As it was only 2:25, and Chef Zhukovsky had yet to turn the corner from pessimist to optimist, he curtly replied: “Of course not!”
This led to a debate between the two men on the differences between what was probable, plausible, and possible—a debate that might have gone on for an hour, but for a knock at the door. Responding with an irritated “Yes?” Emile turned, expecting to find Ilya with his wooden spoon, but it was the clerk from the mail room.
The chef and ma?tre d’ were so confounded by his sudden appearance that they simply stared.
“Are you Chef Zhukovsky and Ma?tre d’ Duras?” he asked after a moment.
“Of course we are!” declared the chef. “Who else would we be?”
Without a word, the clerk presented two of the five envelopes that had been dropped in his slot the night before (having already made visits to the seamstress’s office, the bar, and the concierge’s desk). A professional through and through, the clerk showed no curiosity as to the contents of these letters despite their unusual weight; and he certainly didn’t wait around for them to be opened, having plenty of his own work to attend to, thank you very much.
With the mail clerk’s departure, Emile and Andrey looked down at their respective envelopes in wonder. In an instant, they could see that the letters had been addressed in a script that was at once proper, proud, and openhearted. Meeting each other’s gaze, they raised their eyebrows then tore the envelopes open. Inside, they each found a letter of parting that thanked them for their fellowship, assured them that the Night of the Bouillabaisse would never be forgotten, and asked that they accept the enclosed as a small token of undying friendship. The “enclosed” happened to be four gold coins.
The two men, who had opened their letters at the same time, and read them at the same time, now dropped them on the table at the same time.
“It’s true!” gasped Emile.
A man of discretion and civility, Andrey did not for one second consider saying: I told you so. Although with a smile he did observe: “So it seems . . .”
But when Emile had recovered from these happy surprises (four pieces of gold and an old friend purposefully at large!), he shook his head as one forlorn.
“What is it?” asked Andrey in concern.
“With Alexander gone and you afflicted with palsy,” the chef said, “what is to become of me?”
Andrey looked at the chef for a moment then smiled.
“Afflicted with palsy! My friend, my hands are as agile as they have ever been.”
Then to prove his point, Andrey picked up the four gold Catherines and sent them spinning in the air.
At five o’clock that afternoon, in a nicely appointed office of the Kremlin (with a view of the lilacs in the Alexander Gardens, no less), the Chief Administrator of a special branch of the country’s elaborate security apparatus sat behind his desk reviewing a file. Dressed in a dark gray suit, the Chief Administrator might have been described as relatively indistinguishable when compared to any other balding bureaucrat in his early sixties, were it not for the scar above his left ear where, by all appearances, someone had once attempted to cleave his skull.
When there was a knock at his door, the Chief Administrator called, “Come in.”
The knocker was a young man in a shirt and tie bearing a thick brown folder.
“Yes?” said the Chief Administrator to his lieutenant, while not looking up from his work.
“Sir,” the lieutenant replied. “Word was received early this morning that a student on the Moscow Conservatory’s goodwill tour has gone missing in Paris.”
The Chief Administrator looked up.
“A student from the Moscow Conservatory?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Male or female?”
“A young woman.”
. . .
“What is her name?”
The lieutenant consulted the folder in his hands.
“Her given name is Sofia and she resides in the Metropol Hotel, where she has been raised by one Alexander Rostov, a Former Person under house arrest; although there appears to be some question as to her paternity. . . .”
“I see. . . . And has this Rostov been questioned?”
“That is just it, sir. Rostov cannot be found either. An initial search of the hotel’s premises proved fruitless, and no one who has been questioned has admitted to seeing him since last night. However, a second and more thorough search this afternoon resulted in the discovery of the hotel’s manager, locked in a storeroom in the basement.”
“Not comrade Leplevsky . . .”
“The very same, sir. It appears that he discovered the plan of the girl’s defection and was on his way to inform the KGB when Rostov overcame him and forced him into the storeroom at gunpoint.”
“At gunpoint!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where did Rostov get a firearm?”
“It appears that he had a pair of antique dueling pistols—and the will to use them. In fact, it has been confirmed that he shot a portrait of Stalin in the manager’s office.”
“Shot a portrait of Stalin. Well. He does sound like a rather ruthless fellow. . . .”
“Yes, sir. And, if I may say so, wily. For it appears that two nights ago a Finnish passport and Finnish currency were stolen from one of the hotel’s Finnish guests. Then last night, a raincoat and hat were stolen from an American journalist. This afternoon, investigators were sent to Leningradsky Railway Station, where confirmation was obtained that a man wearing the hat and coat in question was seen boarding the overnight train to Helsinki. The hat and coat were discovered in a washroom at the Russian terminus in Vyborg, along with a travel guide for Finland from which the maps had been removed. Given the tightness of security at the railway crossing into Finland, it is presumed that Rostov disembarked in Vyborg in order to cross the border on foot. Local security has been alerted, but he may already have slipped through their fingers.”
“I see . . . ,” said the Chief Administrator again, accepting the file from his lieutenant and putting it on his desk. “But tell me, how did we make the connection between Rostov and the Finnish passport in the first place?”
“Comrade Leplevsky, sir.”
“How so?”
“When comrade Leplevsky was led to the basement, he witnessed Rostov taking the Finnish guide from a collection of abandoned books. With that piece of information in hand, the connection was quickly made to the theft of the passport, and officers were dispatched to the station.”
“Excellent work all around,” said the Chief Administrator.
“Yes, sir. Though it does make one wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Why Rostov didn’t shoot Leplevsky when he had the chance.”
“Obviously,” said the Chief Administrator, “he didn’t shoot Leplevsky, because Leplevsky isn’t an aristocrat.”
“Sir?”
“Oh, never mind.”
As the Chief Administrator tapped the new folder with his fingers, the lieutenant lingered in the doorway.
“Yes? Is there something else?”
“No, sir. There is nothing else. But how shall we proceed?”
The Chief Administrator considered this question for a moment and then, leaning back in his chair with the barest hint of a smile, replied:
“Round up the usual suspects.”
It was Viktor Stepanovich, of course, who left the damning evidence in the Vyborg terminal washroom.