Boris Akunin - Turkish Gambit

A dashing Cossack sergeant approached the general and jabbed with his finger, pointing to something. 'Look, Your Excellency, I think it's Semyonov!'

Varya turned to look and suddenly felt sick: the bandit's bay on which she had made her recent inauspicious gallop had reappeared beside the bush. The horse was nibbling on the grass as if nothing had happened, with the loathsome trophy still suspended, swaying, on its flank.

Sobolev jumped down and walked over to the horse with his eyes screwed up sceptically and turned the nightmarish sphere this way and that. 'That's not Semyonov, surely?' he said doubtfully. 'You're talking nonsense, Nechitailo. Semyonov's face is quite different.'

'It certainly is Semyonov, Mikhal Dmitrich,' the sergeant said heatedly. 'See, there's his torn ear, and look here' - he parted the dead head's purple lips - 'the front tooth's missing as well. It's Semyonov all right!'

'I suppose so,' said the general, nodding thoughtfully. 'He must have had a pretty rough time of it. Varvara Andreevna,' he said, turning to Varya to explain, 'this is a Cossack from the Second Cavalry Squadron who was abducted by Daud-bek's Meskhetians this morning’

But Varya was no longer listening: the earth and the sky somersaulted, exchanging places, and Paladin and Fandorin were only just in time to catch the suddenly limp young lady as she fell.

'Well then, how am I to address you, as "madame" or "mademoiselle"?' asked the beetle-black lieutenant-colonel of gendarmes, twisting his lips revoltingly. 'This is not a ballroom, but army headquarters, and I am not paying you compliments, but conducting an interrogation, so I would be obliged if you would stop beating about the bush!'

The lieutenant-colonel was called Ivan Kharitonovich Kazanzaki, and since he was resolutely determined not to see Varya's side of things, the most likely outcome in prospect for her was clearly compulsory deportation to Russia.

When they had finally reached Tsarevitsy the day before, it was almost night. Fandorin had immediately set out for the headquarters staff building and Varya, by this time so tired that she could barely stand, had set about doing what had to be done. The charitable nurses from Baroness Vreiskaya's medical unit had given her some clothes and heated some water for her and, after she had tidied herself up, Varya had collapsed on to a field hospital bed - fortunately the wards were almost completely empty of wounded. Her meeting with Petya had been postponed until the following day, for she would require full command of all her faculties during the important discussion that lay ahead.

In the morning, however, Varya had not been allowed to catch up on her sleep. Two gendarmes wearing hard helmets and carrying carbines had turned up and escorted 'the individual styling herself Miss Suvorova' directly to the special unit of the Western Division, without even allowing her to arrange her hair properly.

And now she had been attempting for hours to explain to this clean-shaven, bushy-browed monster in the blue uniform the precise nature of the

4i relationship that bound her to the cryptographer Pyotr Yablokov.

'Why on earth don't you call Pyotr Afanasievich and he will confirm everything himself,' Varya kept repeating, but the lieutenant-colonel's reply was always the same: 'All in good time.'

Kazanzaki was particularly interested in the details of her encounter with 'the individual styling himself Titular Counsellor Fandorin'. The lieutenant-colonel noted down all about Yusuf-pasha and Vidin, and the coffee with French conversation, and freedom won in a game of backgammon,- but his professional curiosity was galvanised most powerfully by the discovery that the volunteer had spoken to the Bashi-Bazouks in Turkish, and he demanded to know exactly how he had spoken - with a stammer or without. Simply clarifying all that nonsense about the stammer must have taken at least half an hour.

And then, when Varya was already on the verge of dry, tearless hysterics, the door of the mud-walled peasant hut that housed the special section had suddenly swung open and in had walked, or rather run, an extremely important-looking general with imperiously bulging eyes and luxuriant whiskers.

'Adjutant-General Mizinov,' he bellowed from the doorway and glanced sternly at the lieutenant-colonel. 'Kazanzaki?'

Taken by surprise, the gendarme stood sharply to attention and began twitching his lips, while Varya stared wide-eyed at the oriental despot and butcher for whom the progressive youth of Russia took the head of the Third Section and Chief of Gendarmes, Lavrenty Arkadievich Mizinov.

'Yes, sir, Your Excellency!' Varya's tormentor wheezed hoarsely. 'Lieutenant-Colonel of the Gendarmes Corps Kazanzaki. Previously serving in the Kishinev office, now appointed to head the special section, Western Division Headquarters. Conducting the interrogation of a prisoner.'

'Who is she?' asked the general, raising an eyebrow and giving Varya a disapproving glance.

'Varvara Suvorova. Claims to have travelled here in a private capacity in order to meet her fiance, operations section cryptographer Yablokov.'

'Suvorova?' Mizinov mused, intrigued. 'Could we perhaps be related? My great-grandfather on my mother's side was Alexander Vasilievich Suvorov-Rymniksky.'

'I very much hope not,' Varya snapped.

The satrap gave a wry smile and paid no more attention to the prisoner.

'Now then, Kazanzaki, don't you go trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Where's Fandorin? It says in the report that you have him.'

'Yes, sir; he is being held in custody,' the lieutenant-colonel reported smartly and added, lowering his voice, 'I have reason to believe that he is our keenly anticipated visitor, Anwar-effendi. Everything fits perfectly, Your Excellency. That story about Osman-pasha and Plevna is blatant misinformation. But how skilfully he spun the . . .'

'Blockhead!' roared Mizinov, so fiercely that the lieutenant-colonel cringed and pulled his head down into his shoulders. 'Bring him here immediately! And look lively about it!'

Kazanzaki dashed headlong out of the room and

Varya shrank back into her chair, but the agitated general had forgotten all about her. He carried on wheezing loudly and drumming his fingers nervously on the table, only stopping when the lieutenant-colonel returned with Fandorin.

The volunteer looked haggard and exhausted and dark circles had appeared under his eyes: he had obviously not slept the night before.