Boris Akunin - The State Counsellor

He unlocked the familiar door, stepped inside and turned the lever of the gas bracket. The room was flooded with gently flickering light.

'Well, mademoiselle, why don't you turn round?' Gleb Georgievich asked derisively, addressing an individual whom Fandorin, still in the corridor, could not see.

'What!' the prince suddenly roared. 'Korzhikov, you dolt, I'll see you in court for this!'

He darted into the room and from the doorway the State Counsellor saw a slim female figure standing motionless, facing the window. The woman's head was inclined melancholically to one side, and the figure only appeared motionless at first glance. A second glance revealed that it was swaying slightly from side to side, and the feet were not quite touching the floor.

'Esfir...' Erast Petrovich whispered, overcome. 'Oh God ...'

The prince took a knife out of his pocket, slashed the rope, and the body slumped to the floor, flapping its arms with the inanimate grace of a rag doll and banging its forehead against the parquet floor before becoming truly motionless.

Ah, damn.' Pozharsky squatted down and clicked his tongue in annoyance. 'She had outlived her usefulness, but even so it's a pity. She was a quite remarkable character. And I wanted to give you a little treat ... Well, now's there's nothing to be done, you'll see this beauty already withered and faded.'

He took the dead woman by the shoulders and turned her on to her back.

Erast Petrovich involuntarily squeezed his eyes shut, but then, ashamed of his own weakness, he forced himself to open them.

The sudden shock of what he saw made him squeeze them shut again. And then he began fluttering his eyelashes in consternation.

Fandorin had never seen the woman lying on the floor before -once seen, a face like that could never be forgotten. One half of it was perfectly normal and even rather pretty in a way, but the features of the other half were flattened and squashed, so that the slit of the eye was set almost vertically, and the cheek bone overlapped the ear.

Pozharsky laughed, very pleased with the effect produced.

'Lovely, isn't she, the she-devil? A birth trauma. The obstetrician grabbed her clumsily with the forceps. Now do you understand Mademoiselle Diana's reason for behaving the way she did? What else could she feel for the men who recoiled from her in horror in the light of day? What else but hate? That's why she liked to live in this enchanted castle, this realm of gloom and silence. Here she was not an unfortunate freak, but the most radiant beauty that any man's imagination could possibly conjure up. Brrrr!' Gleb Georgievich shuddered as he looked at that terrible mask and complained. 'It's all very well for you, but when I think that I spent half of yesterday gratifying a monster like that, it gives me the shivers.'

Erast Petrovich stood there in state of total emotional numbness, still stunned by the shock, but he already knew that the first emotion he would feel as soon as his heart recovered slightly would be acute shame.

'But then, it's quite possible that in hell, where the newly departed has undoubtedly gone, it is precisely her kind that are regarded as the foremost beauties,' the prince remarked philosophically. Anyway, our plan remains in force, Erast Petrovich. Don't forget: the snowdrift is on the right.'

Pozharsky was late.

Six minutes past nine. Green put his watch back in the pocket of his greatcoat. His Colt was in there too, and his fingers folded firmly round the comfortably fluted butt.

The revolution wasn't in such a bad way after all, if the top brass of the criminal investigation authorities were obliged to meet like conspirators, in secret from their own subordinates. The enemy's camp had been plunged into alarm and uncertainty; everyone there was afraid of his own shadow; they didn't trust anyone. And they were right not to.

Or did they have their suspicions about TG?

It was all very simple. No cause could ever triumph if its supporters were more concerned for their own well-being than anything else. That was why the victory of the revolution was inevitable.

Only you won't live to see it, Green reminded himself, in order to drive that azure blue back deep inside, the azure that had been struggling so hard to rise to the surface after what had happened yesterday. You are a match, and. you've already been burning for longer than usual. And you yourself excluded the joys of life from your own existence.

State Counsellor Fandorin was sitting on the next bench, tapping one glove on his knee in his boredom, gazing at the jackdaws hopping about in the branches of an old oak tree.

This handsome, foppishly dressed man was about to die. And it would be impossible ever to find out what he had been thinking about during the final minutes of his life.

Green shuddered at this unexpected thought. When you're training your sights on the enemy, you mustn't think about his mother and his children, he thought, reminding himself of what he had told Bullfinch many times. Once a man had put on the enemy's uniform, he was no longer a civilian, but a soldier.

The greatcoat that Green was wearing was thick, made of good cloth. Nobel had brought it from home - his father was a retired general. Needle had glued on Green's grey moustache and sideburns - an excellent disguise.

There was Bullfinch walking along the path of the park, dressed as a grammar-school boy. He was supposed to have checked the street to make sure everything was clear. As he walked past, he nodded lightly and then sat down on the bench beside Fandorin. He scooped up some fresh snow and crammed it into his mouth. He was nervous.

Nobel and Schwartz were scraping down the avenue with spades. Emelya was standing on the other side of the railings, pretending to be a police constable. Marat and Beaver, dressed in artisans' kaftans and felt boots, were playing at stick-knife right beside the entrance to the park. Pozharsky and Fandorin had chosen an excellent time for their talk: no strollers, not even any chance passers-by.

'You can go whistle for your three kopecks! That for your money,' Marat shouted, cocking a snook and jumping to one side. And he set off along the avenue, whistling, casually sticking his hands in his pockets as he went.

That was the signal; it meant Pozharsky had shown up.

Beaver went rushing at Marat: 'What d'you think you're playing at?' he shouted (Beaver was a fine, calm young lad, an ex-student). 'Come on, pay up!' And behind him the long-awaited deputy director of police appeared. Wearing a Guards greatcoat, a white royal-retinue cap, with a sabre. A fine conspirator.

Pozharsky stopped at the entrance to the square, planted his bright, gleaming boots in a wide stance, grasped his sword belt in picturesque fashion and shouted: 'Nihilist gentlemen! You are completely surrounded! I recommend you to surrender!' And that very second he ducked nimbly behind the fence and disappeared behind the snow-covered bushes.

Green glanced round at Fandorin, but the State Counsellor, suddenly roused from his reverie, also displayed remarkable agility. He grabbed Bullfinch by the collar and pulled him close, and then for some strange reason plunged into the tall snowdrift on the right of his bench.

Suddenly there was a tremendous rumbling and crashing from all sides, as if someone were ripping the very world in half.

Green saw Marat throw up his hands and jerk violently, as if he had been struck hard in the back. He saw Beaver firing from under his elbow, aiming somewhere upwards and off to one side.

He grabbed the Colt out of his pocket and went dashing to help Bullfinch. A bullet knocked his hat off his head and grazed his temple. Green swayed, lost his balance and collapsed into the snowdrift on the left of the next bench.