Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

Fandorin was still examining the note. He walked across to the window, lifted the sheet of paper higher, and Vedishchev saw the scrawling, uneven lines of writing.

'Yes, it's such terrible scribble you can hardly even read it,' the millionaire said in his deep voice, looking round for somewhere to put the cigar he had finished smoking. As if it was written in a carriage or with a serious hangover.'

He didn't find anywhere. He almost threw it to the floor, but decided not to; he cast a guilty glance at the Collegiate Counsellor's back, wrapped the stub in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket. That's right.

'You can go, Burylin,' Erast Petrovich said without turning round. 'Until tomorrow you will remain under guard.'

The millionaire was highly incensed at that news. 'I've had enough; I've already spent one night feeding your police bedbugs! They're vicious beasts, and hungry. The way they threw themselves on an Orthodox believer's body!'

Fandorin wasn't listening. He pressed the bell button. The gendarme officer came in and dragged the rich man towards the door.

'But what about Zakharka?' Burylin shouted. 'He'll be calling for the money!'

'That's no concern of yours,' said Erast Petrovich, and he asked the officer: 'Has the reply to my inquiry arrived from the ministry?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Let me have it.'

The gendarme brought in some kind of telegram and went back out into the corridor.

The telegram produced a remarkable effect on Fandorin. He read it, threw it on to the desk and then suddenly did something very strange. He clapped his hands very quickly several times, and so loudly that Vedishchev banged his head against the glass in his surprise, and the gendarme, the adjutant and the secretary stuck their heads in at the door all at once.

'It's all right, gentlemen,' Fandorin reassured them. 'It's a Japanese exercise for focusing one's thoughts. Please go.'

And then even more wonders followed.

When the door closed behind his subordinates, Erast Petrovich suddenly started to get undressed. When he was left in just his underclothes, he took a travelling bag that Vedishchev hadn't noticed before out from under the desk and took a bundle out of the bag. The bundle contained clothes: tight striped trousers with footstraps, a cheap paper shirt-front, a crimson waistcoat and yellow check jacket.

The highly respectable Collegiate Counsellor was transformed into a pushy jerk, the kind that hover around the street girls in the evenings. He stood in front of the mirror, exactly a yard in front of Frol Vedishchev, combed his black hair into a straight parting, plastered it with brilliantine and coloured the grey at his temples. He twisted the ends of his slim moustache upwards and shaped them into two sharp points. (Bohemian wax, Frol Vedishchev guessed - he secured Prince Dolgorukoi's sideburns in exactly the same way, so that they stuck out like eagles' wings.)

Then Fandorin put something into his mouth and grinned, and a gold cap glinted on one tooth. He carried on pulling faces for a while and seemed perfectly content with his appearance.

The Yuletide masker took a small wallet out of the bag, opened it, and Vedishchev saw that it was no ordinary wallet: inside it he could see a small-calibre burnished steel gun barrel and a little drum like the one on a revolver. Fandorin put five shells into the drum, clicked the lid shut and tested the resistance of the lock with his finger - no doubt the lock played the role of a trigger. What will they think of next for killing a man? the valet thought, with a shake of his head. And where are you going dressed like a cheap dandy, Erast Petrovich?

As if he had heard the question, Fandorin turned towards the mirror and put on a beaver-fur cap, tilted at a dashing angle, winked familiarly and said in a low voice: 'Frol Grigorievich, light a candle for me at vespers. I won t get by without God's help today'

Ineska was suffering very badly, in body and in spirit - in body, because last night Slepen, her former ponce, had waited for the poor girl outside the City of Paris tavern and given her a thorough beating for betraying him. At least the creep hadn't rearranged her face. But her stomach and sides were battered black and blue - she couldn't even turn over at night; she just lay there shifting about until morning, gasping and feeling sorry for herself. The bruises weren't the worst thing - they'd heal up soon enough, but poor Ineska's little heart was aching so badly she could hardly stand it.

Her boyfriend had disappeared, her fairy-tale prince, the handsome Erastushka; he hadn't shown his sweet face for two days now. And Slepen was as brutal as ever and always making threats. Yesterday she'd had to give her old pimp almost everything she earned, and that was no good; decent girls who stayed faithful didn't do that.

Erastushka had gone missing; that lop-eared short-arse must have handed him over to the police and her pretty dove was sitting in the lock-up in the first Arbat station, the toughest in the whole of Moscow. If only she could send her darling a present, but that Sergeant Kulebyako there was a wild beast. He'd put her inside again, the same as last year, threaten to take away her yellow ticket, and then she'd end up servicing the whole police district for free, down to the last snot-nosed constable. It still made her sick to remember it, even now. Ineska would gladly have accepted that kind of humiliation if she could just help her sweetheart, but after all, Erastushka wasn't just any boyfriend: he had brains, he was nice and clean, choosy; he wouldn't want to touch Ineska after that. Not that their passion had actually come to anything yet, so to speak; love was only just beginning, but from the very first glance Ineska had taken such a fancy to his lovely blue eyes and white teeth, she'd really fallen for him; terrible it was, worse than with that hairdresser Zhorzhik when she was sixteen, rot his pretty face, the lousy snake - if he hadn't drunk himself to death by now, of course.

Ah, if only he'd show up soon, her sweet honey-bunch. He'd put that vicious bastard Slepen in his place and he'd be sweet and gentle with Ineska, pamper her a bit. She'd found out what he'd told her to, and hidden some money in her garter too -three and a half roubles in silver. He'd be pleased; she had something to greet him and treat him with.

Erastik. It was such a sweet name, like apple jam. Her darling's real name was probably something simpler, but then Ineska hadn't been a Spanish girl all her life either; she'd been born into God's world as Efrosinya, plain simple Froska in the family.

Inessa and Erast - that had a real ring to it, like music it was. If only she could stroll arm-in-arm with him through Grachyovka, so that Sanka Myasnaya, Liudka Kalancha and especially that Adelaidka could see what a fine fancy-man Ineska had, and turn green with envy.

After that, they'd come to her apertiment. It might be small, but it was clean, and stylish too: pictures from fashion magazines stuck on the walls, a velvet lampshade, and a big, tall mirror; the softest down mattress ever, and lots of pillows, a whole seven of them - Ineska had sewn all the pillowcases herself

Then, just as she was thinking her very sweetest thoughts, her cherished dream came true. First there was a tactful knock at the door - tap-tap-tap - and then Erastushka came in, in his beaver-fur cap and white muffler, with his wool-cloth coat with the beaver collar, hanging open. You'd never think he was from the Kutuzka jail.

Ineska's little heart just stood still. She leapt up off the bed just as she was, in her cotton nightshirt, with her hair hanging loose, and threw herself on her sweetheart's neck. She only managed to kiss his lips once; then he took hold of her by the shoulders and sat her down at the table. He looked at her sternly.