Boris Akunin - Turkish Gambit

'Aa-choo!' Varya sneezed and then shrank back down into her chair again in fright.

The general was even more frightened than she was. He started, swung round and stared dumbfounded at the involuntary witness of his confidential conversation.

'Madam, what are you doing here? Why did you not leave the room with the lieutenant-colonel? How dare you?'

'You ought to have looked,' Varya replied with dignity. 'I'm not some mosquito or fly that you can just choose to ignore. I happen to be under arrest, and no one has given me leave to go yet.'

She thought she saw Fandorin's lips twitch ever so slightly. But no, she had imagined it - this specimen did not even know how to smile.

'Very well then, all right.' Mizinov's tone of voice held a quiet threat. 'You, my dear non-relative, have learned things which you absolutely ought not to know. In the interests of state security I am placing you under temporary administrative arrest. You will be taken under escort to the Kishinev garrison quarantine station and detained there under guard until the end of the campaign. And you have only yourself to blame.'

Varya turned pale. 'But I haven't even seen my fiance . . .'

'You'll see each other after the war,' snapped Lavrenty Mizinov, turning towards the door to summon his ophchniks; but then Erast Fandorin intervened.

'Lavrenty Arkadievich, I think it would be quite sufficient to ask Miss Suvorova to give her word of honour.'

‘I give my word of honour!' Varya cried, encouraged by this unexpected intercession on her behalf.

'I'm sorry, dear chap, we can't take the risk,' the general snapped without even looking at her. Then there's this fiance of hers. And how can we trust a girl? You know what they say: "The longer the braid, the dafter the maid."'

‘I don't have any braid! And that is a base insult to my intelligence!' Varya's voice trembled, threatening to break. 'What do I want with all your Anwars and Midhats anyway?'

'On my responsibility, Your Excellency. I vouch for Varvara Andreevna.'

Mizinov said nothing, frowning in annoyance, and Varya realised that even among secret police agents there were clearly some people who were not entirely beyond salvation. After all, he was a Serbian volunteer.

'It's stupid,' growled the general. He turned towards

Varya and asked gruffly: 'Do you know how to do anything? Is your handwriting good?'

'I qualified as a stenographer! I worked as a telegrapher! And a midwife!' said Varya, stretching the truth just a little.

'A stenographer and a telegrapher?' said Mizinov, surprised. 'All the better, then. Erast Petrovich, I will allow this woman to remain here on one single condition: she will fulfil the duties of your secretary. You will in any case require some kind of courier or messenger who will not arouse unnecessary suspicion. Only bear in mind that you have vouched for her.'

'Oh no!' Varya and Fandorin exclaimed in a single voice. Then they continued speaking together, but in different words.

Erast Petrovich said: 'I have no need of a secretary.'

Varya said: 'I will not serve in the Okhranka.'

'As you wish,' said the general, rising to his feet with a shrug. 'Novgorodtsev, the escort!'

'I agree!' shouted Varya.

Fandorin said nothing.

They halted by the porch. Some kind of understanding had to be reached.

Fandorin coughed to clear his throat and began: 'Varvara Andreevna, I very much regret that things have turned out like this. Naturally, you are entirely at liberty and I shall not oblige you to work for me in any way.'

'Thank you,' she replied coldly. 'That is very noble of you. I must confess that for a moment I thought you had arranged all this deliberately. You could see that I was there perfectly well, and you must have anticipated how everything would turn out. Well, do you really need a secretary so badly?'

Once again Erast Fandorin's eyes glinted briefly in a way that she might have taken for a sign of merriment in any normal man.

'You are most perceptive. But unjust. I was indeed guided by an ulterior motive, but I was acting entirely in your own interests. Lavrenty Arkadievich would quite certainly have banished you as far away as possible from the active forces. And Mr Kazanzaki would have set a gendarme to guard you. But now you have a p-perfectly legitimate basis for remaining here.'

Varya could hardly raise any objection to that, but she did not wish to thank this contemptible spy. 'I see you are a truly subtle practitioner of your despised profession’ she said acidly. 'You even managed to outwit the head ogre.'

'By "ogre" you mean Lavrenty Arkadievich?' Fandorin asked in surprise. 'He hardly fits the p-part, I think. And then, what is so d-despicable about defending the interests of the state?'

What point was there in talking to someone like that? Varya demonstratively turned away and ran her eyes over the camp: little white-walled houses, neat rows of tents, brand-new telegraph posts. She saw a soldier running along the street, waving his long, awkward arms in a very familiar-looking fashion.

'Varya, Varenka!' the soldier called out from a distance, tugging his long-peaked cap off his head and waving it in the air. 'So you really did come!'

'Petya!' she gasped and, instantly forgetting Fandorin, she dashed towards the man for whose sake she had made the long journey of one and a half thousand vyersts.

They embraced and kissed, entirely naturally, with no awkwardness, in a way they never had before. It was a joy to see Petya's dear, plain face so radiant with happiness. He had lost weight and acquired a tan and he stooped more than he used to. The black uniform jacket with the red shoulder straps hung on him like a loose sack, but his smile was the same as ever, wide and beaming in adoration.

'So you accept, then?' he asked.

'Yes,' Varya replied simply, even though she had been planning not to accept his proposal immediately, but only after a long and serious discussion, only after she had laid down certain conditions of principle.

Petya gave a childish squeal of joy and tried to hug her again, but Varya had already come to her senses. 'But we still have to discuss everything in detail. In the first place . . .'

'Of course we'll discuss everything, of course we will. Only not now, this evening. Why don't we meet in the journalists' tent? They have a kind of club there. You've met the Frenchman, haven't you? I mean Paladin. A splendid fellow. He's the one who told me you had arrived. I'm terribly busy right now; I just dashed away for a moment. If they notice, I'll really be for it. Till this evening, this evening!'

He ran off back the way he had come, kicking up the dust with his heavy boots and glancing back at every second.

However, they were not able to meet that evening. An orderly brought a note from the staff building: 'On duty all night. Tomorrow. Love, P.'

There was nothing to be done - he was in the army now - so Varya began settling in. The nurses had taken her in to live with them. They were wonderful, caring women, but they were quite elderly - all about thirty-five - and rather dull. They collected together everything necessary to replace the baggage appropriated by the enterprising Mitko - clothes, shoes, a bottle of eau de cologne (instead of her wonderful Parisian perfume!), stockings, underwear, a comb, hairpins, scented soap, powder, salve to protect against the sun, cold cream, emollient lotion to counteract the effect of wind, essence of camomile for washing her hair and other essential items. Of course, the dresses were quite awful, with the possible exception of only one, which was light blue with a little white-lace collar. Varya removed the old-fashioned cuffs and it actually turned out rather nice.