Special Assignments

by Boris Akunin

  A nice boy' the accused said, touched, and his words made the Collegiate Counsellor's face twitch, while the dispassionate court guard whispered something harsh and hissing in Japanese.

  Even Angelina shuddered as she looked at the man in the chair.

  'You made use of Tulipov's revelations on Friday when you entered his apartment and committed a double murder,' Erast Petrovich continued after a brief pause. And as for my ... domestic circumstances, they are known to many people, and Zakharov could have told you about them. So today or, in fact, yesterday morning already, I had only one suspect left: you. But I still had a few things to do. Firstly, establish what Sotsky looked like, secondly ascertain whether he really was dead and, finally, find witnesses who could identify you. Stenich described Sotsky to me as he was seven years ago. You have probably changed greatly in seven years, but height, the colour of the eyes and the shape of the nose are not subject to change, and all of those features matched. A telegram from the Department of Military Justice which included the details of Sotsky's time in prison and his supposedly unsuccessful attempt to escape, made it clear that the convict could quite well still be alive. My greatest difficulty was with witnesses. I had high hopes of the former "sadist" Filipp Rozen. When he spoke about Sotsky in my presence, he used a strange phrase that stuck in my memory. "He's dead, but I keep thinking I see him everywhere. Take yesterday ..." He never finished the phrase - someone interrupted him. But on that "yesterday", that is, on the fourth of April, Rozen was with Zakharov and the others at the cemetery. I wondered if he might have seen the watchman Pakhomenko there and spotted a resemblance to his old friend. Unfortunately I wasn't able to locate Rozen. But I did find a prostitute you tried to kill seven weeks ago at Shrovetide. She remembered you very well and she can identify you. At that stage I could have arrested you; there were enough solid clues. That is what I would have done if you yourself had not gone on the offensive. Then I realised that there is only way to stop someone like you

  Sotsky appeared not to notice the threat behind these words. At least, he did not show the slightest sign of alarm - on the contrary, he smiled absent-mindedly at his own thoughts.

  Ah yes, and there was the note that was sent to Burylin,' Fandorin remembered. A rather clumsy move. The note was really intended for me, was it not? The investigators had to be convinced that Zakharov was alive and in hiding. You even tried to imitate certain distinctive features of Zakharov's handwriting, but you only reinforced my conviction that the suspect was not an illiterate watchman but an educated man who knew Zakharov well and was acquainted with Burylin. That is - Sotsky Your telephone call when you took advantage of the technical shortcomings of the telephone to pretend to be Zakharov could not deceive me either. I have had occasion to use that trick myself. Your intention was also quite clear. You always act according to the same monstrous logic: if you find someone interesting, you kill those who are most dear to him. That was what you did in Tulipov's case. That was what you wanted to do with the daughter of the prostitute who had somehow attracted your perverted attention. You mentioned my Japanese servant very specifically - you clearly wanted him to come with me. Why? Why, of course, so that Angelina Samsonovna would be left at home alone. I would rather not think about the fate that you had in mind for her. I might not be able to restrain myself and

  Fandorin broke off and swung round sharply to face Angelina: 'What is your verdict? Is he guilty or not?'

  Pale and trembling, Angelina said in a quiet but firm voice: 'Now let him speak. Let him justify himself if he can.'

  Sotsky said nothing, still smiling absent-mindedly. A minute passed, and then another, and just when it began to seem that the defence would not address the court at all, the lips of the accused moved and the words poured out - clear, measured, dignified words, as if it were not this man in fancy dress with a woman's face who was speaking, but some higher power with a superior knowledge of truth and justice.

  'I do not need to justify anything to anyone. And I have only one judge - our Heavenly Father, who knows my motives and my innermost thoughts. I have always been a special case. Even when I was a child, I knew that I was special, not like everybody else. I was consumed by irresistible curiosity, I wanted to understand everything in the wonderful structure of God's world, to test everything, to try everything. I have always loved people, and they felt that and were drawn to me. I would have made a great healer, because nature gave me the talent to understand the sources of pain and suffering, and understanding is equivalent to salvation - every doctor knows that. The one thing I could not stand was ugliness; I saw it as an offence to God's work - ugliness enraged me and drove me into a fury. One day in a fit of such fury, I was unable to stop myself in time. An ugly old whore, whose very appearance was sacrilege against the name of the Lord, according to the way that I thought then, died as I was beating her with my cane. I did not fall into that fury under the influence of sadistic sensuality, as my judges imagined - no, it was the holy wrath of a soul imbued through and through with Beauty. From society's point of view it was just one more unfortunate accident - gilded youth has always got up to worse things than that. But I was not one of their privileged favourites, and they made an example of me to frighten the others. The only one, out of all of us! Now I understand that God had decided to choose me, I am the only one. But that is hard to understand at the age of twenty-four. I was not ready. For an educated man of sensitive feelings, the horrors of prison - no, a hundred times worse than that, the horrors of disciplinary confinement - are impossible to describe. I was subjected to cruel humiliation, I was the most abused and defenceless person in the entire barracks. I was tortured, subjected to rape, forced to walk around in a woman's dress. But I could feel some great power gradually maturing within me. It had been present within my being from the very beginning, and now it was putting out shoots and reaching up to the sun, like a fresh stalk breaking up through the earth in the spring. And one day I felt that I was ready. Fear left me and it has never returned. I killed my chief tormentor -killed him in front of everyone, grabbed hold of his ears with my hands and beat his half-shaved head against a wall. I was put in shackles and kept in the punishment cell for seven months. But I did not weaken or fall into consumptive despair. Every day I became stronger and more confident; my eyes learned to penetrate the darkness. Everyone was afraid of me - the guards, the officers, the other convicts. Even the rats left my cell. Every day I strained to understand what this important thing was that was knocking at the door of my soul and not being admitted. Everything around me was ugly and repulsive. I loved Beauty more than anything else in the world, and in my world there was absolutely none. So that this would not drive me insane, I remembered lectures from university and drew the structure of the human body on the earth floor with a chip of wood. Everything in it was rational, harmonious and beautiful. That was where Beauty was, that was where God was. In time God began to speak to me, and I realised that He was sending down my mysterious power. I escaped from the jail. My strength and stamina knew no bounds. Even the wolfhounds that were specially trained to hunt men could not catch me, the bullets did not hit me. I swam along the river at first, then across the estuary for many hours, until I was picked up by Turkish smugglers. I wandered around the Balkans and Europe. I was put in prison several times, but the prisons were easy to escape from, much easier than the Kherson fortress. Eventually I found a good job. In Whitechapel in London. In a slaughterhouse. I butchered the carcasses. My knowledge of surgery came in useful then. I was well respected and earned a lot; I saved money. But something was maturing within me again, as I looked at the beautiful displays of the rennet bags, the livers, the washed intestines for making sausages, the kidneys, the lungs. All this offal was put into bright, gay packaging and sent to the butchers' shops. Why does man show himself so little respect? I thought; surely the belly of the stupid cow, intended for the processing of coarse grass, is not more worthy of respect than our internal apparatus, created in the likeness of
God? My enlightenment came a year ago, on the third of April. I was walking home from the evening shift. On a deserted street, where not a single lamp was lit, a repulsive hag approached me and suggested I should take her into one of the gateways. When I politely declined, she moved very close to me, searing my face with her filthy breath, and began shouting coarse obscenities. What a mockery of the image of God, I thought. What were all her internal organs working for day and night? Why was the tireless heart pumping the precious blood? Why were the myriads of cells in her organism being born, dying and being renewed again? What for? And I felt an irresistible urge to transform ugliness into Beauty, to look into the true essence of this creature who was so unattractive on the outside. I had my butcher's knife hanging on my belt. Later I bought a whole set of excellent scalpels, but that first time an ordinary butcher's instrument was enough. The result far surpassed all my expectations. The hideous woman was transformed! In front of my eyes she became beautiful! And I was awestruck at such obvious evidence of a miracle from God.'

  The man in the chair shed a tear. He tried to continue, but just waved his arm and did not say another word.

  'Is that enough for you?' Fandorin asked. 'Do you declare him guilty?'

  'Yes,' Angelina whispered, and crossed herself. 'He is guilty of all these atrocities.'

  'You can see for yourself that he cannot be allowed to live. He brings death and grief. He must be exterminated.'

  Angelina started. 'No, Erast Petrovich. He is insane. He needs treatment. I don't know if it will work, but it has to be tried.'

  'No, he isn't insane,' Erast Petrovich replied with conviction. 'He is cunning and calculating; he possesses a will of iron and he is exceptionally enterprising. What you see before you is not a madman, but a monster. Some people are born with a hump or a harelip. But there are others whose deformity is not visible to the naked eye. That kind of deformity is the most terrible kind. He is only a man in appearance, but in reality he lacks the most important, the most distinctive feature of a human being. He lacks that invisible, vital string that dwells in the human soul, sounding to tell a man if he has acted well or badly. It is still present even in the most inveterate villain. Its note may be weak, perhaps almost inaudible, but it still sounds. In the depths of his soul a man always knows the worth of his actions, if he has listened to that string even once in his life. You know what Sotsky has done, you heard what he said, you can see what he is like. He does not have the slightest idea that this string exists; his deeds are prompted by a completely different voice. In olden times they would have called him a servant of the devil. I put it more simply: he is not human. He does not repent of anything. And he cannot be stopped by ordinary means. He will not go to the gallows, and the walls of an insane asylum will not hold him. It will start all over again.'

  'Erast Petrovich, you said that the English will demand his extradition,' Angelina exclaimed pitifully, as if she were clutching at her final straw. 'Let them kill him, only not you!'

  Fandorin shook his head. 'The handover is a long process. He'll escape - from prison, from a convoy, from a train, from a ship. I cannot take that risk.'

  'You have no trust in God,' she said sadly, hanging her head. 'God knows how and when to put an end to evil deeds.'

  'I don't know about God. And I cannot be an impartial observer. In my view, that is the worst sin of all. No more, Angelina, I've decided.'

  Erast Petrovich spoke to Masa in Japanese: 'Take him out into the yard.'

  'Master, you have never killed an unarmed man before,' his servant replied agitatedly in the same language. 'You will suffer. And the mistress will be angry. I will do it myself.'

  'That will not change anything. And the fact that he is unarmed makes no difference. To hold a duel would be mere showmanship. I should kill him just as easily even if he were armed. Let us do without any cheap theatrics.'

  When Masa and Fandorin took the condemned man by the elbows to lead him out into the yard, Angelina cried out: 'Erast, for my sake, for our sake!'

  The Decorator glanced back with a smile: 'My lady, you are a picture of beauty, but I assure you that on the table, surrounded by china plates, you would be even more beautiful.'

  Angelina squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears, but she still heard the sound of the shot in the yard - dry and short, almost indistinguishable against the roaring of the firecrackers and the rockets flying into the starry sky.

  Erast Petrovich came back alone. He stood in the doorway and wiped the sweat from his brow. His teeth chattered as he said: 'Do you know what he whispered? "Oh Lord, what happiness".'

  They stayed like that for a long time: Angelina sitting with her eyes closed, the tears flowing out from under her eyelids; Fandorin wanting to go to her, but afraid.

  Finally she stood up. She walked up to him, put her arms round him and kissed him passionately several times - on the forehead, on the eyes, on the lips.

  'I'm going away, Erast Petrovich; remember me kindly'

  Angelina ...' The Court Counsellor's face, already pale, turned ashen grey 'Surely not because of that vampire, that monster

  Tm a hindrance to you; I divert you from your own path,' she interrupted, not listening to him. 'The sisters have been asking me to join them for a long time now, at the Boris and Gleb Convent. It is what I should have done from the very beginning, when my father passed away. And I have grown weak with you. I wanted a holiday. But that is what holidays are like: they don't last for long. I shall watch over you from a distance. And pray to God for you. Follow the promptings of your own soul, and if something goes wrong, don't be afraid: I will make amends through prayer.'

  'You can't go into a c-convent,' Fandorin said rapidly, almost incoherently. 'You're not like them; you're so vital and passionate. You won't be able stand it. And without you, I won't be able to go on.'

  'You will; you're strong. It's hard for you with me. It will be easier without me... And as for me being vital and passionate the sisters are just the same. God has no need of cold people. Forgive me, goodbye. I have known for a long time we should not be together.'

  Erast Petrovich stood in silent confusion, sensing that there were no arguments that could make her alter her decision. And Angelina was silent too, gently stroking his cheek and his grey temple.

  Out of the night, from the dark streets, so out of tune with this farewell, there came the incessant pealing of the Easter bells.

  'It's all right, Erast Petrovich,' said Angelina. 'It's all right. Do you hear? Christ is risen.'

  Table of Contents

  www.orionbooks.co.uk