The Death of Achilles (38 page)

There was a muffled shriek and a dark shadow went darting away from him.

Achimas overtook the runner in two swift leaps and swung his cane down hard from above.

He shone his light on the fallen man. A coarse, bestial face. Dark blood oozing from beneath his greasy, matted hair. The stubby fingers clutching at the man’s side were also wet with blood.

The attacker was dressed in the Russian style: collarless shirt, wool-cloth waistcoat, velveteen trousers, blacked boots. Lying on the ground beside him was an axe with an unusually short handle.

Achimas leaned lower, pointing the finger of light straight into the man’s face. It glinted on two round eyes with unnaturally dilated pupils.

There was the sound of a whistle from the direction of Neglinnaya Street, then another from the Theater Lane side. He didn’t have much time.

He squatted down, set his finger and thumb just below the fallen man’s cheekbones, and squeezed. He tossed the axe aside.

“Who sent you?”

“It’s poverty that’s to blame, Your Honor,” the wounded man croaked. “We beg forgiveness.”

Achimas pressed his finger hard into the facial nerve, allowed the man on the ground to squirm in agony for a while, and repeated his question: “Who?”

“Let go… let go, you gull,” wheezed the wounded man, hammering his feet against the flagstones. “I’m dying.”

“Who?” Achimas asked for the third time, and pressed hard on an eyeball.

Blood flooded out of the dying man’s mouth, almost drowning his low groan.

“Misha,” the faint voice gurgled. “Little Misha… Let go! It hurts!”

“Who is this Misha?” asked Achimas, pressing down more heavily.

But that was a mistake. The would-be murderer was already at his last gasp. His groan became a wheeze and a torrent of blood gushed out onto his beard. He was obviously not going to say anything more. Achimas straightened up. A police constable’s whistle trilled somewhere very close by.

By midday he had reviewed all the possible courses of action and formulated his decision.

He started from the facts: First, someone had robbed Achimas and then someone had attempted to kill him. Were these two events connected with each other? Undoubtedly. The man who had been lying in wait for Achimas in the dark archway had known what route he would take and when.

That meant:

(1) He had been followed the previous day, when he was checking the route, and followed very cleverly — he had not spotted his tail.

(2) Someone was well aware of what Achimas had been doing last night.

(3) The briefcase had been taken by someone who was certain that Sobolev wouldn’t be coming back to his suite — otherwise why would he have bothered to lock the safe after himself so carefully and climb out through the small window? The general would have discovered the loss in any case.

Question: Who knew about the operation and about the briefcase?

Answer: Only Monsieur NN and his people.

If they had simply tried to eliminate Achimas, that would have been annoying, but understandable.

Annoying, because in that case he, a topflight professional, would have misread the situation, miscalculated the risk, and allowed himself to be deceived.

Understandable, because in a major undertaking like this, fraught with a multitude of possible complications, the agent should, of course, be eliminated. That was precisely what Achimas would have done in the client’s place. The secret imperial court was a fiction, of course. But it was a clever invention, and even the worldly-wise Mr. Welde had been taken in by it.

Taking everything together, it could all have been explained, if not for the disappearance of the briefcase.

Monsieur NN and crude housebreaking? Absurd. Take the million rubles, but leave the documents for the conspirators? Improbable. And the idea that the killer with the bestial face from the archway had any connection at all with NN or ‘Baron von Steinitz’ was absolutely unbelievable.

The wielder of the axe had addressed Achimas as a ‘gull’. In Russian criminal slang, this was a term of abuse that expressed the most extreme level of contempt — not a thief, not a bandit, but an ordinary, law-abiding citizen.

So the attacker was a professional criminal? Perhaps a character from the notorious Khitrovka district?

His behavior and manner of speech certainly suggested it. What was his connection with NN, a man whose lowly coach driver had the bearing of a military officer? Something here didn’t add up.

Since he had insufficient information for genuine logical analysis, Achimas tried approaching the problem from a different angle. If the initial data were inadequate, it was more convenient to start by denning your objectives.

What needed to be done?

1. Clean up after his own operation.
   
2. Find the briefcase.
   
3. Settle accounts with the person or persons who had tried to cheat Achimas Welde.
   

And in that precise order. First protect himself, then get back what belonged to him, and then exact vengeance, for dessert. But there must be a dessert. It was a matter of principle and professional ethics.

At the practical level, the three stages of the plan were as follows:

1. Eliminate Wanda. A pity, of course, but it was necessary.
   
2. Deal with the mysterious Little Misha.
   
3. He would get Misha to provide his dessert.
   

Someone among Monsieur NN’s people kept strange company.

Once he had worked out his program of action, Achimas turned over onto his side and instantly fell asleep.

Point 1 was scheduled for implementation that evening.

He managed to sneak into Wanda’s suite without being noticed. As he had anticipated, the songstress hadn’t yet returned from the Alpine Rose. Between the boudoir and the hallway there was a cloakroom, crammed with dresses on hangers and stacks of shoeboxes and hatboxes. The room was ideally positioned, with one door leading into the boudoir and another into the hallway.

If Wanda came back alone, it would all be over quickly, without any complications. She would open the door in order to get a change of clothes and die that very second, before she had any time to feel afraid.

Achimas very much didn’t want her to suffer any fear or pain before she died.

He pondered the question of what would be more appropriate — an accident or suicide — and settled on suicide. There were surely many reasons why a woman of the demimonde might decide to take her own life.

The task was simplified by the fact that Wanda didn’t employ a maid. If you had been used to looking after yourself all your life, then it was more convenient to manage without servants — he knew that from his own experience. On the island of Santa Croce the servants would live apart; he would build a house for them at a good distance from the count’s residence. They could always be summoned if they were needed.

But what if Wanda didn’t come back alone?

Well, in that case it would be a double suicide. That was quite fashionable nowadays.

He heard the sound of a door opening and light footsteps.

She was alone.

Achimas grimaced as he recalled her voice asking him: “You won’t deceive me, will you, Kolya?” At that very instant the door from the boudoir into the dressing room half-opened and a slim, naked arm reached in and pulled a Chinese dressing gown decorated with dragons off its hanger.

The moment had been missed. Achimas looked through the chink of the door. Wanda was standing in front of the mirror, still in her dress, holding the dressing gown in her hand.

Three quick, silent steps and the job would be done. She would hardly even have time to catch a glimpse of the figure behind her in the mirror.

Achimas opened the door slightly and then pulled back at the sound of a brief trill from the electric doorbell.

Wanda went out into the hallway, exchanged a few brief words with someone, and came back into the drawing room, examining a small piece of cardboard. A calling card?

She was standing with her profile toward Achimas now and he saw her face quiver.

Almost immediately there was another ring at the door.

Again he was unable to hear what was said in the hallway — the door on that side of the little room was firmly shut. But Wanda and her late-night visitor came straight through into the drawing room, and then he could hear and even see everything.

Fate had an unexpected surprise in store for him. When the visitor — a well- proportioned young man in a fashionable frock coat — entered the circle of light cast by the lamp shade, Achimas recognized his face immediately. In the years that had passed it had changed greatly, matured and shed the soft contours of youth, but it was definitely the same man. Achimas never forgot what his targets looked like; he remembered every last little detail of every one, and especially of this one.

It was an old story from a long time ago, from the interesting period when Achimas had been contracted to work for an organization that called itself ‘Azazel’. They were very serious people who paid the top rate, but they were romantics. That was clear enough from the absolute requirement to utter the word ‘Azazel’ before every strike. Sentimental nonsense. But Achimas had observed this ludicrous condition — a contract is a contract.

He found it disagreeable to look at the handsome young man with black hair. Above all because he was still walking about and breathing. In his entire professional career Achimas had only failed in his task three times, and now he saw before him the living proof of one of those occasions. He ought surely to have been content with such a low failure rate after twenty years of work, but his mood, which had been bad enough already, was now completely spoiled.

What was the name of this young neophyte? Something beginning with ‘F’.

“Mr. Fandorin, on your card it says ‘I know everything’. What is ‘everything’? And who are you, as a matter of fact?” Wanda asked in a hostile tone of voice.

Yes, yes, Fandorin. That was his name. Erast Petrovich Fandorin. So now he was the governor-general’s deputy for special assignments, was he?

Achimas listened carefully to the conversation taking place in the next room, trying to understand the significance of this unexpected encounter. He knew that extraordinary coincidences like this were never accidental; they represented some kind of sign from the fates. Was this a good sign or a bad one? The habit of tidiness prompted him to kill the black-haired young man, although the term of the contract had expired long ago, and the clients themselves had disappeared without a trace. It was sloppy to leave a job unfinished. But, on the other hand, it would be unprofessional to give way to his emotions. Mr. Fandorin could continue on his way. After all, even six years ago Achimas hadn’t had anything personal against him.

But when the young functionary brought up a highly dangerous subject — the Chateau d’Yquem — Achimas was ready to reverse his decision: Mr. Fandorin couldn’t be allowed to leave this place alive. And then Wanda surprised him by not saying a single word about the merchant from Ryazan and how incredibly well-informed he had been concerning the habits of the deceased hero. She led the conversation off in a completely different direction. What could that mean?

Shortly after that the young man took his leave.

Wanda sat at the table with her face in her hands. Nothing could be easier than to kill her now, but Achimas still hesitated.

Why kill her? She had withstood questioning without giving anything away. If the authorities had shown themselves perceptive enough to see through the officers’ primitive conspiracy and find Mademoiselle Wanda, it would be better not to touch her for the time being. The sudden suicide of a witness would appear suspicious.

Achimas shook his head angrily. He must not deceive himself; it was a violation of his code. These reasons were merely excuses for letting her live. At this precise moment the suicide of a chance witness to a national tragedy would seem perfectly understandable: remorse, a nervous breakdown, fear of possible consequences. He had wasted enough time. It was time to get the job done.

There was another ring at the door.

Wanda was in great demand this evening.

Once again the visitor proved to be a familiar face. Not an old acquaintance like Fandorin, but a recent one — the German agent Hans-Georg Knabe.

The spy’s very first words put Achimas on his guard.

“You serve me badly, Fraulein Tolle.”

A fine turn of events this was! Achimas could hardly believe his ears. What ‘substance’ was this? Wanda had been instructed to poison Sobolev? God preserved Germany? It was raving lunacy! Or perhaps some incredible series of coincidences that he could exploit to his own advantage?

As soon as the door closed behind the German, Achimas emerged from his hiding place. When Wanda came back into the room, she didn’t notice at first that there was someone standing in the corner, and when she did she clutched at her heart and uttered a thin shriek.

“Are you a German agent?” Achimas asked curiously, ready to put his hand over her mouth if she tried to make any noise. “Have you been making a fool of me?”

“Kolya…,” she blurted out, raising her hand to her mouth. “Were you listening? Who are you? Who?”

He shook his head impatiently, as though shaking off a bothersome fly.

“Where is the substance?”

“How did you get in here? What for?” Wanda muttered, as if she hadn’t heard his questions.

Achimas took her by the shoulders and sat her down. She gazed at him through wide, black pupils. He could see two miniature reflections of the lamp shade in them.

“This is a strange conversation we are having, mademoiselle,” he said, sitting down facing her. “All questions and no answers. Someone has to begin and it might as well be me. You have asked me three questions: Who am I, how did I get in here, and what for. Here are my answers. I am Nikolai Nikolaevich Klonov. I got in here through the door. And as for why — I think you already know that. I engaged your services to provide a pleasurable surprise for our famous compatriot, Mikhail Dmitrievich Sobolev, and not only did he receive very little pleasure, he lost his life. Surely I am obliged to make inquiries? It would be irresponsible not to, a violation of the merchant’s code. What shall I report to the association? After all, money has been spent.”