Chapter 10: Master Detective Niki

“For the health and salvation of our great sovereign, the Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich, and the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, may the Lord watch over them for many, many years….”

As the blessing rite drew toward its close, the Metropolitan of Petersburg began to read the prayer.

Naturally, those around us began offering prayers and crossing themselves as well.

This was the moment I had been waiting for.

When hundreds of people bow their heads at once, every eye in the venue is drawn in a single direction.

And anyone who doesn’t blend into it naturally stands out.

-Lucky for you, you’re a kid shoved off in a corner. Nobody’s going to say a word if you skip the prayers and gawk around.

At Seong-jun’s words, I dipped my head just enough to look like I was praying and peeked at Akashi through the slit of my eyelids.

However difficult a puzzle may be, work backward from the answer and it comes apart surprisingly easily, doesn’t it?

Retracing, one by one, the record of Akashi’s spy career left in Seong-jun’s memory, not a single thing about the man’s movements unfolding before my eyes looked natural.

He lingered far too long in front of some people, and didn’t spare so much as a nod for others.

A flicker of eye contact visible only in passing; exit routes in the same direction, staggered by intervals.

-You know we have to remember all of it, right? It’d be too much for you alone, so let’s split the load.

Certainly, if my word was going to carry any weight later, every last trivial detail would have to be embalmed whole in my head.

Until the rite ended, which figures Akashi made contact with, at intervals of how many minutes, and through which gallery he slipped away.

That entire picture was stored intact in Seong-jun’s memory and mine.

“How did you find the New Year rite, Young Master?”

In the carriage back to the palace,

Pobedonostsev spoke first, laying his gloves neatly on his knees.

“It was so, so amazing and fun!”

-Yeah, I’ll bet it was.

No trivial sidebar chatter from here on. This is the most important part.

“When I saw His Majesty break the ice himself, my chest went all warm. The Tsar of the Russian Empire, going down into that freezing river water for his people. I think I realized all over again today what a holy country the Russian Empire is.”

The old man, the Tsar’s former tutor and my current one, let the corners of his mouth curl slightly upward.

“And it was nice getting to see the diplomats from far away, too. Everyone’s uniforms were so splendid.”

“That is the charm of such occasions. Every nation has its own proper forms, so it is good for children to take in many cultures with their own eyes.”

We traded small talk until we were about halfway to the Alexander Palace, when I gently steered the conversation to the day’s real subject.

“By the way, Your Excellency, there was someone I truly saw for the first time today. An Asian man. His face was like the pictures I’d only ever seen in books, but a little different too. It was so fascinating that I kept staring at him.”

“Ah… you mean the Oriental gentleman.”

“What country is he from?”

“He is a military attaché from a country called Japan. An island nation at the eastern edge of the world. Though… regrettably, Russia and Japan are not on good terms at present. The two countries’ interests keep colliding in the Far East.”

The moment he finished speaking, I deliberately let a beat pass.

“Ahh… so that must be why.”

“Pardon? Why what, Young Master?”

“Only that Japanese gentleman was acting so strangely. Maybe he was nervous because he comes from a country we don’t get along with.”

The air inside the carriage seemed to drop about 3 degrees.

“…Strangely, you say. Might I ask precisely how he was strange?”

Why, of course. Of course I’ll tell you.

“The other diplomats gathered with people from their own countries and talked for a long time. But that Japanese gentleman was the only one who kept moving around alone. He’d talk with one person for a moment, then go straight off somewhere else, and then straight off somewhere else again.”

“Hoho….”

“But with some people he gave really long greetings. He stood for ages in front of the mustached man in the black overcoat before moving on. And to the Russian diplomats he just barely dipped his head and walked past. I suppose that’s because they don’t get along with us?”

A spy as practiced as Akashi would, as a matter of course, move with an eye on who might be watching.

But no spy on earth ever factored a 7-year-old’s line of sight into his tradecraft.

I could feel Pobedonostsev’s face stiffening, little by little, plain as day.

“Oh, and this is the really amazing part, that Japanese gentleman and the mustache man pretended not to know each other later, and then went off separately in the same direction. The east gallery. If they were going to the same place, why not just go together?”

“…….”

“And I think that Japanese gentleman was pretending not to speak Russian well. He kept getting stuck as he talked, but he always finished his sentences all the way to the end. I know because I’m learning French these days, and if you really can’t speak a language, you can’t finish your sentences, right?”

Pobedonostsev swallowed once, parted his lips slightly, then closed them again.

“Oh, right, right. He also kept standing behind a Russian general. When the general moved, he moved with him, and when the general looked back, he quickly drifted away. But he never once spoke to him.

And also… he exchanged a super quick nod with a young officer in a blue uniform. The two of them seemed like strangers, but the motion was so natural that it actually caught my eye.”

The cabin fell so quiet that the rattling of the carriage stabbed at my ears.

“Young Master. How is it that you remember all of this so clearly?”

“Um… it’s a little embarrassing.”

However much everyone around me played up the prodigy talk, in the end a 7-year-old showing this level of observation would need a matching reason, wouldn’t he?

Naturally, I had one prepared.

“I really did see an Asian person for the first time today. He was so fascinating I couldn’t stop staring. And the more I watched, the more his behavior was different from all the other diplomats’, so my eyes just kept following him. I’m a little worried I might have been rude, staring at him so openly. But is that how diplomats from Asia usually go about?”

Pobedonostsev did not answer my question right away.

Even when we entered the palace and the servants approached to take our coats, his face remained lost in thought.

And then he led me not to my room but to a small study in the palace.

The moment I took a seat in the middle of the little study, its stove crackling away, a notebook and fountain pen were set before me.

“Um… did I say something I shouldn’t have?”

“No, no, nothing of the sort. What you told me just now, and what you saw at the ceremony, recall it all once more carefully and… no. Could you write it all down here before I return? No, no, you simply must write it down!”

Pobedonostsev stormed out mid-babble, and it was about 2 hours before he returned.

* * *

Two days later, an unexpected disturbance erupted in Nicholas II’s office.

“Your Majesty, Konstantin Petrovich begs an urgent audience.”

The Tsar’s hand, mid-signature, froze for a moment in the air.

“Urgent? It has hardly been a few days since I last saw him.”

The instant permission was given, the door opened, and his old tutor’s haggard face caught his eye.

He looked almost like a different man from a few days before.

“Petrovich? You look terribly unwell.”

“Your Majesty. Forgive me, but pray dismiss the servants first.”

Sensing that something was off, the Tsar flinched briefly, then waved the attendants out.

The heavy thud of the closing door had barely finished echoing off the office walls before Pobedonostsev spoke.

“It concerns the young Mikhail.”

The Tsar’s shoulders went rigid for an instant.

Surely he hadn’t discovered that Mikhail was his illegitimate son?

“Has… has Misha done something wrong?”

“No. Quite the opposite.”

Inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief, and at the same time he could hardly believe this.

A seven-year-old does something praiseworthy, and the man comes storming in with this much fanfare?

“On the way back, the Young Master said something to me. He said it seemed that Lieutenant Colonel Akashi Motojiro, military attaché of the Japanese Legation, was engaged in espionage inside the Empire.”

See? A mere spy… hm?

The Tsar’s blue eyes slowly widened.

What finally escaped his long-hanging jaw was something close to a laugh of disbelief.

“Ha… haha. Petrovich, the joke goes too far. Talk of spies, from the mouth of a child not yet eight years old?”

“He did not name anyone directly. He merely pointed out that the man’s behavior was singularly odd.”

“To a child’s eyes, most things look odd, do they not.”

“At first I thought exactly as Your Majesty does. So I wrote down the Young Master’s words without missing a single letter, obtained materials from an acquaintance in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and completed the cross-checking myself.”

“Don’t tell me… the result….”

The Tsar took the papers as gingerly as he had once received lessons from this tutor long ago.

The mustached Polish man the Young Master had singled out.

The document noted that he was a Polish émigré intellectual registered in Paris, not even an accredited diplomat, and that how such a man had gotten into the New Year rite at all was suspicious in the extreme.

Then, confirmation that the office of the Russian general Akashi had shadowed had ties reaching into Far East Command.

The fact that the young officer in the blue uniform was a green lieutenant just posted to Petersburg from the staff section of the Far East High Command.

Even a copy of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs file recording that Lieutenant Colonel Akashi, during his Paris posting, had spoken French and German at a native’s level.

The Tsar’s hand grew heavier with every page he turned.

“Even from this alone… it is certainly strange that he still cannot speak Russian.”

“Yes. For a man so gifted with languages to keep feigning clumsiness in the local tongue for going on two years is, to anyone’s eyes, unnatural.”

“No… how could our Okhrana have missed facts as basic as these?”

“At present the Empire has no agency dedicated to catching foreign spies, Your Majesty. The Okhrana’s proper duty is watching domestic subversion, so matters concerning foreign legation staff are forever pushed down the list. Moreover, mishandle a man with diplomatic status and it becomes an international incident on the spot; by long custom, the rule is not to touch them unless one absolutely must.”

The Japanese had been exploiting precisely this gap to work their attaché as a spy to their heart’s content.

Faced with the raw truth, the Tsar found himself pressing hard at his temples.

Above all, when it sank in that the one who had put a finger on this gap was a seven-year-old child, his head grew more tangled still.

“So you are telling me that a mere seven-year-old worked out that suspicious trail just by watching for two hours.”

“That was the part I found hardest to believe as well. I wondered if someone had whispered it to him from behind, and could not sleep a wink for two days. So I showed the Young Master twelve portraits he had never seen before, for 1 minute, and an hour later asked him to set down their features on paper. All twelve of them, everything from appearance to details of dress, posture, and expression, every last one correct without a single omission.”

For a moment, the Tsar felt his breath stop.

He was truly glad his son was a genius, but on the other hand he could not help wondering whether his son could really be that clever.

“Set adults the same test and they recall half at best. To put it figuratively, the Young Master has two brains in his head. Purely a figure of speech, of course.”

“Ho ho….”

When the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod himself, of all people, was saying so, what doubt could there be?

And at the same time, in a way, it made sense.

How on earth could that child be so brilliant?

Because the blood of the Tsar of Russia, set on his throne by God, his very own blood, ran in the boy’s veins. What other reason could there be?

“…Konstantin Petrovich. For the time being, no one must know that Mikhail is the source of this material.”

“I was of the same mind.”

“For now, I shall summon the Okhrana section chief myself and give the instructions directly. As for the source, We shall say it was a conclusion We reached while collating various reports.”

“A wise judgment.”

It was the very next afternoon that Yakov Nikolaevich Sazonov, section chief of the Petersburg Okhrana, entered the Tsar’s office.

The section chief, a man in his late 50s, was visibly on edge at the fact that the Tsar himself, of all people, had summoned him in person.

“Your Majesty. I came the moment I was called.”

“Sit, Yakov Nikolaevich. You know Akashi Motojiro, the military attaché of the Japanese Legation? We suspect this man of conducting espionage inside the Empire, and so We have called you here.”

Yakov’s eyes trembled violently.

Honestly, who could blame him for being floored. As it was understandable.

The Tsar, of all people, suddenly summons the director of the secret police, and this is what comes out of his mouth.

“You mean Lieutenant Colonel Akashi? If I may ask… by what course did Your Majesty arrive at such a judgment?”

The anticipated question arrived exactly as anticipated, and the Tsar delivered the answer he had already prepared.

“While collating various recent reports from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Okhrana, certain points that defied common sense caught Our eye, so We dug into them. Following the contradictions We uncovered led to this conclusion.”

“…Your Majesty undertook such work personally.”

“Is that so astonishing? What is so remarkable about a Tsar examining his own empire’s reports?”

“N-no, I meant nothing of the kind.”

Nicholas II slid the papers forward with the most impressive expression he could muster.

“Then dig into it along this line and investigate. Report the results to Us directly, and until the investigation is complete, keep the number of those who know of this matter to a minimum.”

Taking the papers and turning them page by page, Yakov’s eyes grew wider and wider.

By the time he reached the last page, his hands were shaking as if an earthquake had struck.

“It shall be done as commanded, Your Majesty.”

Judging by that reaction, this was clearly no shot in the dark.

Had he not watched with his own eyes as the seasoned counterintelligence officer’s face slowly hardened over the pages?

Now, just a little more waiting, and the results would come.

Whether this country’s Tsar and Chief Procurator had made an absurd fuss over a child’s silly prattle, or whether the blood of the Romanovs had sent down into this world a genius fit for the history books.

* * *

It was four days later that Section Chief Yakov appeared before the Tsar again.

The moment the audience chamber door opened, the Tsar saw it at a glance.

Today, of all days, there was hardly a trace of color in the face of a secret police officer whose expression never cracked under any circumstances.

“Your Majesty. Following the line Your Majesty indicated… clear grounds for suspicion have been confirmed.”

“Hmm…….”

“The list of Polish figures Lieutenant Colonel Akashi has contacted during his Petersburg posting, the flow of funds tied to them, and abnormal points of contact with several Russian military personnel have all come to light. We are currently conducting further investigation so that the other side notices nothing.”

“Then how do you intend to handle it?”

“Since they have not yet caught on, if we follow the routes we have now mapped, we should be able to pull up Japan’s entire covert network by the roots. Should there be any sign they have noticed, we can switch at once to public exposure and lodge a protest. Whichever way it goes, Japan will suffer a colossal humiliation before the international community.”

Yakov stepped back a pace and bowed deeply.

“If I may be so bold, Your Majesty, in all my decades in this work, this is among the sharpest insights I have ever seen. To pluck so precise a thread of suspicion from the gaps of what must be thousands of pages of reports… truly, this is the Tsar of our Russia!”

“Haha… it was nothing, really.”

Wait, what? This is actually working?

“However, for the further investigation there are several more things we need to know. Forgive me, our intuition falls short of Your Majesty’s level, so if Your Majesty could confirm the following points for us….”

Looking at the summary Section Chief Yakov hurriedly presented, Nicholas II could, of course, give no answer whatsoever.

He was not the originator in the first place; hit him with advanced questions and how on earth was he supposed to answer?

But he could hardly confess here and now that he had copied, wholesale, what a 7-year-old child had noticed.

“…One moment. I shall give you the answer after a trip to the bathroom, so wait here.”

Having thrown out the first excuse that came to hand, the Tsar turned toward the room where Mikhail was in the middle of lessons with Pobedonostsev.

…Son, help me.