Two Cases for the Czar

by Gorg Huff

  Since Miroslava had an eidetic memory there was no reason to be looking at the book except to not be looking at something else like the tray that was missing a pearl. Miroslava's friend's pearl.

  "Which jewels?" There was, in the sergeant's tone, a touch of avarice I didn't much like.

  "Several that we know were stolen and others that might be," I said, wanting to avoid unpleasantness. "Miroslava has examined the tray and knows all the jewels on it. And be aware, Sergeant, most of the people who own those jewels are the sort of people you don't want to get on the wrong side of. Just a word to the wise."

  The sergeant's expression was suddenly sour and a bit less friendly. "Well, in that case, we'll need to do everything according to the regulations. And the regulations say you have to be held here while we call in the detectives. That's Detective Sergeant Pavel Baranov, since we have two dead bodies here, and Detective Corporal Zuykov since this is about thefts."

  By the time he'd finished his recitation, he was looking quite sour.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It was another quarter hour before the detectives got here, and by that time the pain in my leg was a throbbing ache that passed from knee to hip and back.

  We went through our stories, me doing most of the talking. I especially made sure that I was the one who talked about recognizing the very nonspecific "some" of the stolen jewels.

  "Which one?" Corporeal Zuykov asked.

  Miroslava pointed at a jewel that I didn't remember seeing in the tray and said. "That is an up-timer cut diamond, quite possibly one cut by the up-timer Jew, Morris Roth. I think that it was once in the tiara of Valaria Denisov, which was stolen a few days ago."

  "And it's entirely possible that some of the rest of these jewels were parts of the items of jewelry that were stolen from various noblewomen in the past few days," I added quickly. “You, Corporal, get to explain that you have cracked the case, at least to the extent of having found the fence." It was then that I had a thought, and acted on it immediately. "In fact, Corporal, you should probably suggest that Gregori over there is still alive and being questioned rigorously to determine the name of the thief."

  "How do you know he's not the thief?"

  "How would he know which houses to burgle? And, frankly, I don't see him being able to scale a wall to enter a room through the window."

  That particular thought of mine had some unintended consequences over the next few weeks.

  Corporal Zuykov took my advice and the rumor started that Gregori Blinov was being questioned. At that point, a man named Piotr Veloshov, minor deti boyar retainer of the Cherkasski family, suddenly went missing. Then, when it was announced that Gregori Blinov was actually dead, everyone assumed that he'd died under questioning, and it all ended up in front of the czar and Miroslava had to swear that she was the one who shot him, and there is a whole class of people who still insist that Gregori Blinov was tortured to death by the police.

  Which is not unreasonable, given how the streltzi city guards have behaved in the past.

  Chapter 9

  Location: Cherkasski Family Residence, Ufa

  Date: May 18, 1637

  Piotr Veloshov was a well formed young man whose prospects had been considerably better two years ago than they were today. He wandered down to the kitchens, where the maids were making porridge with sausage for breakfast. He was in Ufa because his family was in the service of the Cherkasski family, what was left of it. They had been in the wrong place when Czar Mikhail made his escape and the leader of the family was executed, and much of its property seized by Sheremetev. The survivors had been cowed and backed Sheremetev to the hilt, and then been proved wrong again. Through it all, the Veloshov family was loyal to the Cherkasski family.

  And lost their lands and serfs, along with the great family they served.

  Piotr scratched his thick if short black beard. He had learned that loyalty was an expensive hobby, one that moved a young man of good prospects from a cavalry officer to a stable hand. No, in this world you took what you could get, and that was the end to it.

  The cook, a fat, talkative woman waved him to a chair and started scooping porridge into a wooden bowl, while still talking to the head gardener. "No, they caught him right enough. He's wounded, but taken to the Kremlin, not the Dacha. If he dies under questioning, there's going to be hell to pay."

  "That's just silly. He is a fence, a buyer of stolen goods. That's what he is, the Holmes confirmed it. The missing jewels were right there in his shop. The way I heard it, they should be torturing him. I don't hold with this coddling of thieves."

  "Doesn't matter what you 'hold with,' you old fool. It's the czar's decision, and the Lord bless him. He looks to protect the innocent, not just punish the wicked."

  "But that's the point. Gregori Blinov wasn't innocent, and now that the streltzi have him in the cells, he'll talk. You mark my words."

  "I heard he already had." The cook gestured with a sausage. "And they'll be coming for the thief quick enough, what with the Holmes on the job."

  "Weren't the Holmes that did it, but good, old fashioned torturing. You just said so yourself."

  "And without the Holmes, who would . . ."

  She was still talking, but Piotr didn't hear. It was drowned out by the blood rushing in his ears. With will stronger than he thought he had, he stayed in the seat and continued to spoon down the porridge. His money from Blinov was hidden in the bottom of his chest, in a corner of the stable. As soon as he could, he got up and went out. When he got to the stables behind the townhouse, he put a good, but not fancy, saddle on Ivan Cherkasski's favorite horse, packed what he could in the saddlebags, most especially his money, and rode out.

  There was a time to consider and a time to act. And this was the time to act.

  Location: Dacha Medical Section

  Date: May 18, 1637

  Tami examined the wound on my thigh and removed the metal fragment as a gaggle of medical students looked over her shoulders. She pointed out the redness and the lack of swelling, explained the wound in gruesome detail that I didn't understand, and finished with, "So the muscles have been damaged. They need to heal, but they also need to be exercised, so light walking with a cane to take part of the weight, for the next couple of weeks."

  She turned from the students to me. "And you, Vasilii, don't need to be spending eight hours a day sitting at your work table, drawing plans, either. Get out and walk."

  Tami left then, followed by her gaggle of baby docs, leaving me in the care of a physical therapist, who explained that he wanted me to use the cane opposite the injured leg, so that when I step on that leg, part of the weight would be taken by the cane. As an engineer, I understood that part well enough.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  When I got back to my room, Miroslava was packing a bag. "Oh good, you're here. How was the doctor? I have to go to Kazan!"

  "The doctor said I should take some time off and walk. Why are we going to Kazan?"

  "We?" Miroslava stopped packing, looked at me and considered. "You're allowed to walk?"

  "Yes. It's even encouraged. I have a bottle of aspirin with a touch of opium to be taken as needed, but no more than four tablets a day. And no more than one at a time, at least four hours apart. Now, why are we going to Kazan?"

  "Because Piotr Veloshov," She held up a sheet of paper, "stole Ivan Cherkasski's best horse and departed for parts unknown, but I think Kazan."

  I limped over and took the sheet. It was a sketch of a man, and below that a description including height, eye color, brown, hair color also brown, and distinguishing features, none to mention. And the drawing, while no doubt accurate, well, it could be any Russian. Well, not me, but apparently Piotr had a common face.

  "And why do you think Kazan?" I realized what she meant. Piotr Veloshov had to be our cat burglar.

  "He doesn't speak Kazak. He speaks Latin and Russian, and reads Russian and English. He will be going either to Shein's territory or Sheremetev's. Certainly so
mewhere in Russia. If he leaves Russia, it will be to go to the west, not east. So wherever he's going, Kazan is his first step. There he will either buy supplies or sell the horse and take a steam boat. He has plenty of cash. From Gregori's books, he has something like a hundred rubles, not enough to live out his life in comfort, but enough to get away. To some place he can steal more."

  "So your plan is to go to Kazan and hunt for him," I said. "Why?"

  "What do you mean, why?"

  "You have solved the riddle. The thief is this fellow, Piotr Veloshov. He is on the run. The jewels have been recovered. So why do you feel the need to catch him?"

  Miroslava stopped packing and stood there for some time. I waited, knowing that she was following one of what I called her reasoning trees, or maybe climbing it, or exploring it. She would climb a branch out to its end, then go back to where it branched off and climb another, until she had scouted each and every leaf to find the reason for a thing.

  "The very first thing he took was Nikolina's necklace. He stole her necklace as a test to see if he could get away with it, because he was convinced that even if he got caught, he would still get away with it because of who she was and who he was." She sighed. "The truth is Nikolina probably would have done the same thing, but that doesn't really matter. What matters to me is that he was willing to destroy her because it was safe. However skilled he might be, I don't care. That, to my mind, makes him a bad guy to be stopped."

  Until then, I had had a certain sympathy for our cat burglar, made up of respect for his skill and daring and sympathy for what I imagined of his circumstances. But Miroslava was right. However skilled and dashing he might be, he was still a bad guy, and he still needed to go down.

  "What about the radio telegraph?"

  "They have already sent an All Points Bulletin all over the network. Even the streltzi in Moscow have it by now. But I don't think they are going to care that much. There isn't any reward for catching him, and it's just suspicion. We still don't have proof that he did anything but steal a horse.

  "Besides, he's smart. He's read a lot of books, even up-timer English books. So he knows tricks. I think he will change his looks. I don't know how, but it will probably be enough to let him slip by the streltzi in Kazan. Once he gets to Kazan, he will buy different clothing, maybe color his hair. I think he will slip away if we aren't there to spot him."

  Location: Riverboat Krasnaya Sobaka

  Date: May 19, 1637

  The trip from Ufa to Kazan was four hundred and fifty miles of twisting, narrow river. Which made it difficult for the pilots, but not for me and Miroslava. We're on the balcony just now, a wooden boardwalk that surrounds the second floor of the riverboat, watching the world go by. We have a very nice, albeit closet-sized, staterooms on the second floor of a wide, two-story river boat that had a steam engine in the middle of the first floor and two propellers driven by shafts.

  While not perfectly safe, by now they had been making steam engines for steam boats for four years in Russia, starting with a great deal more theoretical knowledge than they had had in that other history. So we spent yesterday walking the balcony and playing cards in the card room. And we planned on spending the rest of today doing the same.

  We weren't the only passengers, either. There was very little cargo on the Krasnaya Sobaka, Red Dog. It was, for the most part, a passenger boat and setting up a regular run, Ufa to Kazan, then down the Volga to the Caspian Sea, then back upriver to Kazan and Ufa. It usually had more passengers going to Ufa than leaving it. Ufa, after all, was the capital of the USSR and it had its own Dacha.

  "How is your leg?" Miroslava asked. "Should we go in and sit for a while?"

  "It's fine," I lied. It hurt like the blazes, and I probably ought to have been taking the pills more often. But I was concerned about addiction.

  "Let's go back to the card room and sit down."

  The card room held a series of tables and became the dining room at breakfast, lunch and dinner. It also had comfortable chairs. I let myself be persuaded.

  We went in, sat down, and had a snack of crackers and cheese with a white wine.

  Location: Near the Ufa River, About Forty Miles Out of Ufa

  Date: May 19, 1637

  Piotr Veloshov climbed off Noski and patted the horse's neck. "Come along, now. I'll walk a bit, but we need to keep moving.

  "I wonder if I made a mistake, boy. No. It wasn't worth the risk. We'll be in Kazan in another week and then we'll part ways, my friend." He reached into the scabbard attached to the saddle and pulled the AK from the horse's neck. It was an AK 4 repeater with six chamber clips, but it was a weapon of hunting, not war. Long barreled and accurate up to three hundred paces. Piotr would be using it to find his meals on the trip.

  Location: Riverboat Krasnaya Sobaka, Docking at Kazan

  Date: May 20, 1637

  It was three in the morning when the boat reached Kazan. Those who had tickets for points south weren't disturbed, at least not intentionally, but the steward knocked on doors and asked passengers to hurry, please, because the Krasnaya Sobaka would be leaving as soon as it had taken on more fuel. Bleary-eyed, I got up and seriously considered taking one of the pills, but didn't.

  Miroslava quickly collected up everything of ours and put it all in two bags. Then we exited the ship to see a sleepy-eyed streltzi waiting on the docks. He yawned, showing browning teeth and asked, "You the Di-tact-toves?"

  "No," I said. "She's the Di-tact-tove. I'm an Onge-a-nor."

  Miroslava elbowed me in the ribs. "I am Consulting Detective Miroslava Holmes. This is my companion, Vasilii Lyapunov, an engineer from the Ufa Dacha."

  The streltzi gave me a nasty look, then nodded. "You're the ones I want. The mayor wants you taken to the Kazan Kremlin. You will be guesting with his family."

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  An hour later we were set up with rooms in the Kazan Kremlin, just down the hall from the mayor's family, and I was in bed, trying to let the pain flow away so I could sleep.

  They let us sleep in, and when we woke a servant was right outside our door. We were told we would be dining with the mayor and certain members of the Kazan city council. Kazan had baths but they weren't in the kremlin. Instead, we had to go about two blocks east to a well set up stone building. The baths were heated. We spent a couple of hours being pampered before we were brought back to lunch with the mayor and certain select city council members.

  It turned out that none of them were the least bit interested in Piotr Veloshov or the horse he was going to be riding in on. No, they wanted to talk politics and airplanes. Mostly politics.

  "What do you think of the new constitution?" the mayor, Abdul Azim, asked.

  I considered the question. I had taken one of the pills in preparation for this meeting, so was feeling a bit better. I was at the convention. In fact, was one of the signers of the document in question. "I think I have to agree with Benjamin Franklin's assessment of the United States Constitution. He said, 'I expect no better, and I am not sure, that it is not the best.' "

  "Who is Benjamin Franklin?" Fyodor Bershov asked.

  "When Prince Gorchakov was writing up his proposal for the United States of Russia constitution, probably the document he used most as his model was the Constitution of the United States of America."

  "United Sovereign States of Russia," Abdul Azim corrected with clear emphasis on the Sovereign.

  "Yes, but that came later. When Vlad introduced it on the first day of the convention, it was for the United States of Russia, nothing about sovereign at all. It wasn't until the very last day that Salqam-Jangir Khan asked that the word 'Sovereign' be added." Then I told the story of that last day's debate. "Anyway, Benjamin Franklin was one of the authors of the American constitution. And my favorite of them, since he was a scientist himself."

  All in all, it was a very entertaining afternoon. The council of Kazan had already voted to approve the constitution, becoming the third state, after Ufa and the Kazak Khanate.
Between the three of them, the USSR was a force to be reckoned with, and the big question on everyone's minds right now was which way General Shein was going to jump. What they mostly wanted to know was how I thought the state and federal laws would interact, because Mayor Azim was Muslim and Fyodor Bershov was Russian Orthodox Christian. And the freedom of religion clauses in the Constitution mattered to these men. Mattered greatly.

  While raised in the Orthodox church, by now I was mostly a deist, like Benjamin Franklin. Miroslava was purely agnostic, saying "I'll know after I die, or I won't. In the meantime, why would anyone care?"

  The long lunch was over, and we were left with promises that the streltzi garrison here in Kazan would assist with the apprehension of Piotr Veloshov.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  After lunch, we went to the headquarters of the Kazan city guard. I won't say police, because Kazan didn't have a police force. It had a city guard who were more concerned with defending the walls of the city than dealing with crime in it. That was mostly handled by neighborhood associations, that answered to no one but themselves.

  We were given into the care of the same unfortunate streltzi who had met us at the docks. His name turned out to be Damir Vasin. "What did you do to piss off your colonel?" I asked once we were out of the kremlin.

  He gave me a suspicious look.

  "It's pretty clear this is some sort of punishment detail."

  Finally, he shrugged and told me. It wasn't a punishment, not exactly. It was more along the lines of the colonel didn't much care what we did as long as it didn't come back on him, and Damir was someone he would willingly throw to the wolves.

  We spent the next few days showing the police sketch around and getting to know the heads of the neighborhood associations of the various neighborhoods, most of whom didn't get along with each other all that well. There were five sections to the city, two Muslim, one Orthodox, and two mixed, with more Orthodox than Muslim, but enough Muslims to cause issues if they were pushed too hard.