"Incident in Semipalatinsk" by Nikolai Svechin, summary Automatic translate

"Incident in Semipalatinsk" is a detective and spy novel from the series about detective Alexei Lykov, set in 1907 in the Steppe region of the Russian Empire. The author, Nikolai Svechin — the pseudonym of Nizhny Novgorod writer Nikolai Viktorovich Grishin — is known for his series of historical detective stories, in which "Incident in Semipalatinsk" occupies a late place. The book draws on the actual geography and administrative structure of the Steppe Governorate-General; it seamlessly intertwines criminal investigation with the theme of the Anglo-Russian confrontation in Asia — the "Great Game."

Murder of the Chief of Police

In the summer of 1907, the Semipalatinsk police chief, Captain Ivan Lavrentyevich Prisypin, went to Zarechnaya Sloboda one evening to meet an informant — and was never seen alive again. The next morning, his body was found behind Kudaibergenev’s inn, stabbed six times. The murder of an official of such rank was an extraordinary event. Governor Major General Galkin demanded that the culprits be found immediately.

The police chief’s assistant, Sotnik Kuzma Pavlovich Zababakhin, takes over the investigation. The clue that leads him to the murder is unexpected: the body was covered with willow branches. Semipalatinsk is almost devoid of greenery — "the devil’s sandbox," as the locals call it — and willow branches can only be cut from the rare groves along the Irtysh. On Lodochny Island, the police find a freshly cut tree, and nearby, two cigarette butts rolled from the Turkestan News newspaper. The newspaper is rare; after checking all the subscribers, the sotnik discovers that one of them — Demokritov, an agent of the Yaroslavl-Kostroma Land Bank — had lost his copy in a robbery. The leader of the robbers was Vasily Korytov, nicknamed Vasya the Accursed — a deserter who controlled the opium route in the west, carried out robberies, and feuded with the crime bosses Zhorkin and Altyn-bek. The picture emerges clearly: the Accursed learned of Prisypin’s planned raid and killed the police chief first. Zababakhin sets an ambush in Ulubekov’s Sart tavern and personally shoots the Accursed dead as he attempts to escape. A silver cigarette case — a gift from Prisypin to the city administration — is found in the dead man’s pocket. The case is officially closed.

Another version

However, Second Lieutenant Nikolai Alekseevich Lykov-Nefedyev, head of the intelligence post in Jarkent, knows something else. Three days before the captain’s death, he met with Prisypin, who informed him of something important: a British residency was operating in Semipalatinsk. A local merchant, Kunybai Karzhibaev, who traded hides and tallow throughout Asia, worked for the Intelligence Department of the British Indian Army in Dehra Dun. Through him, couriers from Xinjiang, China — from Kashgar and Yarkand — delivered reports on the deployment of Russian troops in the Steppe and Turkestan Governorates-General. Prisypin managed to intercept several encrypted letters and passed them on to codebreakers. When Karzhibaev sensed surveillance, he left for Pavlodar and disappeared, and his men were ordered to eliminate the police chief in a manner that would make it look like a criminal offense. The accursed one was just an instrument - a convenient screen that was put under attack.

Second Lieutenant Lykov-Nefedyev sends a report to Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Evgenievich Snesarev, the senior clerk at the Main Directorate of the General Staff. He contacts Major General Baron Viktor Reingoldovich Taube, and through him, Minister of War Rediger and Prime Minister Stolypin. A decision is made at the very top: conduct a covert investigation, entrusting it to an experienced Moscow detective. Nikolai names his father, Collegiate Councilor Alexei Nikolaevich Lykov.

The path to the steppe

Lykov Sr. is summoned to the Director of the Police Department, Trusevich, and given a secondment. At the General Staff building on Palace Square, Taube and Snesarev brief him on the "Great Game": decades of covert confrontation between Russia and Britain in Central Asia, wars over the Pamirs, Tibet, and Afghanistan. Now the two sides are preparing to sign a comprehensive agreement on the division of spheres of influence, but undercover work will continue on both sides.

The detective leaves for the east by train, but his son changes his plan: instead of meeting his father in Omsk, he secretly takes him off the train at Medvezhya station. The reason is that an open telegram could alert British agents. Nikolai is dressed in the uniform of the Siberian Cossack Host, and his Kazakh assistant, Botabai Ganiev, is at his side. The three of them ride off into the steppe on horseback, keeping away from the main road.

Semipalatinsk. Investigation

Arriving in Semipalatinsk, Lykov Sr. gains the trust of Zababakhin, who by then had become acting police chief. Gradually, it becomes clear that a spy network has become deeply entrenched in the city. The thread leads to the merchant Ybysh Kapanbayev in the Zarechnaya Sloboda, where Gubaydulla, the bodyguard and aide of Karzhibayev himself, whom the police had been searching for for three weeks, is hiding. The head of the Sloboda, retired titular councilor Orestov, reports that, on the eve of his death, Prisypin personally asked him to gather information on Kapanbayev, explicitly naming the espionage.

A twelve-man arresting team crosses the Irtysh River on a ferry-plane. Orestov lures the house owner out of the gate under the pretext of needing witnesses. Kapanbaev is captured quietly, but his guard, Gubaidulla — nicknamed Kaskir, or "wolf" — enters the fray and remains behind Lykov.

Chase and ambush in the dunes

Meanwhile, a young woman, Anastasia Loevskaya, a military intelligence liaison, appears in the case. She is carrying important information to Jarkent on Nikolai’s orders. Lykov Sr. is escorting her across the steppe in a droshky when they are ambushed in the dunes. The thugs kill the scout horseman Zhuma and the horses, and wound Botabay in the side. In the shootout, Lykov kills two of the attackers with several well-aimed shots, and Anastasia, who manages to take Ganiev’s magazine, takes out another. The remaining bandits retreat. The wounded Botabay is taken to the infirmary in Jarkent in a zemstvo troika, where a military doctor confirms that his life is not in danger.

The finale

The interrogations of Kapanbaev and Gubaidulla allow Lykov to piece together the full picture: it was Karzhibaev’s men who orchestrated Prisypin’s murder, using the Accursed One as a hired gun, thereby disguising a political crime as a criminal one. The residency itself turned out to be part of a vast intelligence network stretching from Xinjiang through Semipalatinsk to St. Petersburg. Karzhibaev had already fled China by that time, but the exposure of his structure deprives the network of support within Russia.

Nikolai Lykov-Nefedyev and Anastasia Loevskaya meet in Jarkent after the operation. The father, finally seeing his son after three years, is convinced that Nikolai has long since grown beyond "Chuneyev" — his childhood nickname — into a true intelligence officer, capable of operating in conditions where the price of a mistake is life.