Sobolev took a gold watch out of his pocket and the lid rang as he flicked it open.
'Half past five. In two hours or two and a half it will start to get light. Hey there, Gukmasov!'
'Yes, Your Excellency,' said the handsome cornet as he dashed into the office.
'Assemble the companies! Fall in the battalion in marching order! Banners and drums to the fore! Let's march in style! Saddle up Gulnora! Look lively! We depart at six hundred hours!' The orderly dashed out.
Sobolev stretched sweetly and said: 'Well now, Varvara Andreevna, I shall either be a greater hero than Bonaparte, or finally lose my foolish head at last.'
'You won't lose it,' she replied, gazing at the general in sincere admiration - he looked so wonderfully fine just at the moment: the Russian Achilles.
'Touch wood,' said Sobolev superstitiously, reaching for the table.
'It's not too late to change your mind!' Perepyolkin piped up. 'With your permission, Mikhail Dmitrievich, I can call Gukmasov back!'
He took a step towards the door, but just at that very moment . . .
At that moment there was a loud clattering of numerous pairs of boots on the staircase, the door swung open and two men entered the room: Lavrenty Arkadievich Mizinov and Fandorin.
'Erast Petrovich!' Varya squealed and almost flung herself on his neck, but she stopped herself just in time.
Mizinov rumbled: 'Aha, here he is! Excellent!'
'Your Excellency!' Sobelev said with a frown, spotting the gendarmes in blue uniforms behind the first two men. 'Why are you here? Of course, I am guilty of acting on my own initiative, but arresting me is really going rather too far.'
'Arrest you?' Mizinov was amazed. 'What on earth for? We barely managed to get through to you on handcars with half a company of gendarmes. The telegraph isn't working and the railway line has been cut.
We came under fire three times and lost seven men. I've got a bullet hole here in my greatcoat.' He showed Sobolev his sleeve.
Erast Petrovich stepped forward. He hadn't changed at all while he had been away, but he looked a real dandy in his civilian clothes: a top hat, a cloak with a pelerine, a starched collar.
'Hello, Varvara Andreevna,' the titular counsellor said cordially. 'How well your hair has grown. I think perhaps it is better like that.'
He bowed briefly to Sobolev.
'My congratulations on the diamond-studded sword, Your Excellency. That is a great honour.'
He nodded quickly to Perepyolkin and finally turned towards the French correspondent.
'Salaam aleichem, Anwar-effendi.'
Chapter Thirteen
IN WHICH FANDORIN MAKES A LONG SPEECH
Die Wiener Zeitung
(Vienna) 21 (9) January 1878
. . . the balance of power between the combatants in the final stage of the war is such that we can no longer disregard the danger of pan-Slavic expansion, which threatens the southern borders of the dual monarchy. Tsar Alexander and his satellites of Roumania, Serbia and Montenegro have amassed a concentrated force of 700 thousand men, equipped with one and a half thousand cannon. Against whom is it directed? One might well ask. Against a demoralised Turkish army, which even according to the most optimistic estimates can at present number no more than 120 thousand hungry, frightened soldiers?
This is no joke, gentlemen. One would have to be an ostrich with one's head buried in the sand not to see the danger hanging over the whole of enlightened Europe. To procrastinate is to perish. If we simply sit back and do nothing, watching the Scythian hordes . . .
Fandorin threw his cloak back off his shoulder and the burnished steel of a small, handsome revolver glinted dully in his right hand. The very same instant Mizinov clicked his fingers and two gendarmes entered the room and trained their carbines on the correspondent.
'What sort of tomfoolery is this?' barked Sobolev.
'What's all this '''salaam-aleichem" and "effendi" nonsense?'
Varya glanced round at Charles. He was standing by the wall with his arms crossed on his chest, watching the titular counsellor with a wary, sarcastic smile.
'Erast Petrovich!' Varya babbled. 'Surely you went to get McLaughlin!'
'Varvara Andreevna, I went to England, but not for McLaughlin. It was quite c-clear to me that he was not and could not be there.'
'But you did not say a word when His Majesty . . .' Varya bit her tongue before she could blurt out a state secret.
'My arguments would have been m-mere speculation. And I had to go to Europe in any case.'
'And what did you discover there?'
'As was to be expected, the machinations of the British cabinet have nothing to do with the case. That is one. Yes, they do not like us in London. Yes, they are preparing for a great war. But murdering messengers and organising sabotage - that would not do at all. It would contradict the British sense of fair play. And Count Shuvalov told me the same thing.
'I visited the offices of the Daily Post and was convinced of McLaughlin's absolute innocence. That is t-two. His friends and colleagues describe Seamus as a straightforward and forthright man who is hostile to British policy and who may, indeed, have connections with the Irish nationalist movement. There is absolutely no way he could be represented as an agent of the perfidious Disraeli.
'On the return journey, since it lay on my route, I stopped off in Paris, where I was delayed for some time. I called into the offices of the Revue Parisienne . . .'
Paladin made a slight movement and the gendarmes raised their carbines to their shoulders, ready to shoot. The journalist shook his head emphatically and put his hands back under the tails of his riding coat.
'And there it became clear,' Erast Petrovich continued, as though nothing had happened, 'that the illustrious Charles Paladin had never been seen in the offices of his own publication. That is three. He sent in his brilliant articles, essays and sketches by post or telegraph.'
'Well, what of it?' Sobolev objected in exasperation. 'Charles is no mincing socialite; he is a man of adventure.'
'And to an even greater d-degree than Your Excellency supposes. I rummaged through the files of the Revue Parisienne and some very curious coincidences came to light. Monsieur Paladin's first published articles were submitted from Bulgaria ten years ago, at the very time when the Danubian Vilajet was governed by Midhat-pasha, whose secretary was the young official Anwar. In 1868 Paladin submits a number of brilliant articles on the mores of the sultan's court from Constantinople. This is during Midhat-pasha's first period of ascendancy, when he is invited to the capital to lead the Council of State. A year later the reformer is despatched into honourable exile, to distant Mesopotamia and, as though bewitched, the fluent pen of the talented journalist also moves from Constantinople to Baghdad. For three years (the precise period for which Midhat-pasha governed Iraq) Paladin writes about excavations of Assyrian cities, Arab sheikhs and the Suez Canal'
'You're fixing the odds here!' Sobolev interrupted angrily. 'Charles travelled all over the Near East. He also wrote from other places that you do not mention, because they do not fit your hypothesis. In 'seventy-three, for instance, he was in Khiva with me. We survived raging thirst and searing heat together. And there was no Midhat there, Mister Investigator!'
'And from where did he travel to Central Asia?' Fandorin asked the general.
'From Iran, I think.'
'I believe it was not from Iran, but from Mesopotamia. In late 1873 the newspaper publishes his lyrical sketches about Greece. Why Greece all of a sudden? Why, because at that time our Anwar-effendi's patron was moved to Salonika. By the way, Varvara Andreevna, do you recall the marvellous feuilleton about the old boots?'
Varya nodded, gazing at Fandorin as if she were spellbound. What he was saying was so obviously absurd, but how confidently, how elegantly and masterfully he said it! And he had completely stopped stammering.
'It mentioned a shipwreck that took place in the Gulf of Therma in November 1873. The city of Salonika happens to lie on the shore of the gulf. From the same article I learned that in 1867 the author had been in Sophia, and in 1871 in Mesopotamia, for that was precisely when the Arab nomads slaughtered Sir Andrew Wayard's British archaeological expedition. It was after "Old Boots" that I first began to suspect Monsieur Paladin seriously, but he threw me off the track more than once with his cunning manoeuvres . . . And now . . .' - Fandorin put his revolver away and turned towards Mizinov - 'let us summarise the damage inflicted on us by the activities of Mister Anwar. Monsieur Paladin joined the war correspondents' corps in late June last year. At that time our armies were advancing victoriously. The barrier of the Danube had been surmounted, the Turkish army was demoralised, the road lay open to Sophia, and from there to Constantinople. General Gurko's forces had already taken the Shipka Pass, the key to the Great Balkan Range. We had, in effect, already won the war. But what happens after that? Due to a fatal confusion in the coding of a message, our army occupies the irrelevant city of Nikopol and meanwhile Osman-pasha's army corps enters the empty Plevna unhindered, completely cutting off our advance. Let us recall the circumstances of that mysterious story. Cryptographer Yablokov commits a serious offence by leaving a secret message unattended on his table. Why did Yablokov do this? Because he was overwhelmed by news of the unexpected arrival of his fiancee, Miss Suvorova.'
Everyone looked at Varya, making her feel as though she were an item of material evidence.
'But who informed Yablokov of his fiancee's arrival? The journalist Paladin. When the cryptographer went dashing away, insane with joy, all that had to be done was to rewrite the coded message, replacing the word "Plevna" with the word "Nikopol". Our military code is not exactly complicated, to put it mildly. Paladin knew about the Russian army's forthcoming manoeuvre, because he was there when I told you, Mikhail Dmitrievich, about Osman-pasha. Do you recall the first time we met?'
Sobolev nodded morosely.
'Well then, to continue: let us recall the story of the mythical Ali-bei, whom Paladin supposedly interviewed. That "interview" cost us two thousand dead, and left the Russian army bogged down at Plevna with no end in sight. It was a risky trick: Anwar inevitably attracted suspicion to himself; but he had no alternative. If it came to it, the Russians could have simply left a covering force to contain Osman and pushed their main forces further south. However, the failure of the first assault created an exaggerated idea of the danger of Plevna in the mind of our command, and the full might of the army was turned against a little Bulgarian town.'
'Wait, Erast Petrovich; Ali-bei really did exist after all!' Varya exclaimed. 'Our scouts saw him in Plevna!'
'We shall come back to that a little later. But for now let us recall the circumstances of the second battle of Plevna, the blame for which we laid on the treacherous Roumanian colonel Lukan, who had apparently betrayed our plan of battle to the Turks. You were right, Lavrenty Arkadievich, the "J" in Lukan's notebook does stand for "journalist", only not McLaughlin, but Paladin. He was able to recruit the Roumanian dandy with no great difficulty - his gambling debts and inordinate vanity made the colonel easy prey; and in Bucharest Paladin cunningly exploited Miss Suvorova in order to rid himself of an agent who was no longer useful and had actually begun to be dangerous. In addition, I assume, Anwar needed to meet with Osman-pasha. Banishment from the army - purely temporary, and with his rehabilitation planned beforehand - gave him the opportunity. The French correspondent was absent for a month. And it was precisely during that period that our intelligence service reported that the Turkish commander had a mysterious adviser called Ali-bei. This same Ali-bei deliberately made fleeting appearances in crowded public places, sporting his conspicuous beard. You must have had a great laugh at our expense, Mister Spy.'
Paladin did not respond. He was watching the titular counsellor carefully, as if he were waiting for something.
'Ali-bei's appearance in Plevna was necessary in order to clear the journalist Paladin of the suspicion caused by that ill-starred interview. I have no doubt, indeed, that Anwar used that month to great advantage to himself: no doubt he reached agreement with Osman-pasha on joint plans of action for the future and acquired some reliable contacts. After all, our counter-intelligence operations did not prevent correspondents from having their own informants in the besieged town. If he wished, Anwar-effendi could even have visited Constantinople for a few days, since Plevna was still not cut off from the lines of communication. It would have been very simple - once he reached Sophia, he could have got into a train and the next day he would have been in Istanbul.
'The third assault was especially dangerous for Osman-pasha, above all because of Mikhail Dmitrievich's surprise attack. But luck was with Anwar and not with us. We were confounded by a fatal coincidence: on his way to headquarters Zurov galloped past the correspondents and shouted out to them that you were in Plevna. Naturally Anwar realised the significance of this statement perfectly well, and also the reason why Zurov had been despatched to command headquarters. Somehow he had to gain time, give Osman-pasha a chance to regroup and dislodge Mikhail Dmitrievich and his small detachment from Plevna before reinforcements arrived. And yet again Anwar took a risk and improvised. Boldly, brilliantly, creatively. And, as always, mercilessly.