Two Cases for the Czar

by Gorg Huff

  Pavel looked around. The truth was that there weren't a lot of places to talk privately in the squad room. The commander had an office and Pavel had a table. The duty sergeant had a lectern-style desk, and there were streltzi in and out all the time, eating lunch or reporting to the sergeant, mostly verbally. Good memories are common among those who don't read, and the duty sergeant had a phenomenal one.

  "Let's go to the Dacha," Miroslava said, "and get something to eat."

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Seated in a private room off the Dacha cafeteria, Natasha Gorchakov handed Pavel a scroll. An actual scroll, with the silk ribbon and the wax seal with the czar's stamp on it. It was pretty long when Pavel opened it, and he muttered, "I wish Maksim was here."

  "Who is Maksim? We want to have as few people knowing about this as possible."

  "He's my assistant. He mostly reads stuff to me, and takes dictation when it comes to taking notes on a case. Kid's been reading since his parents went to work in the Dacha the year Bernie arrived."

  "Maksim Vinnikov?" Natasha asked.

  "Yes."

  Natasha frowned. "Not the most reliable boy. If I recall correctly, he was prone to bragging." She reached across the table and took the scroll from Pavel's hands. "If you will trust me, I'll read it."

  The scroll, after calling Pavel by name, contained a fairly detailed plot of misinformation. As Princess Gorchakov read, Pavel looked at Miroslava. She was looking embarrassed.

  Finally Pavel interrupted. "This didn't happen."

  "We are aware of that."

  "And you want to let the murderer go free just to put out this . . . this . . . this story about a female spy with a ridiculous name?"

  "After examination of the evidence, the czar has determined that the person who shot Nikola Vetrov was acting in self defense."

  "And who was the person who killed Nikola Vetrov?" Pavel asked Miroslava, not Princess Gorchakov.

  But it was Princess Gorchakov who answered. "Do you really need to know that?"

  Pavel looked at Princess Gorchakov. Again he was in one of those situations where the smart thing to do was shut up and soldier, keep your head down, and avoid making waves. And, again, Pavel didn't do the smart thing. "Yes, ma'am. I think I do."

  "It was the chambermaid," Miroslava said. "Vetrov was drunk on vodka, trying to rape, and maybe kill her. She didn't have any choice."

  "Well, why not just say that then!" Pavel shouted. He didn't mean to shout, certainly not in this company. In a way, Natasha Gorchakov was scarier than the czar. This was the woman who set up and ran the Dachas, first the one outside Moscow on her family's property, then the one here in Ufa. The great wizardess of Russia. And, at the same time, as the scroll indicated, she had the ear of the czar.

  But the case had been frustrating, the attitude of the embassy bureau infuriating, and almost to his own surprise, the idea of falsifying records and lying about who did the killing was deeply offensive. In a way, that was the part that was hardest for Pavel to deal with. Why should he care about the police having false reports? It wasn't like it was a new thing. How had Pavel become an honest cop?

  "Well, you were quite right in your assessment," Princess Gorchakov said quietly. "There are a number of reasons, most of them political." She proceeded to go through those reasons, and they made sense.

  "All right, but we're going to need Maksim on this."

  "Why?"

  "Because he writes up all my reports. And he's a bright lad. He's going to know that they don't fit what he saw during the investigation." Then Pavel grinned. "And he's possibly our best means of spreading this false narrative."

  "How?"

  "He's dating, well, trying to date Drysi, over at the Dacha telegraph office. An ambitious lad, our Maksim. She's a year older than he is. He could leak it to her pretty easily. And once a telegraph operator gets it, it's going to be all over Russia."

  "As long as he only leaks the version we want him to leak," Princess Gorchakov said, still not completely satisfied.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  "Have a seat, Maksim," Pavel said.

  Maksim wondered what he'd done now. He sat on the bench in the park just outside the kremlin and Pavel handed him a sausage roll. It was a piece of sausage about five inches long, wrapped in rye bread dough, and baked. They were available all over Ufa these days, in inns and on carts in the street. You could get Russian catsup, which didn't have tomatoes in it, to dip them in. Which was how Maksim preferred them, but he took the roll and said "Thank you, sir."

  Pavel looked at him and smiled. "You're not in trouble, kid. But I need a favor. A very secret favor."

  Somehow that didn't sound any better than Maksim being in trouble. In fact, it sounded worse. Maksim just waited and Pavel's smile died. "The murder in the locked room has been solved, but the actual solution isn't going into our files."

  That didn't sound good at all. That sounded like the sort of thing that a young and upstanding streltzi could end up hanging for. "I don't know about that, Sergeant. I mean, I've learned a lot from you, and I want to be a good cop. But . . ."

  Pavel was smiling again as though Maksim had passed some sort of test. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sheet of heavy paper folded in thirds and with the gold and red silk ribbon that was reserved for official documents from the czar. "You can read, so read this aloud. But quietly."

  Maksim took it, opened it, and read. It was easy. The document was not handwritten, but written on one of the new typewriters. All but the signature at the bottom, M. Romanov, CoR followed by his seal in red wax.

  "Hello, Pavel," Maksim read, then looked at his boss in shock. Streltzi didn't get letters from the czar that started by naming them. Pavel was blushing a little. Maksim went back to the paper. "Russia needs a little favor from you for reasons Natasha will explain. I need your records to show that the evil murder of Nikola Vetrov was committed by an agent of Sheremetev."

  The letter went on to detail a nefarious plot of Med Nayezdnikovna who, working for Sheremetev, had wormed her way into the China railroad, and then killed Nikola Vetrov in an attempt to keep the railroad from happening.

  Maksim stopped reading and stared at Pavel with dozens of questions running through his mind. What popped out was, "Who's Natasha?"

  Pavel grinned. "Princess Natalia Gorchakov. Her friends, which group includes the czar of Russia, call her Natasha."

  That Princess Natalia Gorchakov and her up-timer friend Bernie Zeppi were personal friends and advisers to Czar Mikhail wasn't news. They were all over the newspapers. Back almost to himself, Maksim considered, then finished reading the letter quietly until it finished.

  "I can put this story in the records," he said. "I don't like it, but I can do it. But who did kill Vetrov?"

  "It was self defense. Miroslava confirms it. No murderer is escaping justice because of his family connections," Pavel said and Maksim nodded his agreement. If Miroslava said it was self defense, he believed it and that was enough for him.

  "Good, then. Can I borrow this?" He held up the sheet. "I will need it to make sure the details all fit when I write up your report on the case of the spy who got away. How do you feel about letting 'Med Nayezdnikovna' with her honey blond hair escape?" He grinned at Pavel.

  "My wife prefers that I not associate with such women," Pavel told him with a little half smile that Maksim didn't really understand. Maksim was starting to feel like this might even be fun.

  Then Pavel spoke again. "That's not all we need you to do, Maksim."

  Maksim started to get nervous again. "What else?"

  "We need you to leak the false story. Share the secret of Honey Ryder and how we figured out who did it and why."

  That was a whole different barrel of cabbage. "You're talking about Drysi." It wasn't really a question.

  "Yes," Pavel said. "She's a radio telegraph operator, and you know how they gossip to each other."

  Maksim did know. There were a couple of them that he was sure wer
e trying to romance Drysi over the radio. Maksim took only limited solace from the fact that they were hundreds of miles away.

  This was doable. Maksim was surprised at how well he was doing with Drysi, not that they had been able to walk out together. Her family was still dvoriane while he was streltzi, so it wasn't just that she was older than he was. She was also of higher social rank. And even if this was New Russia, it was still Russia. And that still mattered.

  And part of the reason Drysi was interested in him, perhaps the largest part of the reason, was because Maksim had made himself a good source of gossip. He was a streltzi assigned to the city police battalion, who had access to all the books, and Drysi found the stories exciting. It was even true that Maksim edited those stories a little bit to make it seem that he was more involved than he actually was.

  "I don't know. I don't like the idea of lying to her."

  Pavel looked at him and Maksim felt his face go hot. "Well, I don't. Not actual lies. Besides, this isn't the sort of thing that I can tell her while I'm leaning over the counter at the radio room."

  "All right, Maksim," Pavel said. "What is it you want?"

  "I want a pass to the Dacha Cafeteria. That's where Drysi eats most of the time. If I'm going to tell her this story, it needs to be someplace where we can sit down."

  Location: Dacha Cafeteria

  Date: May 17, 1637

  Maksim held the chair as Drysi sat down. She was sort of impressed. The cafeteria at the Dacha was the only place for a date that her parents would approve. And Maksim wasn't part of the Dacha staff, so he had to get special permission to get in here. Not bad for a lad not yet seventeen.

  Drysi liked Maksim. He told exciting stories, and she knew about police work from being a little bit involved when they were tracking down Karol Karolivich Chernoff's girlfriend's killer. So she let Maksim seat her. They were off in a corner, in sight of most of the room, but not so close that people could overhear what they were saying.

  She sipped her small beer and asked Maksim, "How is work? Is anything exciting going on in the police department?"

  "Yes. One got away."

  This was going to be interesting. Maksim didn't like to talk about the police's failures to catch the bad guys. He liked stories that made the police, and especially him, look good.

  Over the next hour, while she had borscht with extra sour cream and Maksim had a hamburger with fried potatoes. Maksim told her about the daring spy who's name, or maybe pseudonym, was Med Nayezdnikovna.

  "We don't even know for certain that she's Russian," Maksim said. "Pavel thinks she may be Polish, working for one of the Lithuanian magnates, and she just got loaned to Sheremetev."

  "What makes you think she was working for Sheremetev?"

  "Who else?"

  "The Chinese, the Zunghar Khanate, the Poles, the Venetians, who don't want us having an overland route that can compete with their route around Africa? It could be anyone."

  "The embassy bureau seems pretty sure it's Sheremetev."

  "The embassy bureau has Sheremetev on the brain. If an alley cat goes missing, they think it's a Sheremetev plot." That was true. Her parents said so, and so did a bunch of people in the network.

  "I didn't know you like Sheremetev," Maksim said, sounding really shocked.

  Drysi rolled her eyes. "I don't like Sheremetev. No one likes Sheremetev. But, well, I don't know . . . it seems like everything gets blamed on him. Lukyan says that he was just trying to keep Russia strong."

  Drysi watched Maksim's face cloud up and was pleased. Lukyan was a radio operator at the Moscow station, and one of her best informants. And he was half convinced that the czar was under the evil influence of up-timer witches. Drysi didn't agree with him, but she brought him up when Maksim or some of the other more radical people here in Ufa got on her nerves.

  "I think it was Sheremetev!" Maksim said stubbornly, and Drysi wanted to slug him. But then he sighed. "But I will try to find out why the embassy bureau is so convinced."

  Location: Ufa Dacha, Room 22B

  Date: May 18, 1637

  I have been going over my notes on the case of the spy who got away, and have decided that I will lock this away to be published after both Miroslava and I are gone, perhaps in the reign of Prince Alexi, or maybe his heir.

  I heard the story of the evil spy and seductress, Med Nayezdnikovna, while eating lunch and managed to keep a straight face. The rumor is that in spite of her efforts, the Russia China Railroad will be built as soon as the czar and the khan reach an agreement.

  No, instead I think I will share the story of the missing necklace. It only involves the police indirectly. It actually started during the case of the spy who got away. And Miroslava was involved because— Well, it happened like this. . . .

  The Case of the Missing Necklace

  Chapter 6

  Location: Ufa, The Happy Bottom

  Date: May 10, 1637

  Miroslava Holmes exited her meeting with Madam Drozdov and went among the girls of the Happy Bottom, some of whom knew her, and others who were new. Especially under the new circumstances, the turnover at the Happy Bottom was rapid. Girls came and went.

  Nikolina was one who knew Miroslava from before, and was not particularly one of her friends. Miroslava wasn't popular among the dancers of the Happy Bottom Club. She was just too different. And, also, way too pretty to be popular among girls whose income was dependent on how attractive they were relative to the other girls in the club.

  "I don't know him," Nikolina told Miroslava. It was apparent to Miroslava that Nikolina had been crying, even though she had tried to hide it with makeup. But since what she was crying about wasn't involved in her investigation, Miroslava didn't pay it much attention.

  "Thank you. Let me know if you think of anything."

  "Why should I?" Nikolina asked. "What do I care if some jerk from the embassy bureau got killed."

  It was a fair question. "I will owe you a favor," Miroslava said.

  "What sort of favor?" The tone was suspicious.

  Miroslava shrugged. "I'm a detective now. I detect."

  "Well, detect who stole my necklace, then."

  "You mean the silver necklace with the black pearls in the pendant?"

  "Yes." Suddenly Nikolina's voice was hopeful.

  More importantly to Miroslava, this was a puzzle, or at least the start of one. "I can't make any promises, but tell me what happened and I will see what I can find out."

  Still cautiously hopeful, Nikolina told her. "It happened the day before yesterday. I went home and my room had been broken into and my necklace was gone. Also all the money I had in the room."

  "Did you call the police?"

  Nikolina looked at Miroslava like she was an idiot. Girls who danced at the Happy Bottom didn't call the police. Even if the cops found the necklace, they would just keep it for themselves, and Miroslava knew that. She didn't think that Pavel would, not any more, but Pavel wasn't the only cop in Ufa, and he knew better than to inform on those who did. She also knew that if someone were to steal from her apartment in the Dacha, the cops would be out in force and very careful about what they touched and none of them would take anything. That was the way things worked in Russia in the seventeenth century. It was even the way things worked in the USSR.

  In her more suspicious moments, she even thought that it was the way things probably worked up-time. Her problem was that she no longer thought that was the way things should work.

  "I will do what I can," she promised. The truth was she didn't know what that would be. Puzzles are hard to solve if you don't have enough of the pieces, and one crime scene, one crime, mostly didn't give enough pieces.

  What did she know, really, about the theft of Nikolina's necklace? She didn't even know if the thief knew about the necklace before he got to Nikolina's room. It could be anyone in Ufa. Still . . . "Tell me everything you saw from the time you got back to your room."

  "My necklace was—"

  "No
, everything from the beginning, when you were outside of your apartment."

  "What?"

  "I need to know everything. Were there scuff marks on the floor outside your room? Was the door locked? Was the latch broken? Everything. In your mind, go back to that day. How was work?"

  "I was on the late shift, and there wasn't much action."

  In spite of the new street lights, Ufa was still a dawn-to-dusk kind of place. Of course, at this time of year, the day part was pretty long. But that meant long days of labor in the shops, factories, and other work sites. Ufa was very much a city under construction, but once the sun went down, most people returned home and went to bed.

  The busy time was right around sunset, which happened a bit after nine in the evening. Miroslava remembered the sunrise-sunset calendar from the Dacha. Sunset on May 7th was 9:02, so by midnight the Happy Bottom would have mostly cleared out, and by 3 AM when it closed, it would be pretty much empty. But Madam Drozdov would keep the late shift girls there to the last.

  "Go on."

  "I got my share of the tips and went home." Most of the girls now had a room off premises.

  "Where is your apartment?"

  "On Tanners Street." Tanners Street was way down near the confluence of the Ufa and Belaya rivers. It wasn't a good part of town, and it was almost three miles from the Happy Bottom. Miroslava nodded. "Go on. You left the club about 3:30, and walked home?"

  Miroslava listened, asking questions as Nikolina went through the events of that night. She learned that Nikolina had a drop bar for when she was home, and a padlock for when she was gone. The padlock was made in Kazan, mostly from brass, but the shank was steel, and Miroslava realized that it was an advertisement that there were things in the room worth stealing. Padlocks of the up-time design were expensive. Any padlock was expensive simply because it was handmade by a metalsmith. It was the sort of thing rich merchants used, not bar girls.