A hundred years ago, strange and threatening events took place that cannot be forgotten, they cannot be left in the past, because without the past there is no present ...

... And he, Doctor of Historical Sciences and Professor of Moscow University Dmitry Shakhovsky, managed to become an expert at the State Duma. In the past, he orients himself much better than in the present.

When the director of the museum is killed in a mansion on Vozdvizhenka, and an old cup of Meissen porcelain and several letters from the early twentieth century are found next to the body, Shakhovskoy is involved in the investigation. To understand what happened at the scene of the crime, Shakhovsky needs to reconstruct the events of almost a century ago - the history of the first Duma, the defeat of a terrorist cell, the arrest of demolitions. And something else to learn and understand ... about yourself. Perhaps he would not have recognized and would not have understood if it had not been for Varvara Zvonkova, who struck his imagination. He will understand the intricacies of destinies, strange and mysterious coincidences. However, maybe these are not coincidences at all? How much has changed - in just a hundred years' journey ...

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* * *

... And then his phone rang, as always, at the most inopportune moment.

The meeting was ending, now they will start to "sum up", he will have to say something coherent, not bad, so smart too, but as soon as the phone rang out, every thought flew out of Professor Shakhovsky's head.

The phone was the newest, latest model, and therefore extremely, unusually difficult to use. The phone was able to do everything - to enter the Internet and even from time to time to leave it, show the stock price on various world exchanges, lay routes from the North Pole to Djibouti, shine a lantern, immerse the owner in Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, give a weather forecast in Lipetsk and on the western slope of Fujiyama for three weeks ahead, taking pictures with zooming in and out, filming, editing video clips, and its processor was superior in power to all NASA computers on the historic day when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Shakhovskoy hated the telephone and did not know how to turn off the sound. The march thundered.

“Lord have mercy,” muttered the presiding Voroshilov nearby and finally dropped the glasses, which he had tried to drop from the very beginning of the meeting, while the historian, who was boringly reading a boring text from a piece of paper, looked at Shakhovsky indignantly. The whole assembly, delighted with the amusement, moved and made a noise.

“I beg your pardon,” the unfortunate professor muttered and rushed out into the corridor, pressing his mobile with all his might to calm the march a little.

- Dmitry Ivanovich, this is Colonel Nikonenko from the Investigative Committee. We once worked with you on the same antique business. You are in the historical part, and I, so to speak, followed the modern line. Remember? ..

Shakhovskoy, who at that moment fiercely hated the telephone, did not understand anything.

- I can’t talk now, I’m at a meeting. Call me back…

- Stop-stop-stop, - Colonel Nikonenko from the Investigative Committee interrupted him disrespectfully, - I understand all this, but I have a fresh corpse, and with it some papers, apparently, are old. I'll send a car for you now, and you will drive up, right? Dictate the address, I'll write it down.

Shakhovskoy - probably because of today's awkward day and hatred of the telephone - again did not understand anything. And I didn't want to understand.

“I’m in the Duma, I have a job,” he said disagreeably. - Call me back, say, in ...

- On Okhotny Ryad? We are here side by side, on Vozdvizhenka, spending time. Come out right now, you will not confuse the typewriter, it is signed in blue letters.

- What? - asked Shakhovskoy, hesitating.

- The Investigative Committee, I say, is written on a typewriter! You can't go wrong. Well, good.

And the screen, similar in size to the KVN-49 TV screen, which was supposed to be watched through a glycerin magnifying glass, went out.

“I'm not going anywhere, what numbers ?! I have my own business, and there are many of them! I still have to "sum up", and then edit the article, and ... "

Then he suddenly remembered this Nikonenko and remembered "antique business"! Then, a hundred years ago, the colonel unrolled a tangle of several murders that was completely impossible to unwind. Antiquaries were killed - without any connection, without logic, brutally - and Shakhovsky was called just so that he would find logic. It was clear that the murders were connected with antiques, but how ?! Dmitry Ivanovich searched for this logic for a long time - antiquaries traded in random items and, at first glance, not connected with each other, - and he found it! And Nikonenko thought of the rest. And “a high-profile case, which was under special control in the prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation, was solved,” as it was later reported in the news.

The memory was ... poignant. Shakhovskoy grinned, standing alone in the middle of the empty and wide Duma corridor. He had never been involved in any investigations, except for historical ones, and then suddenly he felt like a detective who carefully and carefully follows on the heels of the villain, a hunter who hunted down an enraged beast, ready to do anything for his mad goals. And Nikonenko - what is his name, Vladimir Petrovich, or what? - all pretended to be a simpleton and a "country detective", but turned out to be an intelligent, calculating, cold-blooded professional.

Shakhovskoy respected professionalism very much.

“I'll go,” the professor suddenly decided, getting in a good mood. “At the same time, you don’t have to summarize anything, you can cope without me there, dear ...”

The car turned off Vozdvizhenka, drove into a low wrought-iron gate, illuminating the paved courtyard with flashes of flashing lights, and stopped at the side porch, just three steps away.

“You go there,” a very serious and very young man in uniform said to Shakhovsky, and showed over the steering wheel exactly where, “they will meet you there.

Dmitry Ivanovich got out of the car and looked around. He, like most Muscovites, saw this house, the mansion of Arseny Morozov, only outside, inside he never visited and did not come into the courtyard, the gates were always closed, and what was behind them was impossible to see. At different times, there were different things here: the embassies of Japan and, it seems, India, the editorial office of some British newspaper, this was during the war, then the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with the Peoples of Foreign Countries became its owner, then the mansion was called House of Friendship of Peoples, and at the time of that very Arseny Muscovites called it "the house of the fool"! A fool, therefore, Arseny, who once built a mansion in the most strange and non-Moscow taste!

The gates closed by themselves - Shakhovskoy looked around when the doors moved and began to converge - and the courtyard immediately turned out to be cut off from Moscow, the crowds, the stinking automobile monster, its tail resting on Mokhovaya, and its head on the Moscow Ring Road - the nightly exodus from the capital was in full swing. For some reason, it became quiet, on the other side of the courtyard a light appeared, burning in one of the windows, the paving stones, dimly lit by a lantern, glittered like varnished.

All this, Dmitry Ivanovich suddenly liked it very much.

He climbed onto the porch — the tall double doors seemed to be closed forever — and nearly fell when the door opened slightly to meet him.

- Come on in.

Shakhovskoy "passed". Another very young man in uniform closed the door carefully behind him and asked for his passport. Dmitry Ivanovich took out his passport and looked around. The hallway turned out to be huge and semi-dark, there was not enough electric light for all the oak panels that were used to sheathe the walls, the light drowned in them and did not illuminate anything. A wide marble staircase led up to a spacious lobby or hallway. Shakhovskoy stretched out his neck to get a better look at the hall, but did not have time.

A tall man swiftly crossed the room and from there, from above, stated quietly:

- Dmitry Ivanovich. Let it go, Slava.

Climbing the steps, Shakhovskoy kept trying to remember the name of Colonel Nikonenko, but he could not remember. Vladimir Petrovich, or what? ..

- Something you take a long time. - The colonel said it in such a tone, as if Shakhovskoy had promised to be with him for dinner, but was late. - Or what? Riser as usual? Let's follow me.

In the large Empire-style hall, it suddenly turned out to be very light and a lot of people. Shakhovskoy closed his eyes for a second and stopped. Two gloved men were brushing over the mantelpiece, above which hung a large mirror with darkened amalgam. Two more crawled on the floor and measured something with rulers. A guy in jeans and a blue sweater wandered in the distance, taking aim, taking pictures with a flash and looked like a tourist capturing the details of the interior, and for some reason this amazed the professor. A young woman was kneeling next to a man lying on the floor. Next to her was an open briefcase, from which she occasionally took out something, and she looked very ordinary.

- Well, so, - Nikonenko walked around the woman, almost stepped over her as if nothing had happened. - Help came in the face of science. Lesh, where are we? ..

“Everything is on the table, Comrade Colonel. In-he, see?

- Come closer, comrade professor! Do not look at the corpse better if it is ... unpleasant for you.

Why only at that moment did Professor Shakhovskoy realize that the one who was lying on the floor was no longer a man, but that It was a person, until something strange, irreparable happened, and the person was gone. There was only a body, from under which a rather large pool of dark blood flowed onto the light parquet floor, and the young woman tried not to hit her knees in this pool, the professor also noticed this.

He suddenly felt so hot that his back immediately got wet, he pulled the scarf from his neck, dropped it and bent down to pick it up.

- Do not look there, by God! ..

The commanding, commanding, impatient tone, in which no one had ever spoken to Shakhovsky, sobered the professor a little, as if they had given cold water to wash up.

- Look here, here it is more familiar to you!

“It's all right,” croaked the nervous professor, and put a briefcase and a scarf on the gilded chair.

- Maybe you will sit down? ..

“Thank you,” the “learned man” said firmly and somewhat even angrily, “everything is all right with me. Do not worry.

The colonel muttered to himself that he was not particularly worried, and took from the table two pieces of paper, yellow and thin from time to time. There was also a teacup with a twisted handle, painted with blue patterns, and nothing more inappropriate than this cup could be imagined in a room where a dead body lies on the floor, a camera flashes, people wander around, talking in the most ordinary voices.

- Well, like this. Actually, it’s because of these gizmos that we called you. The papers were found next to the corpse, on the right side, and the cup stood there. Just don’t grab it with your bare hands. Varvara Dmitrievna! Throw in your gloves, huh?

The young woman pulled a pair of medicals out of her briefcase and tossed the rubber ball towards the colonel. He deftly caught, for some reason blew on them and handed them to Shakhovsky.

The professor took the gloves as if he didn't know what to do with them. Nikonenko looked sideways and shook his head. In his “past case,” he remembered that the professor was not as flimsy and unreliable as a scientist seemed to be supposed to be. He was a good thinker - Nikonenko especially appreciated this! - did not suffer from nervous seizures, I remember answering questions clearly, without being too "scientific". This is what the colonel did not particularly like, so it is when the "educated" speak incomprehensible and look pityingly and a little downwardly, as at a village idiot!

However, he understood that for an unprepared person, a corpse on the floor in a pool of blood was, admittedly, a depressing sight. Moreover, they pulled him out of the Duma! .. I suppose there is decorum, beauty and grandeur, but there are no corpses.

Then Nikonenko decided that the professor needed a little help.

- And what do you do in the Duma? Are you a deputy?

- Me? .. Oh, no, what are you. There, in addition to parliamentary work, is complete.

- What kind of work? - Nikonenko was frightened, and Shakhovskoy suddenly remembered his manner of playing the district representative Aniskin from a remote Siberian village. The Moscow colonel from time to time began to get frightened, singing melodiously, rounding his eyes, clattering his tongue and propping his cheek with his hand - in accordance with the image. It turned out very reliably and, apparently, helped him in his business. - What kind of work is complete in the Duma, if from morning till night on TV they show how people in the hall sit and everyone, without exception, sprinkle tic-tac-toe with themselves, and then, therefore, they press the button, for or against, and on the scoreboard lights up, it’s accepted, they say, or, conversely, it’s not accepted! .. And then go home, to eat tea. That's all the work!

- Well, this is actually not quite true, Vladimir ...

- I'm Igor Vladimirovich! Forgotten?

- Or rather, not at all. The work of any parliament, in principle, is very difficult to organize, and in our country it is even more difficult, because since the time of the First Duma, that is, since the nine hundred and sixth year, it so happened that the State Duma is always to blame for everything! It interferes with everyone, it is very uncomfortable with it, one way or another you have to reckon with, but you don’t want to reckon, and the experience of parliamentarism in Russia is not enough, to be honest ...

Thank God, he spoke, thought Nikonenko, and praised the district police officer Aniskin, who always helped him out. Thank you, Fedor Ivanovich, my dear!

- And I am preparing various materials, for example, for a meeting of the committee on culture. The committee must decide whether it makes sense to open a museum for state money ... I don’t know, for example, Muromtsev, and I am preparing documents ...

- Who is Muromtsev?

- Chairman of the First Duma, a very interesting character.

Shakhovskoy was concentrating on pulling on rubber gloves. Unaccustomed to pull them on, it was difficult.

- Muromtsev is a part of history, and an important one! Like the first Russian parliament. But for some reason no one is seriously interested in the history of the fatherland, especially in this part. Everyone is interested in palace coups, but no one really knows anything about parliament. When was it created, what for. Why did it last so long. And not to know this is shame and savagery. And it’s dangerous not to know ...

- Okay, professor, what a pessimism!

“Who is not a pessimist at forty,” said Shakhovskoy and wiggled his rubber fingers, “and at fifty is not a misanthrope, he may be pure in heart, but he will go to the coffin like an idiot.”

Nikonenko grunted:

- Who wrote this? You?

- All the same Sergey Andreevich Muromtsev.

- Eck took it apart, your Muromtsev! Didn't you like people? ..

Then the professor asked unexpectedly:

- Do you love? People? One and all?

And he carefully pulled a thin piece of paper from the colonel's hand. Nikonenko did not immediately think of what to say about his love for people, he did not call Aniskin on such a trifling matter and stared at Shakhovsky's face.

... It was immediately clear that the yellow and thin sheets are a genuine rarity, no doubt about it. At first glance, judging by the manner of writing, the location of the text on the page, the papers are a hundred years old, no less. On one sheet there was a letter with an appeal and signature, on the second - some kind of note, apparently drawn up in a hurry. He put Shakhovskoy's note aside, and raised the letter to his eyes, for some reason smelled it, turned it over and looked from the other side.

- Well? Colonel Nikonenko asked impatiently. - What is written there? I couldn't make out a word.

“Dear sir Dmitry Fyodorovich, I hasten to inform you that the case that has so worried us recently has ended quite well. The conspiracy has been completely eliminated, the danger that threatened the person you know has passed. According to Pyotr Arkadievich, with whom I had the pleasure of talking this afternoon at the Aptekarsky, such a favorable outcome, in which I, I confess, did not believe until the last hour, we all owe to Prince Shakhovsky, who proved that in the Duma there are noble people the will to achieve what is necessary and useful for the state. Pyotr Arkadyevich assured me that the emperor, who was also worried, would find out about everything tomorrow. I look forward to a personal meeting to tell you all the details of this amazing case, completely in the taste of Mr. Conan Doyle and his sensational stories, which are now read in both capitals. Now I can only intrigue you with the news that the cup with diamonds that appeared in the case has disappeared without a trace. Please accept my assurances and so on. " Signature and number, twenty-seventh May one thousand nine hundred and six.

The professor took a breath. His eyes were shining. Nikonenko shrugged his shoulders and looked sideways at the letter - he did not share professorial emotions.

- How do you not understand? .. Judging by the signature, this is Shcheglovitov's letter, in the nine hundred and sixth year he was just the Minister of Justice! Pyotr Arkadievich, who is mentioned, is most likely Stolypin, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and he had a dacha at Aptekarskoye, this is a well-known fact.

- And Shakhovskoy is you, or what? - Nikonenko clarified with hostility, who did not like being clever in his presence. Well, he doesn’t know any Scheglovitovs, but he heard about Stolypin once at school, and even then with the edge of his ear, and now what?

- In the First Duma, in fact, there was such a deputy from the Cadet party - Prince Shakhovskoy, - answered the professor for some reason reluctantly. - Yes, and Dmitry Fedorovich, to whom the letter is addressed, is most likely Trepov, the commandant of the Winter Palace, a figure very close to Nicholas II, in some way a personal bodyguard, so to speak.

- Comrade Colonel, we seem to have finished.

- Finished, and go to the Office. Blow, blow! .. The faster you process, the better.

Shakhovskoy looked back at the people, saw no one, did not understand anything, and again stared at the letter.

“A conspiracy,” he muttered, “what kind of conspiracy could have been then? .. In May ?! In April, yes, in April the adjutant of Dubasov, the Moscow governor-general, was killed. In June, the same SRs killed Admiral Chukhnin. And in May ?! Nobody mentions this! Who is this "person you know"? Moreover, one about which the sovereign and the ministers are worried! There is no evidence ... What does the Duma have to do with it? Noble people who show will to achieve what is useful and necessary for the state! And Shcheglovitov wrote this ?! The government hated the Duma, and the deputies hated the government!

He read the straight lines in one gulp, written a hundred years ago, and came across "a cup of diamonds that disappeared without a trace."

- To the taste of Mr. Conan Doyle and his sensational stories! .. So, there was a cup.

- Which? A cup!

The young woman approached them, pulling off her gloves, and also looked into the letter.

“Wow,” she said in surprise, “and how did you make it out? You will not understand anything.

- It's just a habit. - Shakhovskoy put the letter aside and took the note. At the same time, it was clear that he did not want to part with the letter. - I have read a lot of handwritten texts written in this way. With "yatami", "fit" and solid signs at the end of nouns.

- Only a hundred years, - and she laughed, - and such changes that you can't read!

- In the eighteenth year, Lenin simplified the spelling by decree of the Council of People's Commissars. Since then, it has been simplified and simplified. Recently, the letter "e" was canceled, and Lenin has nothing to do with it. - Shakhovskoy examined the note. - They also wanted to simplify the hare, but, in my opinion, have not yet decided.

- How to simplify? - the young lady did not understand.

- One letter, - Shakhovskoy said thoughtfully, - so that he finally becomes a "rabbit" not only on the Internet and love text messages.

- Do the students write to you like that?

Then he looked at her for the first time. For some reason, he was amazed how anyone could have thought that students write him text messages and call him "rabbit".

“Barbara,” she immediately introduced herself, rather mockingly. “I am an expert, just like you, but ... in a different field.

- Dmitry Ivanovich, - out of a professorial habit, he said, although it was quite possible to do without a patronymic, what is this patronymic for? watch. In the nine hundred and sixth year, forty years was considered the most mature age, and nowadays forty years are all beginners, young, and behave like teenagers used to be, wear curls, go to dances or ... wherever they go ...

Then Dmitry Ivanovich suddenly realized that he was staring into Varvara's face intently, without stopping, and she was looking into his face with the same mockery, and Nikonenko next to him made his eyebrows a little house and also stared at him. The professor instantly averted his eyes, she smiled, and Nikonenko snorted distinctly.

- Excuse me, I was thinking.

- It is visible, - Nikonenko screwed in. - What do they write in the second letter?

- It's just a note! “Everything is ready, be here today at eleven o'clock in the evening in the house you know at the corner of Malokhtinsky. If you do not come alone, the deal will not take place. I rely on your discretion. " There is no signature, only the date. May 26 of the same year, that is, the day before the letter was written.

- If you come alone? Or not one? - Nikonenko clarified, as if it could make a difference.

- Written - not one. That is, someone had to bring someone to the house on the corner of Malokhtinsky Prospect. By the way, this is a famous place.

- Who knows something?

“There was an underground workshop for making rifle cartridges. There was such a Sergeev, nicknamed Sasha Okhtinsky, and his friend, it seems, Sulimov. They somehow managed to take out the parts of the machine for filling cartridges from the cartridge factory and regularly stole cartridge cases, bullets and gunpowder from there. The famous workshop was! They made a hundred cartridges a day. This is ... a lot.

- Take the body, Comrade Colonel?

- Well, we can leave here! And before they always took away!

Shakhovskoy winced. These people and their conversations made it difficult for him to think.

Oh yes. Here ... murder. He was called only because there was a murder. Some person recently took the life of another person in this very place - and on the floor now lies what is left of that. It was ... today. Not May nine hundred and six. And today it makes no sense to talk about the workshop on Malokhtinsky, which filled up to hundreds of cartridges a day. Those cartridges were shot long ago, and they probably also killed someone, but that was a long time ago and is no longer important.

Does a life taken away forcibly cease to be important? It cannot be taken away, it is ... prohibited.

- How was he killed? - suddenly asked Shakhovskoy.

- Bad, - said Varvara, also an expert, but ... in another area. - First they hit me on the head, hard, from behind. He fell. They finished off with a knife. Five wounds. The two are not compatible with life. At first glance, two, Comrade Colonel.

- And you say - the sovereign is worried! - said Nikonenko and scratched behind his ear. - You will worry here.

In the waiting room, behind the high open doors, they spoke loudly and laughed, and the orderlies entered. In no time, they laid out the stretcher, indifferently, like a thing that bothers everyone and needs to get rid of it as soon as possible, turned the body over and piled it on a black oilcloth.

Shakhovskoy looked. He's uncomfortable this way, he thought. Look how awkward it lies. We ought to shift it. He kept forgetting that this was no longer a man, but something else, incomprehensible.

Death does not care how the corpse lies.

The orderlies raised the stretcher, the living stepped aside in front of the dead, and here in this body, which was so awkwardly pushed onto the black stretcher, Shakhovskoy suddenly recognized the person it had been until today. Until they were separated by five stab wounds, two of which were incompatible with life - a person and his body.

- Wait, - said Shakhovskoy. - Just one second.

1906, May.

Varvara Dmitrievna Zvonkova was approaching the goal of her journey.

The goal was the Tauride Palace, once erected by Mother Catherine for her beloved and most faithful assistant in the affairs of war and power, Prince Potemkin. There, in the semicircular hall, the next session of the State Duma was about to open.

For the first time, the "people's representatives" gathered in a white, spacious, beautiful hall just a month ago, on the twenty-seventh of April, and since then every meeting has become an event that the newspapers wrote about, interpreted and reinterpreted on the sidelines, and discussed all over Russia!

Varvara Dmitrievna, a full member of one of the most numerous parties - the Cadet party, was a "Duma journalist".

Oh, what a May it was! .. In Russia, in all of its centuries-old history, there has never been such a May - furious, truly revolutionary! What can I say! The autocracy, of course, did not fall, a struggle lies ahead, Varvara Dmitrievna understands this very well, but nevertheless the Russian revolution achieved tremendous success, the tsar had to retreat. The manifesto of October seventeenth gave the people, for which all the members of the Cadet Party, and Varvara Dmitrievna, were happy too, political rights!

Varvara Dmitrievna ran - as far as decency allowed, of course - and smiled at herself and the day ahead, the next day of the work of the first Russian parliament.

What wonderful, sonorous words - the Russian parliament! Who would have thought five years ago ... no, no, even a year ago that Russia would have its own parliament! Is the clumsy carcass of state bureaucracy shifting, is absolute power receding? As if the sparkling sword of the revolution had cut it in two, and light appeared to all the people!

Here Varvara Dmitrievna thought that it would be good to memorize and write down this passage, it will be useful for the article.

The grating of the garden of the Tavricheskiy Palace was already quite close, and Varvara Dmitrievna walked more quietly, more impressively. The English Bulldog she was leading on a leash looked around with displeasure. He knew nothing about parliamentarism, but he sincerely fell in love with the garden around the palace, with its paths, lawns and benches, which he watered with truly English equanimity.

Bulldog Varvara Dmitrievna from foggy Albion was delivered by a British journalist as a presentation. She liked the journalist, he was a real Englishman - restrained, with excellent manners, well-educated, talked mainly about politics, but something told Ms. Zvonkova that he was taking the bulldog to her not at all as a colleague and comrade in parliamentary work. The bulldog was named Henry Campbell-Bannerman. A bit difficult, of course, but it turned out to be the complete namesake of the British Prime Minister - both funny and with a hint. Why should we all look back to the West and grieve that in Mother Russia they still slurp cabbage soup with bast shoes? There we have such changes - our own parliament, where the claims to the authorities that have accumulated over centuries are completely legitimately expressed, and the authorities are forced to listen and answer! These are not quiet conversations in your ear, not singing forbidden songs under the mute, not a Marxist circle! ..

They talked about him to Varvara Dmitrievna, an outstanding economist, they say, he came up with a whole theory explaining the entire world order. She was going to get acquainted, but never got ready. Once, a lot of work. There was also Professor Liszt, who was published, it seems, in Berlin, and he was also read and quoted, and Varvara Dmitrievna knew that the opinion of the German professor Liszt was the last argument in any dispute about the welfare of the Russian people. For some reason, it turned out that Russians must now and then look back at overseas scientists, adjust their lives to their theories, so incomprehensible that Varvara Dmitrievna's temples began to ache from long discussions about Marx and Liszt.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman pulled aside, but the hostess returned him to the sidewalk. The palace has already stepped out from behind the trees, we will now arrive.

The paths of the garden were crowded with people, the ladies in smart dresses created a feeling of festivity. In general, it seemed to Varvara Dmitrievna that, despite the hourly storms, clashes with opponents, confrontations with ministers, the feeling of celebration did not leave the Tauride Palace for a minute. The harmonious spaciousness of the white halls, passages, newly decorated chambers reminded of the magnificent statehood of the Catherine's age, and the spirit of freedom and openness, the opportunity for the whole world to talk about the coming and coming changes strengthened faith in the future, in Russia!

It would also be good to write it down, decided Varvara Dmitrievna, and Henry Campbell-Bannerman jogged merrily to his favorite bench, which he never missed and always irrigated first.

Varvara Dmitrievna waited for the moment of irrigation, independently looking to the side. They greeted her, and she nodded in response, smiled affably, and everyone thought that the lovely dimples on Mrs. Zvonkova's cheeks were the last missing touch to the picture of cheerful, active concern.

Nodding to the right and to the left, Varvara Dmitrievna walked along the gallery on the sidelines, where a lot of people had already gathered - everyone was expecting the meeting, like an invited feast. Here, to the end, to the last word, they discussed what was impossible to agree on in the conference room, where the chairman, the press, stenographers with their reports were present! On the sidelines, freedom reigned as boundless as the sea. Here the deputies met with the people, walkers came here, around which rallies gathered. Here everything seemed to be trembling with impatience and intolerance, here the slogan invariably sounded - demand, demand! .. Demand land, freedom, new freedoms. Here, on the sidelines, there were their heroes, like Alyabyev, a deputy from the "Labor Party" who wore a carnation in his buttonhole. He reveled in the praise of journalists and the public, spoke a lot and passionately.

And now, before the meeting, Alyabyev was already giving oration and gathered a small crowd. Varvara Dmitrievna wanted to stop and also listen, and then remembered Henry Campbell-Bannerman's strange dislike for this particular socialist, and changed her mind about stopping.

His and Henry's path lay past the conference room into a large corner room where the Constitutional Democratic Party was located and Varvara Dmitrievna usually worked.

It was a Big Day - when ministers appeared in the ministerial box with their draft laws, which the Duma was supposed to adopt or reject. On days like this, the sessions of the legislature usually turned into "unrestrained rallies," as the newspapers wrote. The entire force of the two main parties - the Cadets and the Trudoviks - was directed against the government, and during the Great Days the ministers had a hard time. Muromtsev, the Duma chairman, usually arranged a short break after ministerial speeches so that the deputies let off some steam on the sidelines, but this did not help much.

The ministers saw the deputies as enemies of the people, and they considered it their duty as soon as possible and as sharply as possible to bring these "servants of the autocracy to clean water", to tell them the whole truth. The burning of the spirit excluded any practical guess. Cooperation with the government was an indispensable condition for the legislative work of any representatives of the people, meanwhile "any contact with the authorities led the deputies into a state of sectarian indignation."

Varvara Dmitrievna entered a room with large French windows, answered the greetings of the assembled comrades in struggle and parliamentary work, asked for tea, and led Campbell-Bannerman out onto the grass. The bulldog made a circle, bending around the flower bed, drank from a marble bowl, into which it had poured yesterday's rain, smiled and lay down in the shade, and Varvara Dmitrievna began her duties.

“The whole palace boils, breathes, moves, full of hopes for new, unprecedented freedom and unprecedented Russian democracy, which is now being born here, in these high white halls, quietly located in the Tauride Palace, whose windows open onto a beautiful garden planted even during Prince Potemkin, and this spring garden seems to support with its exuberant spring flowering in our aspirations and hopes. "

Tatiana Ustinova

One hundred years of journey

... And then his phone rang, as always, at the most inopportune moment.

The meeting was ending, now they will start to "sum up", he will have to say something coherent, not bad, so smart too, but as soon as the phone rang out, every thought flew out of Professor Shakhovsky's head.

The phone was the newest, latest model, and therefore extremely, unusually difficult to use. The phone could do everything - to access the Internet and even leave it from time to time, show the stock price on various world exchanges, plot routes from the North Pole to Djibouti, shine a lantern, immerse the owner in Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, give a weather forecast in Lipetsk and on the western slope of Fujiyama for three weeks ahead, taking pictures with zooming in and out, filming, editing video clips, and its processor was superior in power to all NASA computers on the historic day when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Shakhovskoy hated the telephone and did not know how to turn off the sound. The march thundered.

Lord have mercy, ”muttered the presiding Voroshilov nearby and finally dropped his glasses, which he had tried to drop from the very beginning of the meeting, while the historian, who was boringly reading a boring text from a piece of paper, looked at Shakhovsky indignantly. The whole assembly, delighted with the amusement, moved and made a noise.

I beg your pardon, ”the unfortunate professor muttered and rushed out into the corridor, pressing his mobile with all his might to calm the march a little.

Dmitry Ivanovich, this is Colonel Nikonenko from the Investigative Committee. We once worked with you on the same antique business. You are in the historical part, and I, so to speak, followed the modern line. Remember? ..

Shakhovskoy, who at that moment fiercely hated the telephone, did not understand anything.

I can't talk right now, I'm in a meeting. Call me back…

Stop-stop-stop, - Colonel Nikonenko of the Investigative Committee interrupted him disrespectfully, - I understand all this, but I have a fresh corpse, and with it some papers, apparently, are old. I'll send a car for you now, and you will drive up, right? Dictate the address, I'll write it down.

Shakhovskoy - probably because of today's awkward day and hatred of the telephone - again did not understand anything. And I didn't want to understand.

I’m in the Duma, I have a job, ”he said hostilely. - Call me back, say, in ...

On Okhotny Ryad? We are here side by side, on Vozdvizhenka, spending time. Come out right now, you will not confuse the typewriter, it is signed in blue letters.

What? - asked Shakhovskoy, hesitating.

The Investigative Committee, I say, is written on a typewriter! You can't go wrong. Well, good.

And the screen, similar in size to the KVN-49 TV screen, which was supposed to be watched through a glycerin magnifying glass, went out.

“I'm not going anywhere, what numbers ?! I have my own business, and there are many of them! I still have to "sum up", and then edit the article, and ... "

Then he suddenly remembered this Nikonenko and remembered "antique business"! Then, a hundred years ago, the colonel unrolled a tangle of several murders that was completely impossible to unwind. Antiquaries were killed - without any connection, without logic, brutally - and Shakhovsky was called just so that he would find logic. It was clear that the murders were connected with antiques, but how ?! Dmitry Ivanovich searched for this logic for a long time - antiquaries traded in random items and, at first glance, not connected with each other, - and he found it! And Nikonenko thought of the rest. And “a high-profile case, which was under special control in the prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation, was solved,” as it was later reported in the news.

The memory was ... poignant. Shakhovskoy grinned, standing alone in the middle of the empty and wide Duma corridor. He had never been involved in any investigations, except for historical ones, and then suddenly he felt like a detective who carefully and carefully follows on the heels of the villain, a hunter who hunted down an enraged beast, ready to do anything for his mad goals. And Nikonenko - what is his name, Vladimir Petrovich, or what? - all pretended to be a simpleton and a "country detective", but turned out to be an intelligent, calculating, cold-blooded professional.

Shakhovskoy respected professionalism very much.

“I'll go,” the professor suddenly decided, getting in a good mood. “At the same time, you don’t have to summarize anything, you can cope without me there, dear ...”

© Ustinova T., 2014

© Design. LLC "Publishing house" Eksmo ", 2014

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use without the written permission of the copyright holder.

© The electronic version of the book was prepared by Litres (www.litres.ru)

* * *

... And then his phone rang, as always, at the most inopportune moment.

The meeting was ending, now they will start to "sum up", he will have to say something coherent, not bad, so smart too, but as soon as the phone rang out, every thought flew out of Professor Shakhovsky's head.

The phone was the newest, latest model, and therefore extremely, unusually difficult to use. The phone was able to do everything - to enter the Internet and even from time to time to leave it, show the stock price on various world exchanges, lay routes from the North Pole to Djibouti, shine a lantern, immerse the owner in Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, give a weather forecast in Lipetsk and on the western slope of Fujiyama for three weeks ahead, taking pictures with zooming in and out, filming, editing video clips, and its processor was superior in power to all NASA computers on the historic day when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Shakhovskoy hated the telephone and did not know how to turn off the sound. The march thundered.

“Lord have mercy,” muttered the presiding Voroshilov nearby and finally dropped the glasses, which he had tried to drop from the very beginning of the meeting, while the historian, who was boringly reading a boring text from a piece of paper, looked at Shakhovsky indignantly. The whole assembly, delighted with the amusement, moved and made a noise.

“I beg your pardon,” the unfortunate professor muttered and rushed out into the corridor, pressing his mobile with all his might to calm the march a little.

- Dmitry Ivanovich, this is Colonel Nikonenko from the Investigative Committee. We once worked with you on the same antique business. You are in the historical part, and I, so to speak, followed the modern line. Remember? ..

Shakhovskoy, who at that moment fiercely hated the telephone, did not understand anything.

- I can’t talk now, I’m at a meeting. Call me back…

- Stop-stop-stop, - Colonel Nikonenko from the Investigative Committee interrupted him disrespectfully, - I understand all this, but I have a fresh corpse, and with it some papers, apparently, are old. I'll send a car for you now, and you will drive up, right? Dictate the address, I'll write it down.

Shakhovskoy - probably because of today's awkward day and hatred of the telephone - again did not understand anything. And I didn't want to understand.

“I’m in the Duma, I have a job,” he said disagreeably. - Call me back, say, in ...

- On Okhotny Ryad? We are here side by side, on Vozdvizhenka, spending time.

Come out right now, you will not confuse the typewriter, it is signed in blue letters.

- What? - asked Shakhovskoy, hesitating.

- The Investigative Committee, I say, is written on a typewriter! You can't go wrong. Well, good.

And the screen, similar in size to the KVN-49 TV screen, which was supposed to be watched through a glycerin magnifying glass, went out.

“I'm not going anywhere, what numbers ?! I have my own business, and there are many of them! I still have to "sum up", and then edit the article, and ... "

Then he suddenly remembered this Nikonenko and remembered "antique business"! Then, a hundred years ago, the colonel unrolled a tangle of several murders that was completely impossible to unwind. Antiquaries were killed - without any connection, without logic, brutally - and Shakhovsky was called just so that he would find logic. It was clear that the murders were connected with antiques, but how ?! Dmitry Ivanovich searched for this logic for a long time - antiquaries traded in random items and, at first glance, not connected with each other, - and he found it! And Nikonenko thought of the rest. And “a high-profile case, which was under special control in the prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation, was solved,” as it was later reported in the news.

The memory was ... poignant. Shakhovskoy grinned, standing alone in the middle of the empty and wide Duma corridor. He had never been involved in any investigations, except for historical ones, and then suddenly he felt like a detective who carefully and carefully follows on the heels of the villain, a hunter who hunted down an enraged beast, ready to do anything for his mad goals. And Nikonenko - what is his name, Vladimir Petrovich, or what? - all pretended to be a simpleton and a "country detective", but turned out to be an intelligent, calculating, cold-blooded professional.

Shakhovskoy respected professionalism very much.

“I'll go,” the professor suddenly decided, getting in a good mood. “At the same time, you don’t have to summarize anything, you can cope without me there, dear ...”

The car turned off Vozdvizhenka, drove into a low wrought-iron gate, illuminating the paved courtyard with flashes of flashing lights, and stopped at the side porch, just three steps away.

“You go there,” a very serious and very young man in uniform said to Shakhovsky, and showed over the steering wheel exactly where, “they will meet you there.

Dmitry Ivanovich got out of the car and looked around. He, like most Muscovites, saw this house, the mansion of Arseny Morozov, only outside, inside he never visited and did not come into the courtyard, the gates were always closed, and what was behind them was impossible to see. At different times, there were different things here: the embassies of Japan and, it seems, India, the editorial office of some British newspaper, this was during the war, then the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with the Peoples of Foreign Countries became its owner, then the mansion was called House of Friendship of Peoples, and at the time of that very Arseny Muscovites called it "the house of the fool"! A fool, therefore, Arseny, who once built a mansion in the most strange and non-Moscow taste!

The gates closed by themselves - Shakhovskoy looked around when the doors moved and began to converge - and the courtyard immediately turned out to be cut off from Moscow, the crowds, the stinking automobile monster, its tail resting on Mokhovaya, and its head on the Moscow Ring Road - the nightly exodus from the capital was in full swing. For some reason, it became quiet, on the other side of the courtyard a light appeared, burning in one of the windows, the paving stones, dimly lit by a lantern, glittered like varnished.

All this, Dmitry Ivanovich suddenly liked it very much.

He climbed onto the porch — the tall double doors seemed to be closed forever — and nearly fell when the door opened slightly to meet him.

- Come on in.

Shakhovskoy "passed". Another very young man in uniform closed the door carefully behind him and asked for his passport. Dmitry Ivanovich took out his passport and looked around. The hallway turned out to be huge and semi-dark, there was not enough electric light for all the oak panels that were used to sheathe the walls, the light drowned in them and did not illuminate anything. A wide marble staircase led up to a spacious lobby or hallway. Shakhovskoy stretched out his neck to get a better look at the hall, but did not have time.

A tall man swiftly crossed the room and from there, from above, stated quietly:

- Dmitry Ivanovich. Let it go, Slava.

Climbing the steps, Shakhovskoy kept trying to remember the name of Colonel Nikonenko, but he could not remember. Vladimir Petrovich, or what? ..

- Something you take a long time. - The colonel said it in such a tone, as if Shakhovskoy had promised to be with him for dinner, but was late. - Or what? Riser as usual? Let's follow me.

In the large Empire-style hall, it suddenly turned out to be very light and a lot of people. Shakhovskoy closed his eyes for a second and stopped. Two gloved men were brushing over the mantelpiece, above which hung a large mirror with darkened amalgam. Two more crawled on the floor and measured something with rulers. A guy in jeans and a blue sweater wandered in the distance, taking aim, taking pictures with a flash and looked like a tourist capturing the details of the interior, and for some reason this amazed the professor. A young woman was kneeling next to a man lying on the floor. Next to her was an open briefcase, from which she occasionally took out something, and she looked very ordinary.

- Well, so, - Nikonenko walked around the woman, almost stepped over her as if nothing had happened. - Help came in the face of science. Lesh, where are we? ..

“Everything is on the table, Comrade Colonel. In-he, see?

- Come closer, comrade professor! Do not look at the corpse better if it is ... unpleasant for you.

Why only at that moment did Professor Shakhovskoy realize that the one who was lying on the floor was no longer a man, but that It was a person, until something strange, irreparable happened, and the person was gone. There was only a body, from under which a rather large pool of dark blood flowed onto the light parquet floor, and the young woman tried not to hit her knees in this pool, the professor also noticed this.

He suddenly felt so hot that his back immediately got wet, he pulled the scarf from his neck, dropped it and bent down to pick it up.

- Do not look there, by God! ..

The commanding, commanding, impatient tone, in which no one had ever spoken to Shakhovsky, sobered the professor a little, as if they had given cold water to wash up.

- Look here, here it is more familiar to you!

“It's all right,” croaked the nervous professor, and put a briefcase and a scarf on the gilded chair.

- Maybe you will sit down? ..

“Thank you,” the “learned man” said firmly and somewhat even angrily, “everything is all right with me. Do not worry.

The colonel muttered to himself that he was not particularly worried, and took from the table two pieces of paper, yellow and thin from time to time. There was also a teacup with a twisted handle, painted with blue patterns, and nothing more inappropriate than this cup could be imagined in a room where a dead body lies on the floor, a camera flashes, people wander around, talking in the most ordinary voices.

- Well, like this. Actually, it’s because of these gizmos that we called you. The papers were found next to the corpse, on the right side, and the cup stood there. Just don’t grab it with your bare hands. Varvara Dmitrievna! Throw in your gloves, huh?

The young woman pulled a pair of medicals out of her briefcase and tossed the rubber ball towards the colonel. He deftly caught, for some reason blew on them and handed them to Shakhovsky.

The professor took the gloves as if he didn't know what to do with them. Nikonenko looked sideways and shook his head. In his “past case,” he remembered that the professor was not as flimsy and unreliable as a scientist seemed to be supposed to be. He was a good thinker - Nikonenko especially appreciated this! - did not suffer from nervous seizures, I remember answering questions clearly, without being too "scientific". This is what the colonel did not particularly like, so it is when the "educated" speak incomprehensible and look pityingly and a little downwardly, as at a village idiot!

However, he understood that for an unprepared person, a corpse on the floor in a pool of blood was, admittedly, a depressing sight. Moreover, they pulled him out of the Duma! .. I suppose there is decorum, beauty and grandeur, but there are no corpses.

Then Nikonenko decided that the professor needed a little help.

- And what do you do in the Duma? Are you a deputy?

- Me? .. Oh, no, what are you. There, in addition to parliamentary work, is complete.

- What kind of work? - Nikonenko was frightened, and Shakhovskoy suddenly remembered his manner of playing the district representative Aniskin from a remote Siberian village. The Moscow colonel from time to time began to get frightened, singing melodiously, rounding his eyes, clattering his tongue and propping his cheek with his hand - in accordance with the image. It turned out very reliably and, apparently, helped him in his business. - What kind of work is complete in the Duma, if from morning till night on TV they show how people in the hall sit and everyone, without exception, sprinkle tic-tac-toe with themselves, and then, therefore, they press the button, for or against, and on the scoreboard lights up, it’s accepted, they say, or, conversely, it’s not accepted! .. And then go home, to eat tea. That's all the work!

- Well, this is actually not quite true, Vladimir ...

- I'm Igor Vladimirovich! Forgotten?

- Or rather, not at all. The work of any parliament, in principle, is very difficult to organize, and in our country it is even more difficult, because since the time of the First Duma, that is, since the nine hundred and sixth year, it so happened that the State Duma is always to blame for everything! It interferes with everyone, it is very uncomfortable with it, one way or another you have to reckon with, but you don’t want to reckon, and the experience of parliamentarism in Russia is not enough, to be honest ...

Thank God, he spoke, thought Nikonenko, and praised the district police officer Aniskin, who always helped him out. Thank you, Fedor Ivanovich, my dear!

- And I am preparing various materials, for example, for a meeting of the committee on culture. The committee must decide whether it makes sense to open a museum for state money ... I don’t know, for example, Muromtsev, and I am preparing documents ...

- Who is Muromtsev?

- Chairman of the First Duma, a very interesting character.

Shakhovskoy was concentrating on pulling on rubber gloves. Unaccustomed to pull them on, it was difficult.

- Muromtsev is a part of history, and an important one! Like the first Russian parliament. But for some reason no one is seriously interested in the history of the fatherland, especially in this part. Everyone is interested in palace coups, but no one really knows anything about parliament. When was it created, what for. Why did it last so long. And not to know this is shame and savagery. And it’s dangerous not to know ...

- Okay, professor, what a pessimism!

“Who is not a pessimist at forty,” said Shakhovskoy and wiggled his rubber fingers, “and at fifty is not a misanthrope, he may be pure in heart, but he will go to the coffin like an idiot.”

Nikonenko grunted:

- Who wrote this? You?

- All the same Sergey Andreevich Muromtsev.

- Eck took it apart, your Muromtsev! Didn't you like people? ..

Then the professor asked unexpectedly:

- Do you love? People? One and all?

And he carefully pulled a thin piece of paper from the colonel's hand. Nikonenko did not immediately think of what to say about his love for people, he did not call Aniskin on such a trifling matter and stared at Shakhovsky's face.

... It was immediately clear that the yellow and thin sheets are a genuine rarity, no doubt about it. At first glance, judging by the manner of writing, the location of the text on the page, the papers are a hundred years old, no less. On one sheet there was a letter with an appeal and signature, on the second - some kind of note, apparently drawn up in a hurry. He put Shakhovskoy's note aside, and raised the letter to his eyes, for some reason smelled it, turned it over and looked from the other side.

- Well? Colonel Nikonenko asked impatiently. - What is written there? I couldn't make out a word.

“Dear sir Dmitry Fyodorovich, I hasten to inform you that the case that has so worried us recently has ended quite well. The conspiracy has been completely eliminated, the danger that threatened the person you know has passed. According to Pyotr Arkadievich, with whom I had the pleasure of talking this afternoon at the Aptekarsky, such a favorable outcome, in which I, I confess, did not believe until the last hour, we all owe to Prince Shakhovsky, who proved that in the Duma there are noble people the will to achieve what is necessary and useful for the state. Pyotr Arkadyevich assured me that the emperor, who was also worried, would find out about everything tomorrow. I look forward to a personal meeting to tell you all the details of this amazing case, completely in the taste of Mr. Conan Doyle and his sensational stories, which are now read in both capitals. Now I can only intrigue you with the news that the cup with diamonds that appeared in the case has disappeared without a trace. Please accept my assurances and so on. " Signature and number, twenty-seventh May one thousand nine hundred and six.

The professor took a breath. His eyes were shining. Nikonenko shrugged his shoulders and looked sideways at the letter - he did not share professorial emotions.

- How do you not understand? .. Judging by the signature, this is Shcheglovitov's letter, in the nine hundred and sixth year he was just the Minister of Justice! Pyotr Arkadievich, who is mentioned, is most likely Stolypin, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and he had a dacha at Aptekarskoye, this is a well-known fact.

- And Shakhovskoy is you, or what? - Nikonenko clarified with hostility, who did not like being clever in his presence. Well, he doesn’t know any Scheglovitovs, but he heard about Stolypin once at school, and even then with the edge of his ear, and now what?

- In the First Duma, in fact, there was such a deputy from the Cadet party - Prince Shakhovskoy, - answered the professor for some reason reluctantly. - Yes, and Dmitry Fedorovich, to whom the letter is addressed, is most likely Trepov, the commandant of the Winter Palace, a figure very close to Nicholas II, in some way a personal bodyguard, so to speak.

- Comrade Colonel, we seem to have finished.

- Finished, and go to the Office. Blow, blow! .. The faster you process, the better.

Shakhovskoy looked back at the people, saw no one, did not understand anything, and again stared at the letter.

“A conspiracy,” he muttered, “what kind of conspiracy could have been then? .. In May ?! In April, yes, in April the adjutant of Dubasov, the Moscow governor-general, was killed. In June, the same SRs killed Admiral Chukhnin. And in May ?! Nobody mentions this! Who is this "person you know"? Moreover, one about which the sovereign and the ministers are worried! There is no evidence ... What does the Duma have to do with it? Noble people who show will to achieve what is useful and necessary for the state! And Shcheglovitov wrote this ?! The government hated the Duma, and the deputies hated the government!

He read the straight lines in one gulp, written a hundred years ago, and came across "a cup of diamonds that disappeared without a trace."

- To the taste of Mr. Conan Doyle and his sensational stories! .. So, there was a cup.

- Which? A cup!

The young woman approached them, pulling off her gloves, and also looked into the letter.

“Wow,” she said in surprise, “and how did you make it out? You will not understand anything.

- It's just a habit. - Shakhovskoy put the letter aside and took the note. At the same time, it was clear that he did not want to part with the letter. - I have read a lot of handwritten texts written in this way. With "yatami", "fit" and solid signs at the end of nouns.

- Only a hundred years, - and she laughed, - and such changes that you can't read!

- In the eighteenth year, Lenin simplified the spelling by decree of the Council of People's Commissars. Since then, it has been simplified and simplified. Recently, the letter "e" was canceled, and Lenin has nothing to do with it. - Shakhovskoy examined the note. - They also wanted to simplify the hare, but, in my opinion, have not yet decided.

- How to simplify? - the young lady did not understand.

- One letter, - Shakhovskoy said thoughtfully, - so that he finally becomes a "rabbit" not only on the Internet and love text messages.

- Do the students write to you like that?

Then he looked at her for the first time. For some reason, he was amazed how anyone could have thought that students write him text messages and call him "rabbit".

“Barbara,” she immediately introduced herself, rather mockingly. “I am an expert, just like you, but ... in a different field.

- Dmitry Ivanovich, - out of a professorial habit, he said, although it was quite possible to do without a patronymic, what is this patronymic for? watch. In the nine hundred and sixth year, forty years was considered the most mature age, and nowadays forty years are all beginners, young, and behave like teenagers used to be, wear curls, go to dances or ... wherever they go ...

Then Dmitry Ivanovich suddenly realized that he was staring into Varvara's face intently, without stopping, and she was looking into his face with the same mockery, and Nikonenko next to him made his eyebrows a little house and also stared at him. The professor instantly averted his eyes, she smiled, and Nikonenko snorted distinctly.

- Excuse me, I was thinking.

- It is visible, - Nikonenko screwed in. - What do they write in the second letter?

- It's just a note! “Everything is ready, be here today at eleven o'clock in the evening in the house you know at the corner of Malokhtinsky. If you do not come alone, the deal will not take place. I rely on your discretion. " There is no signature, only the date. May 26 of the same year, that is, the day before the letter was written.

- If you come alone? Or not one? - Nikonenko clarified, as if it could make a difference.

- Written - not one. That is, someone had to bring someone to the house on the corner of Malokhtinsky Prospect. By the way, this is a famous place.

- Who knows something?

“There was an underground workshop for making rifle cartridges. There was such a Sergeev, nicknamed Sasha Okhtinsky, and his friend, it seems, Sulimov. They somehow managed to take out the parts of the machine for filling cartridges from the cartridge factory and regularly stole cartridge cases, bullets and gunpowder from there. The famous workshop was! They made a hundred cartridges a day. This is ... a lot.

- Take the body, Comrade Colonel?

- Well, we can leave here! And before they always took away!

Shakhovskoy winced. These people and their conversations made it difficult for him to think.

Oh yes. Here ... murder. He was called only because there was a murder. Some person recently took the life of another person in this very place - and on the floor now lies what is left of that. It was ... today. Not May nine hundred and six. And today it makes no sense to talk about the workshop on Malokhtinsky, which filled up to hundreds of cartridges a day. Those cartridges were shot long ago, and they probably also killed someone, but that was a long time ago and is no longer important.

Does a life taken away forcibly cease to be important? It cannot be taken away, it is ... prohibited.

Reviews about the book:

Advantages: Size, price Disadvantages: No Comment: I love to read, the first order of books on Ozone and immediately ordered a whole series. Tatyana Ustinova is one of my favorite writers. Yesterday I started reading, I like the plot, I want to know what will happen next

Sorokina Irina 0

I read it with pleasure. Interesting plot, time lines are perfectly intertwined. It is fashionable to write "retro detectives" now. Even if Ustinova has a plan to write a certain number of books, as is suspected here, she succeeds. Easy and fun.

This is the most interesting book of all books by Ustinova that I have read. At the very beginning there were a few moments that seemed a little too long to me, but then I read it deeply. Very tasty description of the time, details. Now it became interesting to read something else, but not a detective story, about the times of the first State Duma.

IT IS BETTER TO WRITE THIS IS BETTER NOT TO WRITE AT ALL. I read books by T. Ustinova, but ... until the "Hotel of Last Hope". And then it got worse and worse. It was simply disgusting to read about Manya Polivanov. Recent books are somehow flat, it seems that the author has to write a certain number of pages.

Tatiana 0

Tatiana Ustinova

Biography of Tatyana Ustinova

Russian writer, screenwriter Tatyana Vitalievna Ustinova was born on April 21, 1968 in the village of Kratovo, near Moscow, into a family of aviation engineers.

She graduated from an English special school, then in 1991 - the faculty of aeromechanics and flying technology of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT).

In 1991 she came to work at the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. She worked as a translator for American programs "60 Minutes", "Salvation 911", "Posner and Donahue", correspondent for the morning broadcast, editor.

In 1993, Ustinova went to work in the press service of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin.

In 1997 she returned to television, worked for ORT in the programs "Man and the Law" and "Health".

For some time she was a PR manager of the Chamber of Commerce (CCI).

In 1999, shortly after Ustinova left the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, her first novel "Personal Angel" was published. The novel was well received by readers and critics. Since then, Tatiana Ustinova has been a professional detective writer, author of over 20 detective novels.

Real people are the prototypes of some of the heroes of Tatyana Ustinova's work.

In the novel "Goddess of Prime Time" (2003), Arina Sharapova served as a prototype. In the novel "The First Rule of the Queen" (2003), the prototype is the former acting chief. First Deputy Head of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Administration Lyudmila Selivanova, in the novel "Spare Instinct" (2003) - the owner of the web design firm Artemy Lebedev.

Ustinova is actively working on film adaptations of her novels. According to her scripts, films and series "Always say" always "(2003)," Parallel to love "(2004)," Goddess of prime time "(2005)," My general "(2006)," House of a phantom in a dowry "(2006) ), "Travel bag with a bright future" (2007), "Five steps on the clouds" (2008), "Genius of an empty space" (2008), "The law of reverse magic" (2010), etc.

The writer also tried herself as an actress. She starred in small roles in the TV series Always Say Always (2003), Opera 1. Chronicles of the Slaughter Department (The Queen's Last Novel, 2004), Kulagin and Partners (2005 2013), played the writer Tatiana in the film In Style Jazz "(2010).

Tatyana Ustinova takes part in popular TV and radio programs: she hosted "Hour of Judgment" on the REN TV channel, the talk show "Life is Like Life" on the St. Petersburg Channel Five; is the host of the Live Detective program on Radio Russia.

Filming of the New Year show on the TV3 channel

In 2004, the Academy of Russian Television awarded Ustinova "TEFI" in the nomination "Screenwriter of a Feature Film (Series)" for the script for the series "Always Say Always."

In 2011, Ustinova's novel Uncut Pages won the Electronic Letter award in the Most Exciting Love Story category.

Tatyana Ustinova is married. Eugene's husband is an engineer-physicist, sons are Mikhail and Timofey.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

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This article is missing links to sources of information. Information must be verifiable, otherwise it can be questioned and removed. You can ... Wikipedia

STO 36554501-012-2008: The use of thermal insulation from polystyrene foam extrusion boards PENOPLEX in the design and construction of shallow foundations on heaving soils- Terminology STO 36554501 012 2008: The use of thermal insulation from polystyrene foam extrusion boards PENOPLEX in the design and construction of shallow foundations on heaving soils: "Cold bridges" breaks in thermal insulation, ... ...

STO 70238424.27.140.036-2009: Hydroelectric power plants. Hydroelectric power station reservoirs. Basic rules for design and construction. Norms and requirements- Terminology STO 70238424.27.140.036 2009: Hydroelectric power plants. Hydroelectric power station reservoirs. Basic rules for design and construction. Norms and requirements: 3.23 shore processing: The process of formation of the shore edge of a reservoir as a result of ... ... Dictionary-reference book of terms of normative and technical documentation

The Sto Plains is a fictional area in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Contents 1 General characteristics 2 Cities and countries ... Wikipedia

Wed If only the glass would always reach the mouth. Gr. A.K. Tolstoy. Oh, if only. Wed Zwischen Lipp und Kelchesrand Schwebt der dunklen Mächte Hand. A hand of dark forces flashes between the lip and the edge of the glass. Fr. Kind. Ankäos von Samos. Wed Burkhard Waldis Fabeln. ... ... Michelson's Big Explanatory Phraseological Dictionary- (France, Frankreich). Location, boundaries, space. From the north, France is washed by the German Sea and the English Channel, from the west by the Atlantic Ocean, from the southeast by the Mediterranean Sea; in the northeast it borders on Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, in the east ... ...

I. Geographical outline of the country. II. Climate. III. Population. IV. Ethnographic sketch of the population of Siberia. V. Land tenure. Vi. Sources of well-being of the rural population (agriculture, cattle breeding, crafts). Vii. Industry, trade and ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

I (France, Frankreich). Location, boundaries, space. From the north, France is washed by the German Sea and the English Channel, from the west by the Atlantic Ocean, from the southeast by the Mediterranean Sea; in the northeast it borders on Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, on ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov The work of an unknown artist. Oil ... Wikipedia

The son of Prince Vasily Anikitich Repnin, General Field Marshal, was born on March 11, 1734; died on May 12, 1801. Having received his initial education under the close supervision of his mother, R. in 1745 was recorded in l. guards Preobrazhensky regiment as a soldier and on ... Big biographical encyclopedia

Barack Obama- (Barack Obama) Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America, the first black president in office. Biography of US President Barack Obama, including his political career, activities in the Illinois Senate and then in the Senate ... Investor Encyclopedia - This page requires significant revision. It may need to be wikified, supplemented or rewritten. Explanation of the reasons and discussion on the Wikipedia page: For improvement / July 9, 2012. Date of staging for improvement July 9, 2012 ... Wikipedia