The Diamond Chariot

A LITTLE PIECE OF HAPPINESS




‘Well now, it’s worth a try,’ said Vsevolod Vitalievich, narrowing his reddish eyes. ‘If you can expose the intendant, that will be a powerful blow struck against the party of war. And your involvement in the investigation will not only free you of all suspicion of Okubo’s murder, it will significantly improve the value of Russia’s stock in Japan.’

Fandorin had found the consul in his dressing room, taking his morning tea. Doronin’s sparse hair was covered with a fine net, and his thin neck with the protruding Adam’s apple was visible in the open collar of his shirt.

Obayasi-san bowed and offered the visitor tea, but Erast Petrovich declined, with the lie that he had already had tea. For some reason he had no desire either to eat or drink. But his apathy had disappeared and the beat of his heart was strong and regular. The hunting instinct is every bit as ancient and powerful as the instinct to make love, thought the titular counsellor, glad that he was recovering the habit of rationalising his own feelings.

‘We shall not inform the ambassador of your new initiative,’ said Doronin, holding out his little finger as he raised his cup to his mouth, but he didn’t drink. ‘If we do, he will instruct Lieutenant Captain Bukhartsev to deal with it, and he will turn the whole business into a grand fiasco.’

Erast Petrovich shrugged.

‘Why bother His Excellency with unimportant trifles? This is very small beer: the vice-consul defending the interests of an underage victim of corruption. That’s all we’re talking about so far.’

And then Vsevolod Vitalievich uttered a most injudicious sentiment.

‘Do you know what true patriotism is?’ he asked, then raised one finger and declared: ‘To act for the good of the Homeland, even if it means going against the will of one’s superiors.’

The titular counsellor considered this adventurous maxim. He nodded in agreement.

‘Thank you for the aphorism, I f-feel it will prove useful to me in life on more than one occasion. And that being the case, I think I shall not tell you anything more. I shall act like a true patriot, that is, without the sanction of my superiors, at my own discretion. If anything goes wrong, I shall answer for everything. For the time being, let us consider that this conversation of ours never took place.’

Doronin flushed, jumped up off his chair and tore the net off his hair.

‘Just what sort of minor role do you think you are assigning to me, my dear sir! Equal shares in the profit, but if the venture makes a loss, please don’t be concerned about that? I’m a Russian diplomat, not a stock market speculator!’

Poor Obayasi, frightened by the sudden shouting, froze on the spot and put her hand over her mouth.

Erast Petrovich also got up off his chair.

‘Precisely,’ he said drily, piqued by that ‘my dear sir’. ‘You are a diplomat, the consul of the Russian Empire, and you must not think of your own role, but the good of the Fatherland.’

The conversation with Lockston was much simpler, with no highbrow introspection.

‘So if His Yellow-Bellied Excellency’s protectors grab us by the ass, I blame you for everything,’ the American summed up. ‘My job’s a cinch: there was a request from the Russian consulate, and I was obliged to comply. All the notes and protests are your department, Rusty.’

‘Precisely so.’

‘Then I’m in.’ The sergeant chuckled. ‘Stick a genuine daimyo in the slammer – I like the idea. That’ll teach them to go defiling our little girls! And if you can take that skunk Suga down a peg or two, I owe you a crate of genuine bourbon, one dollar ninety-nine a bottle. Why that ape, thinking he could give white men the run around! There I was with my men, guarding that swamp, while he was pulling his dirty little tricks. Walter Lockston won’t let anyone get away with that, especially some lousy, slanty-eyed aboriginal!’

The titular counsellor winced at the American manner of scorning other races and repeated the essential points.

‘You wait for the signal. The next time Onokoji shows up at “Number Nine”, the owner will plant the young Polish girl on him. Asagawa lets us know immediately. You hurry to the brothel and make an arrest at the scene of the c-crime. Then you summon the Russian vice-consul and the head of the Japanese police.’

They didn’t have to wait long for ‘the next time’.

That evening a courier arrived at the consulate, bearing an official note from Sergeant Lockston: an underage female, very probably a Russian subject, had been subjected to abuse.

Erast Petrovich responded to the summons immediately, taking the secretary Shirota with him to add greater formality to the proceedings.

The scene that greeted the representatives of Russia in the office of the head of the municipal police was perfectly scandalous. Two people were sitting facing the sergeant, whose visage was set in a predatory smile; Prince Onokoji and a skinny little girl – gaudily made up, but with her hair in plaits, tied with bows. Both arrestees were in a state of complete undress. Lockston had evidently escorted the fornicators to the station in the same condition in which they were caught.

The infuriated daimyo’s apparel consisted of two sheets (one round his loins, the other thrown across his shoulders) and a pair of silk socks with elastic suspenders.

The presumptive Russian subject was wrapped in a sheet, but by no means tightly, and unlike her accomplice, she gave no sign of being particularly agitated – she kept turning her bright little face this way and that, sniffing all the time, and at the sight of the vice-consul she crossed one leg over the other and toyed coquettishly with her sandal. The knee of this victim of molestation was as skinny as a frog’s paw.

‘Who is this?’ Onokoji squealed in English. ‘I demanded the presence of the Japanese authorities! You will answer for this! My cousin is a minister of court!’

‘These are representatives of the injured party’s state,’ Lockston declared solemnly. ‘Here you are, Mr Vice-Consul, I relinquish this unfortunate child into your custody.’

Fandorin cast a glance of disgust at the child molester and spoke compassionately to the young girl in Russian.

‘What is your name?’

She flirted with her heavily painted eyes, stuck the end of one plait into her mouth and drawled:

‘Baska. Baska Zaionchek.’

‘How old are you?’

After a moment’s thought, the unfortunate child replied:

‘Twenty.’

And in an entirely superfluous gesture, she showed him ten outstretched digits twice.

‘She says she is twenty years old?’ asked the prince, brightening up. ‘That is what she told you, right?’

Taking no notice of him, Erast Petrovich said slowly:

‘That is a great pity. If you were a juvenile, that is, underage, the Russian Empire, in my person, would have defended you. And then you could count on substantial c-compensation. Do you know what compensation is?’

Baska clearly did know what compensation was. She wrinkled up her forehead and examined the titular counsellor curiously. She jerked her leg, throwing off the sandal, scratched her foot and replied, swallowing her hard Polish ‘l’:

‘I wied to the gentewman. I’m fourteen.’ She thought for a little longer. ‘I wiw be soon. I’m stiw thirteen.’

This time she put up ten fingers first, then three.

‘She is thirteen,’ the vice-consul translated for Lockston.

The prince groaned.

‘My child, I can only protect your interests if you have Russian citizenship. So tell me, are you a subject of the empire?’

‘Tak,’ Baska said with a nod, crossing herself with three fingers, Orthodox-style, to prove the point – although she did it from left to right, as Catholics did. ‘Pan, the compensation – how much is it?

‘She is a Russian subject, we’ll take care of her,’ Erast Petrovich told the sergeant, and he reassured the girl: ‘You’ll b-be quite satisfied.’

Her presence was no longer required.

‘Why didn’t you let the poor creature get dressed?’ the vice-consul asked Lockston reproachfully. ‘The little child is frozen through. Mr Shirota will take her to her apartment.’

Baska didn’t really look chilly at all. On the contrary, keeping her eyes on the interesting man with the dark hair, she opened the sheet as if by accident and Fandorin blinked: the juvenile Zaionchek’s breasts were developed well beyond her age. Although the devil only knew how old she really was.

So Shirota led the injured party away and Erast Petrovich stayed to attend to the drawing up of the minutes. And soon after that the representative of the Japanese side turned up – Inspector Asagawa, the head of the indigenous police.

The prince threw himself at the inspector, waving his arms in the air and jabbering something in Japanese.

‘Quiet!’ Lockston roared. ‘I demand that all conversations be conducted in a language comprehensible to the injured party.’

The injured party – in this case Erast Petrovich – nodded sombrely.

‘The individual styling himself Prince Onokoji has said he can obtain a promotion for me if I hush this case up,’ Asagawa announced imperturbably.

The arrested man gazed round at all three of them with a hunted look and his eyes glinted, as if the realisation was dawning that he had not ended up in the police station by chance. But even so, he drew the wrong conclusion.

‘All right, all right.’ He chuckled, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I can see I’ve been caught. You arranged it all very neatly. But you are in for a disappointment, gentlemen. Did you think that because I am a prince I have pockets full of money? I am afraid not. I am as poor as a shrine turtle. You won’t make much out of me. I’ll tell you how all this will end. I’ll spend the night in your lock-up and tomorrow someone from the ministry will come and collect me. You’ll wind up with nothing.’

‘What about the disgrace?’ said Asagawa. ‘You, a scion of an ancient and glorious line, are involved in a dirty little scandal. Your patrons may perhaps get you released, but then they will break off all relations with you. Society will shun you, as if you had the plague. No more protection, no more charity from relatives.’

Onokoji narrowed his eyes. This man was clearly far from stupid.

‘What do you want from me? I can see that you’re leading up to something. Tell me straight out. If the price is fair, we’ll strike a deal.’

Asagawa and Fandorin exchanged glances.

‘Suga,’ the inspector said in a quiet voice. ‘We want Suga. Tell us everything you know about his part in the assassination of Minister Okubo, and we will let you go.’

The prince’s face blenched as rapidly as if he had daubed a paintbrush dunked in lead white across his forehead and cheeks.

‘I know nothing about that …’ he babbled.

‘A week ago you told Algernon Bullcox about the reward in store for Suga for doing the job so neatly,’ said Fandorin, joining the game. ‘Don’t deny it, there’s no point.’

The prince gaped at the vice-consul in horror – he evidently had not been expecting an attack from this quarter.

‘How do you …? We were alone in the room, just the two of us!’ Onokoji batted his eyelids in confusion.

Erast Petrovich was certain that this puny playboy would flinch and falter now. But instead it was the titular counsellor who flinched.

‘Ah!’ the prisoner exclaimed. ‘It’s his concubine, isn’t it? She’s spying for the Russians? But of course! There weren’t any servants in the house, only her!’

‘What concubine? Who are you talking about?’ Fandorin asked hastily (perhaps rather too hastily). His heart shrank in horror. The very last thing he wanted was to get O-Yumi into trouble! ‘You shouldn’t chat b-beside open windows where anybody at all might overhear you.’

It was hard to tell whether he had succeeded in diverting Onokoji from his dangerous suspicion with this retort. But the prince refused to speak openly.

‘I won’t say a thing,’ he blurted out sullenly. ‘Disgrace may be unpleasant, but my life means more to me … Your agent got things confused. I don’t know anything of the sort about Intendant Suga.’

And after that he stuck to his guns. Threats of scandal had no effect on him. Onokoji simply kept repeating his demand for the Tokyo police to be informed of the arrest of a member of the higher nobility, a first cousin of four generals and two ministers, a schoolfellow of two Imperial Highnesses, and so on, and so forth.

‘Japan will not allow the Prince Onokoji to be held in a foreign lock-up,’ he declared in conclusion.

Is he right? was the question in Fandorin’s glance at the inspector. Asagawa nodded.

Then what can we do?

‘Tell me, Sergeant, I expect you are probably very busy with correspondence, reports and all sorts of documents?’ Asagawa asked.

‘No, not really,’ answered Lockston, surprised.

‘Oh, come now,’ the inspector insisted. ‘You are responsible for the entire Settlement. Citizens of fifteen different states live here, there are so many ships in the port, and you have only one pair of hands.’

‘That’s true,’ the sergeant admitted, trying to understand what the Japanese was driving at.

‘I know that under the law you are obliged to inform us of the arrest of a Japanese subject within twenty-four hours, but you might not be able to meet that deadline.’

‘Probably not. I’ll need two or three days. Maybe even four,’ said the American, starting to play along.

‘So, I’ll receive official notification from you in about four days. I’m very busy as well. Not enough staff, I’m barely keeping up. It could be another three days before I can report to the department.’

Onokoji listened to this conversation with increasing alarm.

‘But listen, Inspector!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re already here! You know that I have been arrested by foreigners.’

‘It’s not a matter of what I know. I have to be informed about this officially, according to the prescribed procedure,’ said Asagawa, raising one finger in admonishment.

The titular counsellor had absolutely no idea what this strange manoeuvre signified, but he did notice the prisoner’s face twitch in a strange way.

‘Hey, Orderly!’ the sergeant shouted. ‘Put this one in a cell. And send to the brothel for his clothes.’

‘Where will dragging things out like this get us?’ Fandorin asked in a low voice when the prince had been led away.

Asagawa didn’t answer, he just smiled.

Once again it was night. And once again Erast Petrovich was not sleeping. He wasn’t tormented by insomnia, it was as if sleep had ceased to exist, as if the need for it had fallen away. Or perhaps it was all because the titular counsellor was not simply lying in bed – he was listening. He had left the door into the corridor open, and several times he thought he heard the porch creak gently under light footsteps, as if someone was standing there in the darkness, unable to make up their mind to knock. Once, unable to bear it any longer, Fandorin got up, walked through quickly into the hallway and jerked the door open. Naturally, there was nobody on the porch.

When the knock finally did come, it was loud and abrupt. O-Yumi could not possibly knock like that, so Erast Petrovich’s heart did not skip a beat. He lowered his feet off the bed and started pulling on his boots. Masa was already leading his nocturnal visitor along the corridor.

The visitor was a constable from the municipal police: the sergeant requested that Mr Vice-Consul come to the station urgently.

Fandorin walked rapidly along the dark Bund, tapping with his cane. Masa plodded along behind, yawning. It was pointless trying to argue with him.

Fandorin’s servant did not go into the police station. He sat on the steps, hung his short-cropped head and drifted into a doze.

‘The Jap’s got convulsions,’ Lockston told the vice-consul. ‘He’s yelling and banging his head against the wall. Has he got epilepsy, then? I told them to tie him up, to stop him harming himself. I sent for you, Asagawa and Dr Twigs. The doc’s already here, the inspector hasn’t arrived yet.’

Soon Asagawa showed up too. He listened to the sergeant’s story without any sign of surprise.

‘So soon?’ he said, but still didn’t explain anything. The inspector’s strange composure and the meaning of the ‘manoeuvre’ were explained when Dr Twigs entered the room.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said, greeting the titular counsellor and the inspector. ‘It’s not epilepsy. It’s a perfectly ordinary withdrawal syndrome. Hence the convulsions. This man is an inveterate morphine addict. The veins on his arms are covered in needle marks. And of course, there are the consequences of a hysterical personality and a weak character, but, generally speaking, at that stage a man can’t manage without another dose for more than twelve hours.’

‘Didn’t I tell you, Fandorin-san, that the prince is given to every possible vice that exists,’ Asagawa remarked. ‘He’ll start singing a different tune for us now. Let’s go.’

The cell was a recess in the wall of the corridor, fenced off with thick iron bars.

Onokoji was sitting on a wooden bunk with his hands and his feet tied. He was shaking violently and his teeth were chattering.

‘Doctor, give me a shot!’ he shouted. ‘I’m dying! I feel terrible!’

Twigs glanced enquiringly at the others.

Lockston chewed imperturbably on his cigar. Asagawa surveyed the sick man with a satisfied air. Only the vice-consul was clearly ill at ease.

‘Never mind,’ said the sergeant. ‘You’ll get out in week or so, you can stick yourself then.’

The prince howled and doubled over.

‘This is torture,’ Fandorin said in a low voice. ‘Say what you will, gentlemen, but I do not wish to obtain information by such methods.’

The inspector shrugged.

‘How are we torturing him? He is torturing himself. I don’t know how things are in your countries, but in Japanese jails we don’t give prisoners narcotics. Perhaps the municipal police have different rules? Do you keep morphine to ease the suffering of morphine addicts?’

‘Like hell we do,’ said Lockston, shaking his head in admiration. ‘Well, Go, you old son of a gun. I could learn a thing or two from you.’

On this occasion Goemon Asagawa did not protest about the American’s familiarity, he just smiled at the flattery.

‘This is a genuine discovery!’ the sergeant continued, waxing more and more enthusiastic. ‘Think of the prospects this opens up for police work! What do you do if a criminal clams up and refuses to inform on his accomplices? They used to stretch him on the rack, burn him with red-hot tongs and all the rest of it. But, firstly, that’s uncivilised. And secondly, there are some tough nuts you can’t crack with any torture. But with this – away you go. All very cultured and scientific! Get a stubborn character like that hooked on morphine and then – bang – stop giving him any. He’ll be only too delighted to tell you everything. Listen, Go, I’ll write an article about this for the Police Gazette. Of course, I’ll mention your name. Only the idea is mine, after all. You came across it by chance, but I invented the method. You wouldn’t dispute that, would you, my friend?’ Lockston asked anxiously.

‘I wouldn’t, Walter, I wouldn’t. You don’t even need to mention me at all.’ The inspector walked over to the bars and looked at the sobbing prince. ‘Tell me, Doctor, could you find an ampoule of morphine and a syringe in that bag of yours?’

‘Of course.’

Onokoji straightened up, gazing at Asagawi imploringly.

‘Well, Your Excellency, shall we have a talk?’ the inspector asked him cordially.

The prisoner nodded, licking his purple lips.

Erast Petrovich frowned, but said nothing – the Japanese inspector was in charge now.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Asagawi. ‘Fill the syringe and leave it with me. You can go home to bed.’

Twigs clearly did not wish to leave. He ran a curious eye over the bound man and rummaged slowly in his bag, opened the ampoule without hurrying and took a long time to examine the syringe.

No one was intending to initiate the doctor into their secret game of backstage politics, but it simply happened anyway.

‘Come on, quickly, quickly!’ the prince shouted. ‘For God’s sake! Why are you dawdling like that? One little injection, and I’ll tell you all I know about Suga!’

Twigs pricked up his ears at that.

‘About whom? Suga? The intendant of police? What has he done?’

There was nothing for it – they had to explain. And so the group that had investigated the case of Captain Blagolepov’s strange death was reconstituted. Only now it had a different status. They were not official investigators but, rather, conspirators.

Almost as soon as the prisoner had been untied and injected, he turned pink, started smiling and became jaunty and talkative. He spoke a lot, but told them very little of real substance.

According to Onokoji, the new intendant of police had taken part in the conspiracy against the great reformer because he was nursing a grudge – he felt offended at having been subordinated to a worthless little aristocrat with connections in high places. Being a man of intelligence and cunning, Suga had planned the plot in such a way as to achieve two goals at once: take revenge on the minister, who had failed to appreciate his true worth, and land the responsibility on his immediate superior, in order to take his place. Suga had succeeded wonderfully well. The public, of course, might repeat all sorts of rumours, but once a lion is dead, he ceases to be the king of beasts and becomes plain ordinary carrion, and no one was interested in the late Okubo any more. There were new winds blowing at the highest levels; the dead minister’s favourites were making way for appointees from the opposite party.

‘Is Suga’s involvement in the conspiracy just rumour or authenticated f-fact?’ asked Fandorin, disappointed by this frivolous tittle-tattle.

The prince shrugged.

‘Naturally, there is no proof, but my information is usually reliable. Otherwise I would have starved to death a long time ago. That skinflint Tsurumaki, who owes everything to our family, pays me such a pitiful allowance that it’s barely enough for decent shirts.’

Five thousand yen a month, Fandorin recalled. Twenty vice-consular salaries.

‘And who led the c-conspiracy? From whom did Suga receive the estate of Tarazaka as his reward?’

‘The samurai of Satsuma set up an entire organisation, and all the members swore to kill the traitor Okubo. Those people prepared for a long hunt, they collected a lot of money. It would have been enough for a dozen estates.’

Further questioning produced nothing. Onokoji repeated the same things over and over again, occasionally veering into high-society gossip, and finally wore his interrogators down.

Eventually, having realised that they wouldn’t discover anything else useful, they moved away and tried to work out a plan of further action.

‘Apart from the certainty that Suga is guilty and a few other details unconfirmed by any proof, we have nothing,’ Erast Petrovich said acidly, no longer doubting that it had been a waste of time to stir up this whole mess. The cunning and morally dubious operation had produced very little.

Asagawa was gloomy too, but he remained determined.

‘But even so, we cannot pull back now. Suga must pay for his villainy.’

‘How about this?’ Lockston suggested. ‘The intendant receives an anonymous letter that says: “You think you’re a sly dog and you’ve sold everyone a pup, but you’ve slipped up, hombre. I’ve got something on you. I don’t give a cuss for Okubo, he got what was coming to him, but I’m in desperate need of money. Come to such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time: I’ll give you the evidence, and you give me – let’s say, ten thousand”. And to make it convincing, slip in a few details about his dirty dealings: the stolen reports, the gag and the estate. At the very least Suga will get alarmed, he’ll want to take a look at this blackmailer and see what he’s got. If he doesn’t send a detachment of police to the rendezvous and comes himself, that alone will give him away, hook, line and sinker. How’s that for a plan?’ the sergeant asked, giving his comrades a boastful look. ‘Not bad, eh?’

The titular counsellor disappointed him.

‘Terrible. No good at all. Of course Suga won’t come. He’s no fool.’

Lockston wouldn’t surrender.

‘So he’ll send some police? I don’t think so. He won’t want to take the risk. What if the blackmailer really does have some evidence?’

‘And there won’t be any p-police. More Satsumans will just turn up and slice us to ribbons.’

‘Mm, yes, that is very likely,’ the doctor admitted.

The inspector didn’t say anything, merely frowned even more darkly.

The disputants fell silent.

‘Hey! What are you whispering about over there?’ Onokoji shouted, walking up to the bars. ‘If you don’t know how to get Suga’s back to the wall, I’ll tell you! And in exchange you’ll let me out of here. All right?’

The four of them all turned towards the prisoner together and spontaneously moved towards the cell.

The prince held his open hand out through the bars.

‘One ampoule in reserve. And the syringe. As an advance.’

‘Give them to him,’ Asagawa told the doctor. ‘If he talks nonsense, we’ll take them away again.’

Savouring the moment, the high-society gent kept his audience in suspense for a brief moment while he brushed a speck of dust off his rather crumpled frock coat and adjusted his lapel. He carefully placed the ampoule in his waistcoat pocket, after first kissing it and whispering: ‘Oh, my little piece of happiness!’ He smiled triumphantly.

‘Ah, how little I am appreciated!’ he exclaimed. ‘And how poorly I am paid. But the moment they need something, they come running to me: “Tell us, find out, pick someone’s brains”. Onokoji knows everything about everybody. Mark my words, gentlemen. In the century to come, which it is unlikely that I shall live to see, owing to my physical frailty, the most valuable commodity will be information. More valuable than gold, diamonds or even morphine!’

‘Stop blabbering!’ the sergeant roared. ‘Or I’ll take it back!’

‘See how the red-hairs talk to the scion of an ancient Japanese family,’ the prince complained to Asagawa, but when the inspector grabbed him menacingly by the lapels, he stopped playing the fool.

‘Mr Suga is a great pedant. A genuine poet of the bureaucratic art. Therein lies the secret of his power. During his years in the police department he has collected a secret archive of hundreds of files.’

‘I’ve never heard about that,’ said the inspector, shaking his head.

‘Naturally. Neither had I. Until one fine day Suga called me into his office and showed me something. Ah, I am a man of lively fantasy, I flit through life like a butterfly. It is not hard to catch my delicate wings with crude fingers. You, gentlemen, are not the first to have done so …’ The prince sighed woefully. ‘On that day, in the course of a conversation that was most unpleasant for me, Suga boasted that he had similar picklocks to open up many highly influential individuals. Oh, Mr Intendant understands perfectly well the great future that lies ahead for information!’

‘What did he want from you?’ Fandorin asked.

‘The same as everyone else. Information about a certain person. And he received it. You see, the contents of my file are such that I did not dare to argue.’

The sergeant chuckled.

‘Underage girls?’

‘Ah, if only … But there’s no need for you to know about it. What matters to you is that I gave Suga what he wanted, but I didn’t want to remain a puppet in his hands for ever afterwards. I turned to certain masters of secret arts for help – not in person, naturally, but through an intermediary.’

‘Masters of secret arts?’ Twigs exclaimed. ‘You wouldn’t be talking about shinobi, would you?’

The doctor and the vice-consul exchanged glances. Was this really possible?

‘Precisely,’ Onokoji said, as if that were perfectly normal, and yawned, putting his elegantly manicured hand over his mouth. ‘To the dear, kind ninja.’

‘S-so … So they do exist?’

Lurid images appeared before Erast Petrovich’s eyes – first the gaping jaws of the snake, then the red mask of the man with no face. The vice-consul shuddered.

The doctor shook his head mistrustfully.

‘If the ninja had survived, people would know about it.’

‘Those who need to know, do know,’ the prince said with a shrug. ‘Those who trade in these arts do not print advertisements in the newspapers. Our family has been employing the services of the Momochi clan for three hundred years.’

‘The same clan? The descendants of the great Momochi Tambi, who killed the witch disguised as a moon with his arrow?’ the doctor asked in a trembling voice.

‘Aha. The very same.’

‘So in 1581 on Mount Hijiyama the samurais didn’t kill all of them? Who escaped?’

‘On which mount?’ Onokoji was clearly not well informed about the history of his own country. ‘I’ve no idea. All I know is that the masters of the Momochi clan serve a very narrow circle of clients and charge very dearly for their services. But they know their job well. My intermediary, my late father’s senior samurai, contacted them and gave them the commission. The shinobi discovered where Suga hides his secrets. If you’re interested in the conspiracy against Okubo, you can be certain that all the information you need is kept there. Suga does not destroy documents, they are his investment in the future.’

‘I have no doubt that my missing reports are there too!’ Asagawa said rapidly, turning to Fandorin.

But the vice-consul was more concerned with the masters of secret arts.

‘But how do people contact the ninja?’ he asked.

‘At our court it was the senior samurai who dealt with that. The prince’s most trusted adviser. They always come from the same family and have served our family for almost four hundred years. That is, they used to serve …’ Onokoji sighed. ‘There are no more principalities or devoted vassals now. But our senior samurai, a most magnanimous man, carried out my request for old times’ sake. He even paid Momochi the advance out of his own funds. An old man with a heart of pure gold – to do that he had to mortgage his family estate. The shinobi did a good job and, as I already said, they found the hiding place, But they didn’t enter it, they wanted more money for that – those were the terms of the arrangement. And as bad luck would have it, I was going through a dry spell at the time, and I couldn’t make the payment. The ninja are very sensitive about that sort of thing. If the client breaks the terms, that’s the end of him. They’ll kill him, and in some nightmarish fashion too. Oh, they’re terrible people, truly terrible.’

‘But you seem to be alive, my friend,’ Lockston remarked.

The prince was astonished.

‘What do I have to do with it? The client was our vassal. And he was the one who had to answer to them. The old man fell ill all of a sudden, out of the blue, with a very strange complaint. His tongue swelled up and fell out of his mouth, then his skin turned black and his eyes melted out of their sockets. The poor fellow screamed in agony for two days and then he died. You know, the shinobi are virtuosos at preparing all sorts of unusual potions, both for healing and for killing. They say that the shinobi can …’

‘Oh, damn the shinobi!’ the sergeant interrupted, to Erast Petrovich’s considerable displeasure. ‘Where’s the hiding place? Did the samurai get a chance to tell you?’

‘Yes, the hiding place is always within Suga’s reach. Last year they built a new headquarters for the police department, in the Yaesu district. Suga, who was vice-intendant at the time, supervised the building work in person, and unknown to almost anyone, he had a secret room built adjacent to his office. The work was carried out by an American architect, who later drowned. Do you remember that sad story? All the newspapers wrote about it. In gratitude for their good work, the police department organised a steamboat cruise for the architect and the best workers, but then, didn’t the boat go and capsize … And the best workers included the three who built the secret room.’

‘What villainy!’ the inspector gasped. ‘Now I understand why Suga stayed in his old office when he was put in charge of the department. And everyone in the department admires his modesty!’

‘How does one gain access to the secret room?’ Fandorin asked.

‘I don’t know exactly. There’s a cunning lever somewhere – that’s all the shinobi told my old samurai. I don’t know any more than that, gentlemen, but you must admit that my information is highly valuable to you. I think you ought to let me go immediately.’

Asagawa and Fandorin glanced at each other.

‘We’ll see about that when we get back,’ said the inspector. ‘But you have earned your little bit of happiness.’

Hard though you may try,

You can’t pinch off a little

Piece of happiness





2.18




Two of them went off on ‘the job’ (that was what Fandorin called the operation to himself, in criminal style). The doctor, as the father of a family and a law-abiding member of society, did not express any desire to participate in such a risky undertaking. Lockston did express such a desire, but he was refused. Entirely abandoning his Japanese politeness, Asagawa declared that the American smelled of cigar smoke and beer from a mile away and Japanese did not smell like that. And his light blond hair would stand out too clearly in the darkness. At least the Russian vice-consul had hair that was a normal colour. Left alone with Erast Petrovich, the inspector was even less complimentary about the sergeant: ‘This matter requires brains, and our American bison knows no other way but to go at something bald-headed.’

The day was spent in preparation. Asagawa went to the police department, supposedly on official business, but really with one very simple goal: he filed down the tongue of the bolt on the window of the toilet. The titular counsellor prepared his outfit for the nocturnal adventure – he bought a costume mask and a close-fitting black fencing costume, and smeared his rubber-soled gymnastic shoes with boot polish.

He tried to catch up on his sleep, but he couldn’t.

When it started to get dark, he sent Masa to the Grand Hotel for the evening paper so that he wouldn’t follow him, and hurried to catch the last train.

He and the inspector travelled in the same carriage, but they sat at opposite ends and didn’t look at each other.

Looking out of the window at the lights drifting by in the darkness, Fandorin was surprised at himself. Why had he got mixed up in this wild adventure? What had made him gamble with his own honour and the honour of his country like this? It was terrible to think what the consequences would be if he, the Russian vice-consul, were caught at night in the office of the intendant of police. What made it worth taking such a risk? The chance to expose a scheming local official who was responsible for the death of another local official? Why, damn the lot of them!

The interests of Russia require it, Fandorin tried to convince himself rather uncertainly. By bringing down Suga, I shall strike a blow at a party hostile to the interests of my Homeland.

He was not convinced. After all, he himself had always said that no interests of the Homeland (at least, its geopolitical interests) could be more important than personal honour and dignity. A most honourable activity, this was – to go rifling through other people’s secret hiding places, dressed up like a chimney sweep.

Then he tried to justify things differently, from Asagawa’s point of view. There was such a thing as Justice, and also Truth, which it was the duty of every noble man to defend. One could not allow infamous acts to be committed with impunity. By conniving at them or washing one’s hands of the matter, one became an accomplice, you insulted your own soul and God.

But for all their grandeur, these highly moral considerations somehow failed to touch the titular counsellor very deeply. It was not a matter of defending Justice. After all, in weaving his plot, Suga could have been guided by his own ideas of Truth, which differed from Fandorin’s. In any case, there was no point in Erast Petrovich deceiving himself – he had not embarked on this nocturnal escapade for the sake of words that were written with a capital letter.

He rummaged about inside himself for a bit longer and finally came up with the right reason. Fandorin did not like it, for it was simple, unromantic and even ignominious.

I could not have borne one more sleepless night waiting for a woman who is never going to come again, the titular counsellor told himself honestly. Anything at all, any kind of folly, but not that.

And when the locomotive hooted as it approached the final station of Nihombasi, the vice-consul suddenly thought: I’m poisoned. My brain and my heart have been affected by a slow-acting venom. That is the only possible explanation.

And after thinking that, he calmed down immediately, as if now everything had fallen into place.

While there were still passers-by on the streets, Erast Petrovich maintained his distance from his partner. He walked along with the air of an idle tourist, casually swinging the briefcase that contained his spy’s outfit.

But soon they reached the governmental office district, where there were no people, because office hours had finished ages ago. The titular counsellor cut down the distance until he was almost walking in tandem with the inspector. From time to time Asagawa explained something in a low voice.

‘You see the white building at the far side of the bridge? That is the Tokyo Municipal Court. It’s only a stone’s throw from the department.’

Fandorin saw a white three-storey palace in the European Mauritanian style – rather frivolous for an institution of the judiciary. Behind it he could see a high wooden fence.

‘Over there?’

‘Yes. The estate of the princes Matsudaira used to be there. We won’t go as far as the gates, there’s a sentry.’

A narrow alley ran off to the left. Asagawa looked round, waved his hand, and the accomplices ducked into the dark, crevice-like passage.

They got changed quickly. The inspector also put on something black and close fitting, tied a kerchief round his head and muffled the lower half of his face in a rag.

‘This is exactly how the shinobi dress,’ he whispered with a nervous giggle. ‘Right, forward!’

They gained entrance to the site of the department very easily: Asagawa folded his hands into a stirrup, Fandorin set his foot in it and in an instant he was on top of the fence. Then he helped the inspector to scramble up. The police obviously didn’t have enough imagination to believe that miscreants might take it into their heads to break into the holy of holies of law and order voluntarily. In any case, there was no one patrolling the yard – just a figure in a uniform and cap over on the right, striding to and fro at the main entrance.

Asagawa moved quickly and confidently. Hunching over, he ran across to a low building in a pseudo-Japanese style, then along the white wall, past a long series of blank windows. The inspector stopped beside the window at the corner.

‘I think this is the one. Help me up.’

He put his arms round Fandorin’s neck, then stepped on the vice-consul’s half-bent knee with one foot, put the other on his shoulder, and grabbed hold of the window frame. He scraped with something, clicked something, and the small windowpane opened. Asagawa pulled himself up and seemed to be sucked into the black rectangle, so that only the lower half of his body was left outside. Then that disappeared into the window as well, and a few seconds later the large windowpane opened silently.

For form’s sake, before entering the building Erast Petrovich noted the time: seventeen minutes past eleven.

The arrangement of the Japanese toilet looked strange to him: a row of low cubicles that could only conceal a seated man up to the shoulders.

Fandorin discovered Asagawa in one of the wooden cells.

‘I advise you to relieve yourself,’ the black head with the strip of white for the eyes said in a perfectly natural tone of voice. ‘It is helpful before hazardous work. To prevent any trembling of the hara.’

Erast Petrovich thanked him politely, but declined. His hara was not trembling at all, he was simply oppressed by the melancholy presentiment that this business would not end well. Nonsensical thoughts about the next day’s newspaper headlines kept drifting into his mind, as they had done on that other memorable night: ‘RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT A SPY’, ‘OFFICIAL NOTE FROM JAPANESE GOVERNMENT TO RUSSIAN EMPIRE’ and even ‘JAPAN AND RUSSIA BREAK OFF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS’.

‘Will you be much longer?’ the vice-consul asked impatiently. ‘It’s twenty-three minutes past eleven. The nights are short now.’

From the toilet they crept down a long, dark corridor, Asagawa on his twisted-straw sandals and Fandorin on his rubber soles. The department of police was sleeping peacefully. That’s what a low level of crime does for you, thought the titular counsellor, not without a twinge of envy. Along the way they encountered only a single office with a light burning, where some kind of night work seemed to be going on, and once a duty officer carrying a candle came out from round a corner. He yawned as he walked past, without even noticing the two black figures pressed back against the wall.

‘We’re here,’ Asagawa whispered, stopping in front of a tall double door.

He put a piece of metal into the keyhole (an ordinary picklock, Erast Petrovich noted), turned it and the accomplices found themselves in a spacious room: a row of chairs along the walls, a secretary’s desk, another door in the far corner. It was clearly the reception area. Consul Doronin had told Fandorin that six years earlier there had been a great bureaucratic reform. The functionaries had all been dressed in uniforms instead of kimonos and forced to sit on chairs, not on the floor. The bureaucracy had almost rebelled at first, but had gradually got accustomed to it. What a shame. It must have been very picturesque before. Imagine arriving at a government office, and the heads of department and clerks and secretaries are all dressed in robes and sitting there cross-legged. Fandorin sighed, lamenting the gradual displacement of the variety of life by European order. In a hundred years’ time everything would be the same everywhere, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether you were in Russia or Siam. How boring.

The room located beyond the reception area was also not in any way remarkable. An ordinary office of some important individual. One broad, short desk, and beyond it a long narrow table. Two armchairs on one side, for official conversations with important visitors. Bookshelves with codes of laws. A photographic portrait of the emperor hanging in the most prominent position. The only unusual thing, from the Japanese point of view, was the crucifixion hanging beside the image of the earthly ruler. Ah, yes, Suga was a Christian, he had a cross hanging round his neck too.

A fine follower of Christ, thought Erast Petrovich, shaking his head, but immediately felt ashamed: As if our own lovers of God don’t betray or kill.

Asagawa closed the curtains more tightly, lit an oil lamp and walked up to the titular counsellor. He seemed excited, almost triumphant.

‘I don’t know if we’ll find the hiding place or how all this will end, so I will say now what I must say. I should have come here alone. This is our Japanese business. My business. But I am very grateful to you, Fandorin-san, for volunteering to keep me company. I have more faith in your acumen than I do in my own. Without you, I would almost certainly not find the lever, but you are cunning. Almost as cunning as Intendant Suga.’

Erast Petrovich bowed ceremoniously, but the inspector did not understand the irony. He bowed in reply, only more deeply.

‘Do not think I do not understand how much more exalted your sacrifice is than mine. If we are caught, what is that to me, I shall merely take my life and bring disgrace on the clan of Asagawa, which has served the law honestly for two and a half centuries. But you will disgrace your country and your state. You are a very brave man, Fandorin-san.’

They exchanged bows again, this time without even a hint of playfulness on the vice-consul’s side, and set about their search.

First they sounded out the two side walls, then divided the office into left and right sections. Unlike the energetic inspector, who nimbly tapped all the skirting boards and floorboards in his half, checked all the items on the desk and then set about the books, Erast Petrovich hardly touched anything at all. He strode around unhurriedly, shining his little American torch on things. An excellent little item, the very latest design. It produced a bright, dense ray of light. When it started to fade – about every one and a half minutes – you had to pump a spring with your fingers, and the torch immediately came back to life.

He stood in front of the portrait for a while. His Majesty the Mikado was shown in military uniform, with epaulettes and a sword. Fandorin thought the young face with the sparse moustache bore the imprint of degeneracy (which was hardly surprising, considering the dynasty’s twenty-five centuries of genealogical history), but Emperor Mutsuhito’s gaze was searching and intent. Patient, cautious, secretive, unsure of himself, enquiring, thought the vice-consul, practising his physiognomics. A master of ninso would undoubtedly have seen far more, but even this was enough to tell that the young royal ruler would go far.

‘I’ve finished my half,’ Asagawa declared. ‘There’s nothing.’

‘Would you like to swap? By all means.’

Fandorin walked out into the centre of the room, sat on the conference table and dangled one leg. A quarter past twelve.

An archive was something that you needed often. So the answer was most likely one of two things: either a lever within easy reach that could be operated without getting up from the desk; or, on the contrary, the lever was located right beside the entrance to the secret compartment. Asagawa had examined everything on the desk very thoroughly indeed. So it must be the second option.

There were two walls in which the secret room could be hidden. The wall between the office and reception area could be eliminated, along with the external wall.

Fandorin walked backwards and forwards, scrutinising.

The clock on the wall struck one.

‘Have you moved that?’ the titular counsellor asked, pointing at the clock.

‘Of course,’ said Asagawa, wiping the sweat off his forehead. ‘I divided the room up into squares, I’m trying not to miss anything.’

Yes, the lever couldn’t be in the clock, Fandorin thought. The cleaner might trip it if he started dusting the timepiece. Or the person responsible for winding and adjusting it …

‘I’ve run out of squares,’ the inspector announced in a dejected voice. ‘What can we do? Try again …’

One forty-two. Where could the lever be? It wasn’t behind the wallpaper or the skirting boards. Or in the bookcase. Asagawa had lifted up the pictures too …

Erast Petrovich suddenly froze.

‘Tell me, did you touch the emperor’s portrait?’

‘Of course not. That’s impossible!’ The inspector actually shuddered at such a blasphemous suggestion.

‘But someone dusts it, don’t they?’

‘That sacred responsibility can only be performed by the owner of the office, with all appropriate respect. In my station no one would dare to touch the portrait of His Majesty that hangs over my desk. People wipe the dust from the emperor’s face in the morning, almost as soon as they get to work. With a special silk duster, after first bowing.’

‘I see. Well, now I’ll show you how the s-secret room opens.’

The titular counsellor took a chair, carried it across to the wall, climbed up on it and took hold of the portrait confidently with both hands. Asagawa gasped.

‘Like this,’ Erast Petrovich purred, swaying the frame to the left. Nothing happened. ‘Well then, like this.’

He swayed the frame to the right – again nothing. Fandorin pulled the portrait towards himself. He tugged it up, he tugged it down. Finally he turned it completely upside down. The poor inspector groaned and whimpered.

‘Damn! Could I really be mistaken?’

Erast Petrovich took the emperor down and tapped on the glass. The sound was hollow.

He angrily hung the portrait back up and it swayed to and fro in shock.

The young man felt ashamed. Not for his mistake, but for the lofty condescension with which he had drawled ‘I see’. The beam of his torch slid across the wallpaper, lighting up the horizontal beam of the crucifixion from above.

The titular counsellor caught his breath.

‘Tell me, who cleans the c-cross? Also the owner of the office?’

Fandorin jumped down on to the floor and moved the chair closer to the crucifixion. He scrambled back up again.

‘Of course. The cleaner wouldn’t dare. He knows it is a sacred object for your religion.’

‘Uh-huh. I can see that.’

The intendant obviously regarded the symbol of the Christian faith with less respect than the portrait of Emperor Mutsuhito – a thin layer of dust had accumulated on the black wood.

Erast Petrovich tried to move the crucifixion, but he couldn’t. Shining his torch a bit closer, he saw that the cross was not hung on the wall or nailed to it, but sunk slightly into its surface. Strange! So a special housing had been made for it?

He tried to pull it out. He couldn’t. Then he pressed it.

With a barely audible click, the crucifixion sank deeper into the wallpaper, leaving its edges protruding no more than an inch.

A second later there was a melodic clang, and a section of the wall moved aside rapidly, almost springing into the space behind the bookcase. A dark rectangle opened up, slightly lower than the height of a man.

‘That’s it! The secret hiding place!’ Asagawa cried, and glanced round at the door of the reception area, in case he had shouted too loudly.

Fandorin automatically glanced at his watch: two minutes to two.

‘Ah, what would I have done without you?’ the inspector exclaimed emotionally, almost with tears in his eyes, and dived into the dark hole.

But the vice-consul’s attention was caught by the arrangement of the secret room. In cross-section it was clearly visible: a layer of oak boards under the plaster, and then cork. That was why sounding out the walls hadn’t helped. The lever released powerful steel springs, which was why the partition jumped aside so fast. Fandorin wondered whether it closed in the same impetuous fashion or whether strength had to be applied.

Having satisfied his technical curiosity, Erast Petrovich followed his accomplice inside.

The repository of secrets proved to be a narrow room, but quite long – about ten paces. Its walls were entirely covered with shelving. Standing on the shelves were perfectly ordinary office files of various thicknesses. Asagawa took them down one by one, exclaimed something in Japanese and put them back again. The vice-consul also took one of the thicker ones. There were hieroglyphs drawn on the cover. The first two were easy, Erast Petrovich recognised them: ‘Eastern Capital’, that was ‘Tokyo’, but everything after that was gobbledegook to him.

‘What does it say here?’

‘Tokyo Provincial Government,’ Asagawa said after a swift glance. ‘But that’s nothing! There are ministers and members of the State Council here, even – you won’t believe it – members of the imperial family! Nothing is sacred to this man!’

‘And what does he have there about the empress?’ Fandorin asked curiously, glancing over the inspector’s shoulder.

He couldn’t see anything interesting on the page – just some note in the same old hieroglyphic scrawl – but the inspector nudged him away impolitely with his elbow.

‘I haven’t read it and I won’t allow you to! How infamous!’

He tore up the note and a few other pieces of paper in the file with trembling fingers.

‘Listen, it’s two minutes past two,’ the titular counsellor told him, pointing to his watch. ‘This isn’t what we came here for. Where’s the file with the conspirators?’

Owing to his hieroglyphic illiteracy, Erast Petrovich had nothing to occupy himself with. While Asagawa rummaged through the shelves, the young man shone his torch in all directions. He failed to discover anything of interest. There didn’t seem to be any lever inside the secret room, it could be opened and closed only from the outside. There were gas burners protruding from the ceiling – evidently the lighting could be switched on from the office, but there was no need for that, the torch and the lamp were quite adequate.

‘I have it!’ the inspector gasped. ‘It says “Okubo” on the spine.’ He started leafing feverishly through the pages. ‘Here are my missing reports, all three of them! And this is a report from the head of the police in the city of Kagosima. He says that according to reports from his agents, the sword master Ikemura Hyoske and two of his pupils have set out for Tokyo. Description: forty-five years old, a scar on the left side of his neck and his temple, left arm twisted. His nickname is Kamiyasuri – “Glasspaper”, because he covers the hilt of his sword with glass paper – his right hand is harder than steel. It’s him, the man with the withered arm! Wait, wait, there’s more here …’ Asagawa took out three sheets of paper covered with writing in a strange brown-coloured ink. ‘It’s an oath. Written in blood. “We, the undersigned, do hereby swear on our honour not to begrudge our lives in the name of an exalted goal – to exterminate the base traitor Okubo …” There are three such documents. One of them has six signatures – that is the group that killed the minister. The second document has three signatures, and the first one is Ikemura Hyoske’s. Our Satsumans! The third document has four signatures. So there was another group that remained undiscovered. The names are here, it will not be difficult to find the plotters before they can do anything else dangerous … We have won, Fandorin-san! We have Suga in our hands! With these oaths and the stolen reports we can pin him down!’

‘He was already in our hands anyway,’ Erast Petrovich remarked coolly. ‘This delightful little archive will cost him his head without any c-conspiracies.’

Asagawa shook his head.

‘Surely you do not think that I will allow all these abominations to come pouring out? There is so much filth here, so many family secrets! There would be a wave of suicides, divorces, scandals, resignations in disgrace. No, worse than that! The new minister would take the archive for his own use, he would announce that it has been destroyed, but keep the spiciest items – just in case.’

‘Then what is to be done?’

‘We are going to destroy all this poison. Without reading it.’

‘Very n-noble,’ declared Fandorin, who could not have savoured the Japanese secrets even if he had felt any desire to do so. ‘But what are these signs? They don’t look like hieroglyphs.’

He pointed to a sheet of paper lying at the very bottom of the file. Right at the centre there was a circle with a strange squiggle inside it. Lines ran out from the circle, connecting it with other, smaller circles.

‘No, those are not hieroglyphs,’ the inspector murmured, peering at the paper. ‘At least, not Japanese hieroglyphs. I have never come across any writing like this before.’

‘It looks like a diagram of the conspiracy,’ Fandorin suggested. ‘And in code too. It would be interesting to know who is symbolised by the c-circle at the centre.’

‘It must be Suga.’

‘Unlikely. He wouldn’t have denoted himself with some kind of doodle. He would just have drawn the circle and left it at that.’

They leaned down over the mysterious diagram, with their shoulders pressed against each other. Asagawa must have breathed in a lot of dust, because he sneezed, and the sound echoed loudly under the low vaulted ceiling.

‘You’re crazy!’ Fandorin hissed. ‘Quiet!’

The Japanese waved his hand nonchalantly and answered without lowering his voice.

‘What does it matter? We no longer have to hide. As soon as we’ve destroyed the unnecessary documents, I’ll call the duty officer and explain that …’

But he didn’t finish what he was about to say.

Without the slightest warning, the secret door slammed shut with that familiar metallic clang. The wall trembled slightly and the room was suddenly as silent as the grave.

Erast Petrovich’s first reaction was purely nervous – he glanced at his watch. It showed eighteen minutes past two.

If it is eighteen

Or nineteen minutes past two –

What’s the difference?