by Boris Akunin
And now the other unanswered question: Did Dolinin find his way into the “noble” cell number eleven of the provincial prison by chance? What if he deliberately used his tours of inspection across the empire for spotting people who could be useful for his as yet unclear goals? It was a supposition, no more than a supposition, but it was certainly highly plausible.
A dam suddenly seemed to burst in Matvei Bentsionovich’s brain: thoughts, hypotheses, and flashes of insight suddenly came pouring in so fast that the public prosecutor felt as if he were choking in a mighty flood.
But up ahead he could see another barrier, mightier than the first, and the water there was seething and foaming furiously.
Just who was Full State Counselor Dolinin?
Berdichevsky began recalling everything he had heard about this man from Pelagia and other sources.
Dolinin had worked for many years as an investigator of criminal cases. There was a family drama—his wife had left him. Pelagia had told this story with compassion—she evidently knew some of the details, but she had not divulged them to Matvei Bentsionovich. She had only told him that the abandoned husband was on the brink of despair, but he met some wise, kind man who turned him to God and liberated him from his thoughts of self-destruction. And that was precisely when the breakthrough in Dolinin’s career came—he took wing and forgot his sorrows, immersing himself in important state business.
Well now. All of this raised questions.
First: Who was this wise man who saved the investigator’s tormented soul?
Second: How remarkable was it that the “saved soul” began recruiting professional killers?
Third: Was it a coincidence that Dolinin’s “enlightenment” and his professional elevation occurred at the same time?
Finally, the fourth and most important point: What determined Dolinin’s actions? Or who? And what was the purpose of these actions?
Berdichevsky’s head was spinning. But one thing was clear—there was nothing more to be done in Zhitomir. As Prince Hamlet said, there was a more powerful magnet.
An American spy
WHEN MATVEI BENTSIONOVICH got off the train at the Tsarkoe Selo station, the very first place he went was the Central Post Office of St. Petersburg, to see if there was any news from His Eminence. The public prosecutor had sent the bishop a short report from Zhitomir without, however, going into the details—they were not for the telegraph service. For instance, he had decided not to explain about Dolinin. All he had said was that in “the case known to Your Eminence,” the trail led to the capital of the empire.
There were no letters from Zavolzhsk, but the state counselor did receive a money order for five hundred rubles, with a note in the accompanying form: “May the Lord preserve you.”
Ah, His Wonderful Eminence! Nothing superfluous, only what Berdichevsky needed most of all just at the moment: money and a blessing.
From a university friend who now worked in the Ministry of the Interior, the public prosecutor learned that Sergei Sergeevich Dolinin was returning that evening from his tour of inspection in the Nizhni Novgorod province and was expected in the office the following day. This was most opportune. Now we shall see whom he visits immediately after his arrival, thought Matvei Bentsionovich. He went to the Nikolaevsky station and learned from the timetable that the train arrived at half past eleven in the evening. And so he found himself free for the whole day.
Berdichevsky had spent several years in St. Petersburg as a student and he knew this beautiful, cold city well. From the point of view of a provincial, the city was spoiled by its abundance of official state buildings—their yellow and white coloring deadened and drowned out the city’s true colors of gray and blue. If you took away all the ministries and public offices, Matvei Bentsionovich pondered, Peter would be a mellower and more agreeable place, much cozier for the people who lived here. In any case, what sort of place was this for a capital city—right on the very edge of a gigantic empire? It was this abscess that skewed Russia’s face out of shape. The seat of power ought be moved to the east—and not to Moscow, which would always survive in any case, but to somewhere like Ufa or Ekaterinburg. Then the ship of state might finally straighten up and stop taking on water over the side.
However, we cannot say that Matvei Bentsionovich devoted the whole of his walk to thoughts on such a monumental scale. He spent the middle part of the day in the huge indoor market of the Gostiny Dvor, choosing presents for his wife and children. This took him several hours, because it was a fussy job that had to be got right. God forbid he should forget that Anechka could not stand green, that Vaniusha was only interested in toy locomotives, that woolen fabrics made Magenka sneeze, and so on and so forth.
Having dealt with this pleasant but wearying task, the public prosecutor gave himself a little holiday: he walked around the shops imagining what present he would buy for Pelagia if she were not a nun and if their relationship were such as to allow him to give her presents. Impossible dreams led the state counselor into the perfumery row, and from there they made him turn into the haberdashery row, and he only came to his senses in the lacy dessous section. He blushed bright red up to the roots of his hair and walked quickly out into the street to cool off in the damp Baltic breeze.
Day was giving way to evening. It was time to prepare for Dolinin’s arrival. According to the address book, the member of the ministerial council resided at Sholtz’s House on Zagorodny Prospect. Matvei Bentsionovich took a look at the house—an ordinary four-story apartment building; General Dolinin’s apartment was on the second floor—and located the right windows. He then took a room in the Helsingfors lodging house, which was conveniently located almost directly opposite.
And now darkness had stealthily fallen. It would soon be time to go to the Nikolaevsky station.
BERDICHEVSKY HAD AN exceptional stroke of luck with his cabby. Number 48-36 proved to be a young lad, very quick on the uptake. When he found out what was required, his eyes began blazing so brightly that he even forgot to bargain over the price.
The Moscow train arrived on time. The public prosecutor had met Dolinin and even spoken with him in Zavolzhsk, so he avoided making himself conspicuous, waiting behind a newspaper kiosk until Sergei Sergeevich walked by and then falling in behind.
Nobody met the full state counselor—unfortunately. Berdichevsky had been imagining a mysterious carriage and a hand that would open the door for the inspector as he approached. Not just an ordinary hand, but one with a special ring, and there had to be a uniform sleeve with gilt embroidery.
But there was none of this, no hand and no carriage. Dolinin modestly got into a cab, set his plain traveling bag down beside him, and drove off.
There was no need to explain everything twice to number 48-36—he had started moving even before Berdichevsky ran up to him. The public prosecutor jumped onboard and whispered: “Don’t crowd him, don’t crowd him.”
The cabby maintained an ideal distance, about a hundred paces, allowing two or three carriages to get in front of him, but no more, so that they would not block his view.
Dolinin’s cab did not go to Nevsky Prospect, but turned off onto Ligovskaya Street. He seems to be going home, Matvei Bentsionovich thought, disappointed. That proved to be right—Dolinin turned onto Zvenigorodskaya Street, and then onto Zagorodny Prospect.
They had to wait for some time at Sholtz’s House. The lights went on in the windows of Dolinin’s apartment, and then went out again in all but one. Was he preparing for bed? Writing a report? Or getting changed to go somewhere else in the middle of the night? The public prosecutor was not sure what to do. Must he hang about here until morning? Well, at least for as long as the light was burning. What if Dolinin was expecting a late visitor?
But the light in the final window burned for forty-two minutes and then went out. He must have gone to bed after all.
“Who is he, a spy?” the cabby asked in a low voice.
Berdichevsky nodded absentmindedly, wondering whe
ther he ought to settle down for the night in the cab.
“’Merican?” number 48-36 inquired.
“Why American?” the public prosecutor asked in surprise.
The lad just sniffed. The devil only knew what was going on in his head and why he chose to grant the supposed enemy of society such an exotic citizenship. “No, Austro-Hungarian,” said Matvei Bentsionovich, naming a more plausible country.
The cabby nodded. “Your Honor, do you want me to keep watch on the windows here? At least till morning? I’m used to it, I won’t fall asleep. How about it? I’ve got oats in the nosebag. And I won’t charge much. Three rubles, that’s all. Two and a half, eh?”
He was clearly desperately keen to keep watch on the Austrian spy. But more important, it was actually quite a good idea. And the price was reasonable.
“All right. I’ll be over there in that lodging house. You see that window? On the corner, the ground floor. If he goes anywhere, or anyone comes to him, even if the light just goes on, you let me know immediately.” Then Berdichevsky started thinking. “The only thing is, how?”
“I’ll whistle,” suggested 48-36. “I can do a special whistle, like a real bandit.”
He folded his fingers together and gave a deafening whistle. Horses squatted down on their hindquarters, the doorman stuck his head out of the Helsingfors, and police constables’ whistles answered in the distance from two directions.
“No, don’t whistle,” said the public prosecutor, huddling down on his seat and looking up anxiously at Dolinin’s windows in case the curtain trembled. “Better run across and throw a few stones.”
He went to bed without taking off his clothes or shoes. He took a swig of the Moselle he had bought in the Gostiny Dvor—straight from the bottle, but not too much. The last thing he needed at his age was to turn into a drunk.
He lay there with his hands behind his head, taking a sip from the bottle every now and then. Sometimes he thought about Masha, sometimes about Pelagia. In some incomprehensible fashion these two women, so entirely unlike each other, had fused into a single being, for whom Matvei Bentsionovich felt such a tender affection that it brought tears to his eyes.
• • •
BERDICHEVSKY WAS WOKEN by a crystalline, ethereal sound, and at first he didn’t realize what it was. It was not until the second stone struck the window—with a force that cracked the glass—that the public prosecutor scrambled hastily to his feet and started dashing around the room, still half asleep.
The room was bright. Morning.
Matvei Bentsionovich jerked up the window frame and stuck his head out.
The cab was waiting at the curb.
“Quick, mister, quick,” said number 48-36, waving his hand. “Lep it, or he’ll get away.”
And so the state counselor did—he grabbed his frock coat and hat and “lepped it” straight over the windowsill. He bruised his leg in the process, but that immediately woke him up.
“Where?” he gasped.
“He’s turned the corner!” The cabby lashed his horse. “That’s all right, we’ll catch him in a flash!”
Berdichevsky tugged his watch out of his pocket. Half past seven. Sergei Sergeevich had set out for work rather early.
The public prosecutor’s somnolence had disappeared as if by magic, and he could feel the excitement of the chase bubbling up in his chest.
The closed carriage driving ahead of them was black, of the kind that usually transport officials with a general’s rank to their offices. It turned onto Zabalkansky Prospect and drove along the embankment for a while, but went past the turn onto Izmailovsky Prospect.
Aha, he’s not going to work! The ministry’s offices are on Morskaya Street!
“What happened during the night?” Berdichevsky asked abruptly.
“Nothing, Your Honor. I didn’t sleep a single minute, don’t you worry about that.”
“Here.” The public prosecutor handed him, not two and a half rubles, or even three, but four, for his diligence. But the cabby didn’t even look at how much he was being given—he just put the money in his pocket. You ought to join the detective department, brother, Matvei Bentsionovich thought. You’d make an excellent agent.
The carriage drove along the Fontanka embankment, across the bridge onto Ekaterinhof Prospect, and stopped soon afterward in front of a building with large windows.
“What’s that?”
“A grammar school, Your Honor.”
But Matvei Bentsionovich had already recognized it himself. Yes, a grammar school. Boys’ school number 5, wasn’t it? What could Dolinin want here?
Sergei Sergeevich did not get out of his carriage, and he even drew the curtains together.
Curious.
Nothing of any note took place in front of the grammar school. The tall door opened every now and then to admit pupils and teachers. The attendant doffed his cap and bowed deeply in greeting to some pompous gentleman—possibly the headmaster or an inspector.
Just once Berdichevsky thought he saw the curtain twitch slightly but thirty seconds later it was drawn closed again, and a second after that the carriage set off.
What was all that about? Why did Dolinin come to this place at such an early hour? Not to look at the children, surely?
Ah, yes, precisely to look at the children, Matvei Bentsionovich suddenly realized. Or rather, at one of them. Pelagia said that when they separated, Sergei Sergeevichs wife took their son.
Absolutely nothing mysterious at all. A father who has been away and has missed his child. He didn’t show himself to his son—either he had promised not to, or he was too proud, or perhaps he did not want to torment the boy, who had grown accustomed to a new father.
It seemed like nothing out of the ordinary, a perfectly normal human thing to do, but Berdichevsky was perplexed. Somehow one did not expect perfectly normal human actions from a fiend who hired murderers and spilled innocent blood.
Or was Dolinin not really a fiend?
The public prosecutor was no longer a boy of eighteen, after all, and his life and work should surely have taught him that not all fiends are as black as Count Charnokutsky but even so, Matvei Bentsionovich felt confused—he had never imagined that there might be anything human about the monster who planned to have Pelagia killed.
“Well, I suppose even a viper loves its baby vipers,” the state counselor muttered to himself, driving away his inappropriate and incongruous doubts.
THE CITY HAD completely woken up now. The street filled up with carriages and an industrious morning crowd strode briskly along the sidewalks. The distance from the object of pursuit had to be reduced, otherwise they might lose him.
And just before the Marynsky Palace they did lose him. The policeman on duty held up one hand to halt the traffic and the black carriage went rolling on in the direction of the equestrian statue of Nicholas the First, leaving Berdichevsky stuck on the bridge. He very nearly went running after it on foot, but that would have attracted attention: a respectable middle-aged gentleman racing along the embankment, holding his hat down on his head.
The cabby stood up on his box, then climbed right up onto the seat.
“Well, did he turn onto Morskaya Street?”
“No, he went straight on, toward St. Isaacs!”
Not going to work in the ministry this time, either!
Eventually the traffic started moving again. Number 48-36 lashed the horse, deftly overtook a fiacre, cut right in front of a four-horse omnibus, and a minute later was already rumbling across Senate Square. Suddenly he pulled hard on the reins and shouted “Whoa!”
“What are you doing?”
The lad jerked his head to one side. There was the familiar black carriage, driving toward them. The curtains at the window were open. There was no one inside.
He had got out. But where?
On the right was the square with the statue of Peter the Great. Straight ahead was the Neva. There wouldn’t have been enough time for the carriage to set down its
passenger on the Angliiskoe embankment and drive back.
So Dolinin must have gone into one of the massive public buildings located on the left, between the boulevard and the embankment: either the Ruling Senate or the Holy Synod. Most likely the Senate, the country’s supreme court of law. What business would an investigator have in the Synod?
“Where to now, Your Honor?” the cabby asked.
“Wait over there,” said Berdichevsky, pointing to the railings of the square’s small park.
Whom had Dolinin gone to see in the Senate when he was only just back from his official tour of inspection? A man he visited before his own superiors must surely be a key figure in all this sinister conspiracy.
What he ought to do was this: go up to the duty clerk keeping the record of visitors and say, “Full State Counselor Dolinin of the Ministry of the Interior is due to arrive here any moment. He has forgotten some important documents—I’ll wait here to give them to him.” The clerk would say: “His Excellency has already arrived, he is with so-and-so.” And if he didn’t say who Dolinin had gone to see, Berdichevsky could ask. It was impudent, of course, but it would clear everything up straightaway.
Or would it be better to wait and continue the surveillance?
The public prosecutor was roused from his torment of indecision by the sound of someone delicately clearing his throat. Matvei Bentsionovich started and looked around. Standing beside him was a doorman wearing a three-pointed hat, a uniform with braid trimming, and white stockings. Not just a doorman—a veritable field marshal. While Berdichevsky was examining the Senate building, he had completely failed to notice this stuffed dummy approaching.
“Your Honor, you are kindly requested to step this way,” the field-marshal-doorman said respectfully, but at the same time firmly, speaking in the way that only servants who are employed at the highest peaks of power can do.