EF06 - The State Counsellor (5 page)

Upstairs the ambience was quite different: a broad, brightly lit corridor with a carpet runner on the floor, the brisk tapping of typewriters from behind leather-upholstered doors, tasteful prints with views of old Moscow hanging on the walls.

The gendarme lieutenant, evidently in hostile territory for the first time, gazed around with undisguised curiosity.

'You sit here for a while,' said Erast Petrovich, pointing to a row of chairs, and walked into the commander's office.

'Glad to see you looking so well!' the Lieutenant Colonel declared, jumping up from behind the desk and hastening to shake his visitor's hand with exaggerated vivacity, although they had parted only some two hours previously and the State Counsellor had not given the slightest reason for any apprehension concerning his state of health.

Fandorin interpreted Burlyaev's nervousness as an indication of the Lieutenant Colonel's embarrassment over the recent arrest. However, all the appropriate apologies had been made in exaggeratedly verbose style at the railway station, and so the State Counsellor did not return to the annoying incident, regarding the matter as already closed, but went straight to the main point.

'Pyotr Ivanovich, yesterday you reported to me on the measures proposed for ensuring s-security during Adjutant General Khrapov's visit. I approved your proposals. As far as I recall, you allocated twelve agents to cover the General's arrival at the station, another four dressed as porters to accompany him in the street, and two brigades of seven men to patrol the environs of the mansion on the Sparrow Hills.'

'Precisely so,' Burlyaev confirmed cautiously, anticipating a trick.

'Were your agents informed of the name of the individual who w-was arriving?'

'Only the leaders of each brigade - four men in total, all highly reliable.'

'I see.' The State Counsellor crossed one leg over the other, set his top hat and gloves down on a nearby chair and enquired casually, 'I hope you did not forget to inform these four men that overall command of the security operation had been entrusted to me?'

The Lieutenant Colonel shrugged and spread his hands. 'Why no, I didn't do that, Erast Petrovich. I didn't think it necessary. Should I have done? My apologies.'

'Well then, apart from you no one in the entire department knew that I had been charged with receiving the General?' asked Fandorin, suddenly leaning forward.

'Only my closest aides knew that - Collegiate Assessor Mylnikov and my senior operations officer, Zubtsov - no one else. In our organisation it's not customary to gossip. Mylnikov, as you know, is in charge of the plain-clothes section, it could not have been kept from him. And Sergei Vitalievich Zubtsov is the most competent man I have; he was the one who invented the COM scenario. It's his professional pride and joy, you might say'

'I beg your pardon, what scenario was that?' Erast Petrovich asked in surprise.

'COM - Category One Meeting. That's our professional terminology. We conduct secret surveillance according to categories, depending on the number of agents involved. "Category Two Shadowing", "Category Three Arrest", and so forth. "Category One Meeting" is when we need to ensure the safety of an individual of the first rank. For instance, two weeks ago the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, arrived in Moscow. Thirty agents were involved then too: twelve at the station, four in droshkies and two teams of seven around the residence. But the "Supreme Category" is only used for His Imperial Majesty. All sixty agents work on that, and the Flying Squad comes down from St Petersburg as well. That's not counting the court security guards, the gendarmes and so forth.'

'I know Mylnikov,' Fandorin said in a thoughtful voice. 'Evstratii Pavlovich, I believe his name is? I've seen him in action; he's very adroit. Didn't he serve his way up from the ranks?'

'Yes, he rose from being a simple constable. Not well educated, but sharp and tenacious, very quick on the uptake. The agents all idolise him, and he looks out for them too. Worth his weight in gold; I'm delighted with him.'

'Gold?' Fandorin queried doubtfully. 'I've heard it s-said that Mylnikov is light-fingered. He lives beyond his means and supposedly there was even an internal investigation into the expenditure of official funds?'

Burlyaev lowered his voice confidentially.

'Erast Petrovich, Mylnikov has total control of substantial funds to provide financial incentives for the agents. How he disposes of that money is none of my concern. I require first-class service from his section, and that's what Evstratii Paviovich provides. What more can I ask?'

The Governor General's assistant for special assignments pondered this opinion and was clearly unable to think of any objections to it.

'Very well. Then what sort of man is Zubtsov? I hardly know him at all. That is, I've seen him, of course, but never worked with him. Do I remember aright that he is a former revolutionary?'

'Indeed he is,' the boss of the Okhranka replied with obvious relish. "That's a story I'm very proud of. I arrested Sergei Vitalievich myself, when he was still a student. He cost me a fair deal of trouble - at first he just scowled and wouldn't say a word. I had him in my punishment cell, on bread and water, and I yelled at him and threatened him with hard labour. But the way I finally got him was not through fear, but through persuasion. Looking at the lad, I could see he had very nimble wits, and people like that, by the very way their brains work, aren't naturally inclined to terror and other violent tactics. The bomb and the revolver are for the stupid ones, who don't have enough imagination to realise you can't butt your way through a brick wall. But I noticed that my Sergei Vitalievich liked to discuss parliamentarianism, an alliance of right-thinking patriots and so forth. Conducting his interrogations was a sheer pleasure -would you believe that sometimes we sat up in the holding cell until morning? He used to make critical comments about his comrades in the revolutionary group; I could see he understood how limited they were, that they were doomed, and he was looking for a way out: he wanted to correct social injustice, but without blowing the country to pieces with dynamite. I really liked that. I managed to get his case closed. Naturally, his comrades suspected he had betrayed them and they turned their backs on him. He was offended - his conscience was clear as far as they were concerned. You could say I was the only friend he had left. We used to meet to talk about this and that, and I told him what I could about my work, about the various difficulties and snags. And what do you think? Sergei Vitalievich started giving me advice - on the best way to talk to young people, how to tell a propagandist from a terrorist, which pieces of revolutionary literature I should read, and so forth. Extremely valuable advice it was too. One day over a glass of cognac I said to him: "Sergei Vitalievich, my dear fellow, I've grown quite fond of you over all these months, and it pains me to see the way you're torn between two truths. I understand that our nihilists have their own truth, only now there's no way back to them for you. But I tell you what," I said, "you join our truth and, by God, you'll find it's more profound. I can see you're a genuine patriot of the Russian land; you couldn't care less for all their Internationals. Well, I'm just as much a patriot as you are. Let's help Russia together." And what do you think? Sergei Vitalievich thought about it for a day or two, wrote a letter to his former friends - you know, saying our ways have parted, and so on -and then put in an application to be taken on to serve under my command. Now he's my right hand, and he'll go a long way yet, you'll see. And by the way, he's a passionate admirer of yours. He's simply in love with you, on my word of honour. Talks of nothing all the time except your great feats of deduction. Sometimes it makes me feel quite jealous.'

The Lieutenant Colonel laughed, apparently very pleased at having shown himself in a positive light and also having paid his future superior a smart compliment.

Fandorin, however, followed his usual habit and suddenly started talking about something else: ‘Ivan Petrovich, are you familiar with a certain lady by the name of Diana?'

Burlyaev stopped laughing and his face turned to stone, shedding some of its usual expression of coarse, soldierly forth-rightness - his glance was suddenly sharp and cautious.

'May I enquire, Mr State Counsellor, why you are interested in that lady?'

'You may,' Fandorin replied dispassionately. 'I am seeking the source from which information about our plan reached the t-terrorists. So far I have managed to establish that outside the Police Department the details were known only to you, Mylnikov, Zubtsov, Sverchinsky and his adjutant. Colonel Sverchinsky thinks it possible that the collaborator with the c-conspiratorial alias of Diana could have been informed of the security measures. You are acquainted with her, are you not?'

Burlyaev replied with sudden rancour: 'I am. She's a splendid collaborator, no doubt about it, but Sverchinsky's hints are misplaced. A clear case of the pot calling the kettle black! If anyone could have let something slip to her, then it's him. She can twist him round her little finger!'

'What, you mean Stanislav Filippovich is her lover?' the State Counsellor asked in astonishment, barely managing to swallow the words 'as well'.

"The devil only knows,' the Lieutenant Colonel growled in the same furious tone. 'It's very possible!'

The bewildered State Counsellor took a moment to gather his thoughts. 'And is she so very attractive, this Diana?'

'I really don't know! I've never seen her face.'

Pyotr Ivanovich emphasised the final word, which lent the entire phrase a distinct air of ambiguity. The Lieutenant Colonel evidently felt this himself, because he found it necessary to explain: 'You see, Diana doesn't show her face to any of our people. All the meetings take place at the secret apartment, in semi-darkness, and she wears a veil as well.'

'But that's quite unheard of!'

'She plays the romantic heroine,' Burlyaev said with a scowl. 'I'm sure Sverchinsky hasn't seen her face either. The other parts of her body - very probably; but our Diana conceals her face like a Turkish odalisque. That was a strict condition of her collaboration. She threatens to stop providing us with any help if there is even the slightest attempt to discover her real identity. There was a special instruction from the Police Department not to make any such attempts. Let her play the mysterious heroine, they said, just as long as she provides information.'

Erast Petrovich mentally compared the manner in which Burlyaev and Sverchinsky spoke about the mysterious collaborator and discovered distinct elements of similarity in the words and intonations of the two staff officers. Apparently the rivalry between the Office and the Department was not limited to the field of police work.

'I'll tell you what, Pyotr Ivanovich,' Fandorin said with a perfectly serious expression: 'you have intrigued me with this mysterious Diana of yours. Contact her and say I wish to see her immediately.'

CHAPTER 2

The man of steel rests

Seven hundred and eighty-two, seven hundred and eighty-three, seven hundred and eighty-four ...

The lean, muscular man with the stony face, calm grey eyes and resolute vertical crease in the centre of his forehead lay on the parquet floor, counting the beats of his own heart. The count proceeded automatically, without involving his thoughts or hindering them in any way. When the man was lying down, each heartbeat was precisely one second - that had been verified many times. The old habit, acquired during imprisonment at hard labour, of listening to the workings of his internal motor while he rested had become such an integral part of the man's very existence that sometimes he would wake in the middle of the night with a four-figure number in his mind and realise that he hadn't stopped counting even in his sleep.

There was a point to this arithmetic: it trained and disciplined his heart, heightened his endurance, strengthened his will and -most importantly - allowed him to relax his muscles and restore his strength in the space of only fifteen minutes (nine hundred heartbeats) just as well as he could have done in three hours of sound sleep. Once the man had had to go without sleep for a long time, when the common convicts in the Akatuisk penal prison had decided to kill him. Too afraid to come near him during the day, they had waited for darkness to come, and the same scene had been played out over and over again for many nights in a row.

The practice of lying on a hard surface had remained with him since the days of his early youth, when Green (that was what his comrades called him - no one knew his real name) had worked hard to develop his self-discipline and wean himself of everything that he regarded as 'luxury', including in this category any habits that were harmful or simply unnecessary for survival.

He could hear muted voices behind the closed door: the members of the Combat Group were excitedly discussing the details of the successful operation. Sometimes Bullfinch got carried away and raised his voice, and then the other two hissed at him. They thought Green was asleep. But he wasn't sleeping. He was resting, counting the beats of his heart and thinking about the old man who had grabbed hold of his wrist just before he died. He could still feel the touch of those dry, hot fingers on his skin. It prevented him from feeling any satisfaction in the neat execution of the operation - and the grey-eyed man had no other pleasures apart from the feeling of duty fulfilled.

Green knew the English meaning of his alias, but he experienced his own colour differently. Everything in the world had a colour, every object and concept, every person - that was something Green had felt since he was a little child; it was one of the special things about him. For instance, the word 'earth' was a clay-brown colour, the word 'apple' was bright pink even for a green winter apple, 'empire' was maroon, 'father' was a dense purple and 'mother' was crimson. Even the letters of the alphabet had their own coloration: 'A' was scarlet, 'B' was bright lemon-yellow, 'C was pale yellow. Green made no attempt to analyse why for him the sound and meaning of a thing, a phenomenon or a person had these particular colours and no others - he simply took note of this information, and the information rarely misled him. The fact was that every colour also had its own secret meaning on a scale that was an integral, fundamental element of Green's soul. Blue was doubt and unreliability, white was joy, red was sadness, and that made the Russian flag a strange combination: it had joy and sadness, both of them strangely equivocal. If the glow given off by a new acquaintance was blue, Green didn't exacdy regard him with overt mistrust, but he watched a person like that closely and assessed him with particular caution. And there was another thing: people were the only items in the whole of existence capable of changing their colour over time - as a result of their own actions, the company they kept and their age.