Once Upon a Time in Imperial Russia
- Thread starter Greg Grant
- Start date
Introduction
The year is 1974, the Russian Empire is in the gentle yet firm hands of His Majesty Tsar Alexander IV, and a century of golden peace continues unabated upon the European continent. Even Russia's most implacable foe, perfidious Albion, seems to be willing to engage in the Spirit of Détente. But troubles soon arise due to a brewing criminal conspiracy and a rumored wonder weapon, and a trail of corpses will lead agents of both empires to a shocking discovery which could endanger the present state of affairs.
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Russia: Duma Election: 1969
| Party | Duma Seats | Votes | ||||
| Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | ||
| Constitutional Democrats | 227 | 129 | 3 | 126 | 51.59 | 26,961,405 |
| Union of Patriotic Russians | 164 | 4 | 115 | -111 | 37.27 | 19,339,345 |
| Russian Agricultural League | 17 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 3.86 | 945,644 |
| Independent Association of Loyal Patriots | 12 | 0 | 5 | -5 | 2.73 | 810,127 |
| Motherland | 9 | 0 | 1 | -1 | 2.05 | 571,891 |
| Ecology | 0 | 0 | 4 | -4 | 0.00 | 509,471 |
| Association of Patriotic Cossack Peoples | 8 | 0 | 3 | -3 | 1.82 | 481,254 |
| Association of Loyal Masovians | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 266,370 |
| Loyal Lithuanian League | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 199,548 |
| Loyal Armenian Christian Union | 2 | 1 | 5 | -4 | 0.45 | 195,555 |
| Russian Social Democratic Labour | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 127,700 |
| Livonian Association of the Regions | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 110,704 |
| Georgian Democratic Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 80,405 |
| White Ruthenian Agrarian Associations | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 65,775 |
| Patriotic Polish People's League | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 64,753 |
| Finnish Social Democratic Patriotic | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 52,488 |
| Bessarabian Patriotic Alliance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 46,047 |
| Loyal Estonian Association | 1 | 0 | 5 | -5 | 0.23 | 37,373 |
| Azeri Alliance of Patriots | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 35,846 |
| Loyal Masurian Association | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 20,815 |
| Kazakh Patriotic League | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 10,709 |
| Kazakh Loyal Union | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 9,957 |
| Kazakh Agricultural Association | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 9,527 |
| Revaluation and Peace | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 8,562 |
| Loyal Polish People's Union | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 7,437 |
| Azeri League of Patriots | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 6,614 |
| Terek People's Patriotic Association | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 6,071 |
| None of the Above | 672,283 | |||||
440 | | | | | 51,653,676 |
United Kingdom: Election: 1970
| Party | Candidates | Votes | ||||||
| Stood | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | ||
| Liberal | 635 | 342 | 111 | 4 | 107 | 53.18 | 13,145,123 | 42.09 |
| Conservative | 641 | 274 | 5 | 99 | -94 | 42.83 | 12,208,758 | 39.09 |
| Labour | 197 | 23 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 3.66 | 5,117,035 | 16.38 |
| SNP | 23 | 0 | 0 | 5 | -5 | 0.00 | 306,802 | 0.98 |
| League of Empire Loyalists | 25 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0.16 | 191,930 | 0.61 |
| Plaid Cymru | 19 | 0 | 0 | 1 | -1 | 0.00 | 125,016 | 0.40 |
| Irish Social Democratic | 5 | 1 | 0 | 3 | -3 | 0.16 | 82,795 | 0.27 |
| Independent Liberal | 5 | 0 | 0 | 4 | -4 | 0.00 | 23,058 | 0.07 |
| Independent Labour | 17 | 0 | 0 | 5 | -5 | 0.00 | 12,685 | 0.04 |
| Ecology | 49 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 9,858 | 0.03 |
| The Officially Silly Party | 17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 4,276 | 0.01 |
| National Front | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 3,449 | 0.01 |
| English Independence | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 1,607 | 0.01 |
| Mebyon Kernow | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 960 | 0.00 |
641 | | | | | 31,233,352 | |
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Russia: Table of Ranks: 1965 Revised Edition
| Class | Ground & Air Forces | Navy | Civil Service Rank | Style of Address |
1 | General Field Marshal | General-Admiral | Chancellor | Your High Excellency |
2 | General | Admiral | Vice-Chancellor | |
3 | General-Lieutenant | Vice-Admiral | Privy Councilor | Your Excellency |
4 | General-Major | Counter-Admiral | Senior State Councilor | |
5 | N/A | Commodore | State Councilor | Your High Well Born |
6 | Colonel | Captain 1st Class | Collegiate Councilor | |
7 | Under-Colonel | Captain 2nd Class | Court Councilor | |
8 | Premier-Major | Captain 3rd Class | Collegiate Assessor | |
9 | Second-Major | Captain-Lieutenant | N/A | |
10 | Captain | Senior-Lieutenant | Titular Councilor | Your Well Born |
| Yesaul (Cossacks) | ||||
| Rotmister (Cavalry) | ||||
11 | Staff-Captain | Lieutenant | Governorate Secretary | |
| Under-Yesaul (Cossacks) | ||||
| Staff-Rotmister (Cavalry) | ||||
12 | First-Lieutenant | Junior-Lieutenant | Provincial Registrar | |
| Sotnik (Cossacks) | ||||
| Poruchik (Cavalry) | ||||
13 | Second-Lieutenant | Midshipman | Town Registrar | |
| Khorunzhiy (Cossacks) | ||||
| Cornet (Cavalry) | ||||
14 | Third-Lieutenant | Junior-Midshipman | N/A |
Chapter I
Chapter I
The first murder which led to the discovery of a wonder weapon happened on Wednesday, April 10, 1974. At dawn, a patrolman found a body on the dunes. He panicked once he realized the man was not a drunk sleeping off a rough night but a corpse with a smashed open head. Sunny Shores is a pleasant seaside tourist trap and had not known a violent death in over 60 years. The patrolman then noticed the dead man had a good leather jacket, imported dungarees and expensive shoes. More trouble still, as it indicated a person of worth. He fought down his revulsion, slipped on a pair of old gloves he'd been meaning to throw out, and patted down the corpse and fished out a wallet stuffed with rubles. To avoid temptation, he did not count the cash, knowing by mere heft there was more in there than his monthly pay. The dead man's driver's license identified him as Ilari Kuzmich Guskov. The patrolman put the wallet back in the dead man's pockets, and jostled something. A small steel disk fell out. The patrolman picked it up and his bad day got worse, because the disk identified the dead man as an agent of the Department of Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire.
A violent death of an agent of the Department required a showy overreaction. Therefore, while an ordinary violent death in Russia rates a police sergeant or a lieutenant to investigate it, the death of Kuzmich required a captain, or rather a rotmister, for the Department favored cavalry ranks to give themselves a debonair air. Rotmister Novikov of the Special Section of the Department was called to the scene once Kuzmich's identity was established. He drove up to Sunny Shores from Riga with a second-lieutenant, or rather cornet, a brace of sergeants, and a junior under-officer (corporal) as the wheelman. Kuzmich's file was in his lap.
Kuzmich was born and raised in Riga, into a family of bookbinders. But young Kuzmich was quick with his fists and did not care for books, and decided to become a policeman. He did not have what it takes to be a detective, but he was always good at roughing up a suspect, so he had a solid career and took an early retirement. He got a job at the "Paris" casino, officially as security guard, and unofficially as a fixer. The Department recruited him shortly thereafter. Or rather its Fifth Section did. The Special Section, which deals with the most serious matters of public order took a pass, having found Kuzmich too crude. As did the First, Second, Third and Fourth sections, each dealing with matters requiring its agents to be able to infiltrate, surveil and write reports. But the Fifth was used by the Department to make arrests on behalf of all the other sections, and on occasion roughed up the "troublemakers." Kuzmich excelled at the latter, always willing to give a back alley beating to people the Department could not lawfully arrest but wanted to get the message, such as civil rights activists. Novikov closed the file.
Once they arrived on the scene, Novikov gestured. Cornet Obolensky took the patrolman's statement, the more forensics minded warrant examined the body, the other warrant talked to the gawkers to see if anyone seen anything, and the Junior Under-Officer fixed Novikov's briar pipe. Novikov nodded his thanks, found a nice dune, gave a few quick puffs, and waited for the senior local police official to make himself known. Sure enough, an older man in a white summer parade uniform waddled up to check-in and give his wisdom. Novikov turned, nodded and waited for the poor fellow's inevitable shock.
"Captain Rykov, Policemeister for Sunny Shores, if you please, I..."
And there it was, the man spotted the ribbon on Novikov's chest. Novikov watched the gears turn in Rykov's head. First, came the frown. What sort of an award is that? Then came recognition of the colors: red, bookended by narrow yellow stripes. Order of St. Anne's. Then confusion. Order of St. Anne's in the Third Class was reserved for majors and above. The man before Rykov was clearly a captain, or whatever silly ranks the Department gave their bedsheet sniffers and eavesdroppers. And mere captains could only get St. Anne's in the Fourth, but... Then the shock.
"Is that, uh, an Order of St. Anne's in, uh, the Fourth?"
Novikov gave a nod. The poor fellow tried not to gape.
"I, uh... I had not realized we gave those out. That is, I was sure it was no longer awarded."
Novikov did not nod and simply waited.
"May I ask you how you came by it?"
"Classified."
"Oh, of course. Yes. That's. Do beg your pardon."
"Quite all right, Captain. You were saying?"
"Oh yes, I have a theory..."
Of course he did, and it would be nonsense, but one must pretend and follow the social conventions. The same conventions which required Novikov to appear at the scene of the crime, despite not being a homicide investigator. He was a spy hunter. But rules are rules, and to be fair, the dead man did deal with some interesting foreigners and there was a non-zero chance it could have gotten him killed.
"And then what?" asked Kotov tonelessly. The plump man in an ill-fitting but expensive suit across from him looked on the verge of crying. They were alone in Kotov's office, overlooking the Riga wharf.
"Then... when we saw the steel disk and... We... It was so sudden, and, uh, Genka took his car and drove it off to Arbor and I, uh, got home and called you in the morning."
"You took his car to Arbor," tonelessly summarized Kotov, and the plump man squirmed and shrank.
"Not me! Genka!"
"What sort of car is it?"
"Foreign. Red. Oh, I remember now, it had a Renault badge. But Genka knows a man with a chop-shop up the coast. Say the word and we will..."
"It is a quarter past noon, Mikhail Porfiriyevich, and a car stolen from a killed agent of the Department of Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is likely to be already flagged as such."
"The Devil take me!"
"And so he might. But right now you belong to me. We will get the car destroyed, by a professional, once I locate one. In the meantime, keep it hidden and keep the circle of a conspiracy to murder and pervert the course of justice small. This Kuzmich is a well-known thug, but at this time we do not know if he discussed his suspicions with anyone else. That is the next step, to find out the extent of the damage to our shared enterprise. I will be in contact shortly."
The plump man opened his mouth and got a stare, and slunk out. Kotov took a minute to calm himself, staring out the window at the wharf. It was a good scheme, but someone made a mistake, and this Kuzmich started sniffing, and now someone made an even worse mistake by... He slapped the desk with the flat of his left palm, and instantly regretted it. The hand stung. The desk was made of oak. And the secretary likely heard as well. Kotov stood up, adjusted his shirt and tie and stepped out of his office, to find his secretary feigning not to have noticed the noise.
"Nataliya Vasileyvna, one of my associates had made a dreadful mistake and I was cross, and the sound you heard was me slapping my desk in frustration, in lieu of slapping him for it. I am sorry."
The petite young woman with dark chestnut hair gave a terrified nod.
"Please hold my calls for the quarter hour, I am going for a walk to clear my mind."
The secretary managed another nod. She had never heard Kotov hit anything, and unlike others of her profession she had no awful story to share about being pinched, ogled or pressed hard against the wall. Kotov was a gentleman, and it made her girlfriends envious, which did worry her, for all knew envy was a curse and she was beginning to wonder if the back pain she began to experience was as a result of it. Clearly it was not. This was the curse, her employer was cursed by her envious girlfriends. She resolved to visit a gypsy to ward it off.
Kotov strolled along the wharf, getting polite greetings from the dock workers and fishermen and operators of fish trawling concerns. He acknowledged all, his voice and face as neutral as on any other day. He got to a battered payphone and fed it a three-kopeck copper piece to get a dial tone, then slipped in a copper-nickel five-kopeck piece to get the intercity switchboard.
The British Empire has a quite few enemies, the Russian Empire being foremost among their number, and it is not surprising the British have quite a few security agencies, though it may surprise some that their competencies overlap, with no one quite being able to explain the precise separation between the responsibilities of the Foreign Office and the Colonial one. Or where the Secret Intelligence Service fits into the scheme of things, or what the UK War Office may or may not do with its extensive overseas spying program focusing. But everyone above would agree on the role of the British Security Service Bureau: they are a strictly counterintelligence agency, concerned only with the internal matters of the British Empire. However a succession of ambitious Bureau chiefs believed the best defense of the realm is an offense and mounted overseas operations beyond the borders, and recruited accordingly. And one such recruitment was done in the Maritime Ministry building in Narva, and said recruit noticed Captain-Lieutenant Valois cancel all his meetings for the day and have his secretary book an immediate flight to Riga. The recruit added it to his monthly log of the curious items his handler asked him to monitor.
Back at Riga HQ of the Department of Police, Novikov was reading through the protocol of the search of Kuzmich's apartment, or rather apartments, for the dead man kept two, one for his wife and three kids and another for his mistress. The family apartment yielded nothing interesting, save a bit more cash in the safe than would be expected for a man of Kuzmich's standing in society. But the fun-pad had even more cash, along with gold coins, a gun with serial numbers filed off, fur coats and a very upset mistress, claiming the furs and the money was hers and having to be restrained from walking off with them.
Novikov looked up from the report to find Kuzmich's Fifth Section handler sitting before him. If Kuzmich had been with another Section, Novikov's approach would have been to offer friendship and remind the handler they are all wearing the same uniform and swim in the same waters. But the Fifth swam in a swamp, and they were well aware the rest of the Department knew it. Furthermore, the Special Section never used the Fifth to bring in suspects. They had their own people to do that. And Special Section never resorted to using thugs to assault people it didn't like. So familiarity would ring undue.
"Poruchik, I won't pretend to be your blood brother, but need your help. Some things about Kuzmich I know. Many I do not. Mind telling me what things he was into that could have gotten him killed?"
The handler's eyes fell on the ribbon on Novikov's chest and he gave a resigned sigh.
"Kuzmich was into a lot of things, Rotmister, and not all of it in our line of work. He was a fixer. People from all over Riga came to him, looking for a solution to their problems. So most of that gold, cash and furs you found at his place came from that. The gun as well. And we're not talking just Russian citizens either. The Bavarians, the French, the Prussians, and even the Americans all had him on retainer, to keep an eye on things at the casino should it involve their citizens."
Novikov nodded, for he knew all of the above already, but he wanted the handler to keep talking.
"But at the end of the day, Kuzmich was on our side. He never moved banned literature, had no tuck with dissidents, and never handled anything politically suspect. Just want to underline that."
Novikov managed another nod.
"I suppose the wife may know something, or the mistress, but Kuzmich is not the sort of man to spill his guts on a pillow. If anyone knows what he was up to, it'd be a drinking buddy of his from the old days, Alessandro Dadiani."
"An Italian?"
"No, from the Caucasus. Mingrelian, I think."
Dadiani had three convictions, two for keeping a disorderly house and one for living off immoral means. A pimp. But a very successful pimp, who lived on Shed Street, which despite its name was one of the more fashionable addresses in the northwest portion of the city center. And Dadiani lived on the most fashionable house on the street, a turn of the century four-story Art Noveau building with a massive two-story high bay window whose façade was decorated with ears of corn, poppies, daffodils and chestnut leaves. Dadiani had an apartment on the fourth floor. Novikov, Cornet Obolensky and Sergeant Buditsky made their way up to it, with the thoroughly rattled building manager.
"Dadiani, open up in the name of the law!" growled Buditsky.
When there was no response, the manager fumbled with the keys, all the while assuring the gentlemen-officers and Buditsky that this was a respectable house. Eventually the door yielded and the three Section men dug out their sidearms and flicked off safeties almost in unison, which made the manager cross himself and flee to a lower landing. Obolensky was bidden to stay behind, which the young man accepted with gritted teeth, and Novikov took point, even though he was a terrible shot and had never fired his gun in anger. Special Section had a term for senior officers who hid behind the backs of their men and it was not a term Novikov wanted ever uttered about him. Buditsky for his part was trying to avoid buck-fever. He had not had to gun down anyone in over twenty years, not since he did his bit for Tsar and Fatherland in the mountains of Dagestan trying to keep the locals pacified. Neither man moved fast and neither called out they were coming into the apartment armed. Such things were best left to American films. Buditsky found Dadiani first, swaying from the beam, bare feet two feet off the carpet. And he also spotted the suicide note on the dirty desk, next to the keys to a Renault.
"The Commodore is ready to see you, Captain-Lieutenant," said the aged secretary.
Captain-Lieutenant Valois of the Naval Counter Intelligence Office of the Main Directorate of the Imperial Russian Navy gave a polite nod, got his gleaming leather portfolio folder and walked inside.
It is never pretty when a grand man falls, and there was nothing pleasant in the way the Commodore was exiled from the St. Petersburg Grand Admiralty House to the Maritime Ministry building in Narva. Oh to be sure, his many enemies rejoiced, but most were embarrassed and looked the other away. Valois did not. He looked where others could not, and he was an expert in human frailty and its exploitation. And whether the once grand man sitting before him now realized it or not, it was Valois who recruited him into the scheme and not the other way around.
"I was told you had to go to Riga, suddenly."
"Yes, Commodore. A very minor distraction. It will not adversely impact our project."
The once grand man nodded. The project would be his legacy, a final gift to an ungrateful Motherland, to upset the balance of power between the British and the Russian Empires and change the world.
Chapter II
Chapter II
The log collected by the British Secret Service Bureau informer inside the Maritime Ministry building in Narva eventually arrived to London to a shabby building in Mayfair called the Leconfield House. The report sat in a tray for ten days. The informer was just one asset of many, and his handler marked most of his gossip as having a low-probability of actionable-intelligence. The Bureau's budget had also been squeezed by the recently elected Liberals, who did not care for England having a secret police, try as the Bureau did to explain they were nothing of the sort. Since the enemies of the Empire did not diminish, regardless of whether the Tories or the Liberals commanded a majority in the Commons, the Bureau was having to do with less, and while even five years ago, a battalion of clerks would do the filing of all incoming reports, now it was down to an overworked company. Still, the report did get to an analyst.
Due to the Bureau originally arising from the Special Branch, all of its analysts and field agents as a courtesy had "detective" in their title. Detective-Constable Rigby shifted through the gossip in the log until he got to the bit about Captain-Lieutenant Valois, who had been on the radar of the Bureau for a while. Valois was in the British Section of the Naval Counter Intelligence Office of the Main Directorate of Imperial Russian Navy, and he was good at his job. His flight to Riga was worth following up, when time permitted. Luckily, the Bureau did have a man in Riga at the moment, despite the budget cuts, and so their man was tasked in the middle of May with finding out why Valois had visited Riga in early April.
In the meantime, the Bureau's man in Riga, Detective-Constable Penfield, was keeping an eye on the mysterious death of Kuzmich. Penfield was not much of a gambler, but the "Paris" casino was a cozy place to gather gossip and make useful friends. And on several occasions Kuzmich had done the Bureau a service, though he did not know it, thinking he was just dealing with Russian businessmen.
"Any new information?" asked the plump man.
"About what," asked Genka, tearing into the roasted chicken. They were out in the township of Arbor, in a clearing not far from the cannery, and the food had been served by women the plump man had not seen there before. They certainly did not look like any workers the plump man would have employed.
"The, uh, situation with Kuzmich."
Genka put down his chicken and the plump man realized he had made a mistake. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Genka shook his head, slightly and only once, and the plump man closed his mouth.
"Let me tell you something I learned the hard way by doing five in a place where it's cold year round. If me and you go do something we shouldn't have yesterday and you bring it up today, I'd look you right in the eye and tell you it never happened. We clear?"
The plump man quickly nodded. Then opened his mouth and hesitated. Then closed it again.
"What? You heard of some of the tins falling off the back of the truck again?"
"What? No, no, no. Not since that one time when... Have you?"
"No, but you look scared, so that's why I asked."
"I am scared. I'm sorry. I know we can't talk about it. But I am scared."
And he had plenty of reasons to be, not the least because he lied to Kotov. Genka didn't dive the car to Arbor, the plump man did. When Genka found the car keys on Kuzmich's corpse, he told him to find the dead man's car and search it. But when the plump man found the car, he heard a noise he did not like and scrambled into the Renault and drove it to Arbor on impulse. But Genka did not know about being blamed for the car theft, or at least the plump man did not think it, making him doubly scared.
Seeing his partner scared, if not knowing the full reasons behind it, Genka put down his chicken once more and the plump man blanched. Genka flashed a grin to settle the man's nerves.
"We got a good thing going, but we had two bumps in the road. First, someone took something from us they should not have, and I made sure it won't happen again. Second, a nosy man came looking and he won't be coming around again either. And it's being taken care of, all right? Now, them gals you just saw are friends of mine. And my friends are your friends as well, and you should get friendly with them. And you can be as friendly as you'd like, because I had 'em tested. So let's finish eating here, and you go get friendly with two of 'em and I'll get the one, because you are twice as important as I am."
The plump man blushed and then preened. Genka concentrated on finishing off the chicken.
Novikov reread Alessandro Dadiani's suicide note. Dadiani confessed to killing Kuzmich over a debt. Dadiani loaned the money to Kuzmich to buy the Renault, but Kuzmich refused to pay him back. Dadiani arranged a dramatic meeting on the dunes to scare the Department agent into paying, but Kuzmich didn't scare and the two exchanged fists and Dadiani cracked him too hard. Dadiani fled, with the car which started the trouble. However, realizing he could not sell it and understanding the police would soon find him, he elected to climb into a noose. Novikov put down the confession, fixed his pipe, gave a puff and thought. He was handed a solved case. Yes, the suicide stunk, but his superiors would not care. During the reign of the late Tsar Nicholas III, a murder of an informer would have meant handing out beatings to any criminal within ten versts to impress upon them the seriousness of the matter, and whole towns would have been stood on their ears. But new tsar, new rules. The Regency emphasized keeping the public order by more peaceful and civil means, and sweeping ugly things under the rug. And when Alexander IV came of age he continued the policy of his mother and her ministers. To continue an investigation into the murder of a low level thug, in spite of the suicide note would now be frowned upon. The Order of St. Anne's in the Fourth got Novikov his plum posting in Riga, two years ago. If he wanted to go further... Novikov called his superiors with the good news. The case was solved.
Kotov hung up the phone and almost smiled. Then he stood, adjusted his shirt and tie and stepped out.
"Nataliya Vasileyvna, it is a lovely day and a Friday. Go on home, if you please, and get some rest."
It was not yet noon. The secretary beamed. The trip to the gypsy had worked. The curse was lifted.
Agafokliya Bondarenko was cursed from birth. She was born in Latgalia, a region of the Russian Empire spanning areas from the Livonian, Couronian and Vitebsk governorates. Latgalians did not take to the practice of having family names until late in the game, getting along perfectly fine with just having first names. Most were farmers, but some were artisans, such as Agafokliya's ancestor, a tinsmith. Trouble began for the Latgalians when the imperial officials took a closer look and decided they were not just beasts of burden grazing on lands but producers of goods and as such in need of enumeration to be taxed. Since the Russian Empire was already overburdened by ethnic minorities as far as the officials were concerned, the notion of adding Latgalians as a distinct people was mooted immediately in St. Petersburg. The Latgalians were told to pick an ethnicity and choose an appropriately corresponding family name. They could be Livonians, Russians or Ruthenians. Some chose Russian surnames, thinking it good to go along to get along, and others picked Livonian ones, because they felt kinship to them. But some picked Ruthenian, because they had dealings with farmers and merchants in the neighboring provinces and thought it might make things smoother. Agafokliya's ancestor decided on a Ruthenian name, since his best customer was a Ruthenian merchant. As choices went, it was very short-sighted.
Per St. Petersburg, there were two types of Ruthenians: White and Red. White Ruthenians were considered to be Russians who simply strayed from Russia and had funny names. But, it was held, they did not stray so far as not to be reeled back into the bosom of Mother Russia. Red Ruthenians also strayed, but they strayed too far and too long and some had temerity to call themselves "Ukrainians." Stark orders went out regarding these ingrates: they were to be subsumed as a people by the newly crafted label "South Russians." Ukrainians and Red Ruthenians were no more. There existed only South Russians, to be monitored closely. One of the Department of Police sections existed solely to do that. But some of these, uh, South Russians shared surnames with White Ruthenians, which meant even an educated man could not tell at a glance one from the other. To make life simpler, the officials regarded anyone with a Ruthenian name born in the White Ruthenian governorates, such as Minsk and Vitebsk, to be a decent Ruthenian, and anyone with the same name born outside the designated Ruthenian provinces to be a suspicious South Russian. Since the Bondarenko family lived on the south bank of the Dvina, they were part of the Couronian governorate and as such were regarded as South Russians, and faced discrimination, harassment, monitoring and employment restrictions. Had they been born on the northern bank of the river, they would have been part of the Vitebsk governorate and considered decent Ruthenians and be gainfully employed. And since they were now on a list of the suspicious South Russians, they were not allowed to move, having been registered by the police.
Agafokliya Bondarenko's childhood was one of privation. Her school years a never ending parade of misery and humiliation. And as she watched her beautiful mother go to an early grave as a hag worn down by worry and tear stained pain, she vowed revenge. A Bureau agent found her trying to obtain a gun. It did not take much to recruit. It was harder to keep her contained. She was promised the hour of the rope would come, but for now she could do more damage by other means.
Agafokliya Bondarenko, from the town of Katerinsk in Couronia, died alone and unmourned in the Cruel Winter of '68, which took many lives across the Empire. And the same year, Agafokliya Bondarenko from the town of Alexandrovsk in Vitebsk moved to Riga to find work. The decent and trustworthy White Ruthenian became a typist at the Riga HQ of the Department of Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And that is how Penfield got his hands on the Department report into Kuzmich's death.
Penfield read the report slowly, looking for something unusual. The first few pages did not qualify. Gobs of money jibed with who Kuzmich was, as did the safe stuffed with even more money, the gold coins and even the nicked gun. There were some mildly interesting promissory notes from quite a few people, including Captain-Lieutenant Dolgorukiy, scion of the grandest aristocratic family in Moscow, whose uncle was head of the Imperial Russian Army's Quartermaster Corps, the principal intelligence and counterintelligence agency of the Russian armed forces; and whose cousin was Colonel Dolgorukiy, the head of the Quartermaster Corps' British Section. However, Captain-Lieutenant Dolgorukiy's apple fell far from the family tree and he was in the River Fleets, the clown navy in charge of patrolling the more strategically important rivers of the Russian Empire, such as Don, Volga and Dvina. Dolgorukiy was in hock for 25,000 rubles, or 5,387 pounds, 18 shillings and 7 pence in civilized money. An eye watering sum, considering the average Russian earned less than 480 rubles a year and Penfield's own pay packet was less than 25 quid a month. But the Dolgorukiy clan were rich, so perhaps it was nothing to them.
Another notable note was given by Captain 3rd Class Mikhail Georgovich von Merenberg, a submarine officer in the Caspian Sea Flotilla. Merenberg had an even more impressive pedigree that Dolgorukiy. For starters he was a Dolgorukiy in his own right. His great-grandmother was Duchess Dolgorukova, who was mistress to Tsar Alexander II. The Tsar granted a noble title to the bastards she born him, and they were given their own noble house. One of the bastards married into the Merenberg family, who previously already married into the family of the great poet Pushkin and the royal house of Luxemburg. All that, and the man somehow was a submarine officer in the world's largest lake. Penfield made a note to check up on Merenberg and returned to the contents of the search.
Penfield puzzled at the contents of the apartment's refrigerator. Kuzmich had a dozen tins of herring. Considering Kuzmich ate out every day, either at the "Paris" casino, or one of the many restaurants whose owners would never dream of charging him money, Kuzmich did not need to stock up. Not unless he had a liking for herring, which considering he was a Riga boy and Riga being world famous for its herring was a possibility. And the fact they were all from the "Silver Fish" brand, as noted by the persnickety Department agent, went some way to such a theory. It was perhaps the favored brand of the dead man. But there were additional notes. The tins were all cracked open, but full. Why open twelve cans of herring at the same time and then put them back into the refrigerator? Penfield decided to find the person most likely to know the eating habits of Kuzmich and willing to talk, his mistress. But she was missing. So Penfield looked into the "Silver Fish" brand, and found four entities operating under that name in Livonia alone. Russian idiosyncratic trademark laws only extended their protection to those belonging to the First Guild of merchants and persons of worth. Before Penfield could examine in detail, a source told him he found the mistress.
The lawful wife of Ferapont Kuzmich Guskov knew all about her husband's other apartment. And she quite enjoying turfing the mistress - the prima of the "Paris" burlesque show. The prima was not having a good week when the eviction crew came, having been fired from her job at "Paris," since the new head of security at "Paris" had his own favorite among the dancers and felt it would be bad form to merely depose the prima and let her hang about and cause potential problems for his beloved. Having been left homeless, and jobless, the unfortunate young woman was also robbed of her fur coats, as they were deemed the property of Guskov's lawful wife, who for her part told the Department they could keep the gold coins and most of the cash. The quid pro quo left the deposed prima without much hope, but she gamely made the argument some of the cash found in the apartment was hers, earned as it was by being in the burlesque show. However the "Paris" casino management, at the request of the dancers, paid them in cash, and recorded a much lower salary on the books. So per the tax records, the deposed prima earned 25 rubles a month and it meant, per a sometime pal lawyer, at best, she could lay claim to about six months' worth of wages, arguing she did not spend it all, but saved and kept the cash at the shared apartment. Said lawyer also found her a new place, an ancient rotting wooden house off Windmill Street, scheduled for demolition. But the lawyer assured her he would get a stay of execution, since the owner claimed Wagner wrote "Rienzi" in it, whatever the Devil that meant.
After watching the rotting house for a couple of days and not spotting any surveillance, Penfield walked up and found the deposed prima hip deep in depression. He introduced himself as a former client of Kuzmich, and confused and hurt about the death of a good fixer, and listened to her tales of woe. Two hours of this would have worn out most men, but Penfield grew up in a pit village and knew the value of patience. He had been the first in his family to get the benefit of a secondary education thanks to the short lived Liberal government of the early '50s, which rammed through an Education Act to set aside a third of the places in local authority direct funded academies to be given to top testing students for free. The Act made it possible for the percentage of adult English males who spent more than six years in school to triple from 1% to 3. Penfield then went on to Magdalen College, Oxford on an open exhibition (read: scholarship) to obtain a law degree, to make real money and his family proud. It didn't quite work out as he planned, but he did end up with an interesting job and he paid the bills on time. And he had patience. As hour two headed to three, he brought up how Kuzmich asked him to buy herring.
"Kuzyanka asked me to buy him some herring for him as well. Was very particular. 'Silver Fish' herring. When I asked which one, since I saw two different types in the tins out there, he told me to forget about it. But then said to get it at 'Ocean,' out on the corner of Reval and Alexander streets. Nowhere else."
"Ocean" was a new store, having come into existence earlier in the year, taking over a failing portrait studio. Its owner was Mikhail Porfiriyevich Ionov, a recent transplant from Astrakhan. Fish stores were a dime a dozen in Riga, but Ionov must have made a tidy profit, for he dressed well, and drove a giant Russo-Balt Albatross, with a Plymouth V6 engine and a steering wheel which belonged on a pirate ship. He also owned a cannery out in the fishing village of Arbor, and canned fish there under the "Silver Fish" brand. A glance at the map told Penfield the township of Sunny Shores sat just between Riga and Arbor.
What was not clear, as Penfield leafed through the purloined copy of the ledger "Silver Fish and Co." provided to the local tax authorities, was where the "Silver Fish" got its herring. The information was sparse and half of the names of the sellers listed false. By contrast, the information on which concerns supplied all the other types of fish in canned was detailed. Considering the mighty herring was plentiful in the Baltic Sea and many fished for it, the lack of detail could have been written off as an accountant not wishing to keep track of all the operators from whom the fish was bought, or perhaps cooking the books by overstating payment to keep profits low and pay less taxes. But having asked around, Penfield found the prices paid by "Silver Fish" cannery were in line with what the other canneries paid. And as for the sheer volume, the Baltic sprats were bought by the "Silver Fish" from a dozen different fishing trawlers in one month alone, and each company was given its own entry, even if the haul was small. There was something different about the herring.
"Slava, you know everything and everyone. I got a guy who is asking me to buy 'Silver Fish' herring. Called me all the way from Tobolsk about it. What do I not know about it?" asked Penfield.
Slava was a cabbie and did know almost everything and everyone going on in Riga and laughed.
"Oh that old wives' tale. Some old fart somewhere in Riga was said to buy a can of 'Silver Fish' herring a little while back. The coffin dodger then goes home, and opens up the can and finds caviar inside."
"Caviar? Well, no wonder."
"Yeah, people ran out and bought the stock. Then they did a run on all the stores selling 'Silver Fish' all over Livonia. But no matter how many cans they bought, ain't nothing in them but herring. Would not put it past some bastard who owns 'Silver Fish' to have started the rumor."
"The Devil take that man. Say, what sort of caviar was it?"
"Oh it was sturgeon, lordship. Because if you're gonna talk about buried treasure, you gotta make it gold doubloons, don't you? No point in making it plain silver dollars."
Penfield gave a chuckle, and spared a thought. While at Oxford, his mind rebelling against writing out yet one more dreadfully detailed analysis on the laws which governed how slaves were freed in Ancient Rome, Penfield took a geography course. He enjoyed it, and recalled Ionov's hometown of Astrakhan sat atop the Caspian Sea, home to a breed of sturgeons so fine and rare they were called diamonds.
Detective-Sergeant Friday knocked on the open door of Detective-Sergeant Woakes's office at the Leconfield House. Friday was with the Northwestern division of the Russian desk, while Woakes was in the Russian desk's Navy division and specialized in submarines.
"I went to the Central division to see if they have someone in Astrakhan, but they sent me to you?"
Woakes did have a good if low-level agent in Astrakhan, who was following the comings and goings of the small but very active Russian submarine fleet in the landlocked but geopolitically crucial Caspian Sea. But that is not something one admitted or shared, even with a fellow Old Salopian.
"Yes, well, Central pulled up stakes, due to the budget cuts. What do you require?"
Chapter III
Chapter III
The Baltic Sea was not gentle, and the fishing trawler heaved and groaned. As did more than a few on it, even seasoned hands. But Kotov had good sea legs and besides, getting sick in front of his employees would have been undignified. One of them came up to him, knuckle to forehead.
"Begging your pardon, Well Born, twenty minutes out."
Kotov gave a nod. And his eyes fell to the ribbon pinned to his chest. The Order of St. Stanislaus in Third Class was the lowest order and class in the land. It carried no title of nobility, hereditary or personal. It barely rated a pension. 25,000 men a year got it. It was a trinket, handed out to a ministerial official after so many years of faithful services, and even junior officers, provided they were in the right regiment or ship, and managed to stay out of trouble. But Kotov was not in any ministry, and he was never a commissioned officer in the right regiment or ship. He went to a small school of which no one knew, and so when it came time for him to do his bit to Tsar and Fatherland, he was told he could not be commissioned as officer in the army or the navy. Having come too far to peel potatoes in the galley, he joined the paramilitary River Fleets instead.
The River Fleets were where the idle rich shipped off their embarrassments, because they could not be allowed into the proper regimental mess or ship berths. Drunks, fools and degenerates were Kotov's shipmates. But he was commissioned as an officer, learned his craft and made connections. When he was done with his duty, he went to Riga and opened a fishing concern. He made profit and outworked everyone. But it was not enough. He needed something. Someone spotted it and they recruited him, and as a token of their esteem ensured he was given a trinket. And that meant he was to be addressed as "Well Born" despite not having a title of nobility or being on the Table of Ranks. He also made more money, but drunks, fools and degenerates had once more become his partners.
Kotov's trawler entered the Swedish port of Ljugarn on the Gotland Isle without any troubles. The American ship was already moored in the neighboring berth. Kotov stepped on the dock with his accountant and stevedore. The American contingent numbered two. Courtesies were exchanged, and the crates were unloaded from the trawler. The count was confirmed and paperwork signed. Then a bank cheque in an oil skin pouch was handed over and more paperwork was signed. But when a carpetbag appeared in the hands of a toothy American boatswain, Kotov's boatswain merely discretely took it to the trawler, and no paperwork was exchanged. Just as discretely, Kotov chose not to notice some of the American sailors were selling albums to his eager men.
If you were to ask the good people of the Russian Empire which of their two mighty allies in the ceaseless fight against perfidious Albion they preferred, most over the age of 22 would say the French, but if you were to poll those under, they'd overwhelmingly pick the Americans. American pop-songs and pop-singers were as big a hit in Russia as they were back home. The Russian state attempted to ensure a right and proper place for Russian songs by restricting airplay of songs with any lyrics other than in the Russian language to just 10% of the songs played per hour. This did not dull the appetite. Though it have a significant knock on effect of virtually eliminating any songs with Ruthenian, Livonian, Azeri, Armenian, Tatar, Chuvash, Polish, Mordvin, German, Kazakh, Karelian, Turkic, Kalmyk, Kyrgyz, Lithuanian, Chechen, Georgian, Dagestani, Tajik, Greek, Bulgarian, Ossetian, Circassian and Estonian lyrics, since they now had to compete with the much more popular English language songs for the 10%. Another side effect was driving the prices of American albums up, since people could no longer hear them reliably on the radio, which presented a big problem for the less financially well off longhairs who favored American rock. Most American albums, even in Riga, went for five rubles, at a time an average worker took home less than 40 a month. But where there is a need and a will, there is a way.
Here the 15 year old entrepreneur paused his tale and hungrily sucked on the straw of his very much empty Coke. Penfield ordered another, and some fries as well. They were in a burger joint made to look like a McDonald's, just north the Riga's central train station, and Penfield was learning a lot.
It seems some cool cats got hip to X-Rays being plentiful and cheap, or free even if you "liberated" them from a clinic. And X-Rays were thick and flexible enough to record albums on, provided you knew how. It required a pair of manicure scissors to cut the X-Ray in the shape of a record album, a cigarette to burn a hole in the middle of your new disk so it can be placed as if a regular record on a gramophone, a wax cutter to dig into the X-Ray proper, a regular gramophone, a second gramophone onto which you placed an album to copy, said album; and time, patience and a quiet room. The quality of these "bone albums" varied from decent to nails on the chalkboard, but the important thing, they were cheap. In Riga, a "bone" for a good band went for half a ruble. Little Mishka, the entrepreneur, lived out in Arbor (population 957, give or take a few dogs and geese) and made routine trips to Riga to pilfer the X-Rays from the garbage bins of the hospitals and the clinics, of which Riga boasted quite a few.
"Sounds complicated, if you don't mind me saying," thoughtfully drawled out Penfield.
"If any cat could do it, then any cat could," said Little Mishka.
"Yes, but are you getting the right return on your investment?"
Little Mishka sat up straight. He figured the fogey for a hick from the boonies trying to get hip, what with the way he rolled his vowels, but he spoke Business with a capital "B" and now had his attention.
"You are making a record one at a time, and that means on a five ruble album you are breaking even on parts after ten copies are sold. Sold, not made. And only parts, and not counting labor. You have to get the X-Rays, and you have to make the copies, and you yourself said sometimes a copy doesn't turn out right if there is background sound or the X-Ray is too deteriorated and you have to rerecord. And, you also have to listen to the 'bone' album to make sure it is good enough to sell. That is time, and time…"
"... is money. I can dig, but what do you suggest?"
"Cheap workforce to do your job for you, while you focus on more important things. But you cannot create competitors by showing people interested in the process how your system works. Do not recruit amongst your American songs loving friends. Find outsiders who just want to make some money, and have basic technical skills to operate your setup. You said you have a cannery in the village? Perhaps..."
"No way, no how. Bunch of cats there have prison ink and if their main boss man finds out I am doing this, he'll have me on a pitchfork and take over my business. I want nothing to do with them."
Penfield agreed his burger companion was in quite a pickle and changed topics.
"D'you hear about Elvis coming to Riga as part of his Russian tour?"
"Hmm?" said a distracted Novikov, sitting in the corner booth of the pub. His two drinking companions had the same shoulder straps as him, and both had the same Anne in the Fourth pin as him as well. One was a blonde in a white naval walking-out uniform. The other was a brunette in dark-green army tunic.
"I said, the world is changing. Kobzon opening for Elvis, and right here in Riga. A Jewish man performing at the Opera House. Can you imagine such a thing happening under the Union?" asked the brunette.
Novikov could not. He had voted for Union of Patriotic Russians, same as most of the officers in his mess, but more out of habit than any political convictions. But in the last election, he - along with millions of others who had enough property to be eligible to vote - cast his vote for the Constitutional Democrats, securing them an outright majority in the Duma for the first time in a generation. When the Liberals had done the same in England the following year, there was talk of a Spirit of Détente and peace between the two great empires. But if it was a peace, it was a cold one.
"Do you think you can get us tickets?" asked the blonde. He had parlayed his Anne into getting a plum spot with the Baltic Sea Fleet in Reval, up in Estonia. Not as plum as Riga, but very much in the top five.
Novikov shook his head. Too many colonels and generals and their wives were lobbying for tickets, not to mention senior civilian officials with the ministries. A mere rotmister did not have much of a chance.
The blonde made a noise and leaned back and lit up. The brunette, who managed to get a plum posting down in Palanga, a pleasant seaside township at the tip of the Couronian governorate, studied Novikov. Once a month, rain or shine, the three men met in Riga, to catch up.
"Everything all right?"
Novikov tried to nod, but could not. The Kuzmich case was gnawing at him. He had not realized how much until now, sitting here with his two former colleagues. The three men were forged by the same fire, and discussed things with each other things they could not utter in front of anyone else. Pashin, the blonde, once had mistress issues. Novikov helped find her a place down in Riga, away from the wife, but close enough to visit. And the brunette Vorobyev on several occasions talked politics, in a serious way, which could have landed him in hot waters and colder climes. Novikov suddenly exhaled.
"Actually, things are not all right."
It tumbled out of him in fits, but tumble out it did. All of it. And the more he talked, the more he realized he had to reopen the Kuzmich case and hunt down the real killer.
Penfield had followed Mikhail Porfiriyevich Ionov, on and off, for two weeks before he lead him to Kotov. Kotov's concern held an export license to Sweden, Norway and the States. He was the man to the outside. Penfield requested more information on Kotov from London, while still waiting on Ionov's Astrakhan bio from the Bureau as well. But he did not need the Bureau help to read up on Genka, the cannery "boss man" had a record as long as his arm and there was a file on him at a local police station.
Genka started off as a teenage pimp in Baku and his favorite pastime was to rob the punters after one of his workers was done with them. One punter objected to being held up by a 12 year old with a blade and knocked the knife out of his hand with his walking stick. Genka got the stick and beat the man to death with it. For the rest of his life, Genka tried to live down the "Genka Walking Stick" nickname, because it was held against him. Among the upper echelons of the underworld to kill a mark just to rob him was considered pathetic. That one action, done in a heat of the moment and at a tender age, marked Genka as an amateur forever. And it did not help when even his grandfather, the old feared boss of Baku's Black Town, washed his hands of him as well, calling him a failure. That one stung. He moved out into the South Russian provinces and specialized in smash and grab, until he got to Riga.
One night, as Penfield watched, Genka took a rambling truck and drove northeast, then turned further inland, coming to a deserted airstrip. Penfield got out his light amplification binoculars and waited for a plane. It never came. Instead a military canvas truck rumbled up and parked alongside Genka's. Crewcut strongmen spilled out and began to transfer crates from the canvas truck to Genka's. Genka lazily stopped one of the crates at random from being loaded and asked for it opened. The strongmen complied. Genka dug out a tin from it, and Penfield zoomed in. The tin had the "Silver Fish" already stamped on it. Genka dug out a knife, cracked it open and got some of the contents of the tin on the blade. It was black caviar. Satisfied, Genka handed the tin off and went to grab a smoke.
Penfield eased away from the airstrip and made his way back to Riga. Before going home, he stopped by a dead drop and found a missive, telling him to look into why Captain-Lieutenant Valois suddenly went to Riga the previous month. Penfield pondered the new wrinkle in the scheme. Why did Valois go to Riga the same day Kuzmich was killed?
Mefodiy Afanasievich Valois sprawled out on the park bench. Narva was still cold in May. Then again, he had served in colder climes. Once the Maritime Ministry finally became convinced Russia really did need marines, it still sought to limit their numbers and function by allowing them to exist in just the Baltic and the Black Sea fleets. When the need for marines, or "naval soldiers" as the old brains in the Ministry insisting on dubbing them, exceeded the original mandate, the bureaucrats played games, keeping the marines assigned on paper to their mother fleet while posting them far and wide. Thus, Valois, on paper a member of the Black Sea Fleet during the length of his service, did a four year stretch along with 157 of his fellow marines in the frozen wastelands of the Russian Far East near Okhotsk, washed by the Sea of Japan, and 6,000 miles from the Black Sea. This was followed by a three year stint in Magadan, where its winter 12 months out of the year, and summer all the rest. After a brief and actually pleasant stop in Port-Petrovsk, a mere 450 miles from the Black Sea, he was soon given new orders to go to Polar, a town named as such because it was way past the Arctic Circle. Valois took the hint and retired. His brother, who went into the submarine service, did not take the hint and kept at it, eventually rising to Captain-Lieutenant and getting to Narva. The older Valois walked up and sat down.
"How are things in Riga?"
"Novikov started moving on the investigation into Kuzmich's death again. How's the Commodore?"
"Melancholy, but stable."
The Commodore set the black and white photograph of the four happy young men on his desk. It was the first time he had put it there in years. Not since the move from St. Petersburg to Narva. The three Kerber brothers and him, the odd man out. Not that the Kerbers ever made him feel it. They went out of the way to make him part of the Musketeers. Though there was much mock debate over who played what role. The Commodore did not think there should have been any debate. Viktor was Athos. He was the eldest of the three Kerbers, and the paternal figure of the group. He too shocked polite society as well, though not by marrying a low born, but by not following his uncle into the Navy and striking out into the newly minted Imperial Russian Air Force. Viktor was instrumental in their independence from the bloody army. The army had control over the aviation then, but thankfully some fathead with more whiskers than brains saw it as a drain on the army's coffers and let the Air Force be spun off, provided the army held on to the airship program. Airships! The Commodore sometimes wondered if the man lived long enough to understand his folly, or was he like so many idiots who was sure of his genius to the bitter end all evidence to contrary.
Little Borya was d'Artagnan, the youngest of the three Kerbers, impulsive and wild, and utterly brilliant. He went into civil aviation, determined to stay away from the military life, but soon found all of his designs marked "Top Secret" and was dragooned into the Ministry of Aviation, where he discovered untold potential of many by opening the forbidden door to non-Russians to work on airplane design, bringing in Ruthenians, Livonians, Jews, and even Crimean Tartars.
But the brother which most changed the Commodore's life was the middle one, the Aramis of the lot. The women's pet to men's regret, Lenya went into the Navy, to appease the family, and because he liked a challenge. And making the Navy grasp the importance of aviation was a challenge indeed. The Navy had no centralized aviation. The Baltic and the Black Sea fleets had some squadrons posted to them, but nobody in the massive Pacific fleet wanted anything to do with the newfangled things. It took decades to change hearts and minds, but it worked. And soon the British admirals were demanding their Royal Naval Aviation Squadrons be organized along Russian lines. And the Commodore was right there by his side, working alongside a legend, and allowed to become one as well.
The three brothers made their respective agencies cooperate, and a new golden chapter of aviation was written. No civilized power on Earth could boast of having its Navy, Air Force and Aviation ministries cooperating. The Musketeers were on top of the world, made sure everyone knew it. The army was told to forego anything with fixed wings. The secret services had to beg to be allowed to expand the cubic capacity of their air transport. They approved all designs. All was well, until Viktor passed away.
The Air Force tried to keep the magic going, but Viktor understood things his replacements could not, and the politics soon overcame them. Poor Lenya had a heart attack when he heard the bloody army had a fixed wing fighter. He never recovered. After that, Borya's mind went. And it was down to the Commodore, the slow and ungainly Porthos of the lot, to carry the vision, and of course he could not. He was outfoxed and when they came to him to ask to move out in Narva, he did not make a scene. His reign was over. The kings were dead. Long live the bloody barons. But the Commodore was still alive, still had a functioning brain, still had some notions and he was still Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev - the genius who could see the future where mere mortals only saw pencil drawings.
So it's something aircraft related. Considering the lack of of two world wars to speed up military development, could it be the design for the functional air to air missile? Or is the nuke plans?
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Jets have been mentioned in Deaty by Telefon, so they are already in use. However the nukes do not exist yet and I have only seen the mentions of AA guns around critical installations, never AA missiles.
Stay tuned!
As Court Jester pointed out, jets do exist ITL. But the Commodore does think the whole thing is related to his notion of something airplane related.
Correct, and stay tuned.
Chapter IV
Chapter IV
Somehow the Leconfield House had decayed further since Kitty last set foot inside it. Back then she was a desk queen - a Registry girl doing her spell of office work in the allegedly glamorous world of spying before settling to marry. Why such a job was considered good for young debs, Kitty could never fathom. The office work was tedious, most of the men were awful and most girls quit and did something else. Kitty hung on, and learned to navigate within the narrow confines of what was allowed for her gender. Analyst work was out of the question, as was field work. Then the new chief changed the rules upon assuming the big chair, and Kitty became one of the first set of women to be authorized to go into field work. Since then she has had adventures in the most dazzling towns of Europe and the Empire as well as its most loathsome parts.
"Help you with something," asked a sharply dressed young man without a hint of a leer or lewdness.
Kitty produced her pass: "I'm here to see DDI Hobson."
The young man gave directions and Kitty followed them. She was curious to see which harridan was running the desk queens, privately hoping to run into her old monster so she could see how far Kitty has risen, but to her surprise the queen mother was a polite middle aged man. The world was changing, she realized, and with a backward glance, she climbed the stairs and worked through the warren of offices.
Divisional-Detective-Inspector Hobson ran the Baltic division of the Bureau's Russian desk. Five years ago, that meant the Estonia, Livonia and Courland. But things were consolidated, and he was now also responsible for the Kovno, Vilno, Vitebsk and Pskov governorates as well and his division was renamed Northwestern. Then some bright lad reasoned the Grand Principality of Finland was in the northwest of the Russian Empire and parts of it were washed by the Baltic Sea, so they gave him all nine Finnish governorates as well. He was therefore a bit overworked, but welcomed Kitty and gave her a Top Secret copy of the reports of Goldfinch (Penfield). It was appended with a Top Secret report from Oriole (the Bureau's agent in Astrakhan), and biographical information on Ionov (merely Secret), Kotov (Secret) and Captain 3rd Class Merenberg (Top Secret). Kitty went into an adjoining room to read.
When Obolensky announced to his college pals he accepted a commission in the Department of Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, half of them stopped talking to him. His girlfriend left him shortly after. Those pals which remained all pulled him aside over the next month to ask why a decent and intelligent man would lower himself to sniffing bedsheets, eavesdropping and torturing the innocent. Try as he might to explain such excesses were associated with previous regimes and a new wind was sweeping through the Department and they wanted the best and brightest, his pals would all shake their heads, sigh and try to get him to read Voinovich or some other banned author on what the police organs of the Empire really did. Obolensky stood his ground. And in the year he has been with the Department he had not had to sniff any bedsheets or torture anyone. But he did eavesdrop in on a conversation between a heroin dealer in Rostov-upon-Don and an underage girl who lacked the funds to secure a dose. He had no regrets in his chosen field of work. But there were certain moments of it he did not enjoy. Such as watching his superior officer dangle a fur coat in front of the former mistress of Kuzmich.
"Celestina Mefodiyavna, with the investigation now closed, certain matters are resolved and items which thought to be related to the murder case can now be returned to their rightful owners and..."
"What do you want?" asked the deposed prima in her rotting wooden house, which recently got a stay of execution due some Bavarian lunatics willing to pay for its upkeep and renovation since the owner proved beyond the shadow of a doubt Wagner really did write "Rienzi" in it.
"We were going over the search protocol of the apartment of the deceased and found a rather odd and previously overlooked item and were hoping you'd shed a light on it. Why did Kuzmich have a dozen open tins of herring in his refrigerator?"
The deposed prima recalled her conversation with the Second Guild merchant and leaned back, taking in pipe smoking Novikov and his young and slightly embarrassed cornet.
"What'd his beloved wife say on the subject?"
"She had nothing to say."
"On account she didn't know him as well as I did."
"Which is why I'm talking to you now."
"No, you're talking to me because she had no reason to tell you nothing, and you got my fur."
"The ownership of the fur coat is in question."
"Coats. There were three."
"All I have is one fur coat."
"There were three. Two full length, made of rabbit, and a waist long one that's mouton."
"Mouton?" asked Cornet Obolensky in spite of himself.
"Oh I'm sorry, you think that's above my station?"
When it came to fur coats, as in all things in Russia, there was a hierarchy. At the top sat sable, followed by mink, fox and wolf, karakul, mouton, nutria, and rabbit and squirrel. A woman such the deposed prima barely rated rabbit, and was far more likely not on the fur scale at all, having to make do with padded jackets like most. But at most, at most, given the prevalence of the beaver-like water-rat creature in the Baltic fur farms, nutria was on her horizon. Mouton was not just a step too far, it was a bridge too far. Novikov glanced at Obolensky and the young man wanted to disappear, but as he could not he managed a nod to signal he will keep his mouth shut for the rest of the conversation.
"No, Celestina Mefodiyavna. I am just clarifying which coat you are claiming. Because all I can offer is one of them, not all three. And I assumed it'd be the mouton one. Was I wrong?" asked Novikov.
"He asked me to buy him herring, but only from one store: 'Ocean.' He was looking for something."
Penfield only had Secret clearance, so the information he received was redacted, but still a picture of a conspiracy formed easily. Ionov and Kotov both came from modest backgrounds and when it was time to do their bit for Tsar and Fatherland could only get commissioned in the River Fleets, and both sailed on the Volga, and did a year on the same boat, regularly coming down to Astrakhan, where they met the hard-drinking, free-spending and highly charismatic Mikhail Georgovich von Merenberg, Captain 3rd Class in the Caspian Sea Flotilla.
As to the mechanics of the caviar harvesting, Oriole concluded poaching about in the actual Caspian Sea was not easy, with the Ministry of Fisheries operating patrol boats and hefty rewards for turning in illegal sturgeon hunters. But the Volga River was another matter entirely. Every spring, sturgeon would swim up, and at the height of the mating season, the width of the mighty river would churn with a never ending stream of sturgeon from bank to bank. Ministry of Fisheries and local police would post men every 50 sazhens on both sides of the shore during the height of mating season, but would routinely stumble upon sliced open carcasses of female sturgeons with their roe removed. And the Volga had tributary rivers, where enterprising fishermen would set up nets. The going rate in some townships up the Volga for an adult female sturgeon was 100 rubles. Too much of a temptation. Furthermore, per Oriole, it was rumored Captain 3rd Class Merenberg let it be known about town he would pay 150, with no questions asked, so long as the roe was not damaged. And Merenberg was said to be involved in a cannery up the Volga, which carried the name "Silver Fish."
Penfield totaled up his findings, and formulated his outstanding questions. What was the scope of the scheme? He saw quite a few crates being transferred from the canvas truck to the rambling one Genka had. But was it a monthly trip, or a semi-weekly one, or perhaps only quarterly? And for how long did the scheme run? How many shipments had Kotov made already with the caviar disguised as herring? Just how much money was being made by this criminal association? Penfield had no way of knowing.
How did Kotov end up with the Order of St. Stanislaus in Third Class? Unlike the Orders of St. Anne's, Vladimir or George, the lowly Order of St. Stanislaus did not have a Grand Hall where its Cavaliers met to discuss the Order's business and records were kept. And it was hard to track, since 25,000 men got it each year. But still, you had to be nominated by a semi-senior government official to get it. Who nominated Kotov? Captain 3rd Class Merenberg did not have the power, but his family certainly did.
Which raised the most tantalizing prospect. How many of the Merenberg family were involved in the scheme and which ones? There were half dozen Merenberg in the Navy, and one was in charge of the British Section of the Naval Intelligence Office of the Main Directorate of the Imperial Russian Navy. If Captain 1st Class Baron Alexander Adolfovich von Merenberg could be proven to have had anything to do with his cousin's caviar smuggling scheme... If not outright blackmail then at least leaking the information would cause trouble enough for an avowed and smart enemy of the British Empire.
Lastly, there was Captain-Lieutenant Valois. What was his game? He was in the British Section as well, but in the Counter Intelligence Office. And it was long rumored Valois and Merenberg did not get along, at familial level, on account Valois descended from royal bastards born by a mistress of Tsar Alexander II whose chief rival was the mistress which was the progenitor of the Russian based Merenbergs. Did he travel to Riga to dig up dirty to blackmail his ancient rival?
Penfield suddenly violently sneezed. There was a rumor of an ugly summer flu spreading through the Baltics up from the Ruthenian provinces. Penfield resolved to get some medicine the next day.
"What do you think of this affair?" asked Detective-Inspector Shepstone of Kitty.
"I am not sure as to the role of Valois in it, either one, or how many Merenberg are involved, but if Oriole is right, then we have Captain 3rd Class Merenberg dead to rights and there is a Hell of an opportunity here to compromise and may even turn someone whose last names matter in Russia. But we need more information. I still have a lot of questions about the affair."
"I agree. Oriole has done a good job, but they are just an informer. We need Bureau boots on the ground, and not just in Astrakhan. We need people to follow these Americans and find out what is the scope of the scheme. How much money and is it still on-going."
"All right. When am I leaving for Astrakhan?"
Captain-Lieutenant Valois observed the subbasement chamber through a two way mirror. The mirror was hidden by the pools of shadows cast by a lonely lightbulb swaying from the ceiling. An old dental chair stood in the middle of the chamber, its leather portions warped and stained. A young woman was brought in, saw the chair and began to sob. The guards strapped the distressed woman into it and left, not heeding her pleas of innocence. Then Junior-Lieutenant Duditsky stepped inside, sleeves rolled up, sadistic smirk on his face and a gleam in his eye. The young woman shuddered, and began to plead innocence once more. But Duditsky tutted at her, shook his head and held up a rolled up report.
"Wish I could say I was impressed with your draft on the Caspian and Volga sturgeon harvesting to London, but I wasn't. Bit of a mess, really. Had to rewrite, to entice your Bureau masters to come out here. You will soon have company, pretty girl. But in the meantime, it'll be just you and me, all alone."
The woman broke down sobbing and began to confess, to everything. A new record, even for Duditsky. Valois wrote out the recommendation for his commendation on the flight back to Narva. Things were going as he predicted, ever since he tipped off Kuzmich about the caviar in the "Silver Fish" tins.
So Valois leaked out caviar scheme to discredit the rival in intelligence service and basically keep everyone looking the wrong way as he pulls the ''wunderwaffe ''scheme. Then Kuzmich got troublesome and had to be killed. I reckon there will be even more of human unpredictability complicating the most delicate of plans.