The Tsarina's Mask Read online

  The Tsarina’s Mask

  A Detektiv Kazakov Mystery Book 3

  K.L. Abrahamson

  Contents

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  The Tsarina’s Mask

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Ivan’s Wolf

  To My Readers

  The Detektiv Kazakov Mystery Series

  About the Author

  Also by K.L. Abrahamson

  Romance, Mystery and Fantasy

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  The Tsarina’s Mask

  K. L. Abrahamson

  1

  Somewhere in Holy Mother Russia there lived a tsar who had a beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter who looked much like her mother. When his wife died, the tsar grieved deeply. Then he noticed how his daughter looked so much like his wife and determined to marry her. He came to his daughter and proposed marriage.

  The princess was so upset that she went to her mother’s grave and poured the story out. From beyond the grave, the mother told her daughter to have a dress made, covered with silver stars. The princess did as her mother bade, but when she wore the dress for her father, he proposed their marriage again.

  Again, the princess went to her mother’s grave and again poured out her story. Her mother told her to have a dress made with a silver moon on its back and the golden sun on its front. The princess did as bid and again her father told her that he loved her more than ever.

  For a third time the princess went back to the graveyard to tell her tale. This time her mother told her to have a dress made of pigskin. The princess obeyed and this time her father was so incensed that he threw her out of the castle.

  The princess wandered into the forest and when a young tsarevich and his hunting party came by, the princess hid in the branches of a tree. The tsarevich’s hunting dogs leapt at the tree and the tsarevich, being curious, sent his servant into the tree to see what had his dogs so upset.

  “What is it?” the tsarevich called to his servant.

  “My Lord, there is some kind of beast in the tree—a marvelous wonder, a wonderful marvel.”

  “What manner of wonder are you?” the tsarevich demanded. “Can you or can you not speak?”

  “I am Pig Skin,” the disguised princess replied.

  “What a marvelous wonder! What a wonderful marvel!” the tsarevich said and brought her down from the tree and into his coach to take back to his palace to show his father and mother. He would keep the marvel there.

  Voices outside the hospital room door interrupted Detektiv Alexander Kazakov’s reading. He closed the book around his finger and inhaled the urine- and disinfectant-tanged air. The room was filled with shadow and lit only by a single spotlight that illuminated the page of the book of fairy tales he had been reading out loud to the comatose figure on the bed. Young, blond Detektiv Pavel Chelomeyev was still unconscious from a beating he had received two months ago.

  The room contained three other beds, though they were thankfully now empty, their bedding pulled crisply across the mattresses, awaiting patients. Chelomeyev’s bedding was pulled tight, too. Uncomfortably so for anyone who moved. It crossed the slow rise and fall of Chelomeyev’s chest and tucked in around him as if he was a manikin or a child’s life-size doll. On the other side of the bed the slow beep, beep, beep of the medical monitor was all that said that Chelomeyev still lived. Though the bandages that had swathed his head had been removed, the young detective was a shadow of his former self, his floppy head of pale hair shaved off and now growing out, the skin of his pale face seemingly pulled tight over bone and shadow. His lashes were dark crescents against the shadowed hollows of his eyes.

  “There you are! Is this how you spend all your evenings? But then, don’t tell me. I already know.” Detektiv Chief Inspektor Valerian Rostoff filled the doorway just as his voice filled the room. An agitated nurse in white uniform stood behind him.

  Kazakov stood—whether to greet his boss or to guard Chelomeyev from him, he wasn’t certain.

  Rostoff turned back to the nurse. “That is all. You can go. We have private matters to discuss.” He waved her away and stepped into Chelomeyev’s room.

  Rostoff was a big man, a bear of a man in the old Russian style. Though he was only in his mid forties like Kazakov, his ruddy face was marred by a bulbus nose, veined like a drinker, and deeply etched frown lines that dragged down his expression. He carried his fur hat, for the weather had changed for the better as the days lengthened in March, but he still wore his greatcoat. In the hospital heat it reeked of warm wool steeped with human sweat. He glanced over Kazakov’s shoulder.

  “Still unconscious, I see. A shame, really. The boy had promise. I hear his mother is most distraught.”

  Chelomeyev’s father, a big man in the New Moscow Police Department, had done nothing to push the investigation into Chelomeyev’s beating. Given what Kazakov had learned about the event, Chelomeyev Senior’s inaction had filled Kazakov with concern—concern he had shared with Rostoff.

  “Has promise,” Kazakov corrected. “He is not dead and the doctors say there is no sign of brain damage. It is simply as if he has decided not to wake up.”

  “And so you spend your evenings here? Doing what?” Rostoff’s gaze slid to the book in Kazakov’s hand and yanked it loose. “Fairy tales? You read a detective fairy tales?”

  “He studied literature in university and did his thesis on fairy tales. I thought they would bring him comfort,” Kazakov said through gritted teeth. He, too, had always loved the old stories. “Now why are you here?”

  Rostoff sniffed and dropped the book on the bedside table. “There are better things to discuss over a man who cannot hear you.” He shook his head again at Chelomeyev.

  At least he was alive. That was the only blessing Kazakov could think of and the one he clung to. If he’d only listened to the young detective. If he’d only allowed him to finish his stories, there was every chance Chelomeyev would not be here. Kazakov sighed and looked back at Rostoff.

  “What do you want? You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something.”

  Rostoff went to the door, checked the corridor, and then pulled the door closed.

  So something clearly had Rostoff spooked. The fact that he was here at all suggested that something was happening, though why he would come to Kazakov was a mystery. The two men had trained as police officers together, but beyond that they had nothing in common. Rostoff had used his connections and his propensity to be a “fixer” to advance quickly, while Kazakov had become a detective with a nose for corruption and a high conviction rate, and that was where he wished to stay. He had refused to work with partners because few other detectives would put in the long hours that Kazakov would dedicate to his cases. Unfortunately, he made few friends of men like Rostoff, who preferred to smooth over cases involving influential figures.

  “Have you been paying atte
ntion to the news?” Rostoff asked. He shifted uneasily to the room’s lone window that looked out onto the parking lot and the dirty snow melting away in the park that fronted Our Lady Yekaterina Hospital.

  “The news?” Kazakov pondered the question. “The election is only a month away.” And all the polls said that the people of Fergana were most concerned about their security. Fergana was a small pimple of a country, caught between the superpowers of the Ottoman and Chinese empires. So far, that had worked to Fergana’s advantage, because neither superpower dared to encroach on Fergana without rousing the ire of their great foe. But recent attacks in Fergana had raised the specter of domestic terrorism. The most recent had blown up the statue of beloved Tsarina Yekaterina. Her statue had stood in the central square of New Moscow as memorial for her leadership in the horrific diaspora of Russians after Moscow fell and Holy Mother Russia was lost. Their people had wandered through the Siberian wilderness until the kind tribal people of Fergana had taken them in.

  In thanks, the Russians had gradually excluded the original people from the new Ferganese culture the Russians had built. Now some people were blaming the tribal people for the attacks and finding a solution had become an election hot potato.

  “Is there some problem of Boris Bure’s you now wish to solve?” asked Kazakov bitterly. Boris Bure was the current front-runner in the election. He was also the stepfather of a recent sixteen-year-old murder victim and the father of her unborn child, but the evidence of this had been withheld—for now.

  Rostoff turned back to him. “The man has power. We both know it. Better to remain on his good side, if a man wants a career.”

  Kazakov shook his head and felt sick to his stomach. He looked down at Chelomeyev. Was this what the New Moscow Police Department had come to? Chelomeyev had tried to do something more and look where it had got him.

  But Rostoff shook his head. “It is not Bure. You may have heard about the murder of an old tribal woman in Biysk. It was on the news this morning.”

  The room ticked around them and the soft beeping of Chelomeyev’s heart monitor ticked off the moments as Kazakov waited for Rostoff to explain himself. Biysk was a ski resort in the mountains enjoyed by Fergana’s wealthy. The death of an elderly tribal woman should barely make the news at all.

  When Kazakov didn’t respond, Rostoff turned back to the window. Apparently, a slush-filled parking lot in the late afternoon’s fading light was more interesting than Kazakov or Chelomeyev’s room. Or perhaps safer.

  “I received a call this afternoon from the Chief Inspector of the Biysk Police Detachment. He has recently experienced a spate of retirements amongst his officers. He has no one with the experience to conduct a murder investigation and is seeking our assistance. You have something of a reputation for your interest in our tribal citizens and you did your part in the investigation into the explosions. I thought perhaps you would appreciate a lighter duty—given your recent injuries, of course.”

  Kazakov shifted where he stood. His side still ached from where he’d been shot four months ago. It had slowed him down, but he was recovering. He’d investigated Chelomeyev’s beating last month and had chopped a cord of wood just this past weekend. Of course, now he paid the price in stiffness.

  “And what of the investigation into the explosives? Who will pursue the source of the bombing plan? And what of the other missing explosives? They have not been found yet.”

  “I know. I know.” Rostoff waved his questions away, his thick mop of hair shadowing his eyes. “But there are other detectives who can pursue this. You—you are a valuable commodity given how the tribals trust you.”

  The tribals. Therein lay the issue. He did not treat one Ferganese citizen differently from another. One might be a tall blond Russian, the other a slight, darker skinned Kyrgyz descendent of ancient warriors or Sogdian Silk Road traders. They were all one and the same when it came to the law. Of course, not every detective saw it that way.

  “Why this woman. Why now?”

  “Kazakov, my old friend.” Rostoff left his place by the window to cross to Chelomeyev’s side. “You are entirely too suspicious. They asked and so I ask you. Will you help out our brethren in Biysk?”

  And get his nose out of trouble in New Moscow. But that was left unsaid.

  “And if I refuse?” Kazakov fingered the pages in the book of fairy tales as he looked down at Chelomeyev. Let the young detective wake up. Let his mind be unimpaired.

  Rostoff’s gaze hardened. “There are those who say you should have retired after you were shot. So far I have denied them.”

  Kazakov sighed. Once he might have considered retirement, but at the moment there were undercurrents to his country that filled him with concern. He could not simply sit back in his dacha and allow ill things to happen. “Given the problems I cause you, I cannot see where sending me off to another department will enhance your reputation. At least not with that department.” And Rostoff was all about enhancing people’s views of himself.

  Rostoff shook his head. “But you always tell me that you get results and that someone must take the side of victims even if they are tribal.”

  Kazakov rolled his gaze heavenward. It was unfortunately true. “All right. I’ll leave first thing tomorrow, but on one condition. You must check on Chelomeyev regularly and keep me updated when I call.”

  Rostoff made grumbling noises but finally nodded. “Better if it was tonight. There are concerns that the entire tribal population could rise up and come down from the mountains. With the spring, the passes are opening.”

  “Tonight then.” Kazakov glanced at Chelomeyev and nodded, though the chances of such an uprising were between slim and none in his estimation.

  He touched Chelomeyev’s hand. “It seems our reading sessions are to be interrupted, old friend, but I will come back and finish the story of Pig Skin.”

  As if to prove he would uphold his end of the bargain, Rostoff snagged a chair and seated himself as if to assume Kazakov’s role, but instead of reading to Chelomeyev, he pulled a magazine from his coat’s deep pockets and began scanning the pages. There was only so far the great Rostoff would go.

  In silence, Kazakov turned away. There were many miles before him this night.

  The village of Biysk lay southeast of New Moscow, deep inside the Pamir-Alay Mountains. By the time Kazakov returned home to his dacha to pack and make arrangements with his neighbor Agafya Ryabkov to feed his cat, Koshka, it was full dark when the land lifted the road out of the fields and steppes that were the heartland of Fergana into the tall mountains that shielded that tender heart from the ravages of the Chinese Empire. It was well known that the Chinese had spread their fingers and spies into these mountains and there were rumors that they attempted to recruit the tribal people as their allies. Of course, there were also rumors that the Ottomans tried the same thing.

  He had been driving five hours by the time he came over the pass that gave onto the village. To either side were the massive white peaks of the mountains hulking against the star-laden vastness of the sky. Ahead and below the road, a swath of electric lights pooled in the darkness along the edge of a river that he knew was likely still frozen as it bisected the valley floor. Contrary to the spring thaws that had occurred in the valley of Fergana, here heaped snow ran either side of the road and a thin layer of ice covered the pavement so that he had to slow the Perseus in the corners of the switchback turns that took him slowly down between the spruce trees that verged Biysk’s valley.

  Once the valley had been a pilgrim destination for Islamic true believers, for it was said that a saint had lived in the crags beyond the village. Others had said the epic hero, Manas, had stopped here to rest during his many battles against the Kipchaks and Mongols. With the advent of Russian Fergana, interest in the valley had waned, but the introduction of skiing from the Anglo-Germans had led to the development of the valley.

  Kazakov slowed the Perseus to a crawl. He had brought his ex-wife, Annuschka, here for a h
oliday on their first anniversary and the lights had been a small huddle in the middle of the valley. Now they spread across its floor. Change had come to the valley.

  He wondered what daylight would show.

  He followed the switchbacks down to the valley floor, but a sudden abundance of roads turning off from the highway slowed him down. Signs advertised hot pools, hotels, and resorts. The ski hill warranted its own broad avenue. Not where he planned to go.

  Before leaving home, he had phoned ahead and made reservations at a small guesthouse that he remembered from long ago. It had been there that he had brought Annuschka—much to her displeasure, for the place held none of the modern amenities of home.

  Following his own sense of direction, he wound through a maze of streets toward the river. Hotels and grand resorts grew up beside the road where once there had been fields of sheep and horses brought in from the hills. Before, the valley had been a patchwork of trees and fields. Now, in the darkness it seemed all that he could see were new structures and parking lots.

  The road he followed dead-ended in a Y intersection by a thin line of naked trees. He stopped the vehicle and climbed out, sniffing the familiar scent of snow and pitchy woodsmoke. So not everything had changed. And over the purr of the Perseus’s engine came the clear music of running water and ice. There might still be deep snow on the ground, but the Biysk River’s ice was breaking up. His breath steamed in the cold, but overhead the veil of stars was bound by a familiar crown of peaks.