The White Russian (15 page)

“I was forgetting… your fine lineage and noble connections,” Sarlov said, with what might or might not have been irony.

“I went out to see Vyrubova,” Ruzsky said, “and the Empress walked in during the course of our interview.”

“This is the same Vyrubova who is, or was, an intimate of both Rasputin and the Empress?”

“Yes.”

“What is the girl supposed to have stolen?” Sarlov asked.

“Money, they said. But I’m not sure I believed them about that either.”

“How did she look?”

“Who?”

“The Empress.”

Ruzsky stared at the wall. “Tired.”

“She stays up late to telegraph the Germans with our war secrets.”

Ruzsky didn’t react. Rumors had circulated since the beginning of the war that the Empress was feeding secrets to the country of her birth. He looked at the dead couple’s effects, which were still piled in the corner. He dropped his cigarette on the floor, stamped on it, and picked up the man’s overcoat. “Why didn’t Prokopiev take their clothes?”

“He looked at them.”

Ruzsky spread out the overcoat. “A cursory glance or a proper examination?”

Sarlov shrugged. “Pretty thorough.”

“A few seconds?”

“A minute or more. I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

“What was he looking for, that’s what I’m driving at.”

“He looked like he was checking there was no incriminating evidence,” Sarlov said.

Ruzsky glanced at his colleague. This is exactly what he had been thinking, but he’d not expected the doctor to articulate it. “You said the man was American,” Ruzsky went on.

“Possibly foreign,” Sarlov said, correcting him.

“We might know by later on this morning, or perhaps tomorrow. Pavel has a lead down at the United States embassy.”

Ruzsky looked at the patch where the label in the overcoat had been removed, then turned out the inside pockets. There was still a little dirt there. He faced Sarlov. “Did the girl die instantly?”

“Most unlikely. Why?”

“I can’t get a clear view of this. Once we establish both their identities, in what direction should we be looking? Is it a crime of passion, a professional assassination, a family feud? What do you think? I mean, forgetting the Okhrana’s behavior for a moment and just considering the crime scene itself.” Ruzsky put the overcoat down and turned to the man’s jacket. Labels had been removed from the collar and the inside pocket.

Sarlov stubbed his own cigarette out on the corner of the table, then flicked it into the iron wastepaper bin. “I’ve been thinking about it, too. Let’s start at the beginning. I would say the murderer was tall. Take the woman. From what I could see, a healthy incision, but high. Forceful. Overhand.” He simulated the action. “Then the man.” Sarlov looked at the position he had once occupied on the slab. He pushed his glasses up his nose. His hair was wilder than yesterday. “Stabbed once initially, also overhand and quite high, coming down-remember the cuts on his face.” He raised his arm once more. “Then again. And again. And again, and again, and again, and again-”

“I get the picture.”

“You see what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“The murderer is angry. More than angry. This is a deep, atavistic rage, certainly not the work of a professional assassin. You do not stab so many times to be certain of the man’s death. Nor do you plan to do so in the snow, in full sight of the Winter Palace. This isn’t some petty squabble over money or… something trivial.”

“All right, Sarlov. I see.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“The murderer’s anger is directed principally at the man-that is my other point. It is an elementary, but nonetheless important, observation. The murder of the woman is purely functional. There is no anger against her, he just needs to get that done, before he turns to the man. That is why he is here and… bang, an explosion of rage. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.”

“You make it sound like a lover’s quarrel,” Ruzsky said.

“It could be.” Sarlov was interested in drawing conclusions from the medical facts at his disposal, not in dreaming up explanations.

“And the branded star on the man’s shoulder doesn’t ring any bells for you? You’ve never seen anything like it before, don’t recall hearing of anything similar?”

Sarlov shook his head.

“Can you think of any potential explanation?”

“That’s your job. It could be anything.”

“What created it, then? What was it made with?”

“As you have observed, it is a branded star.”

“An imprint of loyalty to an organization, or group, or society?”

“I don’t know.”

“A religious sect?”

Sarlov didn’t answer. Ruzsky made a mental note to pursue the possibility of a religious connection.

He stared ahead, lost in thought, then turned back to the clothes. The branded star rang a bell somewhere in his mind. Was it in a case he himself had investigated, or something he had read about? He picked up the man’s boots. They had tiny holes in both soles, like his own. He caught sight of something on the heel and held them up to the light. “Have you got a magnifying glass?” he asked.

The physician rumbled around in a drawer and then came over, cleaning his glasses and looking up as Ruzsky held both the boots and the magnifying glass to the light. “Do you see that?”

“No.”

“The maker’s name has been worn down, but you can see something. I think it is ‘amburg.’ The ‘H’ has gone. Hamburg. That’s where they were made.”

Sarlov nodded. “He could be German.”

Sarlov took the magnifying glass and returned it to his drawer. Ruzsky examined the man’s trousers, turning them inside out. “If the murderer was that angry,” he said, “that insane-”

“I did say angry; I did not say mad. Sane men do diabolical things,” Sarlov insisted, with some feeling.

“His blood is up and yet, once he is done, the girl is, according to you, probably still alive, bleeding to death on the ice. The murderer bends over her and starts ripping the labels from her clothes. Then he or she goes to the man and does the same. The man’s body is covered in blood, which is everywhere, freezing quickly. This all takes time. Five minutes. Longer. It is the middle of the night, but the moon is bright and the danger of being seen must be high. There is no easy escape. You must walk far in each direction to get away from the scene and the murderer has decided that he must leave no prints. It’s brutal, methodical, but also amateurish. The murderer goes to the trouble of placing his footprints in those of his victims and then abandons that plan as he gets close to the embankment.”

Looking at the overcoat, Ruzsky could not quite believe that the murderer had been able to so thoroughly remove all clues as to the man’s identity in a few, rushed minutes out on the ice.

“Do you think he got this coat in Hamburg as well?” Ruzsky asked, holding it up to the light once more.

“Do I look like an expert in international fashion?”

Ruzsky shook his head. “To be honest, no.”

Pavel was sitting at his desk. “Progress,” he said, holding up a photograph of the male victim’s body. “It’s the man from the Astoria Hotel. I checked on the way in. And I got hold of the American official. He’s waiting for us at the embassy.”

Pavel stood. “You’ve a note on your desk. Another messenger. You’re a popular boy.”

Ruzsky picked up the envelope and turned it over. It had the seal of his brother’s regiment, the Preobrazhensky Guards.

The letter was on thick, yellowish paper.

My dear Sandro, Dmitri had written, I shall be at the yacht club at luncheon and hope you will join me there. I shall make the assumption that your answer is affirmative, unless you get a message to me by noon.

Ruzsky sat down and removed from the drawer the roll of ruble notes they’d found on the dead man. He realized that there was more money there than he’d first thought-the outer notes were a low denomination, but there were higher ones within. He leaned forward to count them.

Ruzsky narrowed his eyes. He took out one note and held it up to the desk lamp. He did the same with another and then with the rest. “Come and have a look at this,” he said.

The big detective heaved himself from his chair and came around to look at the notes.

“See?” Ruzsky asked, holding two up to the light.

“See what?”

“Here.” Ruzsky pointed. It had a series of tiny marks, in black ink, underneath the serial numbers.

Ruzsky looked closer, then at the other notes once more. “Look. They’re all in some kind of order. Each note is marked with a minuscule figure in black ink inside the double-headed eagle. By the left-hand beak. You see, one, two, three, and so on. Then each note also has some of the serial numbers underlined with tiny dots.”

“That could mean anything. Some teller in a bank fiddling around on a cold afternoon.”

Ruzsky spread all the notes out in front of him. He rearranged them in order of the numbers inscribed by the left-hand beak of the eagle. He could see that he was right. “We’ve got numbers one to fourteen here. So it’s a code, and the message has fourteen letters, which are to be assembled in this order. The digits underlined in the serial number must be page references from the code book. If we had that, we could see the message.”

T hey found themselves faced with a long wait at the United States embassy over on Furshtatskaya. A fat, middle-aged Russian woman sat behind the reception desk and got more irritated every time Ruzsky went to inquire how much longer the official they sought might be.

He strolled around the entrance hall, glancing as he went at the pictures crowding the walls. The subject of each was inscribed on a brass plaque at the bottom of the frame. There was a watercolor of beach life in California, and another of a town house in Boston. Some government buildings in Washington were depicted in oil, along with a grand plantation house in Georgia and a panoramic view of New York.

He sat down again. The remnants of Pavel’s breakfast were still visible in his mustache and on the corners of his chin.

“You smell of herring,” Ruzsky said.

“I forgot to tell you. I received a call from Anton when I got home last night. We have to chair a briefing later today.”

“For whom?”

“Vasilyev and an official from the Ministry of the Interior.”

“Where?”

“Alexandrovsky Prospekt.”

Ruzsky’s heart sank at the mention of the Okhrana’s gloomy headquarters. “You can do it. I don’t need to go.”

“Oh no.” Pavel shook his head. “You want to be back in charge, you do it.”

“Do you think,” Ruzsky said, “that our corpse was an American intelligence agent?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Think of the banknotes. If they do contain a cipher, an encoded message…”

“I still think that’s quite a leap.”

Ruzsky did not respond. He could see Pavel knew he was right.

“You’re seeing conspiracies where none exist,” Pavel said. His manner had become defensive again.

“True, but it makes you wonder, that’s all. Perhaps it explains why the Okhrana were so quick off the mark. Did you check his room at the Astoria?”

“Inch by inch. There’s nothing there.”

They sat in silence.

“Nothing at all.”

“Come on,” Ruzsky said, glancing up at the clock on the wall again.

“I would have thought Tobolsk might have cured you of your chronic impatience.”

“I saw Vasilyev last night outside that club.”

“And?”

“He was in a car and opened the door to pick up two young girls from the street.”

A tall man with small glasses, short hair, and a long, bony nose came through the door opposite them. He had an ungainly walk. “Good morning,” he said, speaking Russian with a perfect Petersburg accent. “Abraham Morris. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

They introduced themselves.

“Come through,” the man said, smiling. His voice was soft and cultured.

Morris led them up several flights of stone steps. His office was on the top floor and it enjoyed a spectacular view of the Neva. His desk was uncluttered. The filing cabinet next to it was covered in what looked like sporting trophies. On the wall, the only painting depicted a white clapboard house overlooking a long, sandy beach.

Morris invited them to sit, then went around to the other side of his desk and pulled over a chair, tugging up his trousers a fraction, just above the knee, as he lowered himself into it. Ruzsky was still staring at the picture on the wall. It had perfectly captured the extraordinary quality of the light. He’d forgotten how much he missed being surrounded by fine paintings.

“Have you been to America, Chief Investigator?”

“No,” Ruzsky said, “but I’d like to go. That’s a fine painting.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is one of your own?”

The man smiled modestly. He leaned forward. “I telephoned the Astoria a short time ago. You have already been to see them.”

“Yes,” Pavel said.

Morris took a sheet of paper from a desk drawer. He glanced at it for a few moments, to refresh his memory, then replaced it. He raised his right hand, palm up. “How can I help you gentlemen?”

Ruzsky reached into his pocket for a picture of the dead man.

“Do you recognize him?”

Morris took the photograph and looked at it, pushing his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “No.”

“You have been made aware,” Ruzsky asked, “that we are conducting a murder investigation?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t recognize the man?”

“No.”

Ruzsky looked at Morris, whose gaze remained steady.

“This isn’t the man you warned the Okhrana about?”

“I don’t know.”