Two Cases for the Czar

by Gorg Huff

  "Surely, rich men . . ."

  "Yes, of course. But they don't talk to us and we don't talk to them. We certainly don't tell them about our private treasures or the private treasures of the other girls."

  "So, not a boyar's son slumming."

  "But who else is going to be at a czar's ball?"

  "Servants."

  "Yes. That would explain it. But what about access to the books? How is he going to learn to be a second-story man and a professional lock picker?"

  "Half the boyars in Russia can't read, and half those who can, don't like to. They have people to do that for them. So a literate servant, your man." I poured myself a glass of wine and held up the bottle.

  "Yes, but there are a lot of literate servants in Ufa." Miroslava nodded at the bottle and I poured her a glass. "We need a way of identifying him."

  "Fingerprints."

  "But we can't fingerprint every male servant in Ufa."

  Fingerprinting was exceedingly new technology. Of the by now over twenty thousand people in Ufa, less than a hundred had been fingerprinted. Miroslava, Vasilii, all the streltzi of the police at the colonel's orders, and the suspects in Karol's murder, but that was about it.

  "So go after the fence. You have a lead on him, right?"

  Miroslava grimaced, and for a moment I thought she didn't like the wine. It wasn't that great a vintage, but it wasn't bad. "I don't want to do that because the fence is going to give up the maid, and she's not the person who stole the jewelry."

  "Why do you care?" At her look, I backtracked hastily. "I mean, it is the woman's necklace. Even if the maid didn't steal it, the boy did, and she's the one who sold it to a fence. Is it that you only help those you like?" As I spoke, I realized that I didn't want that to be the reason. I didn't want Miroslava to be someone who only respected the rights of those people she liked.

  She stopped and considered. That was perhaps the thing that I like most about Miroslava Holmes. It isn't that she has a rigid code of honor, but that she considers. She thinks about the details of each case and each question. That's what she's doing when people around her think she is ignoring them.

  "Kira was given the necklace. She didn't steal it. It could be . . . no, it is true that Nikola stole it, but he isn't the one who will be punished for the theft and I don't trust Detective Corporal Zuykov."

  "Granted, but she did sell the gift."

  "What else was she going to do with it? Wear it while she was cleaning the fireplace?"

  There was bitterness in that. And I realized that giving jewels to a serving woman was not the grand romantic gesture that it might seem, though it had probably seemed that way to the boy, Nikola. "Your point is made. Okay. We want to avoid implicating Kira or Nikola, but we still need to talk to the fence. Tell me about this Zuykov fellow. Is there some way we can get around him?"

  "That assumes that the fence is the same fence." Miroslava ignored my question about Zuykov in favor of the question of the fence.

  "How many fences of jewelry can there be in Ufa? It's not like Ufa is Magdeburg, Paris, or some up-timer city."

  "I think I will go myself and have a talk with him."

  "Not on your own. Isn't there any way we can call in the police, get Pavel to . . ."

  Miroslava was shaking her head. "Pavel made it clear. He can't interfere with Zuykov more than he did. He only got me access to the files because the colonel knows that I know the czar and wouldn't want me going over his head."

  "Then I think I will be taking tomorrow off, and we will go visit the fence. Together."

  Again Miroslava paused and considered. "That will work."

  Location: The Pawn Shop of Gregori Blinov

  Date: May 17, 1637

  There was a bell that rang as the door opened, and across from the door was a long wooden counter, almost like a bar, but there were no drinks behind the bar. Instead, the wall behind it was covered with shelves, and the shelves contained all manner of things. Balalaika, knives, swords, bows, tools of all sorts. Behind the counter sat a short, fat man with a ring of long hair surrounding the completely bald top of his head. The hair was greasy, and it was clear that the man wasn't a frequenter of any of the dozen or so bathhouses that were all the rage in Ufa.

  As I looked around the room, I learned that we weren't alone. In the corner out of sight of the door as you came in was a large man, seated on a bench with a modified AK on his lap. It was one of the earlier ones, a flintlock with a large bore barrel that had been sawed off short. The stock also had been modified. It was more like a pistol grip than a rifle's stock. I was put in mind of a sawed-off shotgun. I had seen pictures of them.

  Clearly, he was the muscle.

  I was quite glad that our shoulder holsters had been completed. We'd picked them up that morning, so both Miroslava and I were armed with guns that were not obvious, but easy to get at. In all the books, the bad guys or the good guys can tell by the clothing if someone is wearing a shoulder holster, but I will tell you, gentle reader, it's not that easy. I had looked at Miroslava quite closely and, even knowing what to look for, I couldn't tell that she was wearing a gun.

  Miroslava, of course, could tell I was. But that was Miroslava. She sees everything.

  The muscle in the corner saw me looking at him and smiled. He had crooked teeth and the smile wasn't friendly. But it was very confident.

  "What can I do for you?" asked the man behind the counter.

  I turned to face him and said, "We're looking to buy some jewelry."

  "Then you've come to the right place."

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Miroslava walked beside Vasilii to the counter, noting without really considering the three silver platters that were located on the shelves behind the counter. They were reflective, but not truly flat. She could see the room reflected in them, but it was distorted. She didn't look at the corners of the room. She didn't need to. She could see them reflected in the bottoms of the platters.

  She noted the smell of the proprietor, but wasn't bothered by it. No, that wasn't true. She was bothered by it, but she had been bothered by such things her whole life. It was an old discomfort, familiar and recognized, which she felt even in the much cleaner Dacha rooms. For the smell of cleansers and disinfectants, even perfumes, were no less disturbing to her than the smell of old sweat and unwashed bodies. The world was what the world was.

  There were several guns on shelves, disassembled or at least without their chambers if they were chamber locks. Several of them were the pre-Ring of Fire matchlocks, none of which were loaded. But as they had come in, the balding man had looked at a particular place below the countertop. As Miroslava walked forward beside Vasilii, she saw, reflected in a brass goblet on a shelf, the pistol that was located in that cubby beneath the counter.

  Now the bald man, probably Gregori Blinov, reached below the counter, but not for that cubbyhole. Instead, he pulled out a tray of jewels and jewelry pieces.

  There were rings and pendants and necklaces. What wasn't there was Nikolina's necklace, at least not all of it. Black pearls aren't actually black. They come in many shades and have variations within the pearl. Nikolina had shown the necklace to Miroslava several times, generally with a snide comment about how being a freak Miroslava would never have such a thing. The necklace ended in a small diamond shaped silver pendant that had four small "black" imperfectly shaped pearls, the smallest on top then two side by side and the largest, a teardrop shaped pearl with blue and green highlights on the bottom. On a bed of dark felt, among a group of other jewels, lay that largest pearl from Nikolina's necklace.

  Much to her own surprise, Miroslava found herself furious. "Where is the rest of it?" she asked.

  "The rest of what?" Gregori Blinov asked, uncertainty and suspicion on his face.

  Miroslava reached out and touched the pearl. "The other three pearls, the diamond-shaped pendant and the braided silver strand completing the necklace." It was, Miroslava knew, a stupid thing to do. But just at that m
oment, she didn't care. This man, and she was sure that it was this man, had quite literally ripped apart Nikolina's dream. That it was a false dream, as Miroslava knew, didn't matter at all.

  "Get out of my shop!" Uncertainty and suspicion were replaced by anger and fear.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  "You don't want us to do that," I said. "We'll just come back with the police." I was trying to save the situation, but in retrospect, it was precisely the wrong thing to say. I saw Blinov look at the muscle in the corner, and turned to face him, reaching for my pistol in its shoulder holster.

  The muscle was already moving, standing and bringing the sawed off AK to bear. I must have jerked the trigger. I shot through my coat and almost shot myself in the left arm, but nowhere near the big guy with the gun. But it was enough to make him pull the trigger early, before the gun was lined up. His shot was off and to the right. One of the bits of metal that he had his chamber loaded with struck me in the leg. The rest struck harmlessly to my right and, thankfully, even farther from Miroslava. I heard two shots from Miroslava's pistol, but I was much too busy to turn around, because the muscle wasn't reloading; instead he was running at me with the sawed off AK lifted like a club.

  I finally got the pistol out and fired again. And again, before he crashed into me, bringing me to the floor. But he was dead or dying by the time he got to me.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Miroslava saw the guard reflected in the platter, but she also saw Blinov reaching into the cubbyhole that held the pistol. She was neither surprised, nor did she have any question about what was going to happen. Analysis was finished, so she reacted quickly.

  She pulled her pistol from her bodice and shot Blinov twice in the chest. The bullets were smaller than the bullets of an AK, but they were plenty big enough. They shattered the breast bone, sending shards into the heart.

  Which was a good thing, because that's when the guard hit Vasilii and Vasilii hit her, and they all went down en masse. It was all quite shockingly sudden, and over before they realized that it had started.

  One thing they both recognized was that if Miroslava was going to be doing this sort of thing, they both needed more training in how to react to violence. They had survived, but as much by luck as by ability. And in the process, they had lost their informant as to the identity of the thief.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  I pushed the guard off me, and helped Miroslava up. Well, I started to. I had a hole in my right leg, and it was leaking. I didn't exactly scream when I tried to move. It was more of a grunt, whatever Miroslava claims. But it was enough to get Miroslava's attention, and she immediately came to my aid, all the while berating me for getting shot. With a handy strip of cloth tied over the wound to at least slow the leakage, we got up and began to examine the room.

  The pawn shop of Gregori Blinov was part of a block of buildings, each of which had a business of some sort on the bottom floor and a residence on the second floor. They were not high-end businesses. There was a rag and bone man on the left side of Blinov's shop, and a barber/dentist on the right. Two doors down was a small bakery that sold meat pastries, and beyond that a tailor shop that specialized in the repair and refitting of used clothing.

  As to the question of whether any of the proprietors of the shops would go for the police on hearing gunshots, well, that was anyone's guess. In any single case, the most likely response would be to mind their own business, but between them all, someone might.

  Once she had my leg bound up, Miroslava started examining the room. She was wearing calfskin gloves, not for comfort, but to keep from putting her fingerprints on anything. She found a door to a back room, where Blinov did his work. He broke up jewelry into its component parts and apparently felt himself a jeweler, for he made pieces out of the jewels and precious metals.

  He also had a ledger. Blinov wasn't literate, not exactly. He could write numbers, cyrillic numerals, and along with them used a combination of cyrillic letters and drawings to signify the who and the why and the what. It wasn't intentional, but it did constitute a quite effective encryption system, because the only person who knew what the combination of letters and symbols meant was now lying dead on the floor of the front room.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  While Miroslava was in the back room, I was visited by a very cautious barber/dentist from next door who was wondering if his services were needed.

  "Yes. Please send for the police, and if you have some alcohol and clean bandages, I would like to get my wound cleaned and bandaged." I had seated myself on a barrel waiting for Miroslava, and when I tried to rise, it didn't work well, so I added, "And a cart of some sort to take us back to the Dacha after the police get here."

  He cautiously came the rest of the way in and asked, "You do all this?"

  "Not by myself, no."

  "Friends ran off and left you, hey?" He shook his head in disappointment. "Happens that way, sometimes."

  "Actually, no. She's simply in the back room," I said.

  "And you want me to get the streltzi?"

  It wasn't until that moment that I realized the barber from next door thought we were here to rob the place. "Yes! I do."

  "You must be connected pretty high," he said, shaking his head at the injustice of the world, still convinced that we were here to rob the place, but now certain that we had bribed the police to let us get away with it. I didn't know whether to be outraged or just sad. It wasn't a judgment against me, I realized. Just against a world where justice was a thing for sale and rather more expensive than a man like him could afford.

  "We were here investigating some recent jewelry thefts and that gentleman took offense at our questions," I said, pointing. "He signaled that gentleman to, ah, deal with us."

  He looked at the scene. "That sounds like Gregori," the barber agreed. "How'd you get the drop on Ivan?"

  I snorted. "I didn't. Nearly shot myself, and did shoot a hole in my coat." I showed him my coat, then continued: "It was enough to startle him and he fired early."

  "And then came at you. I see. Ivan never was one to back away. I'm Konstantin, by the way." He lifted an eyebrow as he pulled some apparently clean bandages and a bottle out of his carpet bag.

  "Vasilii Lyapunov," I said, and it was about then that Miroslava emerged from the back room.

  She was carrying Gregori's account book. "I have his book, but I can't read it."

  She passed it over to me, and I took a look at it. "I can't read it either."

  "Gregori couldn't write. Nor read either," Konstantin said as he knelt down beside my chair and looked at Miroslava's makeshift bandage. He undid it and examined the wound. It was located on the outer mid-thigh, and whatever it was that had hit me was still in there. "I can pack that for you, but for real surgery you need to go to the Dacha. This is going to hurt."

  He poured a greenish liquid from the bottle onto my leg, and I screamed. Yes, this time it was a scream. I admit it. That stuff burned like a hot iron. He took a swig of the stuff and I saw the label on the bottle. It was hand lettered on an oval piece of white paper, and it said "vodka." And if it should come to pass that any up-timer reads this, be aware that James Bond would never make a martini from that vodka, neither shaken nor stirred. There were things in the bottle, sprigs of this or that plant. Each maker of vodka has a unique recipe, and each recipe is a closely held secret, for each maker insists that their medicine will cure everything from the common cold to the pox, and that all the others are frauds.

  On the other hand, having felt the stuff, I had little doubt that my wound was sterile.

  He then proceeded to place a pad on the wound and re-used our bandage to wrap the leg, explaining as he worked that while he read the pamphlets from the Dacha, he wasn't going crazy like they did. Sure, he boiled the actual pad that went over the wound, but there was no reason to waste his sterile material when there was a perfectly functional piece of cloth with which to bind up the injury. "It's not like it's going to touch the wound, after all."

/>   And while I knew that Tami Simmons wouldn't approve, his reasoning seemed sound to me.

  Having patched my leg, he went back out to send one of his sons to fetch a beat cop. He knew just where to find him; the beat cop spent most of his time in a tavern two blocks over.

  ***

  Konstantin Konstantinovich, all of ten years old, wasn't entirely clear what had happened, but he was convinced that the thieves who'd shot Mr. Blinov and Ivan, then sat there calmly waiting for the cops, had to have balls the size of boulders. And he dutifully informed the cop of that. "They took down Mr. Blinov and Ivan, and they said they'd be waiting for you right there."

  The cop, an older man who felt that he could best spend his days in a comfortable chair here in the tavern so that everyone would know where to find him if they really needed to, but was happy enough to let them settle their own issues without his involvement, was not thrilled to hear this. He used his whistle to call for backup before approaching the shop. Then he, three other cops, and the sergeant in charge of this part of town repaired to the barber's shop to find out what was going on. The barber wasn't in, having gone back to see after his patient.

  However, one of his customers was there and explained to them that it was much ado about a couple of deaders, and that the people over there were at least dvoriane, being from the Dacha.

  The sergeant cautiously opened the door, which rang the bell, then came in, a nightstick in hand.

  As soon as he caught sight of Miroslava, he put away his nightstick and rolled his eyes. "What's this all about? And how did you get here before we even heard about it?"

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  I realized as he said that, that he thought Miroslava was here to investigate the deaths. "The easiest way possible," I told him. "We're here investigating the jewel thefts over the last few days, and when we realized that some of the missing jewels were in that tray there, Gregori Blinov took offense and his man attacked us." It wasn't until I pointed at the small tray that I realized the pearl was missing. I looked at Miroslava and looked away. She wasn't looking at me or the tray, but was examining the book in detail.