Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel by Boris Akunin

back. And actually, Shelukhin did have a ticket to Jaffa.”
    The magnesium hissed and flared.
    “One more full face. Then three-quarter profiles from the right and the left. And both full profiles,” Dolinin instructed. He gave the tidied-up corpse a skeptical look and sighed. “Height above average, facial features ordinary, light brown hair, blue eyes, slight build, no distinguishing features. No, gentlemen, this is simply not good enough. I need a hundred percent clarity.”
    He wrinkled up his brow as he figured something out. Tugged on his wedge of beard. Shook his head decisively.
    “Sister, from here to Zavolzhsk is twelve hours’ sailing, right? And how long from there to Gorodetsk?”
    “Two days along the rivers. But the Gorodets District extends a long way, and Stroganovka is right over by the Ural Mountains. You have to travel through the forest to get there, through a remote wilderness. It’s a difficult journey, and a long one. I’ve been in those parts once, with the bishop. We traveled around to the schismatics’ hermitages, trying to persuade the local monks not to be afraid of the authorities.”
    “I’m going,” Sergei Sergeevich declared, and his eyes glinted fervently. “This really is a case of public importance. Once Dolinin finds himself at the scene of a crime, he has to get right to the bottom of it! He can’t just let it go. I’ll send the minister a telegram: the tour of inspection is being interrupted owing to exceptional circumstances. He’ll only be glad that I happened to be at the right place at the right time.”

Only herself to blame
    ON THE THIRD day of the journey they disembarked from the barge and stopped for the night in the large Old Believer village of Gorodets, where the women in white shawls spat over their left shoulders when they saw Pelagia in her habit. After that they set off by land, through the Forest.
    It didn’t have a name—just “the Forest,” that was all. At first deciduous, then mixed, then almost entirely coniferous, the Forest extended for a hundred miles as far as the Urals Crest, crept over the mountains, and, on emerging into the wide open space beyond them, swept all the way to the Pacific Ocean across an unimaginably vast expanse of land, its immense mass seamed with dark, broad rivers, many of which also had no name, for how could anyone think up such a great number of names, and who was there to do it?
    At its western extremity, in Zavolzhie, the Forest was still far from mature, but even at its margins it differed from its European counterparts in the same way as an ocean wave differs from a wave on a lake—by virtue of the distinctive leisurely might of its breath, and also an absolute contempt for any human presence.
    On first acquaintance, the road posed as a decent country track, but by the tenth mile it had already abandoned any pretense of carrying regular traffic and shriveled to the dimensions of an ordinary forest path.
    After an hour or two of rattling and shaking along a rutted surface on which black water gleamed dully through an overgrowth of spring grass, it was hard to believe that cities, broad steppes, deserts, open sky, and bright sunlight really existed in the world. Out there, in the realm of freedom, warmth reigned supreme, the meadows were full of yellow dandelions and the buzzing of bees as yet only half awake; but in here, patches of gray snow lay in the hollows, an equal mixture of meltwater and ice pellets frothed in the ravines, and the deciduous trees still stood in their mournful winter nakedness.
    When the birches and aspens were replaced by fir trees, it became even darker and more forbidding. The space closed in, the light faded, and new smells appeared in the air, setting your skin creeping and prickling. There was the scent of wild animal life lurking in the thickets, as well as a certain vague, damp terror. As night approached, the alarming scent became stronger, and the horses crowded close around the