A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ as well, the mortuary report raised some questions. I thought that perhaps further investigation was needed. Blue Shirt was there, that night, after all. And someone is attempting to call it a suicide when it wasn’t –’

      ‘Certainly, Pyotr Mikhalovich. Absolutely. You have my complete trust. Circumspect. Diligent…’ Zezulin had forgotten about the desk drawers and their contents. He was staring out through one of the little attic windows that overlooked the canal.

      ‘Thank you then, sir. I’ll start on the paperwork.’ Zezulin continued his vigil. Ryzhkov might as well have been invisible. ‘Well, then. Will there be anything else, sir?’

      ‘Well, there’s always something else, isn’t there!’ Zezulin laughed at his own joke. ‘So! Well, good to have you back, Inspector. And keep me up to date on that…on your…project. Sounds suspicious to me. Don’t like it.’

      ‘Yes, sir. Nor do I.’

      ‘Good, good…whatever you need.’ Zezulin gave him a kind of salute, a spinning motion with his hand, a cross between a wave goodbye and a Moorish salaam.

      ‘Very good, sir.’

      

      At the end of that same night Ryzhkov, Dudenko and Hokhodiev treated themselves to a visit to the Egorov baths. At five in the morning they almost had the place to themselves. They passed a bottle of vodka back and forth and talked. Ryzhkov told Hokhodiev about what he had been doing: the Lvova reports, what Bondarenko had said and the odd way he had said it. Hokhodiev just listened and nodded. When it was all over he spat into the drain and sat there for a long moment. ‘Big people,’ he said and shook his head. ‘Real aristocrats.’

      ‘It’s an expensive place, that whorehouse,’ Ryzhkov said.

      ‘So, you don’t know what to do now? That’s not like you. What do you care anyway?’

      Ryzhkov looked at his friend for a moment, shrugged. It was a good question. ‘I don’t know. Someone killed her, Kostya. Someone is lying about it, now someone is going to get away with it…with doing something like that.’ He shrugged again. What did he care? It was hard to put into words.

      ‘Fine, fine. You have a sense of justice, I know, even if she was a whore. It’s touching and it’s why you have so many friends in the police force, but do you really think there’s the slightest chance of getting to the bottom of it? These big shots, they have resources, brother…’ Hokhodiev wagged a finger and even tried to laugh, but it didn’t sound happy.

      ‘Well, I guess I’ll try to see if there are any witnesses, talk to the madam – but I thought I should tell you about it at least.’

      ‘Look, I don’t give a damn if you have to slip it through the cracks, I’ll help you, brother, and he will too, won’t you –’ Kostya turned to elbow Dudenko, but stopped. ‘Look at that,’ he said. Dudenko lay sleeping on the narrow bench across from them, wrapped up in a sheet, his hands pressed down between his knees, snoring. ‘A babe in the woods, a sheep waiting for the wolves…’

      ‘…teacup in an earthquake…’

      ‘…virgin in the barracks…God have mercy.’ The big man turned and laughed quietly. ‘And, of course, Dima’s the only one who’ll get out of this, you know that, don’t you? He’s young, intelligent, he has savoir faire…he has a future,’ Hokhodiev said and raised the bottle to his lips. The vodka was warm and almost gone.

      ‘Oh, yes…Smart, educated.’

      ‘Oh, the boy’s a genius. A fucking genius, with his little earphones and things that he can screw into your telephone set. Without ones like him they’d be shitting Bolshevik bombs in Peterhof, but does he get any credit, will it do him any good?’ He looked up at Ryzhkov and winked.

      ‘I doubt it.’

      ‘Nothing. There’s no loyalty any more. The three of us here in this room are loyal, the only loyal ones left. Protect the Tsar, protect the Tsarina, protect the grand dukes, the grand duchesses…on and on…’ Hokhodiev closed his eyes for a few moments as if he were falling asleep, then his lids flickered. ‘No one ever asks the question, if these people are so fucking holy why do they need so much protection in the first place, eh?’

      ‘There’s always someone trying to get to the top,’ Ryzhkov muttered.

      ‘Blue Shirt…’ Hokhodiev said, coming out of his dream, then looked over at Ryzhkov as if he were surprised to be awake.

      ‘Yes, I know, I know,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘We have to protect him, too.’

      ‘And all of it is just to keep the rich ones getting richer and the powerful ones getting more powerful. But Russia…poor Russia, she’s just a fucking house of cards and she’s just going to cave in on herself. It’s all sick, a goddamned pestilence.’

      ‘It’s Rasputin.’

      ‘All of them, they’re all sick. Rotten. Like a fish rots, from the head down. Dima…’ Hokhodiev looked over at Dudenko and started laughing quietly. ‘Poor fellow, to be coming along in a world like this.’

      ‘He should do well, he seems to know a lot about the telephone system –’ Ryzhkov had started laughing, too.

      They talked about women. Ryzhkov’s bad luck, about Filippa and her mother, how the disease of irrational femininity seemed to somehow get passed along from mother to daughter.

      After a few moments of silence Hokhodiev leaned forward, elbows propped on thick knees, one hand stroking the wispy hair on the crown of his head, and told Ryzhkov that his wife was dying. His voice sounded thick. They had drunk too much. Far, far too much. ‘…and you know, Pyotr, it’s not a moment too soon, if you ask me.’

      ‘Is she in pain?’ Ryzhkov finally said, his words coming slowly, one at a time; is – she – in – pain.

      ‘Pain…’ Hokhodiev said, thinking it over. ‘Well, who isn’t?’

      ‘I mean…’

      ‘In the mornings, yes. Pain.’

      ‘Mmm.’ Ryzhkov closed his eyes.

      ‘Listen, Pyotr. You’re not like me. You’re different, you’re smart. You still have, you still have…’

      ‘Be quiet.’

      ‘You look around us? You see these bastards, these fucking cabinet ministers and their grandiose…fiefdoms? It doesn’t matter about the Tsar. We have no Tsar. It’s not Nicholas, it’s fucking Alexandra that’s running everything.’

      ‘Kostya, Kostya –’

      ‘And you see that poor little boy in his uniform…and they get Blue Shirt to pray for him and think that’s going to make the difference? Where are the damn patriots, that’s what I mean.’

      ‘They’re all patriots, just ask them.’

      ‘Oh, I know…patriots are the worst, it’s so cheap. The patriots and the fucking Church. You poke around the Narva district for a while. Are there any blessings, any blessings at all?’ СКАЧАТЬ