Sobolev slapped a hand against his knee and his horse shifted its feet nervously. 'Ah, if I only had at least a regiment! But I am not involved in the action, Fandorin. You need to go to headquarters, to the commander-in-chief. I have to complete my reconnaissance, but I'll provide you with an escort to Tsarevitsy. Perhaps you will be my guest this evening, Varvara Andreevna? It can be quite jolly at times in the war correspondents' marquee.'
'With pleasure’ said Varya, casting a nervous glance towards the spot where the freed prisoner had been laid on the grass. Two Cossacks were squatting on their haunches beside the officer and doing something to him.
'That officer is dead, isn't he?'
'Alive and kicking,' replied the general. 'The lucky devil, he'll live for a hundred years now. When we started chasing the Bashi-Bazouks, they shot him in the head and high-tailed it. But everyone knows you can't trust a bullet. It shot off at a tangent and only tore off a little scrap of skin. Well then, my lads, have you bandaged up the captain?' he shouted loudly to the Cossacks.
The Cossacks helped the officer to get up. He swayed, but stayed on his feet and stubbornly pushed away the Cossacks, who were trying to support him by the elbows. He took several jerky, faltering steps on legs that seemed about to buckle under him at any moment, stood to attention and wheezed in a hoarse voice: 'Captain of General Headquarters Eremei Pere-pyolkin, Your Excellency. I was proceeding from Zimnitsa to my posting at the headquarters of the Western Division, where I had been appointed to Lieutenant-General Kriedener's operations section. On the way I was attacked by a unit of hostile irregular cavalry and taken prisoner. It was my own fault ... I simply did not expect anything of the kind in our rear ... I did not even have a pistol with me, only my sword . . .'
Varya was able to get a better look at the poor victim now. He was short and sinewy, with dishevelled chestnut hair, a narrow mouth with almost no lips and stern brown eyes - or rather, one brown eye, because the second one was still not visible,- but at least the captain's gaze was no longer full of anguish or despair.
'You're alive, and that's splendid’Sobolev said magnanimously. 'But an officer must always carry a pistol, even a staff officer. Otherwise it's like a lady going out into the street without a hat - she'll be taken for a loose woman.' He laughed, then caught Varya's angry look and hemmed as if he were clearing his throat. 'Pardon, mademoiselle.'
A dashing Cossack sergeant approached the general and jabbed with his finger, pointing to something. 'Look, Your Excellency, I think it's Semyonov!'
Varya turned to look and suddenly felt sick: the bandit's bay on which she had made her recent inauspicious gallop had reappeared beside the bush. The horse was nibbling on the grass as if nothing had happened, with the loathsome trophy still suspended, swaying, on its flank.
Sobolev jumped down and walked over to the horse with his eyes screwed up sceptically and turned the nightmarish sphere this way and that. 'That's not Semyonov, surely?' he said doubtfully. 'You're talking nonsense, Nechitailo. Semyonov's face is quite different.'
'It certainly is Semyonov, Mikhal Dmitrich,' the sergeant said heatedly. 'See, there's his torn ear, and look here' - he parted the dead head's purple lips - 'the front tooth's missing as well. It's Semyonov all right!'
'I suppose so,' said the general, nodding thoughtfully. 'He must have had a pretty rough time of it. Varvara Andreevna,' he said, turning to Varya to explain, 'this is a Cossack from the Second Cavalry Squadron who was abducted by Daud-bek's Meskhetians this morning’
But Varya was no longer listening: the earth and the sky somersaulted, exchanging places, and Paladin and Fandorin were only just in time to catch the suddenly limp young lady as she fell.
Chapter Three
WHICH IS DEVOTED ALMOST ENTIRELY TO ORIENTAL GUILE
La Revue Parisienne
(Paris) 15 (3) May 1877
The double-headed eagle that serves the Russian Empire as its crest illustrates quite magnificently the entire system of government of that country, where any matter of even the slightest importance is not entrusted to a single authority but at least two, and these authorities hamper each other's efforts while taking no ultimate responsibility for anything. The same thing is happening now in the Russian army in the field. Formally speaking, the commander-in-chief is the Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich, who is currently based in the village of Tsarevitsy. However, located in the small town of Bela, in the immediate vicinity of Nikolai's headquarters, is the staff of Emperor Alexander II, to which are attached the Chancellor, the Minister of War, the Chief of Gendarmes and other dignitaries of the highest rank. Taking into account the fact that the allied Roumanian army possesses its own commander in the person of Prince Karl Hohenzollern-Siegmaringen, one is reminded less of the double-headed king of the feathered tribe than of the droll humour of the Russian fable in which a swan, a crayfish and a pike are harnessed to the same carriage . . .
'Well then, how am I to address you, as "madame" or
"mademoiselle"?' asked the beetle-black lieutenant-colonel of gendarmes, twisting his lips revoltingly. 'This is not a ballroom, but army headquarters, and I am not paying you compliments, but conducting an interrogation, so I would be obliged if you would stop beating about the bush!'
The lieutenant-colonel was called Ivan Kharitono-vich Kazanzaki, and since he was resolutely determined not to see Varya's side of things, the most likely outcome in prospect for her was clearly compulsory deportation to Russia.
When they had finally reached Tsarevitsy the day before, it was almost night. Fandorin had immediately set out for the headquarters staff building and Varya, by this time so tired that she could barely stand, had set about doing what had to be done. The charitable nurses from Baroness Vreiskaya's medical unit had given her some clothes and heated some water for her and, after she had tidied herself up, Varya had collapsed on to a field hospital bed - fortunately the wards were almost completely empty of wounded. Her meeting with Petya had been postponed until the following day, for she would require full command of all her faculties during the important discussion that lay ahead.
In the morning, however, Varya had not been allowed to catch up on her sleep. Two gendarmes wearing hard helmets and carrying carbines had turned up and escorted 'the individual styling herself Miss Suvorova' directly to the special unit of the Western Division, without even allowing her to arrange her hair properly.
And now she had been attempting for hours to explain to this clean-shaven, bushy-browed monster in the blue uniform the precise nature of the
4i relationship that bound her to the cryptographer Pyotr Yablokov.
'Why on earth don't you call Pyotr Afanasievich and he will confirm everything himself,' Varya kept repeating, but the lieutenant-colonel's reply was always the same: 'All in good time.'
Kazanzaki was particularly interested in the details of her encounter with 'the individual styling himself Titular Counsellor Fandorin'. The lieutenant-colonel noted down all about Yusuf-pasha and Vidin, and the coffee with French conversation, and freedom won in a game of backgammon,- but his professional curiosity was galvanised most powerfully by the discovery that the volunteer had spoken to the Bashi-Bazouks in Turkish, and he demanded to know exactly how he had spoken - with a stammer or without. Simply clarifying all that nonsense about the stammer must have taken at least half an hour.
And then, when Varya was already on the verge of dry, tearless hysterics, the door of the mud-walled peasant hut that housed the special section had suddenly swung open and in had walked, or rather run, an extremely important-looking general with imperiously bulging eyes and luxuriant whiskers.
'Adjutant-General Mizinov,' he bellowed from the doorway and glanced sternly at the lieutenant-colonel. 'Kazanzaki?'
Taken by surprise, the gendarme stood sharply to attention and began twitching his lips, while Varya stared wide-eyed at the oriental despot and butcher for whom the progressive youth of Russia took the head of the Third Section and Chief of Gendarmes, Lavrenty Arkadievich Mizinov.
'Yes, sir, Your Excellency!' Varya's tormentor wheezed hoarsely. 'Lieutenant-Colonel of the Gendarmes Corps Kazanzaki. Previously serving in the Kishinev office, now appointed to head the special section, Western Division Headquarters. Conducting the interrogation of a prisoner.'
'Who is she?' asked the general, raising an eyebrow and giving Varya a disapproving glance.
'Varvara Suvorova. Claims to have travelled here in a private capacity in order to meet her fiance, operations section cryptographer Yablokov.'
'Suvorova?' Mizinov mused, intrigued. 'Could we perhaps be related? My great-grandfather on my mother's side was Alexander Vasilievich Suvorov-Rymniksky.'
'I very much hope not,' Varya snapped.
The satrap gave a wry smile and paid no more attention to the prisoner.
'Now then, Kazanzaki, don't you go trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Where's Fandorin? It says in the report that you have him.'
'Yes, sir; he is being held in custody,' the lieutenant-colonel reported smartly and added, lowering his voice, 'I have reason to believe that he is our keenly anticipated visitor, Anwar-effendi. Everything fits perfectly, Your Excellency. That story about Osman-pasha and Plevna is blatant misinformation. But how skilfully he spun the . . .'
'Blockhead!' roared Mizinov, so fiercely that the lieutenant-colonel cringed and pulled his head down into his shoulders. 'Bring him here immediately! And look lively about it!'
Kazanzaki dashed headlong out of the room and
Varya shrank back into her chair, but the agitated general had forgotten all about her. He carried on wheezing loudly and drumming his fingers nervously on the table, only stopping when the lieutenant-colonel returned with Fandorin.
The volunteer looked haggard and exhausted and dark circles had appeared under his eyes: he had obviously not slept the night before.
'G-Good morning, Lavrenty Arkadievich’ he said listlessly and bowed briefly to Varya.
'My God, Fandorin, is it really you?' the satrap gasped. 'I would never have recognised you. You've aged a good ten years! Have a seat, my dear fellow, I'm delighted to see you.'
The general sat Erast Petrovich on a chair and took a seat himself, so that Varya was behind him and Kazanzaki was left standing to attention, rooted to the spot outside the door.
'How are you now?' asked Mizinov. 'I wanted to give you my most sincere—'
'I would rather not talk about that, Your Excellency,' Fandorin interrupted politely but firmly. 'I am perfectly all right now. Tell me, rather, whether this g-gentleman' he nodded dismissively towards the lieutenant-colonel
'has told you about Plevna. Every hour is precious.' 'Yes, yes. I have with me an order from the commander-in-chief, but first of all I wanted to make sure that it was really you. Here, listen.' He took a sheet of paper out of his pocket, set a monocle in his eye and read: '"To the commander of the Western Division, Lieutenant-General Baron Kriedener. I order you to occupy Plevna and secure your position there with a force of at least one division. Nikolai."'
Fandorin nodded.
'Lieutenant-Colonel, have this encoded immediately and forwarded to Kriedener by telegraph,' Mizinov ordered.
Kazanzaki respectfully took the sheet of paper and ran off to carry out the order, his spurs jangling.
'So perhaps you can come back to work now?' the general asked.
Erast Petrovich frowned. 'Lavrenty Arkadievich, I believe I have fulfilled by d-duty by reporting the Turkish flanking manoeuvre. But as for fighting against poor Turkey, which would have fallen apart quite happily without our heroic efforts - please spare me that.'
'I shall not spare you, sir, I will not!' said Mizinov, growing angry. 'If patriotism is merely an empty word to you, then permit me to remind you, Mister Titular Counsellor, that you are not in retirement, but only on indefinite leave, and although you may be listed as a member of the diplomatic corps, you are still on service with me, in the Third Section!'
Varya gave a feeble gasp of amazement. She had taken Fandorin for a decent man - but he was a police agent! And he had even made himself out to be some kind of romantic hero, like Lermontov's Pechorin. That intriguing pallor, that languid glance, that nobly greying hair. How could she trust anyone after this?
'Your Excellency,' Erast Petrovich said in a quiet voice, clearly not even suspecting that in Varya's eyes he was now irrevocably damned, 'it is not you that I serve, but Russia. And I do not wish to take any part in a war that is not only pointless, but actually ruinous for her.'
'It is not your place, or mine, to draw conclusions concerning the war. His Majesty the Emperor decides such matters’ Mizinov retorted curtly.
An awkward pause ensued. When the chief of gendarmes began speaking again, his voice sounded quite different.
'Erast Petrovich, my dear fellow,' he began imploringly. 'Hundreds of thousands of Russian people are risking their lives, the burden of war has almost brought the country to its knees . . . and I have a dark presentiment of disaster. Things are going far too smoothly altogether. I am afraid it will all end very badly