The Diamond Chariot

NAKA-NO-KU





The first syllable, in which Vasilii Alexandrovich takes leave


They said goodbye as friends and, of course, not for ever – Rybnikov promised that as soon as he was settled in, he would definitely come to visit.

‘Yes, do, please,’ Lidina said severely, shaking his hand. ‘I’ll be worried about that tube of yours.’

The staff captain assured her that he would wriggle out of it somehow now and parted from the delightful lady with mixed feelings of regret and relief, of which the latter was by far the stronger.

After shaking his head to drive away inappropriate thoughts, the first thing he did was pay a visit to the telegraph office at the station. A telegram was waiting there for him to collect: ‘Management congratulates brilliant success objections withdrawn may commence project receive goods information follows’.

Apparently this acknowledgement of his achievements, plus the withdrawal of certain objections, was very important to Rybnikov. His face brightened up and he even started singing a song about a toreador.

Something in the staff captain’s manner changed. His uniform still sat on him baggily (after the adventures of the night, it had become even shabbier), but Vasilii Alexandrovich’s shoulders had straightened up, the expression in his eyes was more lively, and he wasn’t dragging his leg any more.

Running up the stairs to the second floor, where the offices were located, he seated himself on a broad windowsill offering a clear view of the entire wide, empty corridor and took out a notebook with pages full of aphorisms for every occasion in life. These included the old byword: ‘A bullet’s a fool, a bayonet’s a fine fellow’ and ‘The Russian harnesses up slowly, but he rides fast’ and ‘Anyone who’s drunk and clever has two landholdings in him’, and the last of the maxims that had caught Vasilii Alexandrovich’s interest was: ‘You may be Ivanov the Seventh, but you’re a fool. A. P. Chekhov’.

Chekhov was followed by blank pages, but the staff captain took out a flat little bottle of colourless liquid, shook a drop on to the paper and rubbed it with his finger, and strange symbols that looked like intertwined snakes appeared on the page. He did the same thing with the next few pages – and the outlandish squiggles came wriggling out of nowhere on to them as well. Rybnikov studied them closely for some time. Then he thought for a while, moving his lips and memorising something. And after another minute or two the serpentine scribbles disappeared all by themselves.

He went back to the telegraph office and sent off two urgent telegrams – to Samara and Krasnoyarsk. The content of both was identical: a request to come to Moscow ‘on agreed business’ on 25 May and a statement that a room had been booked in ‘the same hotel’. The staff captain signed himself with the name ‘Ivan Goncharov’.

And with that, urgent business was apparently concluded. Vasilii Alexandrovich went downstairs to the restaurant and dined with a good appetite, without counting the kopecks – he even allowed himself cognac. He also gave the waiter a tip that was not extravagant, but quite respectable.

And that was only the start of this army scarecrow’s miraculous transformation.

From the station, the staff captain went to a clothing shop on Kuznetsky Most. He told the salesman that he had been discharged ‘for good’ when he was wounded, and wished to acquire a decent wardrobe.

He bought two good summer suits, several pairs of trousers, shoes with spats and American ankle boots, an English cap, a straw boater and half a dozen shirts. He changed there, put the tattered uniform away in his suitcase and told them to wrap his sword in paper.

And then there was this: Rybnikov arrived at the shop in a plain, ordinary cab, but he drove off in a lacquered four-wheeler, the kind that charge you fifty kopecks just for getting in.

The dapper passenger got out at Vuchtel’s typographical emporium and told the driver not to wait for him. He had to pick up an order – a hundred cartes de visite in the name of a correspondent from the Reuters telegraph agency, and, moreover, the first name and patronymic on the cards were his, Rybnikov’s – Vasilii Alexandrovich – but the surname was quite different: Sten.

And the freshly minted Mr Sten (but no, in order to avoid confusion, let him remain Rybnikov) made his departure from there on a regular five-rouble rocket, telling the driver to deliver him to the Saint-Saëns boarding house, but first to call in somewhere for a bunch of white lilies. The driver, a real sport, nodded respectfully: ‘Understood, sir.’

The railings of the absolutely charming empire-style villa ran along the actual boulevard. If the garland of small coloured lanterns decorating the gates was anything to go by, the boarding house must have looked especially festive during the evening hours. But just at the moment the courtyard and the stand for carriages were empty and the tall windows were filled with the blank white of lowered curtains.

Rybnikov asked whether this was Countess Bovada’s house and handed the doorman his card. Less than a minute later a rather portly lady emerged from the depths of the house, which proved to be far more spacious on the inside than it appeared to be from the outside. No longer young, but not yet old, she was very well groomed and made up so skilfully that it would have taken an experienced eye to spot any traces of cosmetic subterfuge.

At the sight of Rybnikov, the countess’s slightly predatory features seemed to tighten and shrink for a brief moment, but then they immediately beamed in a gracious smile.

‘My dear friend! My highly esteemed …’ – she squinted sideways at the calling card. ‘My highly esteemed Vasilii Alexandrovich! I am absolutely delighted to see you! And you haven’t forgotten that I love white lilies! How sweet!’

‘I never forget anything, Madam Beatrice,’ said the former staff captain, pressing his lips to the hand that glittered with rings.

At these words his hostess involuntarily touched her magnificent ash-blonde hair, arranged in a tall style, and glanced in concern at the back of the gallant visitor’s lowered head. But when Rybnikov straightened up, the charming smile was beaming once again on the countess’s plump lips.

In the decor of the salon and the corridors, pastel tones were prevalent, with the gilt frames of copies of Watteau and Fragonard gleaming on the walls. This rendered even more impressive the contrast with the study to which Her Excellency led her visitor: no frivolity or affectation here – a writing desk with account books, a bureau, a rack for papers. It was obvious that the countess was a thoroughly businesslike individual, and not in the habit of wasting time idly.

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Vasilii Alexandrovich, taking a seat in an armchair and crossing his legs. ‘Everything is in order. They are pleased with you, you are as useful here as you were previously in Port Arthur and Vladivostok. I have not come to you on business. You know, I’m tired. I decided to take a period of leave, live quietly for a while.’ He smiled cheerfully. ‘I know from experience that the wilder things are around me, the calmer I feel.’

Countess Beauvade took offence.

‘This is not some wild place, this is the best-run establishment in the city! After only a year of work my guest house has acquired an excellent reputation! Very respectable people come to us, people who value decorum and calm.’

‘I know, I know,’ Rybnikov interrupted her, still with the same smile. ‘That is precisely why I came straight here from the train, dear Beatrice. Decorum and calm are exactly what I need. I won’t be in the way, will I?’

His hostess replied very seriously.

‘You shouldn’t talk like that. I’m entirely at your disposal.’ She hesitated for a moment and asked delicately, ‘Perhaps you would like to relax with one of the young ladies? We have some capital ones. I promise you’ll forget your tiredness.’

‘I’d better not,’ said the telegraph correspondent, declining politely. ‘I may have to stay with you for two or three weeks. If I enter into a special relationship with one of your … boarders, it could lead to jealousy and squabbling. We don’t want that.’

Beatrice nodded to acknowledge the reasonableness of his argument.

‘I’ll put you in a three-room apartment with a separate entrance. It’s a section for clients who are prepared to pay for total privacy. That will be the most convenient place for you.’

‘Excellent. Naturally, your losses will be reimbursed.’

‘Thank you. In addition to being secluded from the main part of the house, where it is sometimes quite noisy at night, the apartment has other conveniences. The rooms are connected by secret doors, which might prove apposite.’

Rybnikov chuckled.

‘I bet it also has false mirrors, conveniently positioned for taking photographs in secret. Like in Arthur, remember?’

The countess smiled and said nothing.

Rybnikov was pleased with his apartment. He spent a few hours arranging it, but not at all in the usual meaning of that word. His domestic bustle had nothing to do with the cosy comforts of home.

Vasilii Alexandrovich went to bed after midnight and took a right royal rest, the kind he had not had in a long time – he slept for an entire four hours, twice as long as usual.





The second syllable, in which Masa violates his neutrality

The passenger from compartment number six did not disappoint Erast Petrovich. On the contrary, the theory appeared ever more promising as time went on.

At the station Fandorin found the driver of the wagon that had transported the passenger who was in such a great hurry away from the banks of the Lomzha. The pretty lady’s testimony was confirmed when the peasant said that the German had indeed forked out a hundred roubles.

‘Why do you say he is German?’ the engineer asked.

The driver was surprised.

‘Well, why would any Russian shell out a hundred note when the price is fifteen kopecks at the outside?’ Then he thought and added, ‘And he had a queer way of speaking too.’

‘Exactly how was it “queer”?’ Erast Petrovich enquired eagerly, but the local couldn’t explain that.

It was much harder to establish where the dark-haired man had gone on to from there. The stationmaster claimed ignorance, the duty supervisor bleated and avoided Fandorin’s eyes, the local gendarme stood to attention and pretended to be a total imbecile. Then, recalling what his invaluable witness had said, the engineer asked point blank where the shunting engine was.

The gendarme instantly came out in large beads of sweat, the duty supervisor turned pale and the stationmaster turned red.

It turned out that the engine, in contravention of all the rules and regulations, had borne the dark-haired man off, full steam ahead, in pursuit of the passenger train that had passed through an hour ahead of the express. The berserk passenger (concerning his nationality, the opinions of the witnesses differed: the stationmaster thought he was a Frenchman, the duty supervisor thought he was a Pole, and the gendarme thought he was a ‘Yid boy’) had thrown so much money about in all directions that it was impossible to resist.

No doubts remained: this was the man Fandorin wanted.

The train that the interesting passenger had set out to chase arrived in Moscow at a quarter to ten, so there was just barely enough time left.

The engineer sent a telegram to the Moscow representative of the Department and an identical one to the head of the Volokolamsk section, Lieutenant Colonel Danilov, telling them to meet the suspect (there follow a detailed description) at the station but not to detain him under any circumstances, simply assign the smartest plainclothes agents they had to shadow him; and to do nothing more until Erast Petrovich arrived.

Because of the wreck, all traffic on the Nicholas line had come to a halt. A long queue of passenger and goods trains had formed in the St Petersburg direction, but in the Moscow direction the line was clear. Fandorin requisitioned the very latest five-axle ‘compound engine’ locomotive and, accompanied by his faithful valet, set off to the east at a speed of eighty versts an hour.

Erast Petrovich had last been in his native city five years earlier – in secret, under an assumed name. The higher authorities of Moscow were not fond of the retired state counsellor; indeed, they disliked him so greatly that even the briefest of stays in Russia’s second capital city could end very unpleasantly for him.

After Fandorin returned to government service without any of the normal formalities being observed, an extremely strange situation had arisen: although he enjoyed the confidence of the government and was invested with extremely wide-ranging powers, the engineer continued to be regarded as persona non grata in the province of Moscow and endeavoured not to extend his journeys beyond the station of Bologoe.

But shortly after the New Year an incident had occurred that put an end to these years of exile, and if Erast Petrovich had not yet got around to visiting his native parts, it was only because of his extraordinarily excessive workload.

Standing beside the driver and gazing absentmindedly into the hot blaze of the firebox, Fandorin thought about the imminent encounter with the city of his youth and the event that had made this encounter possible.

It was an event that shook Moscow, in the literal sense as well as the figurative one. The governor-general of Moscow, Fandorin’s bitter enemy, had been blown to pieces by a Social Revolutionary bomb right in the middle of the Kremlin.

For all his dislike of the deceased, a man of little worth, who had caused only harm to the city, Erast Petrovich was shocked by what had happened.

Russia was seriously ill, running a high fever, shivering hot and cold by turns, with bloody sweat oozing from her pores, and it was not just a matter of the war with Japan. The war had merely brought to light what was already clear in any case to any thinking individual: the empire had become an anachronism, a dinosaur with a body that was huge and a head that was too small, a creature that had outlived its time on earth. Or rather, the actual dimensions of the head were huge, it was swollen up with a multitude of ministries and committees, but hidden at the centre of this head was a tiny little brain, uncomplicated by any convolutions. Any decision that was even slightly complex, any movement of the unwieldy carcass, was impossible without a decision of will by a single individual whose wisdom, unfortunately, fell far short of Solomon’s. But even if he had been an intellectual titan, how was it possible, in the age of electricity, radio and X-rays, to govern a country single-handed, during the breaks between lawn tennis and hunting?

So the poor Russian dinosaur was reeling, tripping over its own mighty feet, dragging its thousand-verst tail aimlessly across the earth. An agile predator of the new generation sprang at it repeatedly, tearing out lumps of flesh, and deep in the entrails of the behemoth, a deadly tumour was burgeoning. Fandorin did not know how to heal the ailing giant, but in any case bombs were not the answer – the jarring concussion would totally confuse the immense saurian’s tiny little brain, the gigantic body would start twitching convulsively in panic, and Russia would die.

As usual, it was the wisdom of the East that helped purge his gloomy and barren thoughts. The engineer fished out of his memory an aphorism that suited the case: ‘The superior man knows that the world is imperfect, but does not lose heart’.

The factor that had disrupted the harmony of Erast Petrovich’s soul should be arriving at the Nicholas station in Moscow any minute now.

He could only hope that Lieutenant Colonel Danilov would not blunder …

Danilov did not blunder. He met his visitor from St Petersburg in person, right beside the reserve line at which the ‘compound’ arrived. The lieutenant colonel’s round face was glowing with excitement. As soon as they had shaken hands he started his report.

He didn’t have a single good agent – they had all been lured into the Okhrana’s Flying Squad, where the pay and the gratuities were better, and there was more freedom. And therefore, knowing that the engineer would not have alarmed him over something trivial, Danilov had decided to reprise the good old days, taken his deputy, Staff Captain Lisitsky, a very capable officer, to help him and followed the mark himself.

Now the engineer understood the reason for bold Nikolai Vasilievich’s agitation. The lieutenant colonel had had enough of sitting in his office, he was weary of having no real work to do, that was why he had gone dashing off so eagerly to play cops and robbers. ‘I’ll have to tell them to transfer him to work in the field,’ Fandorin noted to himself as he listened to the adventurous tale of how Danilov and his deputy had dressed up as petty merchants and how deftly they had arranged the surveillance in two cabs.

‘In Petrovsko-Razumovskoe?’ he asked in surprise. ‘In that d-dump?’

‘Ah, Erast Petrovich, it’s easy to see you haven’t been around for quite a while. Petrovsko-Razumovskoe’s a fashionable dacha district now. For instance, the dacha to which we trailed the dark-haired man is rented by a certain Alfred Radzikovski for a thousand roubles a month.’

‘A thousand?’ Fandorin echoed in astonishment. ‘What kind of Fontainebleau is that?’

‘A Fontainebleau is exactly what it is. A huge great garden with its own stables, even a garage. I left the staff captain to continue the surveillance, he has two corporals with him, in civvies, naturally. Reliable men but, of course, not professional sleuths.’

‘Let’s go,’ the engineer said briskly.

Lisitsky – a handsome fellow with a rakishly curled moustache – proved to be a very capable fellow. He hadn’t wasted his time sitting in the bushes, he had found out a great deal.

‘They live on a grand scale,’ he reported, occasionally slipping into a Polish accent. ‘Electricity, telephone, even their own telegraph apparatus. A bathroom with a shower! Two carriages with thoroughbred trotters! An automobile in the garage! A gym with exercise bicycles! Servants in lace pinafores! Parrots this size in the winter garden!’

‘How do you know about the parrots?’ Fandorin asked incredulously.

‘Why, I was there,’ Staff Captain Lisitsky replied with a cunning air. ‘I tried to get a job as a gardener. They didn’t take me – said they already had one. But they let me take a peep into the conservatory – one of them is a great lover of plants.’

‘One?’ the engineer asked quickly. ‘How many are there?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s a fair-sized group. I heard about half a dozen voices. And, by the way, between themselves they talk Polish.’

‘But what about?’ the lieutenant colonel exclaimed. ‘You know the language!’

The young officer shrugged.

‘They didn’t say anything significant with me there. They praised the dark-haired bloke for something, called him a “real daredevil”. By the way, his name’s Yuzek.’

‘They’re Polish nationalists from the Socialist Party, I’m sure of it!’ Danilov exclaimed. ‘I read about them in a secret circular. They’ve got mixed up with the Japanese, who promised to make independence for Poland a condition if they win. Their leader went to Tokyo recently. What’s his name again …’

‘Pilsudski,’ said Erast Petrovich, examining the dacha through a pair of binoculars.

‘That’s it, Pilsudski. He must have got money in Japan, and instructions.’

‘It l-looks like it …’

Something was stirring at the dacha. A blond man standing by the window in a collarless shirt with wide braces shouted something into a telephone. A door slammed loudly once, twice. Horses started neighing.

‘It looks like they’re getting ready for something,’ Lisitsky whispered in the engineer’s ear. ‘They started moving about half an hour ago now.’

‘The Japs’ spies don’t seem any too bothered about us,’ the lieutenant colonel boomed in his other ear. ‘Of course, our counter-espionage is pretty lousy, right enough, but this is just plain cheeky: setting themselves up in comfort like this, five minutes away from the Nicholas railway station. Wouldn’t I just love to nab the little darlings right now. A pity it’s out of our jurisdiction. The Okhrana boys and the provincial gendarmes will eat us alive. If they were on the railway right of way, now that would be a different matter.’

‘I tell you what we can do,’ Lisitsky suggested. ‘We’ll call our platoon and put the dacha under siege, but we won’t take it, we’ll inform the police. Then they won’t make any fuss about it.’

Fandorin didn’t join in the discussion – he was turning his head this way and that, trying to spot something. He fixed his gaze on a freshly trimmed wooden pole sticking up out of the ground beside the road.

‘A telephone pole … We could listen to what they’re saying …’

‘How?’ the lieutenant colonel asked in surprise.

‘Tap the line, from the pole.’

‘Sorry, Erast Petrovich, I don’t have a clue about technical matters. What does “tap the line” mean?

Fandorin, however, didn’t bother to explain anything – he had already made his decision.

‘One of the platforms on our Nicholas line is c-close by here …’

‘That’s right, the Petrovsko-Razumovskoe way station.’

‘There must be a telephone apparatus there. Send a gendarme. But be quick, don’t waste a second. He runs in, cuts the wire right at the wall, takes the telephone and comes straight back. No wasting time on explanations, he just shows his identification document, that’s all. At the double, now!’

A few moments later they heard the tramping of rapidly receding boots as the corporal rushed off to carry out his mission. About ten minutes after that he came dashing back with the severed telephone and wire.

‘Lucky it’s so long,’ the engineer said happily, and astounded the gendarmes by taking off his elegant coat, clutching a folding penknife in his teeth and shinning up the pole.

After fiddling with the wires for a bit, he came back down, holding the earpiece in his hands, with its wire leading up into the air.

‘Take it,’ he said to the staff captain. ‘Since you know Polish, you can do the listening.’

Lisitsky was filled with admiration.

‘What a brilliant idea, Mr Engineer! How incredible that no one ever thought of it before! Why, you could set up a special office at the telephone exchange! Listen to what suspicious individuals are saying! What tremendous benefit for the fatherland! And so very civilised, in the spirit of technological progr …’ The officer broke off in mid-word, raised a warning finger and informed them in a terrible whisper, ‘They’re calling! The central exchange!’

The lieutenant colonel and the engineer leaned forward eagerly.

‘A man … asking for number 398 …’ Lisitsky whispered jerkily. ‘Another man … Speaking Polish … The first one’s arranging to meet … No, it’s a gathering … On Novo-Basmannaya Street … In the Varvarin Company building … An operation! He said “operation”! That’s it, he cut the connection.’

‘What kind of operation?’ asked Danilov, grabbing his deputy by the shoulder.

‘He didn’t say. Just “the operation”, that’s all. At midnight, and it’s almost half past nine already. No wonder they’re bustling about like that.’

‘On Basmannaya? The Varvarin Company Building?’ Erast Petrovich repeated, also whispering without even realising it. ‘What’s there, do you know?’

The officers exchanged glances and shrugged.

‘We need an address b-book.’

They sent the same corporal running back to the way station – to dart into the office, grab the All Moscow guidebook off the desk and leg it back as quickly as possible.

‘The men at the way station will think the railway gendarme service is full of head cases,’ the lieutenant colonel lamented, but mostly for form’s sake. ‘Never mind, we’ll return it all afterwards – the telephone and the book.’

The next ten minutes passed in tense anticipation, with them almost tearing the binoculars out of each other’s hands. They couldn’t see all that well because it was starting to get dark, but all the lights were on in the dacha and hasty shadows flitted across the curtains.

The three of them went dashing to meet the panting corporal. Erast Petrovich, as the senior in rank, grabbed the tattered volume. First he checked what telephone number 398 was. It proved to be the Great Moscow Hotel. He moved on to the Listing of Buildings section, opened it at Novo-Basmannaya Street, and the blood started pounding in his temples.

The building that belonged to the Varvarin Company contained the administrative offices of the District Artillery Depot.

The lieutenant colonel glanced over the engineer’s shoulder and gasped.

‘Why, of course! Why didn’t I realise straight away … Novo-Basmannaya Street. That’s where they have the warehouses for the shells and dynamite that they send to the army in the field! They always have at least a week’s supply of ammunition! But, gentlemen, that’s … Why, it’s unheard of! Monstrous! If they’re planning to blow it up – almost half of Moscow will be blown to pieces! Why, those lousy Poles! Begging your pardon, Boleslav Stefanovich, I didn’t mean …’

‘What can you expect from socialists,’ said Staff Captain Lisitsky, interceding for his nation. ‘Pawns in the hands of the Japanese, that’s all. But what about those Orientals! Genuine new Huns! Absolutely no concept of civilised warfare!’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Danilov interrupted, with his eyes blazing. ‘There’s a silver lining to this cloud! The artillery stores adjoin the workshops of the Kazan railway, and that’s …’

‘… that’s our territory!’ Lisitsky concluded for him. ‘Bravo, Nikolai Vasilievich! We’ll get by without the provincials!’

‘And without the Okhrana!’ his boss said with a predatory smile.

The lieutenant colonel and the staff captain worked a genuine miracle of efficiency: in two hours they set up a sound, thoroughly planned ambush. They didn’t trail the saboteurs from Petrovsko-Razumovskoe – that was too risky. At night the lanes in the dacha village were empty and, as luck would have it, the moon was shining with all its might. It was more rational to concentrate all their efforts at a single spot, where the plotters had arranged their gathering.

Danilov brought out all the current members of the section for the operation, apart from those who were standing duty – sixty-seven men altogether.

Most of the gendarmes were set around the inside of the depot’s perimeter wall, with orders to ‘lie there quietly and not stick their heads up’. Lisitsky was the man in command on the spot. The lieutenant colonel himself took ten of his best men and hid in the management building.

To obtain permission for the railway gendarmes to run their own show on the territory of the artillery administration, they had to get the Director of Depositories, an old general who had fought against Shamil some fifty years previously, out of his bed. He got so agitated that it never even entered his head to nitpick about the finer points of jurisdiction – he just agreed to everything immediately and kept swallowing heart drops all the time.

Seeing that Danilov was managing perfectly well without him, the engineer distanced himself from the supervision of the ambush. He and Masa stationed themselves in an entrance opposite the gates of the depot. Fandorin chose the spot quite deliberately. If the gendarmes, who were not used to this kind of operation, let any of the saboteurs get away, then Erast Petrovich would block their path, and they would not get away from him! However, Danilov, elated by the preparations, understood the engineer’s decision in his own way, and a note of slight condescension appeared in the lieutenant colonel’s tone of voice, as if to say: Well, of course, I’m not criticising, you’re a civilian, you’re not obliged to put yourself in the way of a bullet.

Just as soon as everyone had taken up their positions and the nervous general had followed instructions by putting out the light in his office before pressing his face up against the windowpane, they heard the chiming of the clock in the tower on Kalanchovskaya Square, and a minute later three open carriages came rolling into the street from two directions – two from the Ryazan Passage and one from the Yelokhovsky Passage. The carriages met in front of the administration building and men got out of them (Fandorin counted five, and another three who stayed on the coach boxes). They started whispering to each other about something.

The engineer took out of his pocket a beautiful small, flat pistol, manufactured to order at the Browning factory in Belgium, and tugged on the breech. His valet demonstratively turned away.

Well then, come on, Erast Petrovich thought to himself, trying to hurry the Poles along, and sighed – there was not much hope that Danilov’s fine eagles would take anyone alive. But never mind, at least one of the villains had to stay with the horses. The lucky man would escape a gendarme’s bullet and fall into Fandorin’s hands.

The discussions ended. But instead of moving towards the doors of the administration building or straight to the gates, the saboteurs got back into their carriages, cracked their whips and all three carriages dashed away from the depot, picking up speed, in the direction of Dobraya Sloboda.

Had they noticed something? Had they changed their plan?

Erast Petrovich ran out of the gateway.

The carriages had already disappeared round the corner.

The engineer pulled his splendid coat off his shoulders and set off at a run in the same direction.

His servant picked up the abandoned coat and jogged after him, puffing and panting.

When Lieutenant Colonel Danilov and his gendarmes darted out on to the porch, Novo-Basmannaya Street was already empty. The sound of hoofbeats had faded into the distance, and the moon was shining placidly in the sky.

It turned out that Erast Petrovich Fandorin, a responsible member of a highly serious government agency, a man no longer in the prime of youth, could not only shin up telephone poles, but could also run at a quite fantastic speed, while making no sound and remaining virtually invisible – he ran close to the walls, where the shadows of night were thickest of all, skirting round the patches of moonlight or vaulting over them with a prodigious leap. More than anything else, the engineer resembled a phantom, careering along the dark street on some otherworldly business of his own. It was a good thing he didn’t run into anybody out walking late – the poor devil would have been in for a serious shock.

Fandorin caught up with the carriages quite soon. After that he started running more gently, in order to keep his distance.

The pursuit, however, did not continue for long.

The carriages halted behind the Von-Dervizov Grammar School for Girls. They were parked wheel to wheel, and one of the drivers gathered all the reins into a bundle, while the other seven men set off towards a two-storey building with a glass display window.

One of them fiddled with the door for a moment, then waved his hand, and the whole group disappeared inside.

Erast Petrovich stuck his head out from round the corner, trying to work out how to creep up on the driver, who was standing on his box, gazing around vigilantly in all directions. All the approaches were brightly lit by the moon.

At this point Masa came panting up. Realising from Fandorin’s expression that his master was about to take decisive action, he threw his false pigtail over his shoulder and whispered angrily in Japanese:

‘I shall only intervene if the supporters of His Majesty are going to kill you. But if you start killing the supporters of His Majesty the Mikado, then do not count on my help.’

‘Oh, drop it,’ Erast Petrovich replied in Russian. ‘Don’t get in my way.’

There was a muffled scream from the house. No further delay was possible.

The engineer ran soundlessly to the nearest lamp-post and hid behind it. He was now only ten paces away from the driver.

Taking a monogrammed cigar case out of his pocket, Fandorin tossed it away from him.

The driver started at the jingling sound and turned his back to the lamppost.

That was exactly what was required. Fandorin covered the distance between them in three bounds, jumped up on to the footboard and pressed the driver’s neck. The driver went limp, and the engineer carefully laid him out on the cobblestones, beside the inflated tyres.

From here he could make out the sign hanging above the door.

‘IOSIF BARANOV. DIAMOND, GOLD AND SILVER ITEMS,’ the engineer read, and muttered:

‘I don’t understand a thing.’

He ran up to the window and glanced in – he could make out the glow of several electric torches in the shop, but it was still dark inside, with only agile shadows darting about. Suddenly the interior was illuminated by an unbearably bright glow, a rain of fiery sparks scattered in all directions, and Fandorin could make out glass counters with men scurrying along them and the door of a safe, with a man leaning over it, holding a blowtorch – the very latest model. Erast Petrovich had seen one like it in a picture in a French magazine.

A man who looked like the nightwatchman had been tied up and was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall: his mouth was covered with sticking plaster, blood was flowing from a wound where he had been hit over the head, and his frantic eyes were glaring wildly at the satanic flame.

‘What has the Japanese secret service c-come to?’ exclaimed Fandorin, turning to his valet, who had just walked up. ‘Can Japan really be so short of money?’

‘The servants of His Majesty the Mikado do not stear,’ replied Masa, surveying the picturesque scene. ‘These are bandits. “Moscow Daredevirs” – I read about them in the newspaper; they make raids in automobiles or fast carriages – they very fond of progress.’ The Japanese servant’s face lit up in a smile. ‘That’s good! Master, I can herp you!’

Erast Petrovich himself had already realised that he was the victim of a misunderstanding – he had mistaken ordinary Warsaw bandits on tour in Moscow for saboteurs. All that time had been wasted for nothing!

But what about the dark-haired man, the passenger from compartment number six, who had fled the scene of the catastrophe in such a suspicious manner?

That’s very simple, the engineer replied to his own question. A daring robbery was committed two days ago in St Petersburg, all the newspapers wrote about it in purple prose. An unidentified individual in a mask stopped the carriage of Countess Vorontsova, robbed Her Excellency, quite literally, of her last thread of clothing and left her there in the road, naked apart from her hat. The spicy part was that the countess had quarrelled with her husband that very evening, and she was moving to her parents’ house, secretly taking all her jewels with her. No wonder Lisitsky said that the inhabitants of the dacha called the dark-haired man ‘a real daredevil’ – he had pulled off the job in St Petersburg and got back here in time for the Moscow operation.

If not for his bitter disappointment and annoyance with himself, Erast Petrovich would probably not have interfered in a mere criminal case, but his fury demanded an outlet – and he felt sorry for the nightwatchman – what if they slit his throat?

‘Take them when they start coming out,’ he whispered to his servant. ‘One for you, one for me.’

Masa nodded and licked his lips.

But fate decreed otherwise.

‘Nix it, gents!’ someone shouted desperately – he must have seen the two shadows outside the window.

In an instant the acetylene glow went out and instead of it a crimson-red gunshot came crashing out of the pitch darkness.

Fandorin and his Japanese valet jumped in opposite directions with perfect synchronisation. The shop window shattered with a deafening jangle.

They carried on firing from the shop, but it was already completely pointless.

‘Whoever jumps out is yours,’ the engineer jabbered rapidly.

He crouched down, rolled agilely over the windowsill covered with shards of glass and dissolved into the dark entrails of the shop.

From inside came the sounds of men yelling and cursing in Russian and Polish, and short, sharp blows. Every so often the room was lit up by the flashes of shots.

A man in a check cap came flying out of the door with his head pulled down into his shoulders. Masa caught the fugitive with an uppercut and laid him out with a blow to the nape of the neck. He rapidly tied him up and dragged him over to the carriages, where the driver Fandorin had half throttled was lying.

Soon another one jumped out through the window and took to his heels without looking back. The Japanese easily overtook him, grabbed him by the wrist and twisted it gently. The bandit squealed and hunched over in pain.

‘Easy, easy,’ Masa coaxed his prisoner as he quickly tied his wrists to his ankles with his belt.

He carried him over to the other two and went back to his original position.

There was no more noise from inside the shop. Masa heard Fandorin’s voice.

‘One, two, three, four … where’s number five? Ah, there he is – five. Masa, how many have you got?’

‘Three.’

‘That tallies.’

Erast Petrovich thrust his head out through the rectangle rimmed with barbs of glass.

‘Run to the depot and bring the gendarmes. And quick about it, or this lot will come round and we’ll be off again.’

The servant ran off in the direction of Novo-Basmannaya Street.

Fandorin untied the watchman and gave him a few slaps on the cheeks to bring him to his senses. But the watchman didn’t want to come to his senses – he muttered and screwed up his eyes, quivered and hiccupped. In medical terms it was called ‘shock’.

While Erast Petrovich was rubbing his temples and feeling for a nerve point just below his collarbone, the stunned bandits began to stir.

One muscly hulk, who had taken an impeccable blow to the chin from a shoe only five minutes earlier, sat up on the floor and started shaking his head. Fandorin had to leave the hiccupping watchman in order to give the reanimated bandit a second helping.

No sooner had that one dived nose first into the floor than another one came round, got up on all fours and started crawling nimbly towards the door. Erast Petrovich dashed after him and stunned him.

A third one was already stirring in the corner, and things were also getting confused out on the street, where Masa had arranged his bandit ikebana: by the light of the street lamp Fandorin could see the driver trying to unfasten the knot on one of his partner’s elbows with his teeth. It occurred to Fandorin that now he was like a clown in a circus who has thrown several balls up in the air and doesn’t know how he’s going to deal with them all. While he’s picking one up off the floor, the others come showering down.

He dashed to the corner. A dark-haired bandit (could it be Yuzek himself?) had not only come round, he had already managed to take out a knife. A quick blow, and another one to make sure. The bandit lay down.

Then a rapid dash to the carriages – before those three could crawl away.

Damn it, where had Masa got to?

But Fandorin’s valet had not managed to reach Lieutenant Colonel Danilov, who was hanging about cluelessly with his men at the Varvarin Company building.

At the very first corner an agile fellow flung himself under Masa’s feet and another two fell on him from above, twisting his arms behind his back.

Masa growled and even tried to bite, but they had his arms twisted tightly, in true professional style.

‘Evstratii Pavlovich! We’ve got one! A Chink! Tell us, Chinky, where’s the shooting?’

They pulled Masa’s pigtail and the wig flew off his head.

‘He’s in disguise!’ the same voice shouted triumphantly. ‘But he’s a slanty-eyed git all right, a Jap! A spy, Evstratii Pavlovich!’

Another man, wearing a bowler hat, walked up and praised his men.

‘Good lads.’

He leaned down to Masa.

‘Good evening to you, Your Japanese Honour. I’m Court Counsellor Mylnikov, Special Section, Department of Police. What’s your name and rank?’

The prisoner tried to give the court counsellor a vicious kick on the shin, but he missed. Then he started hissing and cursing in some foreign tongue.

‘No point in swearing,’ Evstratii Pavlovich rebuked him. ‘You’re caught now, so you can stop chirping. You must be an officer of the Japanese general staff, a nobleman? I’m a nobleman too. So let’s deal honestly with each other. What were you up to here? What’s all this shooting and running about? Give me a light here, Kasatkin.’

The yellow circle of electric light picked out a narrow-eyed face contorted in fury and a head of short-cropped, shiny black hair.

Mylnikov started babbling in confusion:

‘Why, it’s … How do you do, Mr Masa …’

‘Rong time, no see,’ hissed Fandorin’s valet.