Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett Read Free Book Online

me a moment to realise it was the routine discharge from the Peter and Paul Fortress and not another explosion.
    I sat down to read the
Petersburg Zeitung
, a pro-German newspaper I rarely saw. A front-page editorial lauded the tsar’s brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich for his recent speech praising the restraint of the Kaiser and the German people in the face of continued French and English provocations. Germany harboured no animosity towards Russia, the editorial continued, and warned that if the pro-Frenchcabal in St Petersburg got its way, it would lead the tsar and Russia to ruin.
    For all Anna’s resistance, it was obvious that something traumatic had occurred during her trip with her father to Kazan all those years ago. There was an odious possibility that Zinnurov had made improper advances towards his infatuated thirteen-year-old daughter. For this reason alone, leaving aside his notorious public reputation, my feelings at the prospect of meeting the Mountain were wary and incomplete.
    The man who bounded into the sweltering room and thrust out his hand was tall, trim and straight-backed despite being, by my calculation, almost seventy. His hair was probably thinner than it had been when he was a youth but it was still plentiful, not yet entirely grey, and, for all his hairdresser’s expertise, a little unruly. He spoke loudly; he was used to being heard and appreciated. I imagined he usually overwhelmed his listeners. And why not? He was the Mountain, after all, self-made entrepreneur and confidant of princes. Only the week before the newspapers had reported at length a speech in which he denounced Russia’s enemies as ‘a league of evil’: they included liberals, factory workers, students, artists, social democrats, anarchists, terrorists and ‘a certain race that need not be named because every decent Russian knows who they are’. Was I in his estimation, even if ambiguously in my own, of that certain race?
    A waiter entered with a decanter of red wine and two crystal goblets on a silver tray. The wine was French, Zinnurov informed me with an ironic shrug (the Imperial Yacht Club was famously the resort of the German noblemen known as the Baltic Barons and their friends).
    â€˜The French are impossible, don’t you agree?’ Zinnurov said with a smile that was only half playful. ‘The alliance with France is immoral. We should have nothing to do with theFrench – they are cynical and frivolous.’ He put his nose into the glass and sniffed deeply, then said with a helpless smile, ‘The same, alas, cannot be said of their wine.’
    We toasted each other. The wine was big, earthy and forceful; Zinnurov liked his essence mirrored back to himself.
    â€˜I understand from my daughter that you are having some difficulty with the police?’ he said without further formality.
    â€˜Earlier this evening and completely out of the blue,’ I began, ‘a police inspector by the name of Lychev visited me in my office. He said he was investigating the murders of the newspaper editor Gulko and a young man called Yastrebov.’
    Zinnurov’s eyes narrowed, his interest piqued.
    â€˜I should state unequivocally,’ I said, ‘that I know nothing of these crimes and that nothing of this nature has ever happened to me before.’
    He nodded solemnly. ‘Did you know Gulko?’
    â€˜I knew neither victim, though Yastrebov was apparently found in possession of my
carte de visite
.’
    â€˜You did not give it to him?’
    â€˜I did not.’
    â€˜Business cards are often passed on from person to person.’
    â€˜I said as much to Lychev. However, he insisted on my attendance tomorrow at police headquarters along with my daughter.’
    â€˜Did he say your daughter is suspected in some way?’
    â€˜No. Catherine is only eighteen. She is a respectable young woman and it is simply inconceivable that she would know