The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols

by Nicholas Meyer

  In the event, the barriers proved no impediment. The customs officials and guardians of three countries appeared to be bored old men, and our arrival on the train occasioned no more than indifferent yawns, illegible signatures, and perfunctory stamps.

  But it wasn’t the boredom or the lack of stimulation that had dampened our spirits. Being robbed is a peculiarly depressing experience. It wasn’t merely the destruction and loss of our possessions (though Mrs. Walling bemoaned the shredding of a pink chemise given her by her husband); it was the sense of personal violation that left one in a state of impotent fury.

  And though he did not allude to it, I knew that Holmes suffered the loss of his beloved Stradivarius keenly. My singular friend was an intensely civilized man. Nothing more surely represented this aspect of his nature than his affection for and reliance upon music. The wanton destruction of his violin, cherished as much for its pleasing contours as its historic value, to say nothing of the agreeable sounds it produced, had shaken him to the core. He could not, I suspect, wrap his head around the idea that human beings were capable of such pointless destruction.

  Added to which, the fact the thieves had contemptuously expressed no interest in Mrs. Walling’s jewelry made clear beyond all doubt that the robbery was as much a warning as a theft. “This is what we can do if we choose,” the Okhrana seemed to be saying.

  I wondered if Mrs. Walling was now regretting her decision to accompany us.

  “What was the point?” she demanded, as if reading my thoughts. “Had they any idea what they were looking for or why?”

  “They were seeking to protect their secret, the secret of the Protocols,” Holmes explained. “They want to know what we know and to prevent our telling what we know.”

  “We don’t know everything.”

  “We know enough to worry them. We know the Protocols are a hoax. We don’t yet know who perpetrated the hoax. And they are intent on preventing us from finding out and revealing it.”

  “Why stop at robbery, then? We’re in Russia. Why not simply kill us? People disappear in Russia all the time. Just look what happened in Kishinev.”

  Holmes might have dismayed her by informing her it had recently happened in London as well, but smiled instead. “It’s a very pretty problem they’re faced with. They’re confronted with too many imponderables. What good would disposing of us do if we’ve already passed on our knowledge? They’ve no way of knowing how far we’ve let the cat out of the bag. Worse, if the celebrated Sherlock Holmes and his almost equally admired (forgive me, Doctor!) Boswell were to … disappear while inside Russia!—His Majesty’s Government would raise the very devil with our Romanov ally. And at present, Nicholas Romanov can’t afford to lose an ally.”

  “But Holmes, you forget: Mycroft said if anything untoward were to happen, London would deny all knowledge of us.”

  “Ah, but these creatures don’t know that. They can only guess. And worry. Can they circulate this lie in every possible language before we expose its author?” The detective shook his head, like one amused by the symmetry of the equation. “No, they can’t harm us without harming themselves. For the present they can only hope to frighten or intimidate us.”

  With this cheerful thought, he closed his eyes.

  Odessa, had it not been crawling with tsarist troops that gave it every appearance of an armed camp, was inarguably the most beautiful city I had ever seen. The architecture of this warm-water port was emphatically European, not to say Mediterranean, in character, with lovely seaside villas and public buildings that would not have been out of place in Paris. Only the diversity of its population, which easily eclipsed that of Varna, informed visitors they were not in Nice. In addition to the many residents of the Balkans and Ukraine, in Odessa were to be found innumerable Germans, French, Italians, and Scandinavians. At one point I am sure I also heard a smattering of Spanish.

  Beggars were nowhere in evidence. Either the presence of armed men or the city’s prosperity discouraged them.

  It was clear that Anna Strunsky Walling knew Odessa well, but her previous affection for the place was confounded by the vastly altered circumstances in which we discovered it. Normally a municipality that prided itself on welcoming travelers and tourists, there were now clusters of soldiers at every street corner and crossing. People were arbitrarily stopped and their papers inspected. Before leaving the station, we were obliged to stand in winding queues, waiting to be interrogated by suspicious and exhausted civil servants, all too aware of uniformed troops peering over their shoulders as they filled out interminable paperwork. The abortive revolution that had begun in Odessa was fresh in the minds of citizens and constabulary alike, and the government was taking no chances.

  Finally confronted by a diminutive bureaucrat in a dark green coat whose hem descended to his ankles, we were quizzed extensively as to our plans, our place of residence within the city, and our intention to visit St. Basil’s on our way to Kishinev.

  “Why do you go to Kishinev?” the harried commissionaire demanded in what I could easily detect as a peevish tone.

  “It’s closer to St. Basil’s,” Holmes explained through Mrs. Walling. “And less expensive for scholars.”

  The man scowled at each of us lingeringly through tiny hexagonal spectacles, sniffed and grunted, then finally scribbled our information in one of countless ledgers no one would ever inspect and affixed stamps to our documents with what I judged to be perfunctory motions. Whatever he’d been told to look for, he was satisfied it wasn’t us.

  The Grand Hotel near the Square de Richelieu was all that could be advertised and more. Our rooms were, as the Baedeker put it, “sumptuously appointed.” We might as well have been at the newly opened Ritz in Paris. Or still aboard the Orient Express.

  “All we lack is proper clothes,” Mrs. Walling observed. Having been robbed, with many items of apparel torn to shreds—particularly hers—this was indeed the case.

  Making sure that our important papers (and my notebook) were again carried on our persons, we set forth to make some purchases, during the course of which Mrs. Walling delivered an impromptu tour.

  The city’s magnificent physical high point was the Square de Richelieu, from which, leading to the waterfront below, descended the longest series of steps I had ever seen. From below it must have appeared a veritable stairway to heaven.

  Mrs. Walling gestured to the bay beyond. “That is where the battleship Potemkin was anchored when the mutiny occurred,” she informed us, lowering her voice. “All the small craft from shore set out to feed the starving sailors.”

  “And here the troops marched down the steps, shooting?” Holmes inquired.

  “Not here,” she corrected him.

  “But the newspapers all said—” I began, but she cut me off.

  “The newspapers got it wrong.” She had lived most of her life in the United States and sometimes spoke bluntly like an American. “The shooting was over there.” She gestured. With a shudder I was unable to suppress, I beheld the nearby yellow stone parapet hideously besmirched by brown stains.

  Mrs. Walling followed my look. “Many were killed. Shot. Slashed with sabers. Men, women, children, babies. The streets ran red. They’ve tried to expunge the blood,” she explained, “but the stone absorbs the colour. It will not allow them to erase their crime.”*

  We moved on, eager to quit the site of that silent witness, but I found it hard to escape the queer impression we were being followed wherever we went by a trail of blood.

  Dawdling later through a colourful souk near a park called the City Garden, we soon acquired a motley assortment of clothing. Mrs. Walling, seemingly at home in such a place, bargained furiously and was soon exotically clad in native sartorial splendor. Odessa was widely celebrated for its beautiful women, and one would have had to be blind not to count Mrs. Edward English Walling now among their number.

  “There are many Jews,” Holmes observed. The Jews we saw were typically distinguished by round hats, some
trimmed with enormous fur brims, and long strands of curled hair which fell before their ears. Unlike the rest of Odessa’s colourful population, Jews proclaimed their uniqueness by wearing black gabardine, the only variation being their curious white aprons with dangling strings.

  “A third of the city’s population,” Mrs. Walling assured him, following his look. “They are slaughtered periodically.”

  “The Protocols?”

  She gave a small shrug. “There are many pretexts.”

  “Our friends have arrived,” I pointed out.

  Secure now on Russian soil, and making no attempt to disguise their interest, instead of staring pointlessly out to sea, the two gentlemen in straw boaters and seersucker jackets from Varna had become three. All pretense of furtiveness cast aside, they regarded us with blank expressions.

  “First my violin and now this,” declared Sherlock Holmes. “Watson, my dear fellow, would you be so kind as to let me have several sheets of blank paper from your journal, and have you a pencil I might borrow?”

  Knowing better than to question the bright gleam in his eye, I gave him the materials for which he asked. Motioning us to join him at a nearby café near the selfsame interminable steps, Holmes busied himself for several minutes while Anna Walling and I exchanged self-conscious pleasantries, avoiding fruitless speculation regarding our observers or the detective’s activities. While Holmes appeared to be sketching something, I asked her where she had lived in San Francisco. “One sixteen Cherry Street,” she answered with a smile. I confessed I was unfamiliar with Cherry Street.

  Holmes was now writing on a separate sheet of paper. I was on the point of giving Mrs. Walling my own San Francisco address and youthful memories of the place when he finished whatever had occupied him. He stood and handed Mrs. Walling two slips of paper, one of them blank, along with my pencil.

  “Would you kindly render this in Russian and then, without being seen to do so, drop it where the authorities will be sure to find it?”

  Mrs. Walling glanced at the paper. Her violet eyes widened, but when she looked up, Holmes had already patted me on the shoulder.

  “I’ll return directly, Watson,” said he, and, stuffing the remainder of the papers into his pocket, he ambled over in the direction of our unwelcome watchers while Mrs. Walling left in the direction of a nearby police kiosk.

  I saw the detective approach the three men, with amiable aspect and expansive gestures. At first they appeared worried he intended a confrontation of some sort, but their fears were quickly allayed and they were suitably mystified by the detective’s efforts to communicate. Holmes laughed heartily, pointed, shrugged as if he had not a care in the world. His pantomime implied his hope they might provide a stranger with directions, which, from their reciprocal gestures and expressions, they were endeavoring to supply.

  Grateful, he practically hugged one of the startled men, eagerly pumped hands with the other two, and returned to our table, barely concealing his hilarity.

  “I think I’ll have some Russian tea,” he announced. “I believe the word is tchai. Puzhalsta means please, and spasiba thank you. Incidentally, in Russian they have no word for ‘foot.’ Which may explain a great deal. Mrs. Walling has been educating me,” he explained, still in the grip of his own amusement.

  I refrained from commenting on his education or its source, contenting myself instead with wondering what was going on.

  “Do you enjoy theatre?” he responded to my surprise, having successfully given his order to our waiter.

  “Are we discussing The Scarlet Pimpernel?” I asked, utterly bewildered by now.

  “By no means. One might call this ‘living theatre.’ We have front row stalls,” he added with a smirk.

  “Oh? And when does the curtain go up?”

  “Any minute now, Watson. Any minute.”

  Our trio of watchers, satisfied we were going nowhere, had seated themselves under an umbrella in an adjacent establishment and were in the act of ordering drinks of their own.

  At which point the very devil broke loose. The air was rent with the shrieks of police whistles and a horde of soldiers with fixed bayonets descended on the square, trailed by a squad of Cossacks on horseback who clattered past them, knocking over tables and diners as they surrounded the three astonished men. Panicked Odessans and visitors created chaos as they fled in every direction. Several pistol shots were fired into the air, adding to the confusion.

  For several hair-raising minutes I had a glimpse of what Odessa must have looked like on the fatal day not a fortnight before when these same troops had systematically mowed down the citizens of Odessa on more or less the same spot.

  Holmes calmly sipped his tea as a furious altercation erupted between the soldiery and our nemeses, loudly protesting their innocence in language that required no translation.

  It was then that one of the soldiers, to the consternation of its owner, plunged a hand into the seersucker pocket of the man Holmes had hugged, triumphantly extracting several papers and waving them aloft. I recognized the pages as having been torn from my book. What had Holmes drawn on them?

  Mrs. Walling returned in time to see the play’s finale, the men dragged off, raging against the incompetence of the constabulary, one of whom responded with the cry, “Espion!”

  “Bravo, Sherlock,” said she admiringly.

  “Well done, Mrs. Walling,” he returned equably, affecting not to be as pleased with himself as I very well knew he was.

  “What did they find?” I demanded.

  “Incriminating drawings of the city’s harbor defenses and fortifications, including the Vorontsov Lighthouse, accompanied by various mysterious symbols, letters, and numerals. A few strategically placed arrows, indicating I’ve no idea what, but not the sort of thing it would do to carry about in one’s pocket at this time and place. Personally I would regard the entire production as rather less than trustworthy, but the city is jumpy enough just now that I suspect my sketches will serve our purpose.”

  I, too, was impressed but felt bound to point out it was unlikely the men would be held for very long.

  “I’m not sure I’m with you there, Watson,” said he. “It will take them some time before they persuade themselves my indecipherable code is in fact gibberish, and I don’t see them releasing these villains before that occurs. Would you care for some tea, Mrs. Walling?”

  9.

  TARGET PRACTICE

  21 January. The town of Kishinev, when we finally reached it by horse-drawn wagon—there being no other access from St. Basil’s, or indeed anywhere else—was remarkable only for its ordinariness. Mrs. Walling likened the sleepy Bessarabian backwater to the San Fernando Valley in Southern California, which she had known from the time she dwelt in that state. Flat fields of fruit trees and other crops stretched out from the city centre, whose few public buildings contrasted with primitive adjacent streets and one-story houses, some more closely resembling hovels. On those dusty, dried-mud side streets one could not help observing vacant lots where homes once stood, their owners fled or dead. The charred ruins were gone, but square patches of ground remained ominously black.

  Yet I must count the town, however drab and uninviting, a welcome distraction from the tedium I experienced after three days within the Monastery of St. Basil, situated roughly two-thirds of the way from Odessa on the nonexistent road. Instead of miles, distances here were reckoned in versts, which, if I understood correctly, roughly correspond to kilometers. For three days I was once more obliged to sit on unforgiving benches, more properly designated as pews, this time beneath domed ceilings, emblazoned by enormous shimmering gold icons and vibrant frescoes, many displaying the Greek cross peculiar to the faith (though in some ways reminiscent of the Celtic), and feign total absorption as I listened to the black-clad choir, their tall headpieces resembling toques in mourning, intoning the chants we had purportedly come to study. In the queerest contrast to the singing, the monks spent the rest of their time in resolute and total
silence. They held their missals or breviaries before them and mutely recited whatever version of the rosary their liturgy prescribed, but never spoke to one another under any circumstances. Their most common orison, as I later learned, was the ceaseless repetition of the phrase Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me. Otherwise, you might accompany one of them from matins to vespers and never be acknowledged. It was worse than the Diogenes, which I had not thought possible. Conferring with Mrs. Walling, who was not allowed within the sacred precincts but had to wait outside the chapel, Holmes took what I hoped were convincing notes about the notes.

  The main thoroughfare of Kishinev was an impressive boulevard called Alexandrova Street, shaded by splendid trees, but one could not escape the impression that it was a road that led nowhere.

  “Pushkin lived here,” Mrs. Walling informed us. “And despised the place.”

  “The poet?” I vaguely knew the name. “Why then did he choose to do so?”

  “He was exiled here.”

  “Exiled,” I echoed stupidly. Yes, in this strange place people could be exiled.

  “The town is more prosperous nowadays than in Pushkin’s time. It is a big agricultural centre. The land hereabouts is very fertile.”

  “With no roads, how do they export their goods?” Holmes wondered.