Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(63)
No matter how good they were, though, a train couldn’t be halted at a station for long, which meant passengers needed to be cleared off and allowed to disperse. They could do their very best to hunt down the passenger list afterward, but any guilty killer would have made their way far into the city by then. Irkutsk was large and unfathomable. It used to be a center of exile for nobles who had revolted against the tsar. Nothing about the streets there allowed for an easy search; everything from its hand-built houses to its bridges was designed to help someone disappear.
But it seemed there was nothing more to say to change the officer’s mind.
Vodin fished his pocket watch from his vest, glancing at the face. “It’s almost midnight. Return to your compartment and get some rest. We will arrive at Irkutsk tomorrow afternoon.”
* * *
As soon as Benedikt woke up the next day, he started to pack their things. It wasn’t the end of the world. Even if this particular express rail made its last stop in Irkutsk, there might be another short-distance train that could take them to Vladivostok. They might be able to take a vehicle, use the remaining time they had to drive farther inland.
The problem was that Irkutsk was located at the southern end of Lake Baikal, but on the western side, which meant they would still need to go around before proceeding east. Benedikt wondered if they could travel through Mongolia instead, but that meant approaching Vladivostok from Manchuria, and with the Japanese invasion there, it would be terribly dangerous to travel by land.
He heaved a sigh.
The socks went in the corner. The shirts in the middle, wrapped around the gun he was putting away.
“It is very beautiful outside. Such a shame that we cannot live around these parts instead.”
Marshall was hovering by the window. Every so often, he pointed out the little lakes they were passing, the scenery turning more ice-blue the closer they came to Lake Baikal.
“I thought you were reading the directories,” Benedikt said, making space at the base of his luggage case. While he was distracted with putting every miscellaneous item away, Marshall had been hovering over the directories all morning. He had brought them into their compartment, lugging each of the five volumes off the dining carriage’s bookshelf and dumping them onto their bed. There was one for each year, with the most recent being 1932, issued only this month, and he had been browsing silently. Marshall unspeaking was a very scary Marshall. Under normal circumstances, Benedikt might have been concerned about what he was brooding about, but he had a suspicion that this was Marshall’s last effort to find some lead in their investigation, and he knew he ought not disturb any revelations being made.
“I’m staring out into the great unknown to ponder.”
“What have you been pondering?”
Marshall pivoted quickly on his heel. It seemed he was ready to share his revelations. “Come look.”
He flopped onto the bed, flipping open 1932’s issue to the pharmaceuticals section, where they had found Popov’s business listed. Then, slowing slightly, Marshall turned a few more pages into another section of listings, for chemists.
“My eye caught on this earlier by complete accident. Call it divine intervention. Or maybe merely my mind operating on a subconscious level, snagging on what it already finds familiar.”
Benedikt leaned closer. He had no idea what Marshall was talking about at first. It looked like any old page, a scramble of words and phone numbers and addresses. Then he caught sight of the listing in the corner, giving an address in Moscow and an alternate address in Vladivostok for inquiries regarding the second location, and recognized what he was looking at.
“This is… our final destination,” he said slowly. Uncomprehendingly. “This is Lourens’s address. The one that Roma gave us.”
“And yet it is listed as the private practice of someone named Egor Gleb,” Marshall said, tapping the information. “Which, might I add, is the falsest name I have ever heard. Now hold on, it gets more bizarre.”
Marshall set aside the 1932 directory. He picked up 1931, keeping the previous book open to the same page. “I figured I might do some cross-referencing. It’s a bit hard to go looking for the same address in the other books because the pages change around. But since directories are listed by name, I went looking for Egor Gleb in every section. He’s a chemist in 1931. And in 1930. Same information in 1929.” One after the other, Marshall flipped each book open, finding the entries on different pages. “But 1928…” Marshall opened the final book. “I didn’t find an Egor Gleb registered under chemists. I flipped over to the previous section, wanting to see if Popov’s Pharmacy was gone that year too.”
Benedikt peered at the page that Marshall had stopped on. “Was it?”
“Yes.” Marshall pointed at one of the entries. “But Egor is here. Under pharmaceuticals instead as a private practice. And his Moscow address is the same as the other years, but”—he thumped the newest directory over its edition from five years ago, putting the pages side by side—“if Egor Gleb is the Lourens Van Dijk we know, then in 1928 his Vladivostok address was Popov’s present-day place of work.”
None of this made any sense. In investigating the other passengers on board, they had been trying to find some sort of connection between a suspect and the deceased. Instead, it turned out the ones with some sort of connection to the deceased… were Benedikt and Marshall.