of a genuine Lomonosov—an orphan with no family or relatives, who had financed his own studies on coppers and then passed the examinations for the seventh year at the grammar school at the first attempt. A genuine natural diamond! I became his patron, sent him to St. Petersburg University, then I gave him a place in my department—and never had cause to regret it. He was my finest assistant, my trusted deputy! He had made a brilliant career—all roads were open to him! Such a brilliant, paradoxical mind, so resourceful, so assiduous! My God, I was even planning to marry my daughter to him!” said the general, clutching his forehead.

Out of respect for the feelings of his high-ranking superior, Erast Fandorin paused tactfully before clearing his throat. “Your Excellency, I was just thinking…Of course, we don’t have many leads, but still we do have something.”

The general shook his head as if he were dispelling unwelcome memories and sat down at the desk. “I’m listening. Tell me what’s on your mind, Fandorin. No one knows this whole business better than you.”

“Well, what I actually wanted to say was…” Erast Fandorin looked at the list, underlining something with a pencil. “There are forty-four men here. Two we were unable to figure out, and the full state counselor—that is, Ivan Brilling—is no longer in the reckoning. At least eight of them can be identified without too much difficulty. Well, just think about it, Your Excellency. How many heads of the emperor of Brazil’s bodyguard can there be? Or number forty-seven F, the head of a government department in Belgium, sent on the eleventh of June, received on the fifteenth. It will be easy enough to determine who he is. That’s two already. The third is number five forty-nine F, a rear admiral in the French fleet, sent on the fifteenth of June, received on the seventeenth. The fourth is number one oh oh seven F, a newly created English baronet, sent on the ninth of June, received on the tenth. The fifth is number six ninety-four F, a Portuguese government minister, sent on the twenty-ninth of May, received on the seventh of June.”

“That one’s a dud,” said the general, who had been listening with great interest. “The Portuguese government changed in May, so all the ministers in the cabinet are new.”

“Are they?” Erast Fandorin asked in dismay. “Oh, well, that means we’ll have seven instead of eight. Then the fifth is an American, the deputy chairman of a Senate committee, sent on the tenth of June, received on the twenty-eighth, in my own presence. The sixth is number ten forty-two F, Turkey, personal secretary to Prince Abdülhamid, sent on the first of June, received on the twentieth.”

General Mizinov found this information particularly interesting. “Really? Oh, that is very important. And actually on the first of June? Well, well. On the thirtieth of May in Turkey there was a coup, Sultan Abdülaziz was overthrown, and the new ruler, Midhat Pasha, set Murad V on the throne. And then the very next day he appointed a new secretary for Abdülhamid, Murad’s younger brother. What great haste, to be sure. This is extremely important news. Could Midhat Pasha be planning to get rid of Murad and set Abdülhamid on the throne? Aha…Never mind, Fandorin, that’s all way over your head. We ‘ll have the secretary identified in a couple of shakes. I’ll get on the telegraph today to Nikolai Pavlovich Gnatiev, our ambassador in Constantinople—we’re old friends. Carry on.”

“And the last, the seventh: number fifteen oh eight F, Switzerland, a prefect of cantonal police, sent on the twenty-fifth of May, received on the first of June. Identifying the rest will be a lot harder, and some of them will be impossible. But if we can at least identify these seven and put them under secret surveillance…”

“Give me the list,” said the general, holding out his hand. “I’ll give orders immediately for coded messages to be sent to the embassies concerned. We shall clearly have to collaborate with the special services of these countries. Apart from Turkey, where we have an excellent network of our own…You know, Mr. Fandorin, I was abrupt with you, but don’t take offense. I do value your contribution very highly and so on and so forth…It’s just that it was painful for me…because of Brilling…Well, you understand.”

“I understand, Your Excellency. I myself, in a sense, was no less—”

“Very well, excellent. You’ll be working with me, investigate Azazel. I’ll set up a special group and appoint the most experienced people. We must untangle this whole sorry mess.”

“Your Excellency, I really ought to take a trip to Moscow…”

“What for?”

“I’d like to have a little talk with Lady Astair. She herself, being more a creature of the heavens than the earth”—at this point Fandorin smiled—“was surely not aware of the true nature of Cunningham’s activity, but she did know the gentleman since he was a child and might well be able to tell us something useful. It would be best not to talk to her formally, through the gendarmerie, surely? I am fortunate enough to be slightly acquainted with her ladyship, and I speak English. What if another lead of some kind were to come to light? Perhaps we might pick up something from Cunningham’s past?”

“It sounds to the point. Go. But only for one day, no more. And now go and get some sleep. My adjutant will assign you your quarters. Tomorrow you’ll take the evening train to Moscow. If we’re lucky, by that time the first coded messages from the embassies will have arrived. On the morning of the twenty-eighth you’ll be in Moscow, and in the evening I want you back here, and come immediately to me to report. At any time, is that clear?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

IN THE CORRIDOR of the first-class carriage on the St. Petersburg-Moscow express, a very grand elderly gentleman sporting an enviable mustache and whiskers and a diamond pin in his necktie smoked a cigar as he glanced with undisguised curiosity at the locked door of compartment number one.

“Hey there, be so kind,” he said, beckoning with a fat finger to a conductor who had made an opportune appearance.

The conductor dashed over to the stately passenger in a flash and bowed. “What can I do for you, sir?”

The gentleman took hold of the conductor’s collar between his finger and thumb and asked in a deep bass whisper, “The young man traveling in the first compartment—who is he exactly? Do you know? He is quite remarkably young.”

“I was surprised at that too,” the conductor declared in a whisper. “Everyone knows the first compartment is reserved for VIPs. They won’t let just any old general in—only someone on urgent and responsible state business.”

“I know.” The gentleman released a stream of smoke. “Traveled in it myself once, on a secret inspection to Novorossiya. But this person is a mere boy. Perhaps he’s someone’s favorite son? One of our gilded youth?”

“Nothing of the kind, sir. They don’t put favorite sons in number one—they’re very strict about that. Except perhaps for one of the grand dukes. But I felt a bit curious about this one, so I took a quick glance at the train manager’s passenger list.” The attendant lowered his voice still further.

“Well then?” the intrigued gentleman urged him impatiently.

Anticipating a generous tip, the conductor put his finger to his lips. “From the Third Section. Specially important cases investigator.”

“I can understand the ‘specially.’ They wouldn’t put anyone who was merely ‘important’ in the first compartment.” The gentleman paused significantly. “And what is he up to?”

“He locked himself in the compartment and hasn’t been out since, sir. Twice I offered him tea, but he wasn’t interested. Just sits there with his nose stuck in his papers, without even lifting his head. We were detained for twenty-five minutes leaving Petersburg, remember? Due to him, that was, sir. We were waiting for him to arrive.”

“Oho!” gasped the passenger. “But that’s quite unheard-of!”

“It does happen, but only very rarely, sir.”

“And does the passenger list give his name?”

“Indeed no, sir. No name and no rank.”

THE LONGER ERAST FANDORIN CONTINUED his study of the niggardly lines of the dispatches, tousling his hair as he did so, the higher he felt the mystical terror mounting toward his throat.

Just as he was about to set out for the station, Mizinov’s adjutant had turned up at the state apartment where Fandorin had slept like a log for almost twenty-four hours and told him to wait. The first three telegrams had arrived from the embassies; they would be deciphered immediately and brought to him. The wait had lasted for almost an hour, and Erast Fandorin had been afraid he would miss the train, but the adjutant had reassured him on that score.

Fandorin was no sooner inside the immense compartment upholstered in green velvet, with a writing desk, a soft divan, and two walnut chairs with their legs bolted to the floor, than he opened the package and immersed himself in reading.

Three telegrams had arrived: from Washington, Paris, and Constantinople. The heading on all of them was identical:

URGENT. TO HIS EXCELLENCY LAVRENTII ARKADIEVICH MIZINOV IN REPLY TO YOUR REF. NO. 13476-8ZH OF 26 JUNE 1876.

The reports were signed by the ambassadors themselves, but that was as far as the similarity went. The texts were as follows.

9 July (27 June) 1876. 12:15 Washington.

The person in whom you are interested is John Pratt Dodds, who on 9 June this year was elected vice chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. A man very well known in America, a millionaire of the sort who are known here as self-made men. Age 44. His early life, place of birth, and background are unknown. He is assumed to have become rich during the California gold rush. He is regarded as an entrepreneur of genius. During the war between the North and the South he was President Lincoln’s adviser on financial matters. It is believed by some that it was Dodds’s diligence and not the valor of the federal generals that was responsible for the capitalist North’s victory over the conservative South. In 1872 he was elected Senator for the state of Pennsylvania. Well-informed sources tell us that Dodds is tipped to become Secretary of the Treasury.

9 July (27 June) 1876. 16:45. Paris.

Thanks to the agent Coco, who is known to you, it has been possible to ascertain via the Ministry of War that on the 15 of June Rear Admiral Jean Intrepide, who had recently been appointed to command the Siamese Squadron, was promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral. He is one of the French fleet’s most legendary personalities. Twenty years ago a French frigate off the coast of Tortuga came across a boat adrift in the open sea, carrying a boy who had obviously survived a shipwreck. As a result of the shock the boy had completely lost his memory and could not give his own name or even his nationality. Taken on as a cabin boy and named after the frigate that found him, he has made a brilliant career. He has taken part in numerous expeditions and colonial wars. He especially distinguished himself in the Mexican War. Last year Jean Intrepide caused a genuine sensation in Paris when he married the eldest daughter of the due de Rohan. I will forward details of the service record of the individual in whom you are interested in the next report.

27 June 1876. Two o’clock in the afternoon. Constantinople.

Dear Lavrentii,

Your request quite flabbergasted me, the point being that this Anwar Effendi, in whom you have expressed such pressing interest, has for some time now been the object of my own close scrutiny. According to information in my possession this individual, who is an intimate of Midhat Pasha and Abdülhamid, is one of the central figures in a conspiracy that is coming to a head in the palace. We must soon expect the overthrow of the present sultan and the reign ofAbdülhamid. Then Anwar Effendi will most certainly become a figure of quite exceptional influence. He is highly intelligent, with a European education, and knows a countless number of Oriental and Western languages. Unfortunately, we do not possess any detailed biographical information on this interesting gentleman. We do know that he is no more than twenty-five years old and was born in either Serbia or Bosnia. His origins are obscure and he has no relatives, which promises to be a great boon for Turkey if Anwar ever should become vizier. Just imagine it—a vizier without a horde of avaricious relatives! Such things simply never happen here. Anwar is by way of being Midhat Pasha’s eminence grise, an active member of the New Osman party. Have I satisfied your curiosity? Now please satisjy mine. What do you want with my Anwar Effendi? What do you know about him? Let me know immediately. It might prove to be important.

Erast Fandorin read the telegrams through once again, and in the first one he underlined the words ‘His early life, place of birth, and background are unknown’; in the second one the words ‘could not give his own name or even his nationality’; and in the third the words ‘His origins are obscure and he has no relatives.’ He was beginning to feel frightened. All three of them seemed to have appeared out of nowhere! At some moment they had simply emerged from the void and immediately set about clambering upward with genuinely superhuman persistence. What were they—members of some secret sect? And what if they were not people at all but aliens from another world, emissaries, say, from the planet Mars? Or worse than that, some kind of infernal demons? Fandorin squirmed as he recalled his nocturnal encounter with ‘Amalia’s ghost.’ Bezhetskaya herself was yet another creature of unknown origin. And then there was that satanic invocation—Azazel. Oh, there was definitely a sulfurous smell about this business…

There was a furtive knock at the door. Erast Fandorin shuddered, reached rapidly behind his back for the secret holster, and fingered the grooved handle of his Herstal.

The conductor’s obsequious face appeared in the crack of the door.

“Your Excellency, we’re coming into a station. Perhaps you’d like to stretch your legs? There’s a buffet there, too.”

At the word ‘Excellency’ Erast Fandorin assumed a dignified air and cast a stealthy sidelong glance at himself in the mirror. Could he really be taken for a general? Well anyway, ‘stretching his legs’ sounded like a good idea, and it was easier to think as he walked. There was some vague idea swirling around in his head, but it kept eluding him. So far he couldn’t quite get a grip on it, but it seemed to be encouraging him: keep digging, keep digging!

“I think I will. How long is our stop?”

“Twenty minutes. But you’ve no need to concern yourself about that. Just take your time.” The conductor tittered. “They won’t leave without you.”

Erast Fandorin leapt down from the step onto a platform flooded with light by the lamps of the station. Here and there the lights were no longer burning in the windows of some compartments—evidently some of the passengers had already retired for the night. Fandorin stretched sweetly, folded his hands behind his back, and prepared himself for a stroll that would stimulate his mental faculties to more effective activity. However, at that very moment there emerged from the same carriage a portly, mustached gentleman wearing a top hat, who cast a glance of intense curiosity in the young man’s direction and proffered an arm to his youthful female companion. At the sight of her charming, fresh face Erast Fandorin froze on the spot, while the young lady beamed and exclaimed in a clear, ringing voice, “Papa, it’s him, that gentleman from the police! I told you about him, remember? You know, the one who interrogated Frälein Pfühl and me!”

The word ‘interrogated’ was pronounced with quite evident pleasure, and the clear gray eyes gazed at Fandorin with unconcealed interest. It must be admitted that the dizzying pace of events during the preceding weeks had somewhat dulled Erast Fandorin’s memories of her whom in his own mind he thought of exclusively as ‘Lizanka’ and sometimes, in moments of particularly fanciful reverie, even as his ‘tender angel.’ However, at the sight of this lovely creature the flame that had singed his heart instantly flared up with renewed heat, scorching his lungs with sparks of fire.

“I’m not actually from the police,” Fandorin mumbled, blushing. “Fandorin, special assignments officer at the—”

“I know all about that ‘je vous le dis tout era’” the mustached gentleman said with a mysterious expression, and the diamond in his necktie glinted. “Affairs of state—no need to go into details. Entre nous sois dit,; I’ve had some involvement with that kind of business myself on more than one occasion, so I understand everything perfectly.” He raised his top hat. “However, allow me to introduce myself. Full Privy Counselor Alexander Apollodorovich Evert-Kolokoltsev, chairman of the Moscow Province Appellate Court. My daughter, Liza.”

“But do call me Lizzie. I don’t like ‘Liza’—it sounds like ‘geezer,’ ” the young lady requested, and then confessed naively, “I’ve often thought about you. Emma liked you. And I remember that you are called Erast Petrovich. Erast is a lovely name.”

Fandorin felt as if he had fallen asleep and was having a wonderful dream. The most important thing was not to move a muscle, in case—God forbid!—he might wake up.