Turkish Gambit (20 page)

The general screwed up the note and tossed it on the floor at the feet of the commandant of the guardhouse, who was standing rigidly to attention.

'Er . . . Erast Pet . . . rovich, what has . . . happened?' Varya mumbled, scarcely able to force out the words. 'Petya!'

'Captain, how is Yablokov? Is he dead?' Fandorin asked, addressing the commandant.

'How could he be dead when he can't even tie a noose properly!' the commandant barked. 'They've taken Yablokov down and they're reviving him now!'

Varya pushed Fandorin away and dashed to the door. She collided with the doorpost, ran out on to the porch and was blinded by the bright sunlight. She had to stop. Fandorin appeared beside her again.

'Varvara Andreevna, calm down; everything is all right. We will go there together straight away, but first you must catch your breath, you look terrible.'

He took her gently by the elbow, but for some reason the entirely gentlemanlike touch of his hand provoked an overwhelming attack of nausea. She doubled over and vomited copiously all over Erast Petrovich's boots. Then she sat on the step, trying to understand why nobody was sliding down off the ground when it was sloping at such an angle.

Varya felt something pleasant and ice-cold touch her forehead and gave a low moan of pleasure.

'A fine business,' she heard Fandorin's hollow voice say. 'This is typhus.'

Chapter Ten

IN WHICH THE EMPEROR IS PRESENTED WITH A GOLDEN SWORD

The Daily Post
(London) 9 December (27 November) 1877

For the last two months the siege of Plevna has effectively been commanded by the old, experienced General Totleben, well remembered by the British from the Sebastopol campaign. Being rather more of an engineer than a military leader, Totleben has abandoned the tactic of frontal attacks and imposed a strict blockade on the army of Osman-pasha. The Russians have lost a great deal of precious time, for which Totleben has been subjected to severe criticism, but now it must be acknowledged that the cautious engineer is right. Since the Turks were finally cut off from Sophia one month ago, Plevna has begun to suffer from hunger and a shortage of ammunition. Totleben is referred to ever more often as the second Kutuzov (the Russian field-marshal who exhausted Napoleon's forces by retreating incessantly in 1812 - Editor's note). Osman and his army of fifty thousand are expected to surrender any day now.

It was an abominably cold and unpleasant day (grey sky, icy sleet and squelching mud) when Varya made her way back to the army positions in a specially hired cab. She had spent an entire month on a hospital bed in the Trnovo Epidemiological Hospital, where she could quite easily have died, because many people did die of typhus, but she had been lucky. Then she had spent another two months dying of boredom while she waited for her hair to grow, because she certainly couldn't go back with her head shaved like a Tatar. Her accursed hair had grown back far too slowly and even now it stood up on her head like a crew-cut or the bristles on a brush. In fact, she looked perfectly absurd, but her patience had run out - one more week of idleness and Varya would have been driven totally insane by the sight of the crooked little streets of that horrid little town.

Petya had managed to get away to visit her once. He was still officially under investigation, but he had been let out of the guardhouse now and gone back to work -the army had grown a lot and there was a shortage of cryptographers. Petya was greatly changed: he had let his beard grow, but it was sparse and straggly and really didn't suit him at all, and he had wasted half away, and he mentioned either God or service to the people with every second breath. What had shocked Varya most of all was that when they met her fiance had kissed her on the forehead. Why did he have to treat her like a corpse in a coffin? Had her looks really suffered that much?

The Trnovo highway was choked with strings of army wagons and her carriage was barely crawling along, so since she was familiar with the area, Varya ordered the coachman to turn off on to a track that led south, around the camp. It was longer that way, but they would get there sooner.

On the empty road the horse broke into a lively jog and the rain almost stopped. In another hour or two she would be home. Varya snorted. A fine 'home'! A damp tent open to all the winds under heaven!

After they passed Lovcha they began meeting individual riders, for the most part foragers and brisk, bustling orderlies, and soon Varya saw the first person she knew. There was no mistaking that lanky figure in the bowler hat and the redingote, perched awkwardly on the dejected chestnut mare. McLaughlin! Varya had a sudden sense of deja vu: during the third siege of Plevna, when she was returning to the army positions just as she was today, she had encountered the Irishman in precisely the same way. Only then it had been hot, and now it was cold, and she had probably looked better then.

But it really was very fortunate that McLaughlin would be the first to see her. He was unaffected and forthright; his reaction would tell her straight away whether she could show herself in society with her hair like this, or whether she ought to turn back. And she could find out all about the latest news . . .

Varya courageously grabbed the cap off her head, exposing her shameful brush. She might as well do things properly! 'Mr McLaughlin!' she shouted out, half-rising from her seat, as her carriage overtook the correspondent. 'It's me! Which way are you headed?'

The Irishman looked round and raised his bowler hat. 'Oh, Mademoiselle Varya, I'm very glad to see you in good health. Did they crop your hair like that for reasons of hygiene? I can hardly recognise you.'

Varya felt a cold shiver inside. 'Why - is it so terrible?' she asked dejectedly.

'Not at all,' McLaughlin hastened to reassure her.

'But you look much more like a boy now than you did when we first met.'

'Are we going the same way?' she asked. 'Get in with me and we can talk. Your horse doesn't look too good.'

'A terrible old nag. My Bessie managed to get herself in the family way by a dragoon's stallion and she blew up like a barrel. And the headquarters groom Frolka doesn't like me because I never give him bribes - what you might call tips - as a matter of principle, so he palms me off with these dreadful jades! I don't know where he gets them from! And right now I'm in a great hurry on extremely important, secret business.'

McLaughlin paused provocatively, and it was clear that he was positively bursting to tell her just how important and secret his business was. The contrast with the son of Albion's habitual stolid reserve was striking - the journalist really must have discovered something quite extraordinary.

'Sit in for just a minute,' Varya wheedled. 'Let the poor animal have a rest. I have some jam pies here, and a thermostatic flask full of coffee with rum . . .'

McLaughlin took a watch on a silver chain out of his pocket. 'Haf pust seven . . . Anatha foty minits to get thea . . . Oil rait, then haf an aua. Etl be haf pust eit . . .' he muttered to himself in that incomprehensible foreign tongue of his and sighed. 'Oh, all right, but just for a minute. I'll ride with you as far as the fork in the road and then turn off for Petyrnitsy.'

He hitched his reins to the carriage and took a seat beside Varya, swallowed one pie whole, bit off half of a second and gulped down a mouthful of hot coffee from the lid of the flask with great relish.

'Why are you going to Petyrnitsy?' Varya asked casually. 'Are you meeting your informant from Plevna again?'

McLaughlin gave her a searching glance and adjusted his steamed-up glasses. 'Give me your word that you won't tell anyone - at least not until ten o'clock,' he demanded.

'My word of honour,' Varya said immediately. 'But what is the great mystery?'

McLaughlin began huffing and puffing, taken aback by the casual way in which the promise had been given, but it was too late for him to recant now, and he was obviously longing to confide in someone.

'Today, the tenth of December, or in your style the twenty-eighth of November 1877, is a historic day’ he began and then dropped his voice to a whisper. 'But as yet there is only one man in the entire Russian camp who knows it: your humble servant. Oh, McLaughlin doesn't give people tips just for performing their duty, but for good work McLaughlin pays very well, mark my words. No more, no more, not another single word about that!' He held up his hand to forestall the question that Varya was about to blurt out. 'I won't tell you the name of my source. I will only say that he has been tested many times and has never once let me down.'

Varya recalled one of the journalists saying enviously that the source of the Daily Post correspondent's information on life in Plevna was not some Bulgarian, but a Turkish officer or something of the kind. Not many people had really believed it, though. But what if it were true?

'Well, tell me then. Don't keep me in suspense.' 'Remember, not a word to anyone until ten o'clock this evening. You gave me your word of honour.'

Varya nodded impatiently. Oh, these men and their stupid rituals. Of course she wouldn't tell anyone.

McLaughlin leaned right down to her ear. 'This evening Osman-pasha will surrender.'

'I don't believe it!' Varya squealed.

'Quiet! At precisely ten o'clock this evening the commander of the corps of grenadiers, Lieutenant-General Ganetsky, whose forces occupy a position on the left bank of the Vid, will be approached by the truce envoys. I shall be the only journalist to witness this great event. And I shall also forewarn the general - at half past nine and no sooner - so that the patrols do not open fire on the envoys by mistake. Can you imagine what an article it will make?'

'Yes, I can,' said Varya with a nod of delight. 'And I can't tell absolutely anyone at all?'

'It would be the end of me!' McLaughlin exclaimed in panic. 'You gave me your word!'

'Very well, very well,' she reassured him. 'Until ten o'clock my lips are sealed.'

'Ah, here's the fork. Stop here!' said the correspondent, prodding the coachman in the back. 'You're going to the right, Mademoiselle Varya, and I'm going to the left. I can just imagine the scene. There I am, sitting with the general, drinking tea and making idle conversation about this and that, and at half past nine I take out my watch and casually remark: "By the way, Ivan Stepanovich, in half an hour or so you will have visitors from Osman-pasha". Not bad, eh?' McLaughlin began laughing excitedly as he stuck his foot in the stirrup.

A few moments later he was lost to view behind the grey curtain of the intensifying downpour.

In three months the camp had changed beyond recognition. The tents were all gone and in their place stood neat files of planking huts. Everywhere there were paved roads, telegraph poles and neat signposts. It was a good thing for an army to be commanded by an engineer, thought Varya.

In the special section, which now occupied three whole houses, she was told that Mr Fandorin had been allocated a separate cottage (the duty officer pronounced this new foreign word with obvious relish) and shown how to get there.

'Cottage' number 158 proved to be a one-room prefabricated hut on the very edge of the headquarters staff village. The master of the house was at home,- he opened the door himself and looked at Varya in a way that gave her a warm feeling inside.

'Hello, Erast Petrovich, here I am back again,' she said, for some reason feeling terribly anxious.

'Glad to see you,' Fandorin said briefly and moved aside to let her in. It was a very simple room, but it had a set of wall bars and an entire arsenal of gymnastic apparatus. There was a three-vyerst map on the wall.

Varya explained: 'I left my things with the nurses. Petya is on duty, so I came straight to you.'

'I can see you are well.' Erast Petrovich looked her over from head to toe and nodded. 'A new hairstyle. Is that the fashion now?'

'Yes. It's very practical. And what has been happening here?'

'Nothing much. We're still besieging the Turk.' Varya thought the titular counsellor's voice sounded bitter. 'One month, t-two months, three months now.

The officers are taking to drink out of boredom, the quartermasters are p-plundering the supplies, the public coffers are empty. In short, everything is perfectly normal. War the Russian way. Europe has already heaved a sigh of relief and is happily watching as Russia's 1-lifeblood drains away. If Osman-pasha holds out for another t-two weeks, the war will be 1-lost.'

Erast Petrovich sounded so peevish that Varya took pity on him and whispered: 'He won't hold out.'

Fandorin started and looked into her eyes inquisitively. 'Do you know something? What? Where from?'

And so she told him. She could tell Erast Petrovich, surely - he wouldn't run off to tell every Tom, Dick and Harry.

'To Ganetsky? Why to G-Ganetsky?' the titular counsellor said with a frown when he had heard her out.

He walked across to the map and muttered under his breath: 'It's a long way to G-Ganetsky. Right out on the flank. Why not go to command headquarters? Wait! Wait!' A resolute expression appeared on the titular counsellor's face; he tore his greatcoat down from its hook and dashed towards the door.

'What? What is it?' Varya screeched, running after him.

'A trap,' Fandorin muttered curtly without stopping. 'Ganetsky's defences are thinner. And beyond them lies the Sophia highway. They are not surrendering; they are trying to break out. They have to dupe Ganetsky so that he won't fire.'