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EIGHT
On the way along the Nevsky Prospect in a cab, Asher recounted where and how he had seen Herr Rissler – now, apparently, Monsieur Texel – before ‘That’s another piece of infor,’ he added, drawing the cab’s lap robe ht’s brutal cold The local population didn’t appear toinstead of four in the ant apartlowed through the raw Neva fog ‘It was a joke in the Depart one of us: one chap used to send his hts By Lydia’s list, there are nearly a dozen Ger alone It won’t take our va to find another, once he learns one is blown’
‘In truth,’ Ysidrofor the fact that so because they cannot stomach the Kaiser and his aims, as Theiss apparently claims to be At least we knohich direction we should be looking at the momentif this Theiss is indeed the loved hands, relapsed into silent consideration of those ures on coachman’s boxes and footman’s perches, those jewel-box s
‘I’ll vet the others’ Asher drew fro cards that had been pressed into his hands in the course of the evening, at least half of the scribbled invitations to tea, seances, soirées ‘It shouldn’t be difficult, the way these people talk about each other I’ht on Friday’
Yet in his heart he knew this was only caution A clinic on the Samsonievsky ProspectAn ideal cover Is Rissler – Texel – his only henchht have been Gernized Texel
Would the AA send ent?
They would if they believed Theiss If they believed they could have at their call a shadow agent whom no sentry could stop, no picket see
A German doctor here whose studies strike me as remarkably similar, the Lady Irene had written
As if Asher had spoken her naht it, he beca from his contemplation of the street, the vampire said, ‘It is absurd to suppose that, were she still able to do so, the Lady would not feel et in touch with me This policeman you spoke to – I commend your accent, by the way – said there had been ashes found, and a woman’s shoe’
‘In the autumn,’ said Asher quickly ‘Your friend’s letter ritten in February’
Ysidro turned his head, the tiniest human flex to his brows: evidently surprised, and – surprisingly – touched, at the offer of co the case,’ he said after a ti his nest’
‘And, in any event, it wasn’t our pro-German Undead, either Would Golenischev have lied? Or would the girl have been a fledgling of this Prince Dargomyzhsky they spoke of?’
‘Had she been, I cannot iine Golenischev would not have thrown the fact at his little rebels last night, in the midst of all that draht distrust our own kind, ’tis alineer his death’
‘Would Lady Eaton have written to you, had one of the Petersburg va nest?’
The slight tilt of the Spaniard’s head would, in another man, have been sharply raised eyebrows, an elaborate scoff, and – in the case of the fragile old Warden of New College – an upflung hand and a disbelieving cry of, My DEAR Asher--! ‘She had little use for the other va ice on the Moyka flashed below thee ‘Never in her letters to lings And the letter she sent randfather made nohere six years ago insofar as it inconvenienced her hunting’
His scarred forehead tugged into the tiniest ghost of a frown, and for an instant Asher recalled the rusted harp and the long-dried leather of those book covers, a library of mathematics and scientific theory that had not been updated in the course of nearly a century
‘As to this traitor to the ranks of the Undead, and whether Golenischev is lying for some reason – and indeed whether this division in the Petersburg nest has any connection at all to the conference that Irene saw – I suspect that, for answers, ill be obliged to travel to Moscow, to ask these things of the vaht – this coht, from the Warsaw Station’
Which should arrive – Asher did so afternoon ‘I’ll be there’ Arguing with Ysidro was a waste of ti about this journey that I need to know?’ The scars that tracked Asher’s throat and forearms under the protective silver chains had been acquired the first tione to Paris with Ysidro
‘The less you know the better’ The cab squeaked to a halt by the lodge of the I Ysidro pay ‘Va are on their track I think it best, after you have left o directly to your own rooree,’ said Asher ‘And does the Master of Moscow speak French?’
Ysidro’s eyes narrowed – he had clearly heard so in the co the haut ton of the Theosophical Society and its hangers-on, had probably led him to believe that most Russians spoke FrenchWhich, Asher ell aware, was not the case Upper-class Petersburgers did – in many cases, better than they spoke Russian
But Moscoasn’t Petersburg Its ht well be some bearded boyar who had defied Peter the Great and considered French e of Napoleon’s vanquished troops
‘I shall re,’ said Asher, ‘and trust that if it so happens that you do need my services as a translator, you’ll protectthe conversation’
For King and Country? To keep the horror of the falling boas, in his dreams, where it had lurked for a dozen years?
Or for the friend who had written, ‘By the love I bear you’ to a woman who had disappeared?
‘I will do all within ht irony in Ysidro’s voice – ‘to keep you from harm I thank you,’ he added, almost hesitantly, ‘for your assistance in this ht, later, that the vampire had been about to speak of just why it was that he had come nearly a thousand miles to the Arctic circle – that he was about to adovern themselves of the services of va , a minute – or two minutes – or five way before the handsome bronze doors of the Iht
As he climbed the steps to where the dvornik waited by the open door (doubtless noting when Jules Plummer came in, for the benefit of the Secret Police), Asher wondered if Ysidro – raised in Toledo at the height of the Counter-Reformation – believed in Hell
‘One reads of cases now and then’ Gospodin Zudanievsky’s French was not the pure unaccented Parisian of French governesses and expensive education abroad, but sounded, to Asher’s trained ear, like a painstaking schoolboy fan visitors to the Russian capital All sorts of inflections cluttered it: Italian, Gered to sit the policeman down and take notes
The corridors of that solid brick edifice across froed since ’94 They still stank of s back-taste of mildew Cheap pine tables narrowed the hallways, heaped with the decades-deep backlog of Russian paperwork – forms, reports, permissions, requests for permissions, requests for further inforrantedWhen last Asher had been brought this way, there had been no Entente Cordiale between the Queen’s Empire and the Tsar’s He spent an extremely unpleasant seventy-two hours in a small chamber in the basement before the Okhrana had finally believed his totally o He kne close he’d coain
Had Zudanievsky been with the department then? He didn’t recall the er and his drawl ‘Well, what I always think is, like Has than meet the eye’ He puffed on his very As that can’t be explained I admit, a lot of ’em are total horse-hockey That woman in Paris they always talk about, back in whenever it was, seventeen hundred and soYou can’t tell in and lit a match But some of those others’ He shook his head ‘I just don’t know’
‘And this Orloff--’
‘Or whatever his name was’
‘Precisely He said that a relative of his--?’
‘His sister,’ agreed Asher somberly ‘He told my-- Well, I happened to be party to a conversation where this kind of thing came up, and another of the folks there kind of scoffed at it, and he said no, that it really could happen because it had happened His sister caught fire, he said, out of the clear blue, with no fire in the roo to burn, and she sure wasn’t no drinker, the way some of these poor folk here was He said the fire was so hot it burned up even her bones He said-- He was damn shook up about it You could see it Now, I’ve traveled some, and I do kno roo’
‘And did he say,’ inquired Zudanievsky, pale eyes sliding sidelong to Asher behind the fish-eye spectacles, ‘if his sister had been involved in anyany curious activity, prior to her immolation?’
‘Is pourin’ vodka over her own head what you’re talkin’ about?’ If he could have kept his heart fro quicker at the question he would have – the police Curious activity???
They turned a corner and passed through a narrow door Asher felt his hair rising on the nape of his neck at the sht and see to sweat fear from its walls The stair they’d taken him doas at the far endBut Zudanievsky turned almost at once and unlocked a little office
‘Nothing of that kind’ There were shelves in the rooasolier down closer over the central table – battered, stained, with the air of careless uncleanness so familiar in the offices of Russian police – then fetched a stout tin lock-box froanization, in the months before theincident? Did her brother ever ht, or the Cult of the World Soul?’
Asher laid his cigar on the edge of the table ‘Now, that I don’t know It was only the one time he talked about this, and he was a little drunk – and, like I said, his naht not have been Orloff He did say he hadn’t seen much of her’
‘Hadn’t seen much of her? Or hadn’t seen her at all?’