The Diamond Chariot

THE REAL AKUNIN




The municipal express post, one of the greatest conveniences produced by the nineteenth century, had made its appearance in the Settlement only recently, and therefore the local inhabitants had recourse to its services more frequently than genuine necessity required. The postmen delivered not only official letters addressed, say, from a trading firm on Main Street to the customs office on the Bund, but also invitations to five o’clock tea, advertisement leaflets, intimate missives and even notes from a wife to a husband, informing him that it was time to go to lunch.

After Fandorin dropped the envelope with the five-cent ‘lightning’ stamp on it into the slit above the crossed post horns, less than half an hour went by before a fine young fellow in a dandified blue uniform rode up on a pony, checked the contents of the box and went clopping off over the cobblestones up the slope – to deliver the correspondence to the addressee at Number 130, the Bluff.

‘What is in the envelope?’ Tamba asked for the fourth time.

The first three attempts had produced no response. Fandorin’s feverish agitation as he addressed the envelope had given way to apathy. The gaijin didn’t hear any questions that he was asked – he sat there, gazing blankly at the street, every now and then beginning to gulp in air through his mouth and rub his chest, as if his waistcoat was too tight for him.

But old Tamba was patient. He waited and waited – and then asked again. And then again.

Eventually he got an answer.

‘Eh?’ Erast Petrovich asked with a start. ‘In the envelope? A poem. The moment Shirota reads it, he’ll lose control and come running. And he’ll pass along this street, over the b-bridge. Alone.’

Tamba didn’t understand about the poem, but he didn’t ask any questions – it wasn’t important.

‘Alone? Very good. We’ll grab him, it won’t be hard.’

He leaned across to Dan and started speaking rapidly in Japanese. The nephew kept nodding and repeating:

‘Hai, hai, hai …’

‘There’s no need to grab him,’ said Fandorin, interrupting their planning. ‘It will be enough if you simply bring him here. Can you do that?’

Shirota appeared very soon – Tamba had barely finished his preparations.

There was the sound of rapid hoof beats and a horseman in a panama hat and a light, sandy-coloured suit came riding round the bend. The former secretary was unrecognisable, so elegant, indeed dashing, did he look. He had the black brush of a moustache sprouting under his flattish nose, and instead of the little steel-rimmed spectacles, his face was adorned with a brand new gold pince-nez.

The native gentleman’s flushed features and the furious gait of his mount suggested that Shirota was in a terrible hurry, but he was obliged to pull back on the reins just before the bridge, when a hunchbacked beggar in a dusty kimono threw himself across the horseman’s path.

He grabbed hold of the bridle and started begging in a repulsive, plaintively false descant whine.

Restraining his overheated horse, Shirota abused the mendicant furiously and jerked on the reins, but the tramp had clutched them in a grip of iron.

Erast Petrovich observed this little incident from the window of the tea parlour, trying to stay in the shadow. Two or three passers-by, attracted for a brief moment by the shouting, had already turned away from such an uninteresting scene and gone about their business.

For half a minute the horseman tried in vain to free himself. Then, at last, he realised there was a quicker way. Muttering curses, he rummaged in his pocket, fished out a coin and tossed it to the old man.

And it worked – the beggar immediately let go of the reins. In a sudden impulse of gratitude, he seized his benefactor’s hand and pressed his lips against it (he must have seen gaijins doing that somewhere). Then he jumped back, gave a low bow and scurried away.

Amazingly enough, though, Shirota seemed to have forgotten that he was in a hurry; he shook his head, then rubbed his temple, as if he were trying to remember something. Then suddenly he swayed drunkenly and slumped sideways.

He would quite certainly have fallen, and probably bruised himself cruelly on the cobblestones, if a young native man of a most respectable appearance had not been walking by. The youth managed to catch the fainting horseman in his arms and the proprietor of the tea parlour came running out to help, together with the pastor, who had abandoned his numerous family.

‘Drunk?’ shouted the proprietor.

‘Dead?’ shouted the pastor.

The young man felt Shirota’s pulse and said:

‘Fainted. I’m a doctor … That is, I soon will be a doctor.’ He turned to the proprietor. ‘If you would allow us to carry this man into your establishment, I could help him.’

The three of them lugged the insensible body into the tea parlour and, since there was nowhere to put the sick man down in the English half, they carried him through into the Japanese half with its tatami – to the very spot where Erast Petrovich was finishing his tea.

It took a few minutes to get rid of the proprietor, and especially the pastor, who was very keen to comfort the martyr in his final minutes. The medical student explained that it was an ordinary fainting fit, there was no danger and the patient merely needed to lie down for a little while.

Soon Tamba came back. It was impossible to recognise this respectable-looking, clean old man as the repulsive beggar from the bridge. The jonin waited for the outsiders to go, then he leaned over Shirota, squeezed his temples with his fingers and sat down to one side.

The renegade came round immediately.

He batted his eyelids, studying the ceiling quizzically. He raised his head – and met the titular counsellor’s cold, blue-eyed gaze. He jerked upright and noticed the two Japanese near by. He barely glanced at young Dan, but stared at the quiet little old man as if he had never seen a more terrifying sight.

Shirota turned terribly pale and drops of sweat stood out on his forehead.

‘Is that Tamba?’ he asked Fandorin. ‘Yes, I recognised him from the description … This is what I was afraid of! That they had kidnapped Sophie. How can you, a civilised man, be in league with those ghouls?’

But when he glanced once again at his former colleague’s stony face, his features drooped and he murmured:

‘Yes, yes, of course … You had no choice … I understand. But I know you are a noble man. You will not allow the shinobi to do her any harm! Erast Petrovich, Mr Fandorin, you also love, you will understand me!’

‘No, I will not,’ the vice-consul replied indifferently. ‘The woman I loved is dead. Thanks to your efforts. Tamba said that you drew up the plan of the operation. Well then, the Don is fortunate in his choice of d-deputy.’

Shirota looked at Erast Petrovich in terror, frightened less by the meaning of the words than the lifeless tone in which they were spoken.

He whispered fervently:

‘I … I’ll do whatever they want, only let her go! She doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t understand anything about my business. She must not be held as a hostage! She is an angel!’

‘It never even entered my head to t-take Sophia Diogenovna hostage,’ Fandorin replied in the same dull, strangled voice. ‘What scurrilous nonsense you talk.’

‘That’s not true! I have received a note from her. This is Sophie’s hand!’ Shirota extracted the small sheet of pink paper from the torn envelope and read out: ‘“My poor heart can bear this no more. Oh come quickly to help me now! And if you do not come, you know I shall lose my life for you”. Tamba guessed where I had hidden Sophie and kidnapped her!’

The fiancé of the ‘captain’s daughter’ was a pitiful sight: lips trembling, pince-nez dangling on its lace, fingers intertwined imploringly.

But Erast Petrovich was not moved by this selfless love. The vice-consul rubbed his chest (those cursed lungs!) and simply said:

‘It’s not a note. It’s a poem.’

‘A poem?’ Shirota exclaimed in amazement. ‘Oh, come now! I know what Russian poems are like. There’s no rhyme here: “more” and “know” is not a rhyme. You can have no rhymes in blank verse, but that has rhythm. For instance, Pushkin: “I visited once more that corner of the earth where I spent two forgotten years in exile”. But this has no rhythm.’

‘But even so, it is a poem.’

‘Ah, perhaps it is a poem in prose,’ Shirota exclaimed with a flash of insight. ‘Like Turgenev! “I fancied then that I was somewhere in the Russian backwoods, in a simple village house”.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Erast Petrovich, who did not wish to argue. ‘But in any case, Sophia Diogenovna is not in any danger, I have n-no idea where you have hidden her.’

‘So you … You simply wanted to lure me out!’ Shirota flushed bright red. ‘Well then, you have succeeded. But I won’t tell you anything! Not even if your shinobi torture me.’ At those words he turned pale again. ‘I’d rather bite my tongue off.’

Erast Petrovich winced slightly.

‘No one is intending to torture you. You will get up in a moment and leave. I have met you here to ask you one single question. And you do not even have to answer it.’

Totally confused now, Shirota muttered:

‘You will let me go? Even if I don’t answer?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t somehow … Oh, very well, very well, ask.’

Looking him in the eye, Fandorin said slowly:

‘I remember you used to call me a friend. And you said that you were in my debt for ever. Then you betrayed me, although I trusted you. Tell me, sincere man and admirer of Pushkin, does serving the Fatherland really justify absolutely any kind of villainy?’

Shirota frowned tensely, expecting a continuation. But none came.

‘That’s all. The question has been asked. You can choose not to answer it. And g-goodbye.’

The admirer of Pushkin turned red again. Seeing Fandorin getting up, he exclaimed:

‘Wait, Erast Petrovich!’

‘Let’s go,’ said Fandorin, beckoning wearily to Tamba and his nephew.

‘I did not betray you!’ Shirota said hastily. ‘I set the Don a condition – that you must remain alive.’

‘After which his men attempted to kill me several times … The woman who was dearer to me than anything else in the world was killed. Killed because of you. Goodbye, sincere man.’

‘Where are you going?’ Shirota shouted after him.

‘To your patron. I have a score to settle with him.’

‘But he will kill you!’

‘How so?’ asked the titular counsellor, turning round. ‘He promised you to let me live, did he not?’

Shirota dashed up to him and grabbed hold of his shoulder.

‘Erast Petrovich, what am I to do? If I help you, I shall betray my Fatherland! If I help my Fatherland I shall destroy you, and then I am a low scoundrel, and the only thing left for me to do will be kill to myself!’ His eyes blazed with fire. ‘Yes, yes, that is a solution. If Don Tsurumaki kills you, I shall kill myself!’

A faint semblance of feeling stirred in Fandorin’s frozen soul – it was spite. Fanning this feeble spark in the hope that it would grow into a salutary flame, the titular counsellor hissed:

‘Why, at the slightest little moral difficulty, do you Japanese immediately do away with yourselves? As if that will turn a villainous deed into a noble act! It won’t! And the good of the Fatherland has nothing to do with it! I wish no harm to your precious Fatherland, I wish harm to the akunin by the name of Don Tsurumaki! Are you eternally in his debt too?’

‘No, but I believe this man is capable of leading Japan on to the path of progress and civilisation. I help him because I am a patriot!’

‘What would you do with the man who killed Sophia Diogenovna? Ah, now see how your eyes blaze! Help me take revenge for my love and then serve your Fatherland, who’s stopping you? Get yourselves a constitution, build up the army and the navy, put the foreign powers in their place. Are p-progress and civilisation impossible without the bandit Tsurumaki? Then they’re not worth a bent kopeck. And another thing. You say you are a patriot. But how can a man really be a patriot if he knows that he is a scoundrel?’

‘I need to think,’ Shirota whispered. He hung his head and made for the door.

Dan waited for him to leave the room and then started after him without a sound, but Tamba stopped his nephew.

‘What a pity that I don’t know Russian,’ said the jonin. ‘I don’t know what you said to him, but I have never seen the zone of self-satisfaction below the left cheekbone change its form and colour so irrevocably in five minutes.’

‘Don’t be too quick to celebrate,’ said Erast Petrovich, anguished to feel that the flame of wrath had not taken hold – the little spark had shrivelled away to nothing, and once again it was difficult to breathe. ‘He has to think.’

‘Shirota has already decided everything, he simply hasn’t realised it yet. Now it will all be very simple.’

Naturally, the master of ninso was not mistaken.

Indeed, the operation looked so simple that Tamba wanted to take only Dan with him, but Erast Petrovich insisted on taking part. He knew he would be a burden to the Stealthy Ones, but he was afraid that if he did not exterminate Tsurumaki with his own hands, the tight ring constricting his chest would never open again.

In a secluded spot on the high seashore, they changed into black and covered their faces with masks.

‘A genuine shinobi,’ said Tamba, shaking his head as he examined the titular counsellor. ‘Only very lanky …’

Masa was ordered to stay and guard the clothes, and when Fandorin’s servant tried to rebel, Tamba took him gently by the neck and pressed – and the rebel closed his eyes, lay down on the ground and started snuffling sweetly.

They didn’t head straight for the gates – there were always sentries on duty there. They went through the garden of the Right Honourable Algernon Bullcox. The ferocious mastiffs were pacified by Dan; he blew into a little pipe three times, and the terrifying monsters sank into a peaceful sleep, just like Masa.

As they walked past the familiar house with the dark windows, Erast Petrovich kept looking up at the first floor and waiting for something to stir in his soul. Nothing stirred.

They stopped at the small gate that led out of the garden into the neighbouring estate. Dan took out some kind of slide-whistle and trilled like a cicada.

The gate swung open without a sound, not even the spring jangled – Shirota had taken care of that by lubricating the gate earlier.

‘That way,’ said Fandorin, pointing towards the pond and the dark silhouette of the pavilion.

Everything was set to end where it had begun. In a detailed note, Shirota had informed them that Tsurumaki did not spend the night in the house. One of his men went to bed in his room and the master of the house went off to sleep in the pavilion. No one else in the house knew about this, apart from Shirota and two bodyguards.

That was why Tamba regarded the operation as not very complicated.

As they approached the pavilion where he had spent so many happy hours, Erast listened to his heart again – would it start pounding or not? No, it didn’t.

The jonin put his hand on Fandorin’s shoulder and gestured for him to lie down on the ground. Only the shinobi went on from there. They didn’t crawl, they didn’t freeze on the spot – they simply walked, but in such an amazing way that Fandorin could hardly see them.

The shadows of the night clouds slid across the grass and the paths, and Tamba and his nephew managed to stay in the dark patches all the time, not getting caught even once in a brightly lit patch.

When the sentry on duty between them and the pool suddenly turned his head and listened, they both froze absolutely still. It seemed to Erast Petrovich that the bodyguard was looking straight at the Stealthy Ones, who were separated from him by a distance of no more than ten paces. But the sentry yawned and started gazing at the glimmering surface of the water again.

There was a very faint sound, like a light exhalation. The sentry tumbled over gently on to his side, dropping his carbine. Dan had fired a dart from his blowpipe. The sleeping drug took effect instantly. The man would wake up in fifteen minutes’ time, and think he had just dozed off a second ago. The young ninja ran straight over to the wall and round the corner. A few moments later he peeped back round and gave a signal: the second bodyguard had also been put to sleep.

Fandorin could get up now.

Tamba was waiting for the titular counsellor by the door. He didn’t let Fandorin go ahead, though, but ducked in first himself.

He leaned down over the sleeping man for no more than an instant and then said in a voice that was low, but not a whisper:

‘Come in, he’s yours.’

The night lamp came on with a flash – the same one that Erast Petrovich had used so many times. Don Tsurumaki was lying on the futon with his eyes closed.

Even the bed was the same one …

Tamba shook his head as he looked at the sleeping man.

‘I pressed his sleep point, he won’t wake up. A good death, with no fear or pain. An akunin like this deserves worse.’ He held out a little stick with a pointed end. ‘Prick him on the chest or the neck. Lightly, so that only one drop of blood seeps out. That will be enough – no one will guess that the Don was killed. The bodyguards will swear that they never closed their eyes. A natural death. His heart stopped in his sleep. It happens with excessively full-blooded individuals.’

Erast Petrovich looked at the ruddy features of his sworn enemy in the grip of a magical stupor. This is no chimerical déjá vu, he told himself. This really has happened once before. I stood over the sleeping Don and listened to his regular breathing. But everything was different then. He wasn’t asleep, he was pretending. That is one. I was the prey and not the hunter. That is two. And on that occasion my heart was pounding, but now it is calm.

‘I cannot kill a sleeping man,’ said Fandorin. ‘Wake him.’

Tamba muttered something under his breath – invective, no doubt. But he didn’t argue.

‘All right. Only be careful. He is cunning and brave.’

The jonin touched the fat man’s neck and skipped back into the shadow.

Tsurumaki started and opened his eyes, which opened wider at the sight of the black figure with one hand raised.

Erast Petrovich pulled the mask off his face, and the Don’s eyes opened wider still.

The most stupid thing that Erast Petrovich could do in this situation was enter into conversation with the condemned man, but how could he strike a man who was unarmed, and without saying anything, like an executioner?

‘It’s not a dream,’ said Fandorin. ‘Farewell, akunin, and may you be cursed.’

Well, he had said his farewell, but he still hadn’t struck the blow.

Who could tell how all this would have ended – but the titular counsellor was lucky. Don Tsurumaki, a man with strong nerves, snatched a revolver out from under his pillow, and then, with a feeling of relief, Erast Petrovich prodded the villain on the collarbone.

The Don made a strange, snoring sound, dropped the gun, twitched several times and lay still. The whites of his upturned eyes glinted between the half-closed eyelids.

Fandorin tried to breathe with his full chest, but he couldn’t!

What was this? The death of his enemy had not brought him relief? Perhaps because it had happened too quickly and simply?

He swung his hand back to strike another blow, but Tamba interfered and grabbed his wrist.

‘Enough! It will leave marks.’

‘I still can’t get my breath.’

‘That’s all right, it will pass off now,’ said the jonin, slapping the vice-consul on the back. ‘The death of an enemy is the very best medicine.’

Incredibly enough, at those words Fandorin suddenly felt better. It was as if some kind of spring unwound inside him. He breathed in cautiously – and the air flowed easily into his chest, filling it right up. The sensation was so delightful that it set Erast Petrovich’s head spinning.

So it hadn’t all been in vain!

While the titular counsellor was relishing his new-found freedom of breath, Tamba hid the revolver under the pillow again, laid the dead man out more naturally, opened his mouth slightly, sprayed something into it, and bubbles of foam sprang out on to the lips. Then he lowered the collar of the nightshirt and wiped away the solitary drop of blood.

‘That’s it, let us go! Let us not cause trouble for our friend Shirota. Well, what’s wrong with you?’

Fandorin’s clarity of thought had returned to him together with his breathing. He looked at Tamba, and seemed to see him properly for the first time – see all of him, just as he was, right through.

‘Our friend?’ Erast Petrovich repeated slowly. ‘Why, of course, this whole business is about Shirota. That’s what you needed me for. You could have avenged yourself on the Don without me. But that’s not enough for you, you want to restore your alliance with the powerful organisation that Tsurumaki created. You calculated that once the Don was gone, Shirota, his right-hand man, would take over the organisation. Especially if you helped him to do it. But you didn’t know how to approach Shirota. And then you decided to use me. Right?’

The jonin didn’t answer. The eyes in the slit of his mask blazed with a furious fire. But, swept on by the irrepressible flood of liberated mental energy, Fandorin continued:

‘I couldn’t breathe! Now I remember how it began. Beside the funeral pyre, when you pretended to restrain me, you squeezed my chest very hard! I thought I couldn’t breathe because of the shock, but it was all your tricks. With my lungs half paralysed, my soul frozen and my rational mind numbed, I was like wax in your hands. And the reason why it has passed off just now is nothing to do with the death of my enemy – it’s because you slapped me on the back! But now I’ve played my part, and my usefulness is exhausted. You’re going to kill me. The Don was a villain, but the blood in all his veins was alive and hot. He wasn’t the real akunin, you are – with your cold heart, devoid of all love and nobility. You didn’t even love your daughter at all. Poor Midori! At her funeral all you were thinking about was how to make the most advantageous use of her death!’

Evidently Erast Petrovich’s mental clarity had not returned to him in full. Otherwise he would not have shouted his accusations out loud, he would not have shown that he had seen through the old shinobi’s game.

There was only one way to correct this fatal error. The titular counsellor lunged, aiming the poisoned stick at the schemer’s chest. But Tamba was prepared for an attack. He dodged and struck Fandorin gently on the wrist, leaving the hand dangling limply. The jonin immediately took the wooden weapon.

Erast Petrovich was not in the right state of mind to clutch at life. Holding his numbed hand, he turned his chest towards Tamba and waited for the blow.

‘Your conclusions are only half right,’ said the jonin, putting the small stick away. ‘Yes, I am a real akunin. But I won’t kill you. Let us get out of here. The guards will wake up any minute now. This is not the time or the place for explanations. Especially since they will be long. Let us go. And I’ll tell you about the Diamond Chariot and a real akunin.’

A real akunin –

Husky laugh, knife in his teeth

And wild, crazy eyes