The servants came in and bundled their boots and coats away, their faces impassive, although they must have overheard their conversation.
She closed her eyes, considered this for a moment. “You’re concerned about bodies but not the dead. Because the five unfortunates weren’t buried in their ancestral graves, they’ll have no peace in the afterlife. They are cursed to wander forever as ghosts.”
“Gospodi-pomiluy,” he whispered. “God have mercy.”
“Let’s go to bed.”
“I have work to do at my desk.” He kissed her, then left her alone with news of the woman’s strange death.
Very late that night, the Baron assembled the tools for calligraphy in his study. He daubed the brush on the inkstone. Waited to relax his shoulders, steady his hand. He was overwhelmed by a formless sensation, almost vertigo, and his hand trembled. The brush fell from his fingers and rolled across the paper, trailing black ink like a violent slash. He stared at the black spoiling the white.
Anxiety was familiar, like a vine inside his body, holding him upright. He wanted to quit, set the brush aside, as he’d once wished to leave during a lesson when unfairly criticized by his father, but he stubbornly remained at his desk to hide his unhappiness.
Fate had taken the lives of four men and one woman but they didn’t fall randomly as leaves. It wasn’t coincidence. It was a warning. Their deaths might never be solved. Perhaps it suited the individuals who controlled or monitored the situation.
After a moment, he picked up the brush, cleaned it, let it slide from his fingers. He stared at the black water, dissolved ink from his brush in the rinse jar. Opaque, deep as a well.
Andreev was his companion at Central Station, the two men dressed identically as the crowd around them in bulky sheepskin coats, their faces half hidden by immense fox-fur hats. Andreev had confirmed the shipment would arrive on the afternoon train from Mukden and the Baron was eager to collect medical supplies ordered months ago. They had spent over an hour in the train station, watching the crowd, drinking tea, their damp coats steaming in the heat from the immense blue-and-white-tile stove in the corner. The Baron resented waiting for the perpetually late trains but Andreev wouldn’t risk the goods being pilfered and then resurfacing later at the market at a higher price. He broke off a chunk of bubliki, a hard roll, and offered it to the Baron.
“The bread is firm enough to reset your jaw after breaking your teeth. To your health.”
He waved away Andreev’s offer of bread with a glum expression.
“Have you made peace with the new corpse?”
The Baron stared back at him.
“The corpse at the Railway Club reception. In the snow.”
“Hardly peace. May God have mercy. Gospodi-pomiluy.” Of course Andreev would know about the death. He was a hovering tiny eye, a fly, a shadow present during secret situations. “I’m prepared for the investigation promised by General Khorvat.”
“Any progress with his promise?” By the tone of Andreev’s voice, it was obvious he was aware nothing had happened.
“There is always another official who lost the paperwork or didn’t receive the paperwork.”
“We should just get on the next train and leave Kharbin. I doubt the situation will improve.” Andreev dodged a woman dragging a heavy pigskin suitcase. He made no offer of assistance.
The Baron encouraged this change of subject and asked Andreev if he’d traveled in Manchuria. He’d once mentioned visiting the remote northern territory, the ancestral home of the Manchu.
“Yes. I made an expedition with a guide. We encountered the Buryat, Oroqen nomads, and the salmon-skin tribe, who wore clothing made from the cured skin of giant river fish. The kaluga sturgeon were enormous. They said some were twice as long as a man. But the worst terror was blackflies. Black clouds that swarmed with a terrible noise like a machine. Our faces were covered with cotton masks, we put thin silk over the eye- and mouth holes, but the flies still got in. We barely uncovered our mouths to eat. The stinging flies drove the horses crazy. It was a wilderness. No place to leave our mark.” Andreev had been focused somewhere else but now his attention locked on the Baron. “Northern Manchuria is no refuge from Kharbin.”
“Are you considering another expedition?”
“Only if desperate.”
The Baron sensed his evasion clearly as if he’d made an about-face. “Now I’m curious.”
Andreev tossed his head, stirring the feathery thick fur on his hat. “My contacts told me Russian officials have ordered a great quantity of barbed wire.”
Andreev’s words stuck like tacks in his skin.
A whistle blast simultaneously brought a low vibration under their feet as the train shook its way onto the tracks behind the station. The crowd immediately swept toward the huge double doors, a force of movement linking the entire room. A wedge of cold entered when the station doors were flung open by a uniformed soldier.
The waiting room had cleared and the Baron pointed at a figure slumped against the far wall. Andreev turned, but the Baron was already moving quickly across the room.
The Baron knelt by the still figure, pulled his jacket aside to check his neck for a pulse. His hand was batted away by the end of a rifle, and he turned toward two soldiers. He stood up too slowly and they shoved him away. A blanket was thrown next to the man on the floor and the soldiers grabbed his arms and legs, still slightly flexible. The man’s arms flopped when he was dropped on the blanket. They carried the body, sagging in the blanket, toward a side door. A few people made the sign of the cross as the soldiers passed.
Andreev came over to him. “You should have given the soldiers orders. You’re a doctor.”
The Baron silently hurried after the soldiers, Andreev following.
Outside the station, they waited a moment for their eyes to conquer the glare on the snow. There was a narrow pathway, almost a tunnel, at the side of the building, carved in the deep snow by countless passengers. At its end, the soldiers were partially visible, swinging a long bundled shape into the back of a wagon.
Andreev raced ahead and the Baron struggled behind him, as slowed by the snow as if it were a thickness of blankets around his legs. Andreev reached the soldiers first, demanded to know where they were taking the body. The soldiers ignored him and yanked the tarp tightly over the corpse, secured it with rope at one side of the wagon. Andreev shoved a soldier and his fist swung back; the two men slipped and fell in the snow without injuring each other. Andreev staggered to his feet, swearing, wiping his wet face. Unconcerned, the soldiers drove away.
Andreev shoved the Baron into a waiting droshky. The driver whistled and they sped down Bolshoi Prospekt following the soldiers, the ice and mud thrown back by the horse stinging their faces. The cold air entered the Baron’s throat like a screw driving in, his breath condensing into hard rivulets of frost on his beard and collar. The soldiers’ wagon, tarp flapping, was just ahead of them and they expertly steered around an overturned cart. With evident pleasure, the Baron’s driver slowed to watch Russians and Poles furiously arguing over the cart in the street until Andreev shouted and pummeled his thick shoulders.
The driver reluctantly set the droshky in motion, steering recklessly until they hit deep ice ruts and tilted wildly to one side, the horsehide blanket sliding off Andreev’s legs. The two men clutched the seat for balance until the vehicle jolted upright. The soldiers’ wagon was far ahead, past the Iverskaya Church, but they quickly narrowed the distance until their wheels caught in a thick snowbank. The chase was over.