Chapter Twenty-four:
Yurievsky’s ability to follow orders and keep secrets had encouraged Grand Duke Pavlovich to snatch him from the ranks during the second Russo-Japanese War in 1904, using the Imperial Army sergeant as an aide, a courier, a bodyguard, and an assassin. The Duke quickly learned, also, to trust the tall soldier’s native intuition. “The man is a veritable barometer for things suspicious,” he boasted to his fellow officers, and it was true. In the years that followed—with the Duke’s Tsarist political enemies far outnumbering his foreign military ones—Yurievsky more than once pointed the impulsive Pavlovich in a right direction when a wrong one might have proven fatal.
Now, the former aide’s barometer was reading low—a storm was brewing—and this premonition kept him in the doorway after Dinkle bolted from the study, giving him a good look at me as I darted out from beneath the desk. He watched me escape and then moved to the window. The boy from the town meeting, he thought, as he watched me dash along the west side of the house, illuminated by gauzy moonlight. I didn’t see him and had no idea I’d been spotted until much later. How did I find out? Be patient. I will explain in due time. For now, just accept that the spy had been espied.
As for Yurievsky, the tall Russian was accustomed to town boys sneaking onto the estate; indeed, he intentionally left windows unlocked in the guesthouse and servants’ quarters to make their adventures more interesting. None had ever stolen inside the main house and another soft spot had now formed on the potato the villagers were harvesting.
Dinkle called out and Yurievsky tracked the old man’s impatient snarl to the front entry of the mansion. The ex-gunrunner had made it only as far as the foyer and waited just inside the front door, unwilling to venture alone into the night despite the pistol he had retrieved from his desk drawer. The car horn continued to sound, a parrot’s squawk intruding upon the distant sound of waves.
“Get out there,” Dinkle growled.
He followed Yurievsky outside, but remained within the safe halo of light provided by the porch fixture, watching his tall manservant approach the garage. Inside, Yurievsky found a tire iron jammed between the seat and steering wheel of the Duesenberg. He removed it, replacing the harsh blare of the horn with the usual chirps and rustlings of the night. He then searched the garage for intruders. Dinkle would expect it done and would verify it had been accomplished with a slit-eyed interrogation. The old man needn’t worry, his man thought. I am a soldier. I follow orders, even the pointless ones. At the end of the war, when mud and cold and the Bolsheviks had thrown the once grand Imperial Army into chaos, other soldiers had stopped following orders. Such men probably would ignore Dinkle now, Yurievsky mused; they’d lean against the painstakingly polished fender of the Duesenberg and enjoy a cigarette for a few minutes, assuming the prowlers were on their way to the village, the garage empty. Yurievsky would not succumb to such insubordination. He had never lied to Dinkle, to Grand Duke Pavlovich, or to any of the men who had engaged his services over the years. He had, on more than one occasion, omitted the truth. Omissions of truth were acceptable, he reasoned, if the truth had not been solicited. Lies, however, were the way of dishonorable men and Yurievsky saw himself as a man of honor, even though he knew most people, if apprised of the things he’d done at the behest of others, would see him as an amoral monster—an enforcer, a torturer, a murderer. He had been those things, but never a liar. When asked for the truth he had always provided it.
When asked.
Yurievsky thoroughly searched the garage even though he knew it was a waste of time. The person who had jerry-rigged the horn—likely the boy’s brother—was by now halfway to the village along with his older sibling. Moreover, their intrusion on its own was of no interest to him—the two boys had snuck onto the estate several times in the past. However, neither had ever entered the main house. This was a bit of derring-do that would require further investigation. Later, Yurievsky thought. Let the rabbits run for now. I know where the hutch is.
Once his inspection was complete, he stepped back into the cool night air. Across the broad drive the porch was empty, the front door closed. Yurievsky smiled humorlessly. Despite the pistol and his bluster, Dinkle typically manifested courage in the form of foreclosures and leveraged buyouts. When younger, the old bounder had allegedly shot an unarmed man or two, but now assigned his fights to hirelings, mercenaries like Sergei Yurievsky.
The night was pleasant and Dinkle’s man decided to put off his boss until morning, instead walking the grounds. Autumn loomed ahead with Labor Day behind them, adding a hint of fog to the salty air as he glided between the buildings and out to the sandy crest overlooking the ocean. Afterward, he made his way back to the garage, retrieved a flashlight, and then hiked to the vineyard on the east side of the estate. There, he found a set of small footprints and followed them until they were joined by a second set. Yurievsky crouched for a closer look at the faint depressions, his eyes narrowed. The smaller footprints were the boy’s, but the others were larger. “Ne mladsij brat,” he said aloud in Russian. “Strannyj.” Not little brother…Odd.
Once satisfied the intruders had numbered only two, the former soldier returned to the main house. More than an hour had passed. Dinkle was now retired, but every light in the place remained on, the old bandit as fearful of the dark as a three-year-old child. Yurievsky climbed the steps to the mezzanine and went to his employer’s bedroom door. He put his ear against the smooth surface. From inside came the sounds of snuffling and snorting—his boss didn’t snore, rather he issued disgusting little noises as if blowing his nose into the pillow. Dinkle’s man chuckled, pondering how easy it would be to assassinate his employer. A man with so many enemies should not sleep this soundly, he thought.
Yurievsky returned to his quarters, changed into bedclothes, and slipped under the covers. He could not sleep, the boy’s intrusion on the same night Dinkle entertained the suspicious chemist too coincidental. Yurievsky did not believe in coincidences. Taken alone, the boy’s appearance might have been a prank. He might have broken into the house on a dare from his friends. But the rest of it—the too-handsome chemist, the startled faces of the village leaders at the town meeting, the unease of the young woman Irina might have become when he picked up the old man’s mail—these events were linked, Yurievsky thought, inextricably linked.
He had yet to share his misgivings with his employer. Dinkle would want proof and the former Russian soldier had none. He rose and relieved himself, then returned to bed and lay awake, staring at the dark ceiling. The villagers had put a guard at the marina to protect their treasure. But when he drove past the boathouse after dropping off the chemist at the Kittiwake Inn, their guard—the fidgety banker—was asleep.
One guard with millions at stake? Asleep?
It was another soft spot, the potato turning rotten before his eyes.
“The boathouse,” Yurievsky said aloud.
He turned on the lamp next to his bed and began to read from a thumbworn book: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. The story of Myshkin—a man whose simplicity leads the book’s worldlier characters to assume he lacks intelligence and insight—was his favorite, and after reading only a few pages, Sergei Yurievsky rose and climbed back into his clothes.