The Death of Achilles (11 page)

If not for agent Klyuev’s warning, Fandorin would never have recognized Herr Knabe. Another master of disguise. But then, in view of his primary professional activity, that was hardly surprising.

Scattered but enthusiastic applause broke out in the hall. Wanda had come out onto the low stage — slim and sinuous in a dress shimmering with sequins, looking like some magical serpent.

“What a scrawny thing; no meat on her at all,” a chubby milliner at the next table snorted, offended because both students were staring wide-eyed at the songstress.

Wanda swept the hall with her wide, radiant eyes and began singing in a quiet voice without any introduction, either words or music. The accompanist picked up the melody on the piano as she went along and began weaving a lacy pattern of chords around the low voice that pierced straight to the heart.

Beside a crossroads far away
,

Buried in sand a body lies
.

Above it blooms a dark-blue flower
,

The flower of the suicides
.

Chill evening wrapped the world in slumber

As at that spot I stood and sighed.

The moon shone on its gentle swaying…

The flower of the suicides
.

A strange choice for a restaurant, thought Fandorin, listening to the German words of the song. From Heine, I think.

The hall went very quiet, then everyone began applauding at once, and the milliner who had recently been so jealous even shouted out ‘Bravo!’ Erast Petrovich realized that even he himself had perhaps slipped out of character, but nobody appeared to have noticed the inappropriately serious expression that had appeared on the young merchant’s drunken features. In any case, the man with the ginger beard, sitting at the table to the right, had been looking only at the stage.

The final chords of the mournful ballad still hung in the air when Wanda began snapping her fingers to set a rapid rhythm. With a shake of his shaggy head, the pianist rushed his ending, then crashed all ten digits down onto the keys, and the audience began swaying in their chairs in time to a rollicking Parisian chansonette.

Some Russian gentleman who looked like a factory owner performed a rather strange ritual: He called over a flower girl, took a bouquet of pan-sies out of her basket, wrapped them in a hundred-ruble note, and sent them to Wanda. Without a pause in her singing, she sniffed the bouquet and ordered it to be sent back, together with the hundred-ruble note. The factory owner, who had been acting as proud as a lion, was visibly deflated and gulped down two tall wineglasses of vodka in quick succession. The people around him in the hall kept casting derisive glances in his direction.

Erast Petrovich did not forget his role again. He played the fool a little, pouring champagne into a teacup, and from there into the saucer. He puffed out his cheeks and sipped at the champagne with a loud slurping noise — but only drank a tiny amount, in order not to get tipsy. He ordered the waiter to bring some more champagne (“And not Lanvin, either — the real stuff, Moet”) and roast a piglet, only it had to be still alive, and first they had to bring it and show it to him: “I know what you krauts are like; you’ll slip me some old carcass from the icehouse.” Fandorin was counting on the fact that it would take a long time to find a live piglet, and in the meantime the situation would be resolved in one way or another.

The disguised Knabe squinted across at his noisy neighbor in annoyance, but without taking any great interest in him. The secret agent took out his Breguet watch four times; it was obvious that he was nervous. At five minutes to eight Wanda announced that she was singing her last song before the intermission and struck up a sentimental Irish ballad about a girl called Molly, whose true love failed to return from war. Some of the people sitting in the hall were wiping tears from their faces.

She’ll finish the song in a moment and sit at Knabe’s table, Fandorin assumed, and prepared himself by lowering his forehead onto his elbow, as if he had dozed off, but he tossed back the strand of hair from over his right ear and, applying the science of concentration, shut off all of his senses except for hearing. He became transformed, as it were, into his own right ear. Wanda’s singing now seemed to be coming from far away, but he could hear the slightest movement made by Herr Knabe with great clarity. The German was restless: squeaking his chair, scraping his feet, then suddenly starting to tap his heels. Just in case, Erast Petrovich turned his head and half-opened one eye — and was just in time to see the gentleman with the ginger beard slipping out through the side door.

The hall broke into thunderous applause.

“A goddess!” shouted a student, moved almost to tears. The milliners were clapping loudly.

Herr Knabe’s stealthy departure was not at all to the collegiate assessor’s liking. In combination with the disguise and the false name, it suggested alarming possibilities.

The young merchant rose abruptly to his feet, knocking over his chair, and declared in a confidential tone to the festive group at the next table: “Got to go relieve myself.” Swaying slightly on his feet, he headed for the side exit.

“Sir!” shouted a waiter, racing up behind him. “The lavatory is not that way.”

“Go away,” said the barbarian, shoving the waiter aside without even turning around. “I’ll go wherever I want.”

The waiter froze on the spot in horror, and the merchant continued on his way in broad, rapid strides. Oh, this was not good. He needed to hurry. Wanda had already flitted off the stage into the wings.

Just as he reached the door a new obstacle arose for the capricious client in the form of a desperately squealing piglet being carried in his direction.

“Here, just as you ordered!” said the panting chef, proudly displaying his trophy. “Alive and kicking. Shall we roast it for you?”

Erast Petrovich looked at the piglet’s little eyes filled with terror and suddenly felt sorry for the poor creature, born into the world only to end up in the belly of some glutton.

The merchant growled: “Not big enough yet, let him put on a bit of fat!”

The chef dejectedly clutched the cloven-hoofed beast to his breast as the ignorant boor stumbled against the doorpost and staggered out into the corridor.

Right, Fandorin thought feverishly. The entrance hall is on the right. That means the offices and Wanda’s dressing room are on the left.

He set off down the corridor at a run. Around the corner he heard a scream coming from a dimly lit recess. There was some kind of commotion going on there.

Erast Petrovich dashed toward the sound and saw the man with the ginger beard clutching Wanda from behind, holding one hand over the songstress’s mouth and forcing a narrow steel blade up toward her throat.

Wanda had grabbed the broad wrist covered in reddish hair with both her hands, but the distance between the blade and her slim neck was closing rapidly.

“Stop! Police!” Fandorin cried in a voice hoarse with tension. Displaying phenomenally rapid reactions, Herr Knabe pushed the floundering Wanda straight at Erast Petrovich, who involuntarily put his arms around the songstress’s thin shoulders. She clung to her savior with a grip of iron, trembling all over. In two bounds the German was past them and dashing away down the corridor, fumbling under his armpit as he ran. Fandorin saw the running man’s hand emerge, holding something black and heavy, and he barely had time to drag Wanda to the floor and shield her. A second later and the bullet would have pierced both their bodies. For an instant the collegiate assessor was deafened by the thunderous roar that filled the narrow corridor. Wanda squealed in despair and began thrashing about under the young man.

“It is I, Fandorin!” he panted as he struggled to stand up. “Let go of me.”

He tried to leap to his feet, but Wanda, still lying on the floor, was clutching him tightly by the ankle and sobbing hysterically: “Why did he do that? Why? Oh, don’t leave me!”

It was useless trying to pull his foot free — the songstress was clinging on tight and wouldn’t let go. Then Erast Petrovich said in an emphatically calm voice: “You know yourself, why. But, God be praised, you’re safe now.”

He unclasped her fingers gently but firmly and ran off in pursuit of the secret agent. It was all right; Klyuev was at the entrance, a sound officer, he wouldn’t let him go. At the very least he would delay him.

However, when Fandorin burst out of the doors of the restaurant onto the embankment, he discovered that things had gone about as badly as possible. Knabe was already sitting in an ‘egoist’ — an English single-seater carriage — and lashing a lean, sleek gelding with his whip. The horse flailed at the air with its front hooves and set off so sharply that the German was thrown back hard against his seat.

The sound officer Klyuev was sitting on the pavement, holding his head in his hands with blood running out between his fingers.

“Sorry, let him get away,” he groaned dully. “I told him — “Stop,” and he hit me on the forehead with the butt—”

“Get up!” Erast Petrovich tugged at the wounded man’s shoulder and forced him to his feet. “He’ll get away!”

With a great effort of self-control, Klyuev smeared the dark-red sludge across his face and began hobbling sideways toward the droshky.

“I’m all right, it’s just that everything’s spinning,” he muttered, clambering up onto the coachbox.

Fandorin leapt up beside him in a single bound, Klyuev cracked the reins, and the chestnut mare set off with its hooves clip-clopping loudly over the cobblestones, gradually picking up speed. But it was slow, too slow. The ‘egoist’ already had a start of a hundred paces!

“Harder!” Erast Petrovich shouted at the groggy Klyuev. “Drive harder!”

At breakneck speed, with houses, shop signs, and astounded pedestrians flashing past in a blur, both carriages tore along the short Sofiiskaya Street and out onto the broad Lubyanka, where the chase began in earnest. A policeman on duty opposite Mobius’s photographic studio began whistling in furious indignation and waving his fist at the scofflaws, but that was all. Ah, if only I had a telephone apparatus in the carriage, Fandorin fantasized, I could call Karachentsev and have a couple of carriages sent out from the gendarme station to cut him off. A useless, idiotic fantasy — their only hope now was the chestnut mare, and that dear creature was giving her all, desperately flinging out her sturdy legs, shaking her mane, glancing back over her shoulder with one insanely goggling eye — as if she were asking if this was all right, or should she kick even harder. Kick, my darling, kick, Erast Petrovich implored her. Klyuev seemed to have recovered a little and he stood up, cracking his whip and hallooing so wildly that an entire Mongol horde seemed to be hurtling down the quiet evening street.

The distance to the ‘egoist’ had been reduced a little bit. Knabe looked back in alarm once, then again, and seemed to realize that he wouldn’t get away. When there were about thirty paces remaining between them, the German agent turned around, holding out the revolver in his left hand, and fired. Klyuev ducked.

“Damn, he’s a good shot! That one whistled right past my ear! That’s a Reichsrevolver he’s blasting away with! Shoot, Your Honor! Aim at the horse! He’s outpacing us!”

“What has that poor horse done wrong?” growled Fandorin, remembering the piglet. In fact, of course, the interests of the fatherland would have outweighed his compassion for the dun gelding, but the problem was that his Herstal-Agent wasn’t designed for accurate shooting at such a distance. God forbid, he might hit Herr Knabe instead of the horse, and the entire operation would be ruined.

At the corner of Sretensky Boulevard the German turned around once again, taking a little longer to aim before his barrel belched smoke and flame. Klyuev instantly collapsed backward, on top of Erast Petrovich. One eye gaped in fright into the collegiate assessor’s face; the place of the other had been taken by a red hole.

“Your Excel —” his lips began to say, but they did not finish.

The carriage swung to one side and Fandorin was obliged to shove the fallen man aside unceremoniously. He grabbed the reins, and just in time, or the carriage would have been smashed to smithereens against the cast-iron railings of the boulevard. The excited chestnut mare was still trying to run on, but the left front wheel had jammed against a stone post.

Erast Petrovich leaned down over the police agent and saw that his one remaining eye was no longer frightened, but staring fixedly upward, as though Klyuev were looking at something very interesting, far more interesting than the sky or the clouds.

Fandorin mechanically reached up to remove his hat, but he had none, for his remarkable topper had been left behind in the cloakroom at the Alpine Rose.

This was a fine result: an officer killed and Knabe allowed to escape!

But where exactly could he have escaped to? Apart from the house on Karyetny Ryad, the German had nowhere else to go. He had to call in there, if only for five minutes — to pick up his emergency documents and money, and destroy any compromising materials.

There was no time to indulge in mourning. Erast Petrovich took the dead man under the arms and dragged him out of the droshky. He sat him with his back against the railings.

“You sit here for a while, Klyuev,” the collegiate assessor muttered and, paying no attention to the passersby who had frozen in poses of horrified curiosity, he climbed back up onto the coachbox.

The ‘egoist’ was standing at the entrance of the beautiful apartment house on the third floor of which the Moscow representative of the banking firm Kerbel und Schmidt resided. The dun gelding, covered in thick lather, was nervously shifting its hooves and shaking its wet head. Fan-dorin dashed into the hallway.

“Stop! Where are you going?” yelled the fat-faced doorman, grabbing hold of his arm, but he was immediately sent flying by a punch delivered to his jaw without any superfluous explanations.

Upstairs a door slammed. It sounded like the third floor! Erast Petro-vich bounded up two steps at a time, holding the Herstal at the ready. He would have to shoot him twice, in the right arm and the left. The German had tried to slit Wanda’s throat with his right hand, and he had fired with his left, which meant he was ambidextrous.