The Diamond Chariot

The final syllable, the longest one of all

How could he have failed to recognise her straight away? Well, yes, certainly, he was tired, he was tormented by boredom, waiting impatiently for when he could leave. And, of course, she looked quite different: that first time, at dawn near the sabotaged bridge, she was pale and exhausted, in a dress that was muddy and soaking wet, and this time she glowed with a delicate, well-groomed beauty, and the veil had blurred the features of her face. But even so, some sleuth he was!

Then, when she approached him herself and mentioned the bridge, it was like being struck by lightning. Erast Petrovich had recognised her and remembered her testimony, which had led to his fatal, shameful error, and – most importantly – he had remembered her companion.

At the Moscow Freight Station, when he looked through his binoculars and saw the man who had received the melinite, Fandorin realised immediately that he had seen him somewhere before but, confused by those Japanese facial features, he had taken a wrong turning, imagining that the spy resembled one of his old acquaintances from his time in Japan. But it was all much simpler than that! He had seen this man, dressed in a staff captain’s uniform, at the site of the catastrophe.

Now everything had fallen into place.

The special had been blown up by the Acrobat, as Mylnikov had so aptly christened him. The Japanese saboteur was travelling in the express train, accompanied by his female accomplice –this Lidina woman. How cunningly she had sent the gendarmes off on a false trail!

And now the enemy had decided to strike a blow at the person who was hunting him. One of the favourite tricks of the sect of stealthy ones, it was called ‘The rabbit eats the tiger’. Well, not to worry, there was also a Russian saying: ‘The mouse hunts the cat’.

Glyceria Romanovna’s invitation to go to her apartment had not taken the engineer by surprise – he was prepared for something of the sort. But even so, he tensed up inside when he asked himself whether he could cope with such a dangerous opponent on his own.

‘If I don’t cope, that’s my karma, let them fight on without me,’ Erast Petrovich thought philosophically – and he went.

But at the house on Ostozhenka Street he behaved with extreme caution. Karma was all very well, but he had no intention of playing giveaway chess.

That only made the disappointment all the greater when he realised that the Acrobat was not in the apartment. Fandorin didn’t beat about the bush after that. The dubious lady’s part in everything had to be clarified there and then, without delay.

She was not an agent, he realised that straight away. If she was an accomplice, she was an unwitting one and had not been initiated into any secrets. True, she knew where to find the Acrobat, but she would never tell Fandorin, because she was head over heels in love. He couldn’t subject her to torture, could he?

At this point Erast Petrovich’s eye fell on the telephone apparatus, and the whole idea came to him in an instant. A spy of this calibre had to have a telephone number for emergency contacts.

After frightening Lidina as badly as he could, Fandorin ran down the stairs, out into the street, took a cab and ordered the driver to race as fast as he could to the Central Telephone Exchange.

Lisitsky had set himself up very comfortably in his new place of work. The young ladies on the switchboards had already given him lots of embroidered doilies and he had a bowl of home-made biscuits, jam and a small teapot standing on the desk. The dashing staff captain seemed to be popular here.

On seeing Fandorin, he jumped up, pulled off his earphones and exclaimed enthusiastically:

‘Erast Petrovich, you are a true genius! This is the second day I’ve been sitting here and I never weary of repeating it! Your name should be incised in gold letters on the tablets of police history. You cannot imagine how many curious and savoury facts I have learned in these two days!’

‘I c-cannot,’ Fandorin interrupted him. ‘Apartment three, the Bomze House, Ostozhenka Street – what’s the number there?’

‘Just a moment,’ said Lisitsky, glancing into the directory. ‘37-82.’

‘Check what calls have been made from 37-82 in the last quarter of an hour. Q-quickly!’

The staff captain shot out of the room like a bullet and came back three minutes later.

‘A call to number 114-22. That’s the Saint-Saëns Boarding House, on Chistoprudny Boulevard, I’ve already checked it. It was a brief conversation, only thirty seconds.’

‘That means she didn’t find him in …’ Fandorin murmured. ‘What boarding house is that? There wasn’t one by that name in my time. Is it educational?’

‘After a fashion.’ Lisitsky chuckled. ‘They teach the science of the tender passion. It’s a well-known establishment, belongs to a certain Countess Bovada. A highly colourful individual, she figured in one of our cases. And they know her well in the Okhrana too. Her real name is Anfisa Minkina. Her life story is a genuine Boussenard novel. She has travelled right round the world. A shady character, but she is tolerated because from time to time she provides services to the relevant government departments. Of an intimate, but not necessarily sexual, nature,’ the jolly staff captain said, and laughed again. ‘I told them to connect me to the boarding house. There are two numbers registered there, so I’ve connected to both. Was I right?’

‘Yes, well done. Sit here and listen. And meanwhile I’ll make a call.’

Fandorin telephoned his apartment and told his valet to make his way to Chistoprudny Boulevard and observe a certain house.

Masa paused and asked:

‘Master, will this be interfering in the course of the war?’

‘No,’ Erast Petrovich reassured him, prevaricating somewhat, but he had no other choice at the moment. Mylnikov was not there, and the railway gendarmes would not be able to provide competent surveillance. ‘You will simply watch the Saint-Saëns Boarding House and tell me if you see anything interesting. The Orlando electric theatre is close by, it has a public telephone. I shall be at number …’

‘20-93,’ Lisitsky prompted him, with an earphone pressed to each ear.

‘A call, on the left line!’ he exclaimed a minute later.

Erast Petrovich grabbed an extension earpiece and heard a blasé man’s voice:

‘… Beatrice, my little sweetheart, I’m aflame, I just can’t wait any longer. I’ll come straight to your place. Get my room ready, do. And Zuleika, it must be her.’

‘Zuleika is with an admirer,’ a woman’s voice, very gentle and pleasant, replied at the other end of the line.

The man became flustered.

‘What’s that you say, with an admirer? With whom? If it’s Von Weilem, I’ll never forgive you!’

‘I’ll prepare Madam Frieda for you,’ the woman cooed. ‘Remember her, the large lady with the wonderful figure. She’s a true whiplash virtuoso, every bit as good as Zuleika. Your Excellency will like her.’

The staff captain started shaking with soundless, suppressed laughter. Fandorin dropped his earpiece in annoyance.

During the next hour there were many calls, some of an even more spicy nature, but all of them in Lisitsky’s left ear – that is, on number 114-22. Nothing on the other line.

It came to life at half past eleven, with a call from the boarding house. A man requested number 42-13.

‘42-13 – who’s that?’ the engineer asked in a whisper, while the young lady was putting through the connection.

The gendarme was already rustling the pages. He found the number and ran his thumbnail under the line of print.

Fandorin read it: ‘Windrose Restaurant’.

‘Windrose Restaurant,’ said a voice in the earpiece. ‘Can I help you?’

‘My dear fellow, could you please call Mr Miroshnichenko to the telephone? He’s sitting at the table by the window, on his own,’ the Saint-Saëns said in a man’s voice.

‘Right away, sir.’

A long silence, lasting several minutes.

And then a calm baritone voice at the restaurant end asked:

‘Is that you?’

‘As we agreed. Are you ready?’

‘Yes. We’ll be there at one in the morning.’

‘There’s a lot of it. Almost a thousand crates,’ the boarding house warned the restaurant.

Fandorin gripped his earpiece so tightly that his fingers turned white. Weapons! A shipment of Japanese weapons, it had to be!

‘We have enough men,’ the restaurant replied confidently.

‘How will you move it? By water?’

‘Naturally. Otherwise, why would I need a warehouse on the river?’

Just at that moment little lamps started blinking on the telephone apparatus on the desk in front of Lisitsky.

‘That’s the special line,’ the officer whispered, grabbing the receiver and twirling a handle. ‘For you, Erast Petrovich. I think it’s your servant.’

‘You listen!’ Fandorin said with a nod at the earpiece, and took the receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘Master, you told me to tell you if anything interesting happened,’ Masa said in Japanese. ‘It’s very interesting here, come.’

He didn’t try to explain anything – evidently there were a lot of people in the electric theatre.

In the meantime the conversation between Windrose and Saint-Saëns had ended.

‘Well, d-did he tell him the place?’ the engineer asked, turning to Lisitsky impatiently.

The gendarme spread his hands helplessly.

‘It must have been during the two seconds when you put the receiver down and I hadn’t picked it up yet … All I heard was the one at the restaurant saying: “Yes, yes, I know”. What are your instructions? Shall I send squads to the Windrose and Saint-Saëns?’

‘No need. You won’t find anyone at the restaurant now. And I’ll deal with the guest house myself.’

As he flew along the dark boulevards in the carriage, Fandorin thought about the terrible danger hanging over the ancient city – no, over the thousand-year-old state. Black crowds, armed with rifles from Japan (or wherever), would choke the throats of the streets with the nooses of barricades. A formless, bloody stain would creep in from the outskirts to the centre and a ferocious, protracted bloodbath would begin, in which there would be no victors, only dead and defeated.

The great enemy of Erast Petrovich’s life – senseless and savage Chaos – stared out at the engineer through the blank wall eyes of dark windows, grinned at him with the rotten mouths of ravenous gateways. Rational, civilised life shrank to a frail strand of lamps, glimmering defencelessly along the pavement.

Masa was waiting for him by the railings.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said quickly, leading Fandorin along the edge of the pond. ‘That bad man Myrnikov and five of his men crept into the house, through that porch over there. That was … twerve minutes ago,’ he said, glancing with delight at the gold watch that Erast Petrovich had given him for the Mikado’s fiftieth birthday. ‘I terephoned you straight away.’

‘Ah, how appalling!’ the engineer exclaimed miserably. ‘That jackal picked up the scent and he’s ruined everything again!’

His valet replied philosophically:

‘There’s nothing you can do about it now, anyway. Ret’s watch what happens next.’

So they started watching.

There were single windows on the left and right of the door. They had no light in them.

‘Strange,’ whispered Erast Petrovich. ‘What are they doing there in the dark? No shots, no shouts …’

And that very second there was a shout – not very loud, but filled with such utter animal terror that Fandorin and his servant both leapt up without a word, breaking their cover, and went running towards the house.

A man crawled out on to the porch, working his elbows and knees rapidly.

‘Banzai! Banzai!’ he howled over and over again.

‘Let’s go!’ said the engineer, looking round at Masa, who had stopped. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

His servant stood there with his arms crossed, the mute embodiment of affronted feelings.

‘You deceived me, Master. That man is Japanese.’

There was no point in trying to persuade him. And anyway, Fandorin felt ashamed.

‘He is not Japanese,’ said Fandorin. ‘But you’re right: you’d better go. If neutrality is not to be compromised.’

The engineer sighed and moved on. The valet sighed and plodded away.

Three shadows came flying out, one after another, from round the corner of the boarding house – three men in identical coats and bowler hats.

‘Evstratii Pavlovich!’ they clamoured, taking hold of the crawling man and setting him on his feet. ‘What’s wrong?’

Mylnikov howled and tried to break free of their grip.

‘I am Fandorin,’ said Erast Petrovich, moving closer.

The agents exchanged glances, but they didn’t say anything – obviously no further introductions were required.

‘He’s cracked up,’ one of them, a little older than the others, said with a sigh. ‘Evstratii Pavlovich hasn’t been himself for quite a while now, our lads have noticed. But this time he’s really flipped his lid.’

‘The Japanese God … Banzai … Get thee behind me …’ the afflicted man repeated, twitching and jerking.

So that he would not get in the way, Fandorin pressed on his artery, and the court counsellor quietened down. He hung his head, gave a snore and slumped in the grip of his deputies.

‘Let him lie down for a while, nothing will happen to him. Right now, follow me!’ the engineer ordered.

He walked quickly round the rooms, switching on the electric light everywhere.

The apartment was empty, lifeless. The only movement was a curtain fluttering at an open window.

Fandorin dashed over to the windowsill. Outside was the courtyard, and after that a vacant lot and the gloomy silhouettes of buildings.

‘He got away! Why was no one posted under the window? That’s not like Mylnikov!’

‘Well, I was standing there,’ one of the agents started explaining. ‘Only when I heard Evstratpalich shout, I ran. I thought he needed a hand …’

‘Where are our lads?’ the older one asked, looking around in amazement. ‘Mandrykin, Lepinsh, Sapliukin, Kutko and that other one, what’s his name, with the big ears. Did they go after him, through the window? They should have whistled …’

Erast Petrovich set about examining the apartment more closely. In the room to the left of the entrance hall, he discovered a few drops of blood on the carpet. He touched it – it was fresh.

He glanced around, set off confidently towards the sideboard and pulled open the door, which was slightly ajar. There, protruding slightly from the inner space, was a small crossbow, gripped in a carpenter’s vice. It had been fired.

‘Well, well, familiar tricks,’ the engineer murmured, and started feeling the floor at the spot where he found the blood. ‘Aha, and here’s the spring. He hid it under the parquet … But where’s the body?’

He turned his head to the right and the left. Then walked towards the mirror hanging on the wall facing the window. He fingered the frame, but couldn’t find a switch, and simply smashed his fist into the brilliant surface.

The agents, who were blankly following ‘Silver Fox’s’ actions, gasped – the mirror jangled and collapsed into a black niche.

‘So that’s where it is,’ the engineer purred in satisfaction, clicking a switch. A small door opened up in the wallpaper.

There was a tiny boxroom behind the false mirror. At the far end of it was a window that gave an excellent view of the next space, the bedroom. Half of the secret hiding place was taken up by a camera on a tripod, but that was not what interested Fandorin.

‘With big ears, you say?’ the engineer asked, bending down and examining something on the floor. ‘Is this him?’

He dragged out a dead body, holding it under the armpits. There was a short, thick arrow protruding from its chest.

The agents clustered round their dead comrade, but the engineer was already hurrying into the opposite room.

‘The same trick,’ he announced to the senior agent, who had followed him in. ‘A secret spring under the parquet. A crossbow concealed in the cupboard. Instantaneous death – the point is smeared with poison. And the body is over there’ – he pointed to the mirror. ‘You can check for yourself.’

But in this secret space, which was exactly like the previous one, there were three bodies.

‘Lepinsh,’ the agent said with a sigh, dragging out the top one. ‘Sapliukin. And Kutko’s underneath …’

The fifth body was found in the bedroom, in the gap behind the wardrobe.

‘I don’t know how he managed to deal with them on his own … It probably happened like this,’ said Fandorin, recreating the scene. ‘The ones who went into the side rooms were killed first, by the arrows, and they were spirited away – “through the l-looking glass”. This one, in the bedroom, was killed with a bare hand – at least, there are no visible signs of injury. Sapliukin and this one, what’s his name, Lepinsh, have had their cervical vertebrae smashed. Lepinsh’s open mouth suggests that he caught a glimpse of his killer, but no more than that. The Acrobat killed these two in the hallway, dragged them into the room on the right and threw them on top of Kutko. The one thing I don’t understand is how Mylnikov survived. He must have amused the Japanese with his cries of “Banzai”. But that’s enough idle speculation. Our most important job is still ahead of us. You,’ he said, prodding one of the agents with his finger, ‘collect your deranged superior and take him to the Kanatchikovo mental clinic. And you two come with me.’

‘Where to, Mr Fandorin?’ asked the one who was a little older.

‘To the River Moscow. Damnation, half past twelve already, and we still have to look for a needle in a haystack!’

Not an easy trick, finding a warehouse on the River Moscow when you don’t know which one it is. The old capital didn’t have a cargo port, and the goods wharves began at the Krasnokholmsky Bridge and stretched downstream for several versts, with breaks, all the way to Kozhukhovo.

They started looking from Taganka, at the wharf of the Volga Basin Steamship Line and Trading Company. Then came the landing stage of the Kamensky Brothers Trading House, the warehouses of Madam Kashina’s Nizhny Novgorod Steamship Company, the freight sheds of the Moscow River Partnership, and so on, and so forth.

They searched like this: they rode along the waterfront in a cab, gazing into the darkness and listening for any noise there might be. Who else would work at this desolate hour of the night, apart from men who had something to hide?

Occasionally they went down to the river and listened to the water – most of the moorings were on the left bank, but once in a while there were some on the right bank too.

They went back to the carriage and drove on.

Erast Petrovich became gloomier and gloomier with every minute that passed.

The search was dragging on – the Breguet in his pocket jangled twice. As though in reply, the clock on the tower of the Novospassky Monastery struck two, and the engineer’s thoughts turned to matters divine.

The survival of the autocratic monarchy depends on the people’s belief in its mystical, supernatural origin, Fandorin thought sombrely. If that faith is undermined, Russia will suffer the same fate as Mylnikov. The people are observing the course of this wretched war and every day they are convinced that the Japanese God is stronger than the Russian one, or that he loves his anointed one more than ours loves the Tsar Nicholas. A constitution is the only possible salvation, mused the engineer – despite his mature age, he had not yet outgrown his tendency to idealism. The monarchy must shift the fulcrum of its authority from religiosity to rationality. The people must comply with the will of the authorities because they are in agreement with that will, not out of the fear of God. But if armed revolt breaks out now, it is the end of everything. And it no longer matters whether the monarchy is able to drown the rebellion in blood or not. The genie will escape from the bottle, and the throne will come crashing down anyway – if not now, then in a few years’ time, during the next convulsion …

Large, paunchy iron tanks glinted in the darkness – the oil storage facilities of the Nobel Company. At this point the river made a bend.

Erast Petrovich touched the driver on the shoulder to make him stop. He listened, and from somewhere on the water in the distance he could hear the clear sound of regular mechanical grunting.

‘Follow me,’ said the engineer, beckoning to the agents.

They jogged through a clump of trees. The breeze carried the smell of crude oil to their nostrils – the Postyloe Lake was somewhere close by, behind the trees.

‘That’s it!’ gasped the senior agent (his name was Smurov). ‘Looks like them, all right!’

Down below, at the bottom of a low slope, was the dark form of a long wharf, with several barges moored at it, and one of them, the smallest, was coupled to a steep-sided little tugboat under steam. It was its panting that Fandorin’s sharp hearing had detected.

Two loaders carrying a crate ran out of a warehouse abutting the wharf and disappeared into the hold of the little barge. After them another one appeared, with something square on his shoulders, and ran down the same gangplank.

‘Yes, that’s them,’ Fandorin said with a smile, instantly forgetting his apocalyptic visions. ‘The s-sansculottes are in a hurry.’

‘The who?’ asked agent Kroshkin, intrigued by the unfamiliar word.

Smurov, who was better read, explained.

‘They were armed militants, same as the SRs are. Haven’t you ever heard of the French Revolution? No? What about Napoleon? Well, that’s something at least.’

Another loader ran out of the warehouse, then three at once, lugging along something very heavy. The flame of a match flared up in the corner of the berth and a second or two later shrank to a red dot. There were two more men standing there.

The smile on the engineer’s face was replaced by a thoughtful expression.

‘There are quite a lot of them …’ Erast Petrovich looked around. ‘What’s that dark form over there? A bridge?’

‘Yes, sir. A railway bridge. For the ring road under construction.’

‘Excellent! Kroshkin, over in that direction, beyond Postyloe Lake, is the Kozhukhovo Station. Take the cab and get there as quick as you can. There must be a telephone at the station. Call Lieutenant Colonel Danilov at number 77-235. If the lieutenant colonel is not there, speak to the duty officer. Describe the s-situation. Tell him to put the watch and the duty detail, everyone they can find, on hand trolleys. And send them here. That’s all, run now. Only give me your revolver. And a supply of shells, if you have them. They’re no good to you, but we might find a g-good use for them.’

The agent dashed off back to the carriage at full tilt.

‘Right then, Smurov, let’s creep a bit closer. There’s an excellent stack of rails over there.’

While Thrush was lighting his pipe, Rybnikov glanced at his watch.

‘A quarter to three. It will be dawn soon.’

‘It’s all right, we’ll get it done. The bulk of it’s already been loaded.’ The SR nodded at a big barge. ‘There’s just the stuff for Sormovo left. That’s nothing, only a fifth of the load. Look lively now, comrades, look lively!’

They may be your comrades, but you’re not lugging any crates, Vasilii Alexandrovich thought in passing as he tried to calculate when would be best to bring up the most important subject – the timing of the uprising.

Thrush set off unhurriedly towards the warehouse. Rybnikov followed him.

‘When’s the Moscow load going?’ he asked, meaning the big barge.

‘The rivermen will move it to Fili tomorrow. Then on to somewhere else from there. We’ll keep moving it from place to place, so it won’t attract unwanted attention. And the small one here will go straight to Sormovo now, down the Moscow river, then the Oka.’

Almost no crates were left in the warehouse now, there were just flat boxes of wires and remote control devices.

‘How do you say “merci” in your language?’ Thrush asked with a grin.

‘Arigato.’

‘So, it’s a big proletarian arigato to you, Mr Samurai. You’ve done your job, we’ll manage without you now.’

Rybnikov broached the most important subject, speaking in a grave voice.

‘Well, then. The strike has to start within the next three weeks. And the uprising within six weeks …’

‘Don’t give me orders, Marshal Oyama. We’ll figure all that out for ourselves,’ the SR interrupted. ‘We’re not going to dance to your tune. I think we’ll hit them in the autumn.’ He grinned. ‘Until then you can keep plucking away at Tsar Nick’s feathers and fluff. Let the people see him stripped naked. That’s when we’ll lamp him hard.’

Vasilii Alexandrovich smiled back at him. Thrush never even guessed that at that second his life and the lives of his eight comrades hung by a thread.

‘But that’s really not right. We agreed,’ said Rybnikov, raising his hands reproachfully.

Sparks of mischief glinted in the revolutionary leader’s eyes.

‘To keep a promise made to a representative of an imperialist power is a bourgeois prejudice,’ he declared, and puffed on his pipe. ‘And what would “see you around” be in your language?’

A workman nearby hoisted the final box on to his back and said in surprise:

‘This is far too light. Not empty, is it?’

He put it back down on the ground.

‘No,’ explained Vasilii Alexandrovich, opening the lid. ‘It’s a selection of leads and wires for various purposes. This one is a fuse, this is a camouflage lead and this one, with the rubber covering, is for underwater mines.’

Thrush was interested in that. He took out the bright-red coil and examined it. He caught the metal core between his finger and thumb – it slipped out of the waterproof covering easily.

‘A smart idea. Laying mines underwater? Maybe we could knock off the royal yacht? I have this man in my team, a real desperate character … I’ll have to think about it.’

The loader picked up the box and ran out on to the wharf.

Meanwhile Rybnikov had taken a decision.

‘All right, then, autumn it is. Better late than never,’ he said. ‘But the strike in three weeks. We’re counting on you.’

‘What else can you do?’ Thrush answered casually over his shoulder. ‘That’s all, samurai, this is the parting of the ways. Hop it back to your ever-loving Japanese mother.’

‘I’m an orphan,’ said Vasilii Alexandrovich, smiling with just his lips, and he thought once again how good it would be to break this man’s neck – in order to watch his eyes bulge and turn glassy just before he died.

At that moment the silence ended.

‘Mr Engineer, it looks like that’s all. They’ve finished,’ Smurov whispered.

Fandorin could see for himself that the loading had been completed. The barge had settled almost right down to the waterline. It might look small, but apparently it was capacious – it took a lot of space to accommodate a thousand crates of weapons.

There was the last man clambering up the gangway – from the way he was walking, his load was not heavy at all, and then seven, no eight, hand-rolled cigarettes were lit on the barge, one after another.

‘They’ve done a bit of moonlighting. Now they’ll have a smoke and sail away,’ the agent breathed in his ear.

Kroshkin ran off to get help at a quarter to three, the engineer calculated. Let’s assume he got to a phone at three. It would take him five minutes, maybe ten, to get Danilov or the duty officer to understand what was going on. Agh, I should have sent Smurov, he’s better with words. So we’ll assume they get the watch out at ten minutes, no, a quarter, past three. They won’t set out before half past three. And it takes at least half an hour to get from Kalanchovka Street to the Kozhukhovo Bridge on a handcar. No point in expecting the gendarmes any earlier than four. And it’s three twenty-five …

‘Get your gun out,’ Fandorin ordered, taking his Browning in his left hand and Kroshkin’s Nagant in his right. ‘On the count of four, fire in the direction of the barge.’

‘What for?’ asked Smurov, startled. ‘Look how many of them there are! And how can they get off the river anyway? When help arrives, we’ll overtake them on the bank!’

‘How do you know they won’t sail the barge out of the city, where there are no people, or transfer the weapons to carts before it gets light? No, they have to b-be arrested. How many cartridges do you have?’

‘Seven in the cylinder and seven spares, that’s all. We’re secret policemen, not some kind of Bashibazouks …’

‘Kroshkin had fourteen as well. I have only seven, I don’t carry a spare clip. Unfortunately, I’m no janissary either. Thirty-five shots – that’s not many for half an hour. But there’s nothing to be done about it. This is what we do. You loose off the first cylinder without a pause, to produce an impression. But after that use the bullets sparingly, make every one count.’

‘It’s a bit far,’ said Smurov, judging the distance. ‘They’re half hidden by the side of the barge. It’s hard enough to hit a half-length figure from this far away, even during the day.’

‘Don’t aim at the men – they are your own compatriots, after all. Fire to prevent anyone getting across from the barge on to the tug. Ready, three, four!’

Erast Petrovich pointed his pistol up into the air (with its short barrel, it was almost useless at that distance, anyway) and pressed the trigger seven times.

‘Well, how about that,’ drawled Thrush when he heard the rapid firing.

He stuck his head out of the door cautiously. So did Rybnikov.

The flashes of shots glinted above a heap of rails dumped about fifty paces from the wharf.

The response from the barge was erratic shooting from eight barrels.

‘Narks. They’ve tracked us down,’ Thrush said coolly, summing up the situation. ‘But there are only a few of them. Three or four at the most. It’s a snag, but we’ll soon fix it. I’ll shout and tell the lads to outflank them from both sides …’

‘Wait!’ said Vasilii Alexandrovich, grabbing him by the shoulder and speaking very rapidly. ‘You mustn’t get drawn into a battle. That’s what they want you to do. There aren’t many of them, but they must have sent for support. It’s not hard to intercept a barge on the river. Tell me, is there anyone on the tug?’

‘No, they were all on loading.’

‘The police only got here recently,’ Rybnikov said confidently. ‘Otherwise there’d be an entire company of gendarmes here already. That means they didn’t see the loading of the main barge; we’ve spent almost an hour loading the one for Sormovo. Listen here, Thrush. The Sormovo load can be sacrificed. Save the big barge. Leave, and you can come back again tomorrow. Go, go. I’ll lead the police away.’

He took the coil of red cable from the SR, stuffed it into his pocket and ran out into the open, zigzagging from side to side.

The black silhouettes on the barge disappeared as if by magic, along with the scarlet sparks of light. But a second later the white flashes of shots glinted above the side of the vessel.

Another figure dashed from the warehouse to the barge, weaving and dodging – the engineer watched its movement with especial interest.

At first the bullets whistled high over their heads, but then the revolutionaries found their range and the little lumps of lead ricocheted off the rails, with a nauseating whine and a scattering of sparks.

‘Oh Lord, death’s come for me!’ gasped Smurov, ducking right down behind the stack every now and then.

Fandorin kept his eyes fixed on the barge, ready to fire as soon as anyone tried to slip across to the tug.

‘Then don’t be shy,’ said the engineer. ‘Why be afraid? All those people waiting for you and me in the next world. They’ll greet you like a long-lost friend. And such people, too. Not the kind we have nowadays.’

Amazingly enough, the argument advanced by Fandorin worked.

The police agent raised his head a little.

‘And Napoleon’s waiting too?’

‘Napoleon too. Do you like Napoleon?’ the engineer murmured absentmindedly, screwing up his left eye. One of the revolutionaries, more quick-witted than the others, had decided to clamber from the barge on to the tug.

Erast Petrovich planted a bullet in the cladding, right in front of the bright spark’s nose. The man ducked back down into shelter behind the barge’s side.

‘Keep your eyes open and your wits about you,’ Fandorin told his partner. ‘Now they’ve realised it’s time for them to leave, they’ll creep across one at a time. Don’t let them, fire across their path.’

Smurov didn’t answer.

The engineer glanced at him quickly and swore.

The police agent was slumped with his cheek against the rails, the hair on the back of his head was soaked in blood, and one open eye was staring, mesmerised, off to the side. He was dead …

I wonder if he’ll meet Napoleon? Fandorin thought fleetingly. Just at that moment he could not afford to indulge in sentimentality.

‘Comrade helmsman, into the wheelhouse!’ a voice yelled out loud and clear on the barge. ‘Quickly now!’

The figure that had hidden at the bow of the barge started climbing into the tug again. Fandorin heaved a sigh and fired to kill. The body fell into the water with a splash.

Almost immediately another man tried, but he was clearly visible against the white deck housing and Erast Petrovich was able to hit him in the leg. In any case, the shot man started roaring, so he must still be alive.

The cartridges Erast Petrovich got from Kroshkin had run out. Fandorin took the dead man’s revolver, but there were only three bullets in the cylinder. And there were still an entire eighteen minutes left until four o’clock.

‘Boldly now, comrades!’ the same voice shouted. ‘They’re almost out of bullets. Cut the mooring lines.’

The stern of the barge started creeping away from the wharf; the gangplanks creaked and plunged into the water.

‘Forward, on to the tug! All together, comrades!’

There was no way of stopping that.

When the whole gang of men went rushing to the bow of the barge, Fandorin did not even bother to fire – what was the point?

The tug spewed a shower of sparks out of its funnel, and started flapping at the water with its paddle wheels. The cables stretched taut with a twang.

They set off at 3.46 – the engineer checked his watch.

He had managed to delay them for twenty-one minutes. At the cost of two human lives.

He set off along the bank, moving parallel to the barge.

At first keeping up was not hard, but then he had to break into a run – the tug was gradually picking up speed.

As Erast Petrovich was passing the railway bridge he heard the rumble of steel wheels from up above, on top of the embankment. A large handcar crowded with men came hurtling out of the darkness at top speed.

‘This way! This way!’ shouted Fandorin, waving his hand, and fired into the air.

The gendarmes came running down the incline towards him.

‘Who’s in c-command?’

‘Lieutenant Bryantsev!’

‘There they are,’ said Erast Petrovich, pointing to the receding barge. ‘Get half the men across the bridge to the other side. Follow on both sides. When we overtake the barge, fire at the wheelhouse of the tug. Until they surrender. At the double!’

The strange pursuit of a barge sailing down a river by gendarmes on foot did not last for long.

The return fire from the tug rapidly fell off as the revolutionaries became more and more reluctant to show themselves above the iron sides. The glass in the wheelhouse windows had been smashed by bullets and the helmsman was steering the vessel without sticking his head up, by guesswork. The result was that half a verst from the bridge the tug ran on to a shoal and stopped. The current started slowly swinging the barge round sideways.

‘Cease fire,’ ordered Fandorin. ‘Call on them to surrender.’

‘Lay down your arms, you blockheads!’ the lieutenant shouted from the riverbank. ‘Where can you go? Surrender!’

There really was nowhere for the SRs to go. The sparse, pre-dawn mist swirled above the water, the darkness was dissolving before their very eyes, and gendarmes were lying in ambush on both sides of the river, so they couldn’t even get away one at a time, by swimming.

The survivors huddled together beside the wheelhouse – it looked as if they were conferring.

Then one of them straightened up to his full height.

It was him!

Even at that distance it was impossible not to recognise Staff Captain Rybnikov, alias the Acrobat.

The men on the tug started singing tunelessly, and the Japanese spy took a run-up and vaulted across on to the barge.

‘What’s he up to? What’s he doing?’ the lieutenant asked nervously.

‘Our proud “Varangian” surrenders to no foe, for mercy no one is pleading!’ they sang on the tug.

‘Shoot, shoot!’ Fandorin exclaimed when he saw a small flame flare up like Bengal fire in the Acrobat’s hands. ‘That’s a stick of dynamite!’

But it was too late. The stick went flying into the hold of the barge and the false staff captain grabbed a lifebelt from the side of the tug and leapt into the river.

A second later the barge reared up, snapped in two by several powerful explosions. The front half surged up and covered the tug. Chunks of wood and metal flew into the air and blazing fuel spread across the water.

‘Get down!’ the lieutenant roared desperately, but even without his command the gendarmes were already dropping to the ground, covering their heads with their arms.

The bent barrel of a rifle embedded itself in the ground beside Fandorin. Bryantsev gazed in horror at a hand grenade that had thudded down beside him. It was spinning furiously, with its factory grease glittering.

‘Don’t worry, it won’t go off,’ the engineer told him. ‘It’s got no detonator.’

The officer got up, looking abashed.

‘Is everyone all right?’ he bellowed briskly. ‘Line up for a roll-call. Hey, Sergeant Major!’ he shouted, folding his hands to form a megaphone. ‘How are your men?’

‘One got caught, Yeronner!’ a voice replied from the other bank.

On this side two men had been hurt by pieces of debris, but not seriously.

While the wounded were being bandaged up, the engineer went back to the bridge, where he had spotted a buoy-keeper’s hut earlier.

He rode back to the site of the explosion in a boat. The buoy-keeper was rowing, with Fandorin standing in the bow, watching the chips of wood and blotches of oil that covered the entire surface of the river.

‘May I join you?’ Bryantsev had asked. A minute later, already in the boat, he asked, ‘What are you watching for? The revolutionary gentlemen are on the bottom, that’s clear enough. The divers will come and raise the bodies later. And the cargo – what they can find of it.’

‘Is it deep here?’ the engineer asked, turning to the oarsman.

‘Round here it would be about two sazhens. Maybe three in some spots. In summer, when the sun gets hot, it’ll be shallower, but it’s deep as yet.’

The boat floated slowly downstream. Erast Petrovich gazed fixedly at the water.

‘That one who threw the dynamite was a really desperate fellow. The lifebelt didn’t save him. Look, it’s floating over there.’

Yes, there was the red-and-white ring of cork, swaying on the waves.

‘Right th-then, row over there!’

‘What do you want that for?’ asked the lieutenant, watching as Fandorin reached for the lifebelt.

Once again Erast Petrovich did not condescend to answer the garrulous officer. Instead he murmured:

‘Aha, that’s where you are, my boyo.’

He pulled the ring out of the water, exposing to view a red rubber tube attached to its inside surface.

‘A familiar trick,’ the engineer said with a condescending smile. ‘Only in ancient times they used bamboo, not a rubber cable with the core pulled out.’

‘What’s that enema tube for? And what trick do you mean?’

‘Bottom walking. But now I’ll show you an even more interesting trick. Let’s note the time.’ And Fandorin pinched the tube shut.

One minute went by, then another.

The lieutenant looked at the engineer in increasing bewilderment, but the engineer kept glancing from the water to the second hand of his watch and back.

‘Phenomenal,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘Even for them …’

Halfway through the third minute a head suddenly appeared out of the water about fifteen sazhens from the boat.

‘Row!’ Fandorin shouted at the boatman. ‘Now we’ll take him! He didn’t stay on the bottom, so we’ll take him!’

And, of course, they did take him – there was nowhere for the cunning Acrobat to escape to. But then, he didn’t try to resist. While the gendarmes bound his arms, he sat there with a detached expression on his face and his eyes closed, dirty water streaming out of his hair and green slime clinging to his shirt.

‘You are a strong player, but you have lost,’ Erast Fandorin told him in Japanese.

The prisoner opened his eyes and studied the engineer for a long time. But it still was not clear if he had understood or not.

Then Fandorin leaned down and uttered a strange word:

‘Tamba.’

‘When your number’s up, it’s up,’ the Acrobat remarked indifferently, and that was the only thing he said.

He maintained his silence in the Krutitsk garrison jail, where he was taken from the place of arrest.

All the top brass came to conduct the interrogation – from the gendarmes, and the military courts, and the Okhrana – but neither by threats nor promises were they able to get a single word out of Rybnikov. After being thoroughly searched and dressed in a coarse prisoner’s jacket and trousers, he sat there motionless. He didn’t look at the generals, only occasionally glanced at Erast Petrovich Fandorin, who took no part in the interrogation and generally stood a little distance away.

After labouring in vain over the stubborn prisoner all day long until the evening, the top brass ordered him to be taken away to a cell.

The cell was a special one, for especially dangerous miscreants. For Rybnikov they had taken additional security measures: the bed and stool had been replaced with a palliasse, the table had been taken out and the kerosene lamp removed.

‘We know these Japanese, we’ve read about them,’ the commandant told Fandorin. ‘He smashes his head open against a sharp corner, and we have to answer for it. Or he’ll pour burning kerosene over himself. He can just sit there with a candle instead.’

‘If a man like that wishes to die, it is not possible to prevent him.’

‘Ah, but it’s very possible. A month ago I had an anarchist, a terrible hard case, he spent two weeks lying swaddled, like a newborn infant. He growled, and rolled around on the floor, and tried to smash his head open against the wall – he didn’t want to die on the gallows. But I still delivered the fellow to the executioner in good order.’

The engineer grimaced in revulsion and remarked:

‘This is no anarchist.’ And he left, with a strangely heavy feeling in his heart.

The engineer was haunted and unsettled by the strange behaviour of a prisoner who had ostensibly surrendered, but at the same time clearly had no intention of providing any evidence.

Once he found himself in a cell, Vasilii Alexandrovich spent some time in an activity typical of prisoners – he stood under the small barred window, gazing at a patch of evening sky.

Rybnikov was in a good mood.

The two goals for which he had surfaced from the waters of the River Moscow, instead of remaining on its silty bottom, had both been achieved.

First, he had confirmed that the main barge, loaded with eight hundred crates, had remained undiscovered.

Secondly, he had looked into the eyes of the man he had heard so much about and had thought about for so long.

That seemed to be all.

Except …

He sat down on the floor, picked up the short pencil left for the prisoner in case he might wish to provide written testimony, and wrote a letter in Japanese cursive script that began with the invocation ‘Father!’

Then he yawned, stretched and lay down at full length on the palliasse.

He fell asleep.

Vasilii Alexandrovich had a glorious dream. He was dashing along in an open carriage that shimmered with all the colours of the rainbow. There was pitch darkness all around him, but far away, right on the very horizon, a bright, even light was glowing. He was not riding alone in the miraculous chariot, but he could not see the faces of his companions, because his gaze was constantly directed forward, towards the source of that rapidly approaching radiance.

The prisoner slept for no more than a quarter of an hour.

He opened his eyes. He smiled, still under the influence of his magical dream.

Vasilii Alexandrovich’s fatigue had evaporated completely. His entire being was filled with lucid strength and diamond-hard resolution.

He reread the letter to his father and burned it in the candle flame without a moment’s hesitation.

Then he undressed to the waist.

The prisoner had a flesh-coloured plaster attached to the skin just below his left armpit. It was camouflaged so artfully that the prison warders had failed to notice it when they searched him.

Rybnikov tore the plaster off, revealing a narrow razor blade. He seated himself comfortably and, with a rapid circular movement, made a single cut all the way round the edge of his face. He caught the edge of the skin with his fingernails and pulled it all off, from the forehead to the chin, and then, without making a single sound, he slashed the blade across his own throat.